Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Captain Hamaf, I'm surprised to see you back down here.  Especially after I instructed the guards not to allow you access to the labs."
"Funny thing about researchers giving orders to guards, guards take orders from their officers and researchers aren't even in the military."
"Yes, but peasants do take orders from nobles.  If they know what's best for them anyways."
"And uncles don't interfere with the reasonable relationships of their nieces.  If they know what's best for them that is."
"So you heard then?  Little Pauline will grow out of this adventurous stage soon enough.  It'll do her good to have a proper husband who will support her as she matures."
"Between you and me, your Lordship, I don't think he'll make it to the altar.  It takes spine to marry a woman of her talents, and I doubt anyone outside of the palace grounds is more up to the task than my second-in-command."
"It takes brains to run a house as historied and wealthy as the Krenksfelds.  Your brute doesn't have the intellect to be a noble."
"Perhaps he lacks your education, but his brain is the third best I've ever met.  The second is a noble, and the first is scheduled to die for serial homicide, treason against the emperor, and several minor counts ranging from petty theft to reckless use of magic in a densely populated area.  Intellect, it would seem, is not all its cracked up to be."
"You think treason is a mark of intelligence?  You truly are mad."
"It takes genius to kill fifteen members of the nobility, one hundred and forty-nine guards, and three imperial guardsmen without being caught; especially with nothing but a soldiers knife, a single vial of poison, and a bilge pump."

Grath's face turned white at the mention of the bilge pump.  Hamaf had done his research, back while he was tracking down his daughter during her spree.  Grath's father had been killed when the cabin of his personal yacht flooded as a result of a curiously sabotaged bilge pump.  And by curious, the newspapers concealed that the pump had been joined by a solid iron pipe directing to the cabin.  Having driven off the crew, she had simply waited for the cabin to fill before breaking the glass to the cabin's light fixture.  She'd already set up a magical light within to respond to the light switch, and wired the sockets for a high voltage burst as soon as the water touched it.  He'd died in seconds, even though a mage like Grath's father would have easily been able to use some sort of water breathing spell to survive the slow flooding.  It had taken hours to fill, and at the trial Jeanine had admitted to having stayed outside the door listening to him beg. 
Grath would have remembered the smirk she gave him as she said it.  Especially considering the wound she had dealt to him not a week later.  The very thought that his father's murderer was in the base seemed to drive a fear-flavored steak into his stomach.  A fact supported by his swift exit in the direction of the lavatory. 

"Now that the greasy pimple is out of the way I have some orders for you men."
"Thank you sir."
"You've been reassigned to the prison cells.  It's dangerously over-populated, but the prisoners up here should be easy enough for my men to handle on their own.  After all, the rangers and I brought half of them in."
"Aye sir, when are these orders effective?"
"Tomorrow morning, don't bother telling him."  He motioned after Grath.  "I'm looking forward to seeing how he handles the situation without the empire's finest watching over him at every second."
Judging by their mirth, the guards didn't like the ovoid noble any more than he did.