Chapter 101: Lady Mania
The air cooled as Jack descended into the lower reaches of the Kaiser estate.
The smell of wet stone and the faint tang of iron was thick in the air.
Candles guttered in the wall along the stairwell left just enough light to reveal the narrow path.
The hush down here was a different species of quiet.
Not absence of sound, but the eerie quiet that came before something important happened.
At the final landing a guard straightened, his fist slammed against his chest in a crisp salute.
"Lord Kaiser."
Jack inclined his head and pushed through the heavy oak door.
The chamber beyond was a square room.
A table scarred by old knives, three chairs, a clay jug of water, and a single lantern whose light pooled like molten gold.
Father Caelen stood by the far wall, his staff upright, both hands folded over the polished head.
The nervous, half-frenzied priest Jack had first met was gone; in his place stood a man tempered like iron.
"You look tired," Jack said quietly.
Caelen’s lips softened. "Tired, my lord, is a blessing. It means there is work yet to be done."
"And our guest?"
"In the next room," Caelen replied. "He believes his secrets make him valuable. I’m letting him steep in that belief. Fear seasons the tongue."
Jack almost smiled. "You sound like Seraphina."
"Seraphina is... effective," Caelen said, allowing the smallest glint of humor.
Jack paced once around the table, fingertips brushing the cool wood. "And the room?"
"If you require Lady Genevieve, say so," Caelen said after a pause.
"Not yet. I’d like the truth from his lips before we bring my mother in."
"A wise choice." Caelen’s thumb idly stroked the staff’s rim. "Fear speaks faster when it imagines mercy is still possible."
Jack’s gaze flicked to the priest’s hands. "You’ve gotten comfortable with ’my lord.’"
"I have decided it is true," Caelen said simply.
Then, without warning, he went to one knee.
Not a theatrical bow, but a deliberate submission.
His spine was straight, eyes raised so there could be no mistake that this was witness, not groveling.
"I have had time to think," Caelen said, his voice dropping low just above a whisper.
"I’ve numbered the times I mistook terror for prudence. If you will have me, Jack Kaiser, I submit my staff, my rites, and my stubbornness to your service."
Jack neither flinched nor feigned surprise. Triumph would have been an insult.
"I’ll have you," he said. "For life."
Caelen’s head dipped once, a door closing softly. "Then your line grows by one old fool."
[DING!]
[Personal Guard Established]
[1 / 100]
[Role: Pending Assignment]
[Skill Learned!]
[Invigorate: Boost the courage and stats of your personal guard and soldiers by 25%.]
The number burned in Jack’s vision. ’I finally got one.’
He had told Evelyne he wanted soldiers enough to defend every border.
This was the first brick in that wall.
"Up," Jack said, allowing a touch of warmth. "You’ll scuff your knees and Seraphina will claim it was my fault."
Caelen chuckled, a clean, unhurried sound. "She would win the argument."
"She always does," Jack agreed.
---
From the next chamber came the faint scrape of a chair leg and a muttered complaint about "fees and fools" and "idiot cities that give water away as if disease were free."
"Shall we?" Caelen asked.
"In a minute. Let him stew in his own importance a little longer."
The priest nodded. Wise men knew that superstition often served strategy.
A soft tread whispered behind them.
Octavia entered first, carrying a ledger and a brass lamp that painted her in molten gold.
Behind her, Lady Genevieve glided like the shadow of a blade.
Every step unhurried, every breath a quiet threat.
Jack’s thoughts flicked, dry and wry.
’Ah, perhaps tonight I will learn why people fear mother more than father.’
"Is the worm in there?" Genevieve asked, her voice almost gentle. Like a lullaby.
"He waits," Caelen said.
"Good." Her smile held the elegance of a dagger unsheathed. "Let’s see what kind of pest dares to tread in my home."
Jack’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. ’She sure is different than I’ve ever seen her.’
Genevieve’s eyes gleamed.
Jack absorbed that with a slow breath.
After an hour of waiting, Jack finally spoke.
"Now," Jack said.
Caelen unlatched the iron door.
The captured "scribe" jerked upright, eyes wide with the desperate hope that amateurs mistake for courage.
He was younger than Jack expected, gaunt from travel, cuffs frayed but ink-stained.
A man who thought words would shield him.
When he saw them, panic flared.
He lunged for the nearest object, a loose chunk of stone from the wall and swung clumsily at Jack.
Jack didn’t bother to move aside.
His spear flashed into being with a shimmer of white light, the haft settling into his palm.
The point kissed the man’s throat, a single bead of blood blossoming.
The spy froze, breath sawing.
Lady Genevieve stepped forward, unhurried, the air bending subtly as if darkness itself was making space for her.
"Enough games," she said, and her voice slid across the stone like velvet.
She lifted one hand.
"Darkness."
The word struck like a hammer.
The room’s candles guttered and died in the same heartbeat.
The air turned cold. Jack could see his breath in front of him.
It continued until even the sound of breathing felt brittle.
Pitch blackness swallowed them.
At first there was only the scrape of the man’s frantic breath.
Then came the whimper.
A child’s sound torn from a grown man’s throat.
"What... where..." His voice cracked, too loud in the sudden void.
"I can’t..." A ragged gasp. "I can’t see!"
Something unseen pressed against the room like a tide of ink.
The man’s words dissolved into frantic syllables.
He stumbled, fell, scrambled against the stone.
A sob became a scream.
"Please... stop... no more... get them out of my head!"
He clawed at his own face as if trying to rip his own eyes out of his head.
Jack stood utterly still.
This was not any darkness.
This was darkness his mother created.
A power that devoured the mind’s last illusions of safety.
The spy thrashed now, begging shadows to give back the light, to give back his thoughts.
Every plea tumbled into incoherence until only a hoarse repetition remained:
"Make it stop. Make it stop. MAKE IT..."
The final word broke into a raw keening that hardly sounded human.
Genevieve did not move.
She simply stood there and her presence was enough to deliver the blow needed.
At last she spoke again, calm as ever. "Tell me who holds your leash."
The man convulsed, the words tearing free like splinters.
"Marcus Thorne! Phallanax Solutions... he sent me! Said to copy your blueprints, mark anything I could find. Please, I told him it was suicide..."
"Why?" Jack’s voice was ice.
"He wants your system, your water rights. He said if he couldn’t buy you he’d...control the source... please... gods help me, just let there be light!"
Genevieve’s fingers flicked once.
Flame leapt back to the candles, their sudden glow almost violent.
The spy lay shivering, eyes wild, tears streaking the grime on his face.
Jack lowered his spear and regarded him with a calm that was nearly mercy.
Blood dripped down from his face into a small pool beneath his feet. He had tried to claw his way into his head through his eyes.
The priest nodded once.
Genevieve regarded the wreck of a man on the floor.
"You will write down every name," she said. "Every contact, every courier. If you lie, I will know, and the darkness will welcome you again."
The man collapsed into nods and broken promises.
’Holy shit. Just how dangerous is my mother??’