A few minutes after we ended training, we were already back inside my room where I immediately looked around.

“Okay, so this dress needs to be cleaned, the candle wax needs to be refilled, you need to tidy up my wardrobe, dust off my desk and change the sheets of my bed. Oh, and the ground needs to be cleaned as well. There are a few crumbs on it.”

“…” Speechless, Hannah stared at me with an open mouth.

“What? Primarily, you are still my maid. Right, you could ask the cook to prepare tea for Mary and me around four. And my books need to be sorted. You can bring all of them starting with every letter until ‘f’ down.”

“Is there anything else?” She said dejected as her work piled up considerably.

“No, not really … although … you will need different, less obvious clothes for the night.” I said and smiled happily. “Thank you!” I twirled around looked one last time at my dirty dress on the bed and strolled out of the window, already curious how much she would be able to accomplish. But I wouldn’t keep an eye on her as I myself also had work to do.

“Hi mum!” I exclaimed after I opened the door to her study swiftly. Mary only looked up with lifeless eyes, piles of paperwork in front of her.

“Help …” she said, close to smashing her head onto the desk.

“That´s why I´m here! What can I do?”

“The taxes from Eastminster need to be verified, there are several citizens who want to resettle into another duchy and we have a few new immigrants who all need to be screened. In addition, the clergy wants to build a larger church, the merchants complain about unfair competition and we are officially broke now.”

“Okay … and what should I do?” I asked, mostly because that seemed quite a lot for me.

“That? I need to do other stuff.” My jaw fell as I imagined the hours of work I needed to put into this. Slowly, I sat down on my chest and despaired as Mary put piles of paper in front of me.

“… we are broke?” I asked, surprised about her revelation.

“We waged a bit too much war and after paying all the soldiers and officials, there will be nothing left for quite the long time.” She said dejectedly.

“How about ten thousand gold coins?” I asked, smiling brightly. It was her money in the first place that enabled Tom to rob the merchant´s guild, so it was completely out of question to not repay her.

“That would alleviate most of the problems we face.” She said, grabbing her chin, seemingly calculating something in her head.

“Great. I´m buying a restaurant then.” I said and stood up.

“Uhh … completely forgot about that.” She said, ruffling her hair in frustration.

“Don´t worry. I already got that covered.” I walked towards the door with a bright smile on my face, until she looked up and saw what I was doing.

“Hey, you need to he-“ I dashed towards the door, opened it in a rush and shut it close behind me. Afterwards, I directly ran towards my room, changed into a plain dress usually worn by commoners, picked up a few gold coins and ordered Hannah, who was just beginning to dust off the desk, to do the same. As soon as she finished, I dragged her out of the room by her hand and ran towards the entrance where a few butlers noticed our presence. They were quite surprised as they caught Mary, standing on the second floor and looking at us in anger.

“Run,” I said and dragged the heavy door open. A few seconds later, we were already running along the gravel street, heading right for the gate of the estate.

“Why are we running?” Hannah asked, out of breath and incredibly glad as we slowed down on the main street.

“Too much paperwork …” I commented and dragged her towards the gates.

“The irony is immeasurable.” She said, a satisfied grin on her face.

“Huh?” I asked, a bit threateningly.

“Forget it.” Immediately, I noticed how she averted her gaze and pulled her hand out of mine, but still fowowed behind me.

“Okay …” I said, satisfied she didn´t say anything bad in the end.

Together, we walked along the street, only to turn left at the gates to visit my usual tunnel. Hannah was a bit uncomfortable with the dark, damp tunnel, but interestingly enough, didn´t complain and walked through the darkness, always looking straight forwards with determination.

Naturally, it wasn´t completely dark as she had a magical lamp, making it a lot less scarier than I hoped it would. Disgruntled, I surfaced on the other side of the wall and walked straight towards the red light district.

“Where are we going?” She asked finally, which made me smile involuntarily.

“The brothel. I have buisness with someone there.” I claimed and turned around to walk backwards, looking straight into her eyes. She was less than pleased with my revealation, but still didn´t complain at all. “I need you for some support … and don’t try to get in my way, I don’t need any more deaths than necessary.”

“You want to hurt someone during the day?”

“It´s just a whore.” I shrugged and turned around again to walk the rest of the way in relative silence. Whenever I turned my head, Hannah looked around, slightly distrustful of everyone and anything. It almost seemed as if she was never inside the commoner district … which could very well be the truth. The others were staring at her, first because of her beauty, and then because of her longer ears whenever she failed to hide them. Even the receptionist of the brothel raised an eyebrow as she noticed her race, but didn´t say anything as she realized who she was with.

We directly strolled past her into the cellar where Tom and the whore were counting coins, which was perfect. This way, I wouldn’t need to search them.

“Hi, Tom!” I said as I took the last step from the stairs, skillfully ignoring the whore.

“Uhm … hi?” He said, a bit surprised to see me around this hour.

“Oh, that´s Hannah. Hannah that´s Tom. He scouted you out for me.” I explained and eyed the table full of coins suspiciously, hoping to find anything out of the ordinary.

“It´s a pleasure to meet you.” He said, already trying to give her a hand, prompting me to interject immediately.

“Get your filthy hands off her. I don’t want anyone else to be contaminated with … you know what I mean.” He looked at me as if I was the idiot, then towards the whore who I still ignored.

“Going by that, shouldn´t you seclude yourself into all eternity?” The whore asked, which I completely ignored as well, producing a very akward atmosphere, until Tom spoke up again.

“Luci … Boss, she asked you something.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked, seemingly quite confused by his words.

“Pauline?” He said after a long pause.

“Sorry, what? She is in this room? She must have gotten the ability to turn invisible and inaudible.” I seriously didn´t want to speak to her at this point. It was a thousand times better to ignore her completely than to face the reality that my thigh was still defiled.

“Tom, could you please tell her that she wanted it?” The whore said, quite angry about my behaviour.

“Lucinda, I am supposed to tell you that you wanted it.” Tom repeated after a long pause where he rolled his eyes.

“Hannah, sorry, I´m not so sure she can even hear me, so could you tell her that I certainly didn´t want to drown because of her spit?” I asked, getting quite worked up as well.

Hannah blinked a few times, and looked to every other person in the room, probably in an attempt to escape her fate, until she gave up.

“Pauline, Lucinda claims otherwise.” She simply said and sat down on a chair, already exhausted by the stupidity of the situation.

“Tom, tell her to go fuck herself,” said the whore, way too sure about her safety.

“Boss, you heard her.” Tom commented. I ignored his statement completely and realized too late that he didn´t relay the information. Thus, I continued to talk to Hannah, even though I swore myself I wouldn’t talk to the whore that day.

“Hannah, tell her she should write down her testament.”

“Uhm … I …” Hannah said, nervously tripping from one foot to the other. “Lucy … Lucinda want´s to murder you.”

“Because of what? Because she was too envious to enjoy? Tom, if yo-“ I interrupted her, mostly because I heard something outrageous.

“Excuse me? Envious? Of your stupidity or what?” I exclaimed, clearly a lot more aggressive than previously.

“Oh, finally! No, I naturally meant how you looked at my chest while yours is so flat I could iron on it.” I balled my hands into fists and walked closer to her while she stared at her finger nails, seemingly in boredome.

“At least im not living off human cum.” I said, making her raise an eyebrow.

“We are both sucking. What are you even feeding on? A donkey?” She smiled dumbly, which was honestly the last straw for me. I dashed forwards, slamming into her with my shoulder as fast as I could … which was honestly a pitiful speed. Still, her chair tilted backwards and she fell, together with me. The world was spinning as I struggled to sit up while the whore groaned beside me.

“Better than getting screwed by a donkey … you would probably love it, wouldn’t you?” I said, holding my head as headaches shot through it. Weakened by the time of the day, it took far longer for me to deal with the issues I had than for the whore. Furiously, she dragged me towards the ground and straddled my belly, giving me horrible flashbacks. I growled and squirmed underneath her weakly as she placed both of her hands onto the ground near my head. She looked down on me and with her hair falling nearly onto my face, she growled threateningly.

“Screw you Lucinda. You wanted it. What can I do against your incompetence to get horny?” Well, that was certainly not what I expected, but made me angry nonetheless, especially because she said it in front of Hannah and Tom. Furiously, I turned my head to the left, and bit into her arm with everything I got. Disgusting blood slowly filled my mouth as the whore screamed in pain. She tried to yank her arm away from me, but failed miserably from all the pain. Grabbing my hair, she even pulled on it, which only incentiviced me further to dig into her flesh. I gripped her arm with both my hands, not ready to let it go yet.

Suddenly, she canged course completely and snatched the sunglasses away from me. I knew she would be eventually going for them, but in the cellar, they were practically not needed anyway. I could see perfectly fine and rather continued to rip her arm open even more, instead of wondering about her regained intelligence.

It didn´t take long through for her to find another solution which was hitting my head with a sack of gold coins. It immediately stunned me as she hit me the first time, prompting me to open my yaw, despite all my attempts not to. Now free, she slammed the sack onto my face as I looked upwards, immediately breaking my nose. I certainly regretted coming this early.

Sure about her victory, she let go of the sack and stood up, holding her left arm in agony.

“Shit.” She said as blood dripped onto the ground. The wound didn´t heal by itself, completely unlike the other times I bit someone and they survived. Still, I had other things to do than to wonder about it as I stood up slowly, helping myself by using the chair.

I staggered away from her, bleeding onto the ground and wary about her next move which never came. She was already bandaging her arm by cutting off a part of her dress as I slumped down onto a chair, wiping the blood away from my bleeding nose. As it didn´t really stop, it was quite the hopeless endeavor, but at least I managed to keep my dess somewhat clean.

“Are we finished now?” asked the whore, still in pain, but already somewhat recovering.

“I … for now.” I said and yanked my nose back into the original position. It still didn´t heal, but at least I wouldn’t look ugly then.

“Great. Next time I screw you so hard you wont be able to put up any resistance.” She mumbled, clrealy indicating that her pride as a scubbus was also tarnished by my behaviour the night before.

“Good luck with that …” I said and looked towards Tom and Hannah for the first time in a while. Tom stood behind the elf, his hands on her shoulders. I glared at Hannah for a good second until I opened my mouth again. “so much for being my guard.” I pointed out.

“I-I … he held me back and told me to ‘watch and enjoy’.” I wasn´t really angry at Hannah. This was between the whore and me and my guess was that she would only escalate this further if she helped. As such, Tom´s actions were justified, although his words were a bit concerning.

“What a great fight! Could we use a muddy arena next time?” Tom said. Both the whore and I scrowled threateningly, surprisingly in unison.

“Fine … but the next time, you will join.” I grinned madly and turned towards the whore again. “Sorry, I kind of needed that. You know, it´s not my fault, it´s yours.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” She said, already feeling a bit better, but still wincing as she moved her hand.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not really sure what she was getting at.

“Ahh … forget it.” For a short moment, akward silence broke out between the four of us. Nobody knew what to say, at least until I snipped loudly and remembered why we came here in the first place.

“Tom, we need ten thousand gold coins. Is there any way to trace them back to the merchant guild?”

“We already went through most of them and I don’t see any way. They are all minted exactly the same and our mage couldn’t detect anything magical at them. There may be a way to trace them even then though … we are not entirely sure … we have around twenty thousand gold coins, but the broad majority of our wealth is bound in jewelery, artefacts and so on. If we sell these … well, i´m not sure they won´t try to find out who stole them.” That was the drawback of letting our sole magician go. If they somehow manage to pay us with tracable money, we would be in trouble. But my guess was that there had to be restrictions, otherwise underground auctions would be doomed from the very get go.

“Alright, I wash our money, you just have to sell these items. And whore?” I said and eyed her fingers angrily.

“I have a name.” She stated. She was right, but I liked how I addressed her more than her name.

“Put that ring on your finger back where it belongs. I expect the money tomorrow at the mansion. See ya!” I loved giving unreasonable orders, especially because I left no one with any choice in that matter as I dashed away, pulling Hannah with me. Well, they could try to follow the trail of my blood, but that would lead to nothing as I pinched my nose shut as soon as we were outside.