Adrian finished securing the prisoners while I tried to convince my body that the fight was actually over. The man Skydancer had kicked was still groaning in the road, the archer remained on his knees with both hands visible, and the leader had apparently decided that surrender included becoming extremely interested in the dirt beneath his boots. Renee kept Raven positioned between Rocky and the prisoners while scanning the surrounding woods, and Goliath stood near Adrian with the calm composure of an animal who considered armed captives an entirely ordinary addition to a morning ride.
“Anyone else hiding out there?” Adrian asked.
The leader said nothing, so Adrian finished tying another man’s wrists before looking toward him again.
“That was not rhetorical.”
The leader’s jaw tightened. “One ran.”
“I noticed.”
“That’s all.”
Adrian glanced toward the woods where the sixth man had disappeared and then back toward the prisoner. His expression suggested he considered the answer possible without considering it trustworthy.
“Could still be lying,” I said.
“I know.”
The fact that I knew it too unsettled me in a way the System could not explain away. Frightened prisoners lied, guilty people said whatever improved their odds, and a man did not become trustworthy merely because I happened to have defeated him. Nothing about holding a royal title made me magically better at deciding which version of his fear was honest, and the realization sat uncomfortably beside the fact that everyone else was already looking to Adrian and me to decide what happened next.
I finally lowered my hand from the rapier hilt and discovered my fingers did not particularly want to uncurl. The muscles through my forearm ached from gripping too tightly, and the click of the blade settling completely into its sheath sounded absurdly loud against the sudden quiet of the road. The System immediately filled that quiet before I had much chance to enjoy it.
COMBAT ENCOUNTER RESOLVED
Hostile Combatants: 6
Defeated: 5
Escaped: 1
Party Members: Experience Awarded
Attached Personnel: Experience Awarded
Participating Animals: Experience Awarded
Additional progression notifications pending.
My attention caught on the third category, and I looked down at Skydancer before reading the line again.
“Participating animals?”
Adrian looked over from the prisoner he was searching. “What?”
“The horses got experience.”
His gaze moved toward Goliath, and the approval that crossed his face was immediate. “He earned it.”
“So did Skydancer.”
The man with the injured leg made an unhappy sound when Skydancer turned her head toward him. Considering she had broken something inside his leg less than five minutes ago, his respect for her seemed entirely reasonable. I reached down and scratched the side of her neck, feeling a ridiculous burst of pride that the System had apparently reviewed the situation and agreed that evasive maneuvers, attempted trampling, and kicking highwaymen counted as legitimate participation.
“You got experience for violence,” I told her. “I hope you are proud of yourself.”
Skydancer blew softly through her nose, and I rubbed beneath her mane while deciding that counted as an answer.
“I am choosing to interpret that as yes.”
Another notification pushed itself over the combat summary before I could investigate whether Skydancer possessed anything resembling a progression screen. The formatting was immediately recognizable, although the title was considerably less cheerful than my previous achievements.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
THE RULES HAVE TEETH
Participate in and survive your first hostile combat after permanent instantiation.
Bonus Conditions Achieved
No Party Member incapacitated.
Personally defeated or disabled hostile combatants.
Protected bonded animal from hostile seizure.
Rewards
Class Experience
Adaptability Progress Recognition
Minor Combat Cache
CACHE CLAIM UNAVAILABLE OUTSIDE SAFE AREA
I stared at the title for several seconds, the memory of steel passing close enough to hear making the System’s phrasing considerably less amusing than whoever had chosen it apparently believed.
“That feels unnecessarily threatening.”
COMBAT WAS HOSTILE
“I noticed.”
No answer appeared, which somehow made the System more irritating. Adrian had stopped beside Goliath and was watching me with that increasingly familiar look he used whenever I started arguing with something only I could see.
“Achievement?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good one?”
“It gave me a cache.”
“That sounds good.”
“It is called The Rules Have Teeth.”
His eyes moved briefly over the prisoners and then toward the man whose leg Skydancer had broken. “Accurate.”
“You are supposed to support my objection.”
“I am not sure what your objection is.”
“The tone.”
“Of the System?”
“Exactly.”
He considered that as though I had raised a legitimate diplomatic concern. “I will prepare a formal protest.”
“Thank you.”
Renee looked over from beside Raven. “You are making this worse.”
“Probably, ” Adrian said.
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but a brighter pulse of gold expanded directly through the achievement panel. The difference in presentation was obvious enough that every other thought stopped competing for my attention.
LEVEL THRESHOLD REACHED
Radiance Ember Soulflame
Total Level: 3 → 4
Court Performer: 3 → 4
Advancement available.
Multiclass Options: Currently Unavailable
Prestige Class Options: Currently Unavailable
Detailed advancement review recommended.
I read it twice while the glowing advancement icon settled at the edge of my vision. Somewhere between the rewards already feeding experience into Court Performer and surviving the first real fight of my life, I had crossed whatever threshold separated Level Three from Level Four, and the number itself felt absurdly small compared with how enormous the change seemed.
“I leveled.”
Adrian went still, his attention shifting toward empty space slightly to his left. His expression changed quickly enough that I knew what had happened before he spoke.
“So did I.”
For several seconds, everything else competed badly for my attention. The road remained blocked, five prisoners still needed to be dealt with, one of them was injured badly enough that his face had gone gray with pain, another man was loose somewhere in the woods, and our actual expedition objective still waited west of us. None of that prevented the bright little Level Four notification from being extraordinarily difficult to ignore.
“What does yours say?” I asked.
“That advancement is available.”
“Same.”
“Anything unusual?”
“Multiclass and prestige unavailable.”
“Same.”
I narrowed my eyes at him when his attention flicked away again. “Do you think it will let us look now?”
“Yes.”
The answer came much too quickly.
“You already tried.”
“I opened it.”
“Adrian.”
“I did not select anything.”
“You got distracted during prisoner management by a level-up menu?”
“You were arguing with the System”
“That is different.”
“It always is.”
I was preparing an excellent rebuttal when Renee’s voice cut cleanly through both of us.
“He needs his leg looked at.”
The glowing advancement icon abruptly became less important. I dismounted with Adrian’s help and barely noticed accepting his hand until both boots were on the ground. The Sureseat Tonic still made the transition easier than it had any right to, but the fading adrenaline left my limbs strangely light and my stomach unsettled as I approached the injured man.
He flinched when he saw me coming, and the reaction stopped me several feet away. Only minutes earlier he had been part of a group threatening to rob us, take Skydancer, and potentially hurt or kill anyone who resisted. Now he was lying in the dirt with sweat beading across his forehead and one leg held at an angle that made my own knee ache in sympathy, and holding both versions of him in my head at once was considerably harder than I expected.
Renee crouched beside him without touching the injury more than necessary. Whatever fear she had experienced during the attack seemed to have been filed somewhere behind the practical problem in front of her, and her attention remained fixed on the swelling beginning beneath his clothing.
“Probably broken,” she said.
“Can we move him?”
“Not carelessly.”
Adrian finished securing the last prisoner and stood, his attention moving from the road to the woods and then to the fallen tree as though he were already reconstructing the situation beyond the fight itself.
“There will be somewhere nearby,” he said. “These men did not drag a tree across a traveled road and hike twenty miles to reach it.”
The leader laughed, only one short and bitter sound, but it caught all three of us. I turned toward him and found his attention fixed somewhere below my face.
“Something funny?”
He did not answer immediately. His eyes had dropped to my hand, and more specifically to the royal signet ring resting there. His eyes moved from the ring to my horns and then back to my face, and recognition arrived slowly enough that I could watch each piece connect. The bitterness disappeared first. Then whatever color remained beneath the dirt and sweat drained from his face.
“Oh, fuck.”
The archer followed his stare toward my hand. His eyes widened, and I watched the same realization move through him before he lowered his gaze with considerably more enthusiasm than he had shown during surrender.
The leader swallowed. “Soulflame.”
Adrian’s expression became almost pleasant. “There it is.”
I looked down at my ring and then back at the man who had ordered his people to take our horses, jewelry, cart, and whatever else they decided was valuable. The fact that he was more frightened now than when I had held a rapier against his chest would have been funny if the reason for that fear had not been so deeply irritating.
“You threatened to steal the Crown Princess’s horse.”
He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. “That sounds worse when you say it like that.”
“There is no good way to say it.”
“We didn’t know.”
I stared at him until he seemed to understand that the explanation had not improved his position. “Do you think robbery becomes acceptable when the victim is not a princess?”
His mouth tightened.
“That was not rhetorical either.”
“No.”
“Good. We are making progress.”
Adrian moved closer without taking over the questioning, which I appreciated enough to notice. He stood slightly behind my right shoulder where he could watch the prisoners and the surrounding road at the same time, leaving me the space to decide what happened next instead of treating Crown authority as something ornamental until a man needed to exercise it for me.
I looked toward the fallen tree and then back at the prisoners. Six men had prepared an ambush on a traveled royal road, which meant this morning had not become violent simply because we happened to meet the wrong idiots at the wrong time. They had chosen the location, blocked the road, positioned an archer, and waited for someone worth robbing.
“How often do you do this?”
The leader’s expression closed immediately.
I folded my arms. “You were extremely conversational when you thought I was a wealthy woman you could threaten. I would hate for rank to ruin your confidence.”
He glanced toward Adrian, perhaps hoping the prince would offer a more useful audience. Adrian merely raised one eyebrow.
“How often?” I repeated.
The man looked toward the woods as though silence might still contain an escape route. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Traffic.”
The answer chilled the remaining humor out of the conversation. “Not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“How many travelers have you robbed?”
He said nothing.
“How many?”
“Don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe you have done this so many times you cannot count?”
His jaw flexed. “I expect you to believe nobody keeps a fucking ledger.”
Adrian’s attention sharpened slightly at that. “Who takes the goods?”
The leader looked at him and hesitated.
“Interesting,” I said. “That question bothered you more.”
His eyes returned to me.
I stepped closer, stopping well outside any distance where tied wrists made him dangerous. “This isn’t just six men wandering through the woods and deciding robbery sounded profitable, is it?”
“This isn’t our road.”
I frowned. “You are currently tied up on it.”
“You think six of us own anything?”
The phrasing landed strangely enough that I looked at Adrian. He had gone very still, the teasing ease from earlier entirely absent as he studied the prisoner.
“Then who does?” I asked.
The leader gave another bitter laugh. “Ask at the bridge.”
“What bridge?”
“West road crossing.”
I knew enough of the route to picture the broad direction but not the specific crossing. Adrian clearly did, because his gaze shifted toward the road ahead before returning to the man.
“How far?”
“Half a day if you ride hard. Longer with the cart.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to ask when I get there?”
The leader’s mouth twisted. “Ask how much it costs to use your father’s road.”
Something inside me went very quiet, and Adrian spoke before I had decided what to do with the anger suddenly gathering beneath it.
“Explain.”
The prisoner looked toward him, then at me, and whatever calculation he made apparently concluded that cooperation had become the least terrible option available.
“Everyone pays at the crossing. Farmers, traders, caravans if they’re small enough to push around. Anyone hauling enough to be worth stopping.”
“Pays whom?” I asked.
“Men at the bridge.”
“That was impressively useless.”
“I don’t know their names.”
“You work for people whose names you do not know?”
“We don’t work for them.”
Adrian’s expression suggested he did not enjoy distinctions offered by criminals. “Then what do you call what you are doing?”
The man jerked his bound hands toward the fallen tree. “Watching the smaller roads. Pushing anyone worth enough toward the crossing. Taking what we can from people who won’t be missed before someone else gets there first.”
Renee looked up from the injured prisoner. Whatever sympathy she had for the broken leg did not extend to the explanation.
“How long?” she asked.
The leader’s attention moved toward her.
“How long has this been happening?” Renee repeated.
“A while.”
“That is not an answer,” I said.
“Couple months.”
The words landed harder than I expected. A couple of months meant this had not appeared yesterday. It had existed while I was still away searching for Cassia, while Father’s government was dealing with crop failures and whatever other disasters had accumulated in my absence, while merchants and farmers apparently learned that a royal road came with an unofficial armed toll.
“How many people at the bridge?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at him until he shifted uncomfortably.
“I don’t,” he insisted. “Changes. Ten, fifteen sometimes. More if they expect trouble.”
“And somebody coordinates all of this.”
He shrugged carefully around his restraints. “Somebody coordinates everything.”
“Who?”
“I told you. I don’t know names.”
“You know something.”
“I know who gives us instructions.”
“That is considerably closer to a name.”
“He calls himself Varrick.”
Adrian’s gaze shifted to me before returning to the prisoner. “Description?”
The leader supplied one after a moment of hesitation. Human, probably in his forties, dark beard gone gray at the sides, missing part of his left ear, usually wore a reinforced leather coat and carried a saber. None of it meant anything to me, but Adrian listened as though every detail might become useful later.
“Where does Varrick stay?” I asked.
“Bridge. Sometimes elsewhere.”
“What does elsewhere mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your commitment to ignorance is impressive.”
His expression hardened again. “You think people like me get invited into meetings?”
The bitterness behind people like me made me pause. His clothing was worn but not filthy, his weapons used and maintained, and none of the men looked starving. They were criminals, unquestionably, but the answer carried enough resentment that I wanted to understand where it came from rather than simply accepting it as an excuse.
“What does that mean?”
He looked at me as though the question itself proved something. “Means nobody tells us shit. Means they tell us which road, what percentage we keep, and what happens if we decide not to show.”
“What happens?”
His gaze flicked toward the injured man before returning to me. “You don’t show, somebody comes looking.”
That did not make him innocent, but it changed the shape of what we were dealing with. Adrian apparently reached the same conclusion because the next question came without any of the contempt that had colored his earlier interrogation.
“How many groups like yours?”
“I don’t know.”
I raised one hand before we went around the same circle again. “Estimate.”
The leader hesitated. “Four that I know of.”
“Six people each?”
“Sometimes more.”
Renee exhaled quietly beside the injured man. Four groups converted six roadside bandits into two dozen or more armed criminals scattered across Calderian roads, plus whoever actually held the bridge and whatever organization sat above them.
“How has the local watch not noticed this?”
The question changed him. His eyes dropped for half a second before he looked away, and Adrian caught the reaction at the same time I did.
“There it is,” Adrian said.
The prisoner said nothing.
I stepped closer. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You are an appalling liar.”
That earned me a brief look from Adrian which I chose not to examine too closely, mostly because I was aware enough of my own history with lying to recognize hypocrisy when it appeared.
The leader shifted against his bindings. “Ask them.”
“The watch?”
“Ask whoever you want.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened.
“Are they being paid?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You reacted when I asked why they had not noticed.”
“That doesn’t mean shit.”
“It means something.”
He stared at me, and I had the distinct feeling that whatever happened next would determine whether the conversation remained useful. I could threaten him. I could invoke my title. I could probably have Adrian loom behind me until the man decided cooperation was preferable to whatever a six-foot-six Court Protector inspired in his imagination.
Instead, I crouched far enough away that he could look at me without craning his neck. “You already tried to rob me. One of your people ran. If there is an organized operation at that bridge, they may already know you failed. You are going into Crown custody regardless of what you tell me, and I am not promising leniency I do not have the authority or information to promise. But if somebody inside Calder’s government is helping this happen, I need to know before more people get hurt.”
His eyes searched my face with an intensity I did not enjoy. I had no magical truth detector, no convenient System notification telling me whether he believed me, and no guarantee that anything he said next would be useful. Eventually his gaze dropped away from mine, and when he answered, some of the defiance had gone out of his voice.
“Patrols don’t come when they’re supposed to.”
Adrian’s voice remained controlled. “Explain.”
“Sometimes they come through early. Sometimes late. Sometimes they take roads nobody uses anymore. People at the bridge know ahead of time.”
“Every patrol?”
“No.”
“How often?”
“Enough.”
Something cold settled behind my ribs. Corruption was one possibility, but it was not the only one. Patrol schedules could leak, someone could be observing movements from the road, a clerk could talk too much, or a watch officer could be taking money. Assuming the worst because one prisoner implied it would be irresponsible, but ignoring the possibility would be worse.
“Who tells Varrick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever seen an officer at the bridge?”
“No.”
“Watch uniform?”
“No.”
“Crown official?”
“No.”
That mattered, and I stored it beside everything else rather than letting suspicion become fact simply because the story fit.
Renee spoke from beside the injured prisoner. “Radiance.”
I looked toward her.
“We should move them before we spend another hour questioning people in the middle of the road.”
She was right. The injured man needed actual treatment, the others needed cells, the road still needed clearing, and we had an escaped bandit somewhere ahead with an unknown destination. The System chose that moment to become involved, unfolding a notification directly across my vision large enough that the prisoner disappeared behind translucent gold.
SIDE QUEST AVAILABLE
A CROWN ROAD, UNKEPT
Armed criminals are extorting travelers and subjects along a royal road within Calder.
As recognized heir to the Crown, you possess authority to investigate and responsibility for the safety of Calderian subjects.
Primary Objectives
Determine the extent of the extortion.
Identify those responsible.
Restore safe passage.
Determine why local authorities have failed to resolve the problem.
Optional Objectives
Recover stolen property.
Minimize harm to Calderian subjects.
Identify official complicity, if present.
Relevant Progression
Reluctant Crown Princess
Royal Recognition
Additional rewards hidden
Accept Quest?
I read the objectives twice. The System had been irritating, invasive, sarcastic, and occasionally far too interested in my personal development, but the wording here was almost painfully straightforward. It did not say local authorities were corrupt. It told me to determine why they had failed and specifically marked complicity as conditional, which was apparently more restraint than my imagination had managed.
“What?” Adrian asked, and I realized I had been staring past him.
“Side quest.”
“For the bandits?”
“For whoever is apparently charging tolls on Father’s roads.”
His eyebrows rose. “Objectives?”
I read them aloud, leaving out the progression section because explaining that my Background might improve through administrative misery felt unnecessary. Renee listened while continuing to monitor the injured man, and Adrian’s expression sharpened further when I reached the possibility of official complicity.
“That matches what he told us,” he said.
“Unfortunately.”
Renee looked up. “Are you accepting it?”
I stared at the question floating in front of me while everything waiting west of us crowded back into consideration. The crop failures were the reason we had actually left the palace, and we had barely made it through our first full morning on the road before acquiring five prisoners, a broken leg, an escaped criminal, a level-up I had not reviewed, an unopened combat cache, and evidence that somebody had converted part of Calder’s transportation network into a private extortion business.
“Apparently being Crown Princess means everyone else’s problems become my problems.”
Renee’s expression softened in a way I did not appreciate. “That is one interpretation of ruling.”
“I liked the jewelry interpretation better.”
Adrian smiled slightly. “You can have both.”
“That is how they get you.”
I looked at the quest again. The word responsibility sat there without judgment, and that was the problem. Nobody was forcing me to accept. Father had not ordered this investigation. The System had not classified it as mandatory. I could put the prisoners into local custody, send word back to the palace, continue toward the failing farms, and argue with complete legitimacy that the Crown possessed officials whose job was handling armed criminals.
Then I thought about the farmer who had nearly dropped his basket when he recognized me that morning, the woman who had watched Adrian and me ride past while probably constructing gossip, and the carts we had passed coming the opposite direction. Ordinary people were using a road they had every reason to believe belonged to their kingdom rather than whoever happened to bring enough swords to claim it.
I focused on the final prompt. “Accept.”
QUEST ACCEPTED
A CROWN ROAD, UNKEPT
Active objectives added.
The notification collapsed to the edge of my vision beside the patiently glowing Level Four icon. I looked west along the road, where the trees eventually swallowed everything beyond the next bend, then back toward the prisoners and the fallen trunk still blocking most of the way.
“First we get them somewhere secure,” I said. “Then we find out exactly what the hell is happening at that bridge.”