Still clad in her sleeping robe, Ruby surveyed the damage. Three guards laid dead; their life blood giving a new colorful ambiance to the dull gray prison. Their bodies were strewn about the dungeon and guard quarters' floors. Two more were missing cowards, muttered the Lady. When we next meet I shall cut their hearts out myself. Still, they would all be replaced easily enough.
"Jakob and Samael were murdered where they slept, my lady. Jackson must have headed them off but his wounds were too fatal and he fell by the dungeon door. Petir and Dugan will be hunted down, I assure you." reported the captain of her estate guards.
"Show me." Ruby commanded and the captain led her to the cells where the Nü girl and Cedric had been held. At the doorway laid Jackson; a table leg turned stake protruded from his side. A miserable way to die.
"Jackson must have slit the vermin's throat before he died," he pointed to the crumpled figure lying along the corridor. The lifeless Nü had fallen ungracefully - the rags she wore now exposed her small bottom. Her bronze skin was painted with the evidence of the struggle and her face drowned in a pool of her own blood.
Frustrated, Ruby pulled back her leg and delivered a massive blow to the abdomen of the corpse. How dare that filthy beast steal her triumph. Ruby was so close to a perfect dance. The Lady Genevieve would be elevated to House ruler, but would maintain her innocence. Indeed, there would be those who knew, deep down, that the widow conducted the orchestra, but they would enjoy the music far too much to wish her to stop playing. But now, though the tune had begun, the key melody, the cathartic executions of Cedric and the girl, would be absent.
"And what of Cedric?" she demanded as she spun on her heel.
"In the dormitory, under the bunks, my lady." He brought the irate woman over to one of the cots set up for the men at arms. Under the wooden frame, a pale blonde man with a head smeared by pulp and ooze laid in the fetal position. In spite of the mess, it was hard to mistake the man's flax hair and delicate hands of the former head chef of her kitchens.
"A coward to the end Cedric." she accused, but observed, "Which is why you were such an effective tool." She pursed her lips and paused for a second, to assess the situation. With executive decision, the Lady Genevieve Archne firmly commanded, "String them up. I want their corpses desecrated and their heads on pikes before breakfast. I will have something to show my guests, who so kindly traveled miles upon miles to be with us."
The guard nodded and turned to leave before she spoke once more, "And tell the kitchen to change the menu so sausage."
If the new head of House Archne could not hide her incompetence in letting her victims die before she gave them leave to, then she would cover the mistake with ruthlessness. Perhaps this way might even work in her favor. The Enforcers might leave her alone if the Empress saw her as merely a rash, bloodthirsty fool rather than the master strategist she was; she thought she was. The other nobles might stop wasting her time with their petty polkas of political intrigue and she could work.
See, there you go Ruby! Always turning rain into rainbows! She smiled to herself as she headed back to the warm bed complete with one Lord Lucius Lot of Reinfeld.
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