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“Well, that is a long story. I hope you love long, boring tales.” Arsene exclaimed, entering full dramatics, and hurling another sparkling powder. Reader dust perhaps. But Nathair had lost all his time for games now, he didn’t even bother to give a retort.

“Once upon a time, there was a cunning, good looking thief named Arsene. He had been arrested by his twin brother, Sherlock, only to escape jail. Trust me, that was rather easy.”

Nathair didn’t care in the slightest about Arsene’s backstory – but he filed the information anyway to use later. The story couldn’t possibly be more meandering than council debates; now it was just a matter of figuring out if Arsene was dumb or playing dumb with his ramblings.

Nathair fiddled with a die in his pocket, idly, processing, his eyes never leaving Arsene’s face.

“After falling off a cliff, Arsene recovered, before going through a carefully planned bank robbery.”  He didn’t have to have Alessio’s lie detecting skills to know Arsene’s narrative was extraordinarily exaggerated. “Guess who happened to be in the bank at the time? Alessio! Yes, Alessio was there.”

Arsene…kept talking, until he had spilled just about everything he could possibly theatricize. And in no time Nathair got the entire story – devils, Arsene really was clueless. Just mentioning Alessio’s name could’ve gotten him killed if he’d talked up the wrong side.

Well, it seemed Alessio was more or less safe…or at least alive. He’d expected to waste a lot more time whittling information out of Arsene, but this guy didn’t know anything. That made him no threat to Alessio, but he might attract a lot of unwanted attention.

Nathair would have to work with it if he wanted to find Alessio in one piece.

“And, since this is obviously the afterlife, Alessio is probably panicking over my corpse.” Arsene finished, just about out of breath now. “So, what do you know about Alessio? He mentioned you, as he punched me in the face.”

Nathair was silence for several moments, calculating how much information he could risk on this random stranger to how much he was likely to get for his efforts.

“I know quite a lot about Alessio,” he said slowly “I was his private tutor and advisor to the royal family.”

This was a gamble and a pretty big one but he needed more leads.

“I imagine he never told you he was a prince,” Nathair said, with a bit of a dry smile at the recollection. “he didn’t love titles when he was younger, I doubt he does now.”

He let out a breath.

“I need to find him before anyone else does – he…disappeared when he was fourteen and no one’s heard a breath about him since – except once, almost a year later, in the Hesgmarde castle the night of the queen’s murder.”

Nathair could still remember that night with blinding clarity. Crystalline blue moonlight pouring into the room like some incantation on the stark, slim silhouette of the queen – not that he was crying for her, she just got the devil’s due. The only person who might disagree would be that stupidly loyal boy…

“I’m sure we both know he couldn’t possibly have murdered her, but whatever he saw that night…it made him run away from everything, and he’s the only witness.” Nathair said “So I need to find him, as soon as possible.”