The Domini saga : lich lords favor

Kynes still holds the unopened black paper beneath the boarding house latch. Bren stands beside him in the entryway, while the quiet common room waits beyond without a summons or disturbance.

The gold seal shows a closed hand around a coin. The paper remains intact between Kynes’s fingers, its invitation still a demand only if he chooses to treat it that way.

Bren keeps one hand near her hidden blades but does not draw. Behind her, the inn carries on in ordinary murmurs, unaware that the Compact has placed a choice at the door.

Kynes lifts the black paper from beneath the latch and carries it upstairs. Bren follows, closing the boarding-house door behind them against the morning noise.

In their rented room, Kynes tosses the sealed letter onto the table. It lands beside the washbasin, gold seal unbroken, while the shutters soften the city’s clamor.

Bren sets aside her blades and settles close beside him. For a while, the Compact, the vessel, and every demand beyond the room are left outside.

They share the private stillness of the room, speaking softly when words come and resting together when they do not. No summons interrupts them.

Kynes leans across the quiet room and kisses Bren deeply. She answers without hesitation, one hand curling into his white hair as the sealed letter waits forgotten on the table.

Bren draws back only far enough to meet his eyes. The former drow matriarch’s guarded poise softens, and a playful certainty replaces the vigilance she carried downstairs.

She rises, secures the shutters, and places the room’s spare chair beneath the latch. Then she returns to him, her smile bright in the softened light.

Bren takes his hand and leads him toward the adjoining washroom, leaving the Compact’s sealed demand untouched as evening settles over Baldur’s Gate.

With a playful grin, Kynes gives Bren’s backside a light slap as she leads him toward the washroom. The sealed letter remains forgotten on the table.

Bren glances back over her shoulder, amusement bright in her eyes. She keeps his hand in hers and draws him into the warm adjoining room.

She closes the washroom door behind them. Evening settles over Baldur’s Gate while the room fills with warm water, quiet laughter, and the promise of private rest.

Still beneath the covers, Kynes studies the sealed envelope on the table while Bren rests beside him, her amused gaze moving between the letter and his face.

Bren reaches from beneath the covers and taps the envelope with one finger, leaving the gold seal unbroken but the wager settled in Kynes’s favor.

Her smile sharpens with familiar mischief. Outside, evening traffic murmurs beyond the shutters, while the Compact’s invitation waits in silence for their attention.

Kynes smirks beneath the covers, treating the Compact’s letter as tomorrow’s concern. Bren studies him, then the sealed envelope, and finds the reassurance in his certainty.

Bren settles closer and leaves the envelope untouched. The room feels secure without becoming complacent, while distant allies keep their watch beyond the walls.

Two days later, Kynes retrieves the black envelope from the table in their rented room. Bren sits nearby as he breaks the gold seal and unfolds the letter.

The message is written in precise black ink. It invites Kynes and Bren to the old customs square at dusk, promising a private discussion with Advocate Seressa Vale and Lord Hadrien Marr.

Further lines name the Gilded Compact’s concern: public testimony, disrupted payments, and the danger of allowing Ilyra’s claim to gather witnesses. The letter offers no apology.

By the time Kynes finishes, the afternoon has slipped away in careful reading and comparison of every clause. He understands the proposal, but the letter leaves one question deliberately unanswered: whether the Compact wants negotiation or surrender.

Kynes lets out a small chuckle, holding the opened letter between them. Bren’s guarded expression eases, and the room’s tension loses its sharpest edge.

She takes the letter, rereads the invitation, and turns it toward the window. The precise wording offers them a useful opening: nothing forbids answering on their own terms.

Bren folds the letter neatly and reaches for fresh paper. The Compact has offered a meeting, but her reply will make its terms visible before either leader can reshape them in private.

She smiles and begins drafting, leaving the choice of response firmly in their hands while dusk gathers beyond the shutters.

Kynes gives a sharp, predatory grin. Bren studies him for a heartbeat, then the unfinished reply, and her guarded amusement returns.

Bren adds a firm line to the reply: they will attend the old customs square at dusk, provided the Compact states its terms plainly before any discussion begins.

She signs the response beneath the conditions and leaves the day unstated, forcing the Compact to name its own timing rather than command theirs.

Kynes leaves Baldur’s Gate boarding house rented room behind and arrives at old customs square.

Dusk settles over the old customs square, turning wet cobbles bronze beneath the harbor lamps. Kynes and Bren arrive without drawing notice, reaching the shadow of a disused weighing house.

Two figures wait beside the dry fountain. Seressa is an adult woman in a dark burgundy gown and fitted traveling cloak, her silver-streaked hair pinned severely. Hadrien is an adult man with a broad build, polished black coat, and an ivory cane.

Bren’s observation proves precise. No escort waits nearby, and a folded sheet rests openly on the fountain rim, marked with the Compact’s gold seal and visible from their cover.

The sheet contains names, payment figures, and a signed offer of restitution to Ilyra, but one line is freshly added: Elira’s safety depends on the Compact’s acceptance.

Kynes steps from the shadow of the weighing house and lifts the Compact’s accounting sheet from the fountain rim. The gold seal cracks beneath his fingers.

Pyrokinetic fire blooms across the paper without touching Kynes’s hand. Names, sums, and the Compact’s polished offer blacken, curl, and vanish into glowing ash.

Bren’s answer carries across the square. Seressa’s controlled smile fades, while Hadrien’s grip tightens around his ivory cane as both leaders reassess the mage before them.

The threat lands without a raised voice. The burned ash drifts from Kynes’s fingers, and the Compact’s leaders no longer present their settlement as an offer made from unquestioned authority.

Invisible force closes around Hadrien Marr’s throat. His ivory cane strikes the cobbles as a small cough becomes a harsh, desperate struggle for breath.

The pressure builds until Hadrien chokes and gasps, his polished authority collapsing into helpless pleading. Seressa raises both hands, suddenly unwilling to test Kynes further.

A folded instruction slips from Hadrien’s inner pocket and lands beside his cane. Its seal identifies the watchers’ next deployment, giving Kynes a precise lead before he loosens the force.

The invisible pressure vanishes from Lord Hadrien Marr’s throat. He catches himself against the weighing house, coughing once as the ivory cane rolls to a stop.

The folded instruction tears free from the cobbles without a hand touching it, crossing the space in a swift arc to settle precisely in Kynes’s grasp.

The Compact seal parts beneath Kynes’s magic. Ink rises from the page in pale letters, revealing three watcher posts around Elira’s chandlery and the name of the inner council clerk who issued the order.

Hadrien remains bent beside his cane, subdued but conscious. Seressa watches the instruction in Kynes’s hand, realizing her own admission has given the enemy a path into the Compact’s records.

Kynes traces a quiet compulsion through the instruction’s seal, fastening the command to Pell Ors’s attention: bring every legitimate financial paper revealing the Compact’s power and influence.

Far beyond the customs square, the spell finds Pell Ors in his records room. The clerk stiffens, gathers sealed account books, payment schedules, and signed authorizations, then hurries toward the summons.

A pale thread of magic pulls through the dusk. Pell arrives breathless, an elderly man in a black clerk’s coat, silver spectacles, and a brass-bound case clasped tightly to his chest.

Kynes’s question falls softly, but the threat beneath it hardens the square. Pell’s fingers tighten around the brass-bound case, while Seressa and Hadrien watch him carefully.

Pell lowers the case onto the fountain rim and opens its twin locks. Each document bears a seal, signature, or accounting mark that can be checked against another record.

The answer leaves no uncertainty. Pell begins arranging the records for inspection, while Seressa and Hadrien stand exposed beneath the lamps, their authority now tied to what the papers reveal.

Bren quietly supplies five silver coins from her purse. Kynes places them in Pell’s palm; beneath the spell, the clerk sees five flawless diamonds and closes his fingers around them.

Pell secures the brass-bound case against his chest and leads them through narrow lanes toward the harbor offices. Seressa and Hadrien follow under watch, while Bren keeps the clerk in sight.

Pell stops before a tall countinghouse marked by a bronze coin above its door. He produces a ring of keys, opens the entrance, and reveals shelves of ledgers, sealed account chests, and a guarded inner stair.

Kynes smiles and turns toward Hadrien Marr and Seressa Vale. A small fireball blooms above his palm, circling between his hands with effortless, precise control.

The spell succeeds, but its heat bites back through the arcane shaping. Violet light flares across Kynes’s casting hand, and the fireball scorches a black ring into the stone beside him.

The fire above Kynes’s palm gutters low, but the question does not. In the counting room, every ledger and sealed chest suddenly looks like a liability with walls around it.

Seressa moves to the stair and orders the lower rooms cleared, while Hadrien unlocks the inner vault. The Compact’s own leaders now hurry to preserve the evidence Kynes threatened to destroy.

Kynes closes his hand, and a silent violet pulse sweeps through the counting room. Seressa, Hadrien, and Pell freeze where they stand, their eyes open but their bodies slack.

The spell settles over all three without throwing them down. Seressa remains at the stair, Hadrien beside his cane, and Pell stands rigid with one hand on the brass-bound case.

The cost arrives through Kynes’s magic. Violet cracks flare from his palm up his forearm, locking his casting hand numb as the spell’s last resonance tears through him.

Bren steps between Kynes and the stunned leaders, checking each for breath and finding them alive, conscious only in the distant, unresponsive way of the spell.

Kynes releases the fireball. It strikes the counting-room floor, bursts into rolling flame, and races beneath shelves as ledgers, account chests, and stair timbers catch alight.

Fire climbs the walls in bright sheets. Seressa, Hadrien, and Pell remain motionless within the spell, their unconscious forms illuminated while smoke rolls toward the ceiling.

The violet cracks in Kynes’s numb casting hand flare as the released magic obeys him. Flames spill across the counting room, consuming the Compact’s arranged records and sealed chests.

Heat drives smoke through the upper room. Bren moves toward Pell first, dragging the brass-bound case clear while keeping herself between the flames and Kynes.

Behind her, burning shelves collapse inward. The counting room becomes a furnace of falling timber and ash, while Seressa and Hadrien remain trapped in magical stillness beside the blazing stair.

Bren reaches the counting-room door and hauls it open through the smoke. Kynes walks beside her as they pass into the harbor corridor, leaving the burning records room behind.

Bren guides Kynes down the corridor and through the countinghouse entrance. Cold harbor air replaces the smoke as they step safely into the evening street.

Behind them, flames glow through the countinghouse windows. The unconscious Compact leaders and Pell remain inside, beyond the threshold, while the upper timbers crack and settle.

Together, Kynes and Bren turn from the smoking countinghouse and walk into the lamplit harbor district, leaving the Compact’s ruined records and living witnesses behind them.

Kynes drives the spell into the burning countinghouse. Heat surges through the lower rooms, turning ledgers, seals, chests, and council records into a roaring furnace.

The intensified blaze engulfs the three unconscious figures and the evidence around them. The scene passes behind smoke and flame as the destructive magic completes its work.

The numbness in Kynes’s casting hand spreads sharply up his forearm. Violet fractures flash across his skin, and the spell tears free in a final blast of heat.

Bren catches Kynes by the uninjured arm and pulls him farther into the harbor street. Behind them, windows burst outward, and the countinghouse settles into a column of sparks and smoke.

Reach safety with Bren