By the time night came, Ludger was already moving through the underground tunnels in his runic carriage.
The vehicle rolled forward with a low mechanical hum, its reinforced frame gliding over the prepared path while the runes beneath it gave off a muted glow against the dark stone. Ludger sat near the front, one arm resting against the side while his eyes stayed half on the tunnel ahead and half on his own thoughts.
He wasn’t alone.
Eclaire sat across from him, posture composed but attention far too sharp for anyone pretending this was a simple trip. Rowan was there as well, broad-shouldered and steady, filling his part of the carriage with that familiar grounded presence of his. Jennifer sat nearby, far more contained than usual, clearly aware that whatever this mission was, it sat in a different category from ordinary guild work.
Of course Eclaire had brought them with her. Ludger had expected as much the moment he told her to prepare.
She might follow his lead, might argue, might glare, might try to peel answers out of him with that increasingly irritated stare of hers, but she was not stupid enough to walk into a job tied to the Regent, the capital, and the Dalmoren family without bringing people she trusted. Not after everything that had already happened.
That part was fine. Expected, even. The carriage continued deeper into the tunnels, the soft rumble of the runic system filling the silence until eventually Eclaire gave up pretending she wasn’t thinking the obvious thing.
“What is everyone else thinking?” she asked at last.
Ludger glanced toward her without fully turning. Eclaire folded her arms.
“Are you really going to hunt down the Dalmoren family,” she asked, “and only bring the three of us to do that job?”
The question lingered in the carriage. Rowan and Jennifer didn’t interrupt, but their attention shifted just enough to make it obvious they were listening very carefully.
Ludger raised his eyebrows and looked at her. If she really had to ask that, then she still didn’t know him well enough. Not nearly well enough. For a moment he just stared at her, dry disbelief written all over his face in the smallest possible amount. Then he looked forward again.
“I could have brought others,” he said.
His tone made it clear that was not the point.
Eclaire narrowed her eyes. “That isn’t an answer.”
“It is,” Ludger said. “Just not one you like.”
Jennifer let out the faintest breath through her nose, somewhere between amusement and resignation. Rowan remained quiet, but the corner of his mouth twitched just enough to suggest he had already guessed the same thing Ludger was implying.
Because yes, Ludger could have brought more people.
He had enough capable members now that assembling a stronger field team would not have been difficult. If this were truly a simple hunt, or even a straightforward mission to track fugitives across hostile ground, there were several names that would have come before this exact combination.
Which meant one obvious conclusion. He hadn’t brought them because they were merely the strongest available. He had brought them for very different reasons.
Eclaire watched him in silence for a second longer, then her expression shifted by a small degree as she began turning the thought over properly.
Rowan, Jennifer, and herself. Not random. Not a standard strike group either.
Jennifer was useful in ways that went beyond direct combat. Rowan was steady, reliable, and good at reading bad situations without making them worse. Eclaire herself had the most personal connection to the Dalmoren side of this entire mess and enough familiarity with capital-born behavior to notice details others might miss.
This wasn’t a hunting party. Or at least, not only that. Ludger rested his head back lightly against the carriage wall as the runes continued humming under the floor.
“If I wanted a larger force,” he said, “I would have taken one.”
Eclaire kept her eyes on him. “So this is not just about tracking fugitives.”
Ludger gave her a flat look.
“That story was dead the moment we accepted the job.”
That shut the carriage up for a moment. Because it was true. The official decree called it a hunt. A clean righteous pursuit of criminals who had supposedly tried to kill the young Emperor.
Reality was filthier. Reality involved Rufas in chains, Gustav’s family dragged into a purge, the Dalmorens moving under pressure, and the Regent trying to use outsiders to clean up a mess he had failed to contain himself.
Rowan finally spoke, voice low and steady.
“So we’re not going to kill them just because the capital told us to.”
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Ludger looked at him.
“No.”
Simple. Immediate. Without hesitation.
Jennifer’s eyes sharpened slightly. “Then what are we doing?”
Ludger’s gaze shifted back toward the tunnel ahead.
“Finding them first.”
That answer was calm. Too calm. Which meant, as usual, there was more behind it than he was saying aloud. Eclaire leaned back a little, still watching him. “And after that?” Ludger’s expression flattened.
“That depends on what condition they’re in, who is already around them, what they know, and whether they’re smart enough not to waste my time.”
Jennifer almost smiled at that. Almost.
Eclaire, on the other hand, looked only partly reassured, which was appropriate because Ludger’s version of not hunting them down for the Regent still left a dangerously wide range of possibilities open.
Still, the important part had been said. No, he was not simply marching into the dark with three people to do the Regent’s dirty work. And no, he had not chosen the people in this carriage by accident.
The runic carriage rolled on through the tunnel, the glow of its embedded lines flickering over stone and shadow alike, while the four of them sat with the weight of that understanding settling more clearly into place.
They weren’t heading toward a clean mission. They were heading toward a moving fracture line inside the Empire. And Ludger had selected this group not because he wanted more brute force, but because he expected that whatever happened next would require something more dangerous than that: judgment.
Eclaire was quiet for a while after that, but not for long.
Eventually, she tilted her head slightly and said, “Viola and her friend would have come in handy in a situation like this.”
Ludger didn’t look at her right away.
The carriage kept rolling through the underground route, the runes beneath the floor humming softly while dim light slid over faces, cloaks, and the metal edges of packed gear. Outside, the tunnels stretched forward like the buried guts of something too old and too useful to leave alone.
“They’re busy sharpening themselves,” Ludger said at last.
Eclaire frowned faintly. “That sounds vague.”
“It isn’t.”
He rested one arm on his knee and continued in the same dry tone.
“They’re either training properly,” he said, “or trying to prove to themselves that they’re already sharp enough by getting involved in guild business before they should.”
Jennifer’s mouth twitched slightly. That sounded close enough to Viola that it barely needed a name attached.
“So I kept them busy with training,” Ludger finished.
Eclaire narrowed her eyes.
“That sounds suspiciously like you locked them out on purpose.”
“I gave them useful work.”
Rowan huffed once under his breath, not quite a laugh. Ludger continued before Eclaire could push harder.
“Besides,” he said, “they’ve already met Rufas, the black knights, and the prisoners before.”
That changed the shape of the conversation immediately. Eclaire’s posture straightened a little. Jennifer’s expression sharpened. Rowan looked at him more closely.
“If they meet them again,” Ludger said, “they can connect the dots.”
That made the reason uglier. And more sensible.
If those threads got tugged in the wrong room at the wrong moment, the story could start tightening around the capital incident in ways Ludger clearly did not want. Eclaire folded her arms.
“Why do you want to meet them without letting them know you gave them a hand indirectly in the capital?”
Ludger gave her a flat look, as if the answer should have been obvious.
“Because I need to assess them.”
That only made her stare harder. He went on anyway.
“I need to see whether they’re useful or not for Lionsguard by approaching them with some level of neutrality.”
The words were calm. Too calm.
“As long as they don’t know I indirectly made their escape easier, they still have to show me what they are without leaning on assumed goodwill, debt, or convenient political fantasy.”
Jennifer slowly crossed one leg over the other.
“So you want a cleaner read.”
“Yes.”
Ludger’s eyes stayed on the tunnel ahead.
“What they want. What they can offer. How much they know. How much of that knowledge is actually worth the trouble attached to it. Whether they can move like allies or only like cornered nobles trying to survive one more week.”
The runic carriage hummed onward. No one interrupted him. Then Ludger said the rest of it with the same maddeningly level tone.
“After that, I’ll decide whether to wipe them out or not.”
Silence filled the carriage. Not the light silence from before. A colder one.
The kind that arrived when somebody said something so brutal, so casually, that the mind needed a second to catch up and confirm it had actually been spoken aloud.
Eclaire stared at him. Jennifer’s eyes narrowed. Even Rowan, who usually looked hardest to rattle, went still. Ludger didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he noticed and simply didn’t care enough to soften it.
Then he added, “When the time comes, you three can decide on joining them or not.”
That made it worse. Much worse. Because the implication behind it settled into all three of them at once. He was not talking about this as some abstract political possibility.
He was speaking as someone fully prepared to move against an old great house if his assessment came back negative.
Prepared enough that he could calmly include the option in conversation. Prepared enough that he was willing to tell the three people in this carriage that if lines were drawn later, they would be allowed to choose a side.
A cold shiver crawled through Eclaire first. Jennifer felt it right after. Rowan’s jaw shifted slightly, the only visible sign that he had felt it too.
Ludger sounded confident. Not hopeful. Not reckless. Confident. Confident that if it came to it, he could wipe out an entire old great house.
And somehow, worse than that, he said it like he didn’t particularly care whether he had to throw the three of them on that pile as well if they made the wrong choice.
Eclaire searched his face again, the old trained instinct in her trying to peel back the layers and find out if this was calculated intimidation, practical honesty, or something even colder.
As usual with Ludger, the answer refused to sit still.
Jennifer broke the silence first.
“You really know how to make people feel valued.”
Ludger shrugged faintly.
“I prefer clarity.”
“That,” Jennifer said dryly, “is one word for it.”
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