For a second, the room went still. Ludger did not react outwardly right away, but his eyes sharpened.
Of course that was the shape they chose. Not escaped prisoners. Not noble extractions. Not internal purges. Not a failed cover-up around Gustav and Rufas.
No. The story had already hardened into something cleaner and filthier: traitorous criminals escaped the castle, attempted to murder the young Emperor Halvyr IV, and now loyal forces of the Empire were to pursue and destroy them.
The Regent had moved fast.
Yvar spoke quietly. “The official language is already spreading through the guild channels and regional powers. The Dalmoren family and Gustav’s people are being treated as co-conspirators. The castle incident is framed as part of an assassination attempt.”
Ludger’s gaze shifted to him.
“And us?”
Yvar’s mouth tightened. “We are being ordered to participate in the hunt.”
Not invited. Not asked. Ordered. That distinction mattered. Arslan leaned back slightly and rubbed a hand over his face.
“The decree praises guilds loyal to the Empire and calls for immediate action,” he said. “Any group with the strength to assist in tracking the fugitives is expected to do so. Ignoring it would be... noticeable.”
Ludger’s expression cooled further.
Yes. That was the point.
The Regent wasn’t just sending hunters after fugitives. He was forcing the board to declare itself. Anyone who joined the chase proved usefulness or obedience. Anyone who hesitated became interesting in the wrong way.
And in their case, the irony was almost offensive. They had gone to the capital to interrogate the prisoners before they were executed. Now the Empire was ordering them to hunt the same people down and kill them.
His fingers tapped once against the chair arm.
“Do they know where they went?”
Yvar shook his head. “Not precisely. The decree is broad. Search, pursue, report, destroy. It gives the impression of certainty without the inconvenience of actual details.”
Ludger almost smiled at that, but not quite. Arslan looked at him carefully.
“I’m guessing,” his father said slowly, “that this is exactly as bad as it sounds.”
Ludger lifted his eyes to meet his. Neither man looked surprised.
He leaned back slightly, thinking through the new shape of the problem.
If the Dalmorens and Gustav’s people had escaped cleanly enough, then they were now moving under full imperial condemnation. Every hunter, guild, soldier, spy, mercenary, and opportunist with enough ambition would start sniffing around for them. Bounties, favor, land, titles, protection, whatever form the reward took, it would be enough to pull people into motion.
And Lionsguard had just been handed a place in that motion whether they wanted it or not. Ludger exhaled once through his nose. The peace had lasted a week.
That was already more generous than usual. Ludger lowered his gaze to the floor and brought one hand up to his chin. His fingers pressed lightly against it while his thoughts moved in tight, cold lines.
The room stayed quiet for a few seconds, not because Arslan and Yvar had nothing to say, but because both of them knew that when Ludger went still like that, his mind was usually already halfway through the uglier implications.
A decree from the Emperor. Meaning the Regent. A public hunt. Meaning a trap wrapped in legitimacy.
And, more annoyingly than anything else, a trap designed so that refusing it openly would be just as dangerous as accepting it carelessly.
Arslan finally broke the silence first.
“This isn’t really about the hunt,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “Or rather, not only about the hunt.”
Ludger didn’t look up.
Yvar gave a small nod. “No. It’s more than that.”
Arslan let out a slow breath through his nose and crossed his arms.
“The capital got hit hard,” he said. “Walls damaged, the garden wrecked, soldiers dead, their precious sense of safety humiliated in front of the whole Empire. On top of that, Gustav’s family escaped, Rufas escaped, and now the Dalmoren house has openly broken from the Regent’s line.”
His father’s mouth flattened.
“They took losses. Political ones too, not just military.”
Yvar picked up the thread immediately.
“And now they want someone else to solve the mess without suffering more of those losses themselves.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly at the floor. Yes. That was exactly what this smelled like.
Yvar continued, voice calm and clipped as always. “Sending more direct capital forces after the fugitives creates more opportunities for failure. More witnesses. More room for more embarrassing complications. If the Regent sends his own core people and they fail again, it makes him look weak. If he commits too many Armandis men, it makes the political imbalance too visible.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“So instead,” Arslan said, “he pushes the burden outward.”
He spread a hand slightly.
“Guilds. Regional powers. Allied houses. Useful idiots with swords.”
The bitter edge in his voice was impossible to miss.
“He gives it the look of imperial unity,” Yvar said. “A righteous purge. Loyal forces across the land hunting traitors who dared threaten the child Emperor. Clean, noble, emotionally easy for people to support.”
Ludger remained silent. Arslan glanced at him, then kept going.
“And for us specifically, it’s filthier than that.”
That finally made Ludger lift his eyes a fraction. Arslan met his gaze.
“He’s trying to use us to hunt down people who could have been allies.”
The words sat heavy in the room. Because none of them needed to pretend otherwise.
Rufas had opposed the slaughter of children. The Dalmorens had moved against the Regent’s purge. Gustav’s family knew things the Lionsguard wanted. None of that made them trustworthy, but it did make them potentially important. Potentially useful. Potentially aligned, at least temporarily, against the same rotting part of the Empire.
Yvar folded his hands together on the desk.
“If we succeed,” he said, “we remove pieces from the board that might later have mattered. We kill knowledge holders. We destroy a possible point of pressure against the Regent. And we do it for him.”
Arslan’s voice turned rougher.
“And if we fail, or even just perform badly enough to look ineffective, our reputation takes the hit.”
That part mattered too.
Lionsguard had been growing fast. Too fast, in some eyes. Their reputation was one of their greatest assets: competence, discipline, results. If they were publicly called to assist in a high-profile imperial hunt and came back empty-handed while others bled and searched, people would notice.
Yvar nodded.
“The decree is built so that the risk sits with us and the advantage sits with the capital.”
He spoke it like he was explaining a market exchange, which somehow made it sound even colder.
“If we fail, then we are a guild that could not carry out an imperial order in a time of crisis. That damages our standing, especially among those already looking for excuses to contain our rise.”
“And if we succeed,” Arslan said, “then we help the Regent bury exactly the people he wants buried.”
Ludger’s hand remained on his chin. His expression hadn’t changed much, but the silence around him was beginning to feel sharper.
Yvar leaned back slightly.
“It’s also pressure,” he said. “The decree forces a response. We cannot simply ignore it without drawing attention. We cannot be too eager without becoming tools. And we cannot openly sabotage it without gambling far too much.”
Arslan gave a humorless huff.
“In other words, he handed us a knife and told us to choose whether to stab ourselves in the right hand or the left.”
“That is one way to put it,” Yvar said.
“It’s the correct way.”
Ludger finally shifted in his seat. Not much. Just enough to signal that his thoughts were settling into firmer shapes. Arslan watched him closely.
“There’s more,” Yvar said. “The capital’s losses after the attack are almost certainly worse than the public version suggests.”
Ludger’s eyes moved to him fully now.
Yvar continued, “Which means this decree also serves another purpose. It creates movement. Attention. Work. It gets others chasing fugitives across the map while the capital regroups, patches its defenses, and limits further internal exposure.”
Arslan nodded slowly.
“They buy time. They preserve face. They make every ambitious fool in the Empire run after the same target.”
“And if one of those fools succeeds,” Yvar added, “the Regent gets the result he wants without spending more of his own strength.”
That was the ugliest part. Efficient, though. Very efficient.
The Regent was turning his own failure into a distributed burden. He had lost prisoners, lost control of the immediate incident, and lost the clean trap he likely wanted around the Dalmorens. So now he widened the frame and made the whole Empire responsible for cleaning the blood off his floor.
If the hunt worked, he won. If it failed, the failure was shared. If it became messy, others got dirty first. Arslan’s eyes hardened.
“I don’t like being used like this.”
Yvar gave him a dry glance. “That makes at least three of us.”
Ludger finally spoke.
“He wants to turn uncertainty into exhaustion.”
Both men looked at him. Ludger lowered his hand from his chin and looked at the ground again, but this time his voice was colder, more certain.
“He doesn’t need every guild to actually find them. He just needs enough people moving, watching, reporting, chasing, and second-guessing each other that the fugitives lose room to breathe.”
Yvar nodded almost immediately.
“Yes.”
Ludger continued.
“And while everyone does that, the capital stabilizes. He rewrites the story. He seizes assets. He isolates houses. He watches who hesitates.”
Arslan’s mouth tightened.
“So what you’re saying is that the job itself is almost secondary.”
“In a way,” Ludger said. “The hunt matters. But the shape of the hunt matters more.”
He lifted his gaze.
“He’s not just chasing fugitives. He’s measuring obedience.”
That landed. Because it fit too well.
Arslan rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Meaning?”
“Meaning this decree tells him who moves quickly, who moves slowly, who asks too many questions, who gets too close to the truth, who might still be loyal to Rufas, and who is desperate enough to prove themselves.”
Yvar exhaled softly.
“A census of fear.”
Ludger gave a small nod.
“Yes.”
The room fell quiet again after that. This time it wasn’t stunned quiet. It was the kind of silence that followed when everyone in the room had reached the same ugly conclusion and none of them enjoyed it.
Outside the office, the guild still moved with that tense restrained energy. People were waiting. Watching. Feeling the shape of something bigger without yet knowing how it would land on them.
Inside, Ludger sat still for another moment, eyes sharp and expression flat. Silence settled over the office again.
Not the productive kind. Not the kind where people were still discussing something in their heads. This one stretched just a little too long, and eventually both Arslan and Yvar realized the same thing at once.
Ludger was being too quiet considering his usual behavior around taking orders. Yvar’s eyes narrowed slightly. Arslan leaned forward a fraction in his chair.
Normally, when Ludger was thinking through something unpleasant, there were signs. A dry comment. A cynical observation. A practical question sharp enough to cut through everyone else’s optimism. Even his irritation had a rhythm to it.
This silence had none of that.
It was cleaner.
Worse.
The two older men looked at him and waited for some kind of reaction, something to confirm whether he was angry, disgusted, or simply preparing to argue why the entire decree should be thrown into a fire.
What they got instead was far more troubling.
A smirk. Slowly, very slowly, a wicked little smirk appeared on Ludger’s face.
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