Lich for Hire

Chapter 411: Familiar Tricks

Monge Greywater had been reasonably well-known in the Ragetide Kingdom during his lifetime—but most well-known figures throughout history tended to be forgotten quickly after their death.

Monge Greywater was different. The Ragetide Kingdom had even erected a monument in his honor.

Milena's information-gathering had been remarkably easy.

As a man of distinguished service, Monge Greywater was so illustrious that his life story had been carved into the stone in full. The monument had become something of a local attraction, and when Milena wandered through Stormhaven pretending to sightsee, someone proactively offered to bring her to see it, to make sure she learned about this hero while she was in the city.

So Milena managed to obtain crucial information without lifting a finger.

The king had formally betrothed Princess Ariel to Monge Greywater, but the hero had died unexpectedly before the wedding day. According to Ragetide custom, whether or not a ceremony had been held, if Ariel swore an oath to the storm declaring her willingness to still be wed to Monge Greywater, the marriage would be recognized as legally valid, and she would become his widow.

As such, Ariel would easily be able to become a widow and not worry about Aiolos' pursuit of her.

After Monge Greywater's death, however, the king had not raised the question of the betrothal again, and Ariel had never completed the oath. Most people assumed she was simply unwilling to dedicate her life to a dead man.

That was understandable enough. Asking the only heir to the Ragetide throne to remain a widow indefinitely—even a widow to a hero of the kingdom—raised the obvious question of inheritance. Who else would inherit the throne?

There were those who assumed Ariel was simply too heartbroken to think about such things yet and would recover in a few years, by which point she would be in her early thirties, an age that, by Ragetide standards, would make her a remarkable spinster.

Regardless, the entire kingdom was invested in Princess Ariel's marriage prospects. She was the first member of the royal family in Ragetide's history who had genuinely cared about the common people, and her popularity had long since surpassed her father's.

That, too, made Milena's work easy. She could ask just about anyone and be rewarded with an extensive briefing on Ariel's situation.

When Milena brought her compiled report to Black Rose, the undead queen's brow furrowed immediately.

"Mother," Milena said, worried, "Monge Greywater is already dead. Isn't that a problem? Ariel can't marry a dead man. Aiolos will still come after her."

Black Rose nodded slowly. "There is a complication, yes, but not in the way you're describing. You may not realize this, but in the eyes of the living, a dead man is often harder to forget than a living one. No matter what Aiolos does, he can never compete with a rival who exists only in memory."

Human memory had the peculiar quality of beautifying what was gone, slowly elevating and perfecting those who were no longer there to disappoint anyone. A hero encountered in Ariel's youth, arrested by death, might become untouchable in her heart.

Black Rose herself had once been an admirer of the Holy King Arthur Lyon before the tragedy that had turned her into a lich. Even now, despite her hatred for Lyon's name, she still held a measure of respect for that particular ancestor of hers.

Ariel was likely the same. A genuine hero, someone rare enough to be thought of as a fitting husband yet gone without warning—the shock of that loss would have elevated Monge Greywater's image to something no living man could match. No one else would measure up.

In one sense, that was useful. Ariel had already built a thick wall around herself that outsiders would struggle to breach. But there was another problem: Monge Greywater was still dead, and how long Ariel would dedicate herself to him was genuinely uncertain.

Ragetide culture placed no particular value on lifelong fidelity. Widows remarrying and widowers taking new wives were entirely ordinary. There was no guarantee Ariel wouldn't eventually relent and agree to Aiolos.

Milena listened to Black Rose's explanation, absorbing what bits and pieces of it she could. "So if Monge Greywater could just come back to life, that would solve everything?"

"You want to resurrect him as an undead?" Black Rose asked. "He's been dead long enough that his soul has either ascended to a divine realm or descended to somewhere else entirely. There'd be no finding it now."

"That's a shame," Milena said. Then, she brightened. "If Father were here, he'd have a solution, wouldn't he?"

Whenever a problem arose, Milena's first instinct was to ask Ambrose. In her mind, he might as well be omniscient.

Black Rose was about to say that this was a small enough problem that it didn't need to bother someone as perpetually busy as her father, but then she frowned. She picked up a document from the table and began reading it carefully.

It was the account of Monge Greywater's life, recorded in detail on the monument.

"The more I read about this Monge Greywater, the more he sounds like one of your father's false identities."

Milena's eyes went wide. "What?! Monge Greywater is Father? But he's dead! Wait, no, he died and then became a lich?"

Black Rose looked at her daughter and sighed. "Monge Greywater died not that long ago. Your father became a lich years ago. The timeline doesn't line up at all."

Milena shut her mouth. She could feel her brain beginning to stall; it was better to just listen.

Black Rose tapped the document. "Look at the record here. Monge Greywater was an orphan, his parentage unknown. That alone fits your father's pattern perfectly. Then, he rose to prominence in middle age, advancing through the naval ranks at unusual speed. But according to the records, Monge Greywater had no actual significant military achievements to his name. He was no match for the Silent Sea Pirate Company at all.

"Something doesn't add up. No accomplishments, but rapid promotions regardless? Like your father, he must have had a tongue blessed by the gods themselves.

"Then look at this final entry: Monge Greywater somehow reached a settlement with the Silent Sea Pirate Company and resolved a threat that had plagued the Ragetide Kingdom for years. I don't know the details of that, but your father mentioned once that he was the one who negotiated the arrangement with Aige."

Ambrose was habitually modest, except when he was in the process of deceiving someone. He never shared his own accomplishments with others unless it served a purpose. Tell too many people how capable he was, and they'd start approaching him with suspicion; that made every subsequent mark harder.

He only reported his exploits to Black Rose on occasion—specifically, the schemes against Lyon, presented as progress updates to keep his funding flowing.

Everything else, such as the details of the arrangement with the Silent Sea Pirates, and his history with the Ragetide Kingdom, Ambrose rarely mentioned to anyone unaffiliated. Exposing his methods meant he would have to come up with new tricks sooner rather than later.

So Black Rose genuinely hadn't known that Monge Greywater was one of Ambrose's aliases, not at first. But the longer she read, the more off everything felt, until she couldn't ignore her theory at all. Wasn't this entirely his style?

Infiltrate a kingdom, rise to a position of influence, then package the entire kingdom up and deliver it to himself, with the victims cheerfully counting the money on his behalf...

The Court of the Silver Moon, the dwarven kingdom, and even the Emerald Dreamwood had apparently fallen for one of Ambrose's schemes. It was the same operation and the same outcome each time. Black Rose did not believe there was a second con artist alive who could pull off kingdom-level manipulation.

Milena nodded along vigorously. She hadn't really followed the reasoning, but she fully agreed with the conclusion: the greatest swindler in the world was surely her father.

Tricking an entire kingdom while walking away with a hero's legacy carved in stone—only her father could manage that. After all, this was a man who had swindled goddesses on multiple occasions. What was one small kingdom like Ragetide to him?

It was all conjecture, of course, but confirming it was simple enough. Black Rose opened the hand-mirror she carried, and Ambrose's face appeared in it.

"What's the sudden call for? Has something gone wrong on the Ragetide end?" he asked, curious.

"Is Monge Greywater one of your false identities?" Black Rose asked.

The Ambrose in the mirror went quiet for a moment. "...You figured that out," he said, sounding faintly embarrassed. "Yes, I'll admit it, that was one of my aliases. I had a small business operation running in the Ragetide Kingdom."

Milena let out a cheer. "That's perfect! So Father just needs to keep playing Monge Greywater and the problem is solved! Princess Ariel can marry you!"

Ambrose stared blankly at Milena.

Black Rose stared at her daughter with equal weariness. Did she have any idea what she was saying?

Black Rose turned back to Ambrose. "Never mind her. I understand the situation now, and I'll handle things on this end. Have you and Aige reached your destination yet?"

Ambrose was equally glad to move on. "We got held up at Coin Island, and I've only just set out with Aige. Something's off out here. Aige says the fighting among the fishfolk has been intensifying, and we can't yet determine the cause. Our best guess is that it's connected to the exile of the Unholy Kingdom."

"The exile?" Black Rose said, thinking it through. "You don't mean the kingdom itself, but the territory it left behind? When it disappeared, the land became open ocean. New waters mean new territory, and the fishfolk are fighting over the new living space."

Ambrose nodded. "That's roughly it, yes, but there are signs of divine involvement, and we're still trying to determine which of the ocean pantheon has entered the fray. It won't be a simple mess to untangle."

"Do what you need to do," Black Rose said. "Leave the Ragetide Kingdom to me."

"Thank you. I can always count on you."

Ambrose was genuinely glad to be working with someone as capable as Black Rose. The other members of the Elegiac Society were either enigmatic grandmasters of unfathomable depth or comic relief like Heki Stone.

Black Rose was the partner who gave him the least headaches and the greatest returns.

The mirror went dark. Black Rose turned to Milena. "Have you forgotten what I told you? Listen more, think more, and speak less."

Milena snapped her mouth shut at once. She wasn't sure exactly what she had said wrong, but antagonizing her mother while dark magic was practically crackling off her seemed like a poor choice.

Black Rose turned her mind to the question of how to make use of Ambrose's identity as Monge Greywater. Did she really have to marry him off?