“Ah,” she said. “You learn something new every day, I guess.”
“It is you, isn’t it?” Lyle said finally. “You look…different.”
“Don’t you agree, Justin?” Tina asked innocently from a bench.
He darted her a look and she grinned at him.
“I’m sorry we’re late,” a new voice said. Dotty turned to see a young woman with dark hair and leather armor with a man in robes trailing in her wake. “Kural wanted to stop and examine a security spell at one of the weapons shops.”
“It was fascinating,” Kural said excitedly. “It kept the weapons from being used to harm any of the store’s employees—or bystanders—but not from being used to harm robbers. You know, I’ve always said that many of the significant developments in magic come from the commercial sector, not only academia.”
“That’s nice,” Zaara said firmly. She nodded to Dotty. “I’m sorry, you’ve never met us. I’m Zaara, and this very vague man is Kural, my mentor and a wizard of some renown.”
Kural, who had stooped to examine a glyph carved on the bench, straightened for a moment with a wounded expression. “Some renown?”
“You’d probably have more if you hadn’t spent five years wandering in various disguises,” Zaara said, unimpressed by the wounded puppy expression. She looked at Dotty. “Sorry about that. What did you say your name was?”
“We’ve met, actually,” Dotty said. “We fought a fire dragon together. I looked a little different at the time.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. She looked at her, then at Justin and Lyle, who both nodded. “Oh. Ah. Wow. Okay. Well, it’s good to meet you. Again. So, why are we all here?”
“Dotty called us all here,” Justin said.
“I did?”
“Yes, you did,” Prima said helpfully.
“Yes, I did,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Has anyone noticed anything…uh, strange…about Insea?”
“Well, I noticed a woman in a red dress kicking the crap out of some muggers,” Tina said. She gave her a wink.
“Yes, precisely,” she said. “There weren’t muggers the last time I was here.”
“I don’t remember any either,” Justin said with a frown. “Callie and Dex were fairly nasty, but it’s not like they jumped people in alleys.”
“Only in arenas,” Tina said, and Dotty was surprised to see her looking deeply angry. There was clearly a story there, but she knew she didn’t have time to ask about it.
She filed it away for later and looked at the others. Kural was frowning, although whether it was about this topic or something entirely different, she could not have said. Lyle looked troubled but offered no input besides nodding when Justin spoke.
“There shouldn’t be any crime,” Zaara said slowly. “Insea is famously safe. It’s one of the reasons my father wanted me to marry a noble here. He said I could go wandering as much as I wanted and not have to worry about being hurt.”
“Well, it would seem he was wrong.” Dotty settled on a bench and looked at all of them.
“He wasn’t,” the woman said.
“I just got mugged,” Dotty told her. “Tina can corroborate—”
“Ugh,” Tina groaned. “Lawyer talk.”
“What I meant,” Zaara said impatiently, “is that when my father said that, it was true.”
“So, what happened?” No one seemed to have an immediate answer. “A mass exodus of the city guard?”
Everyone looked at one another before Lyle said, “There’s never been a city guard.”
“What?” She studied their matching expressions in disbelief. They all seemed fairly sure of the idea, but as far as she could tell, the very concept was cuckoo. A city with no police force?
“Insea has never had an army,” Zaara explained. “Or a city guard. There are guards in the palace—”
This was familiar ground, and she jumped on it. “For the king? Queen? Person?”
“King,” the woman said. She pressed her lips together. “But I don’t know, to be honest. No one has ever seen the king.”
“No one has…ever…seen the king?” Dotty asked. She must be mistaken about what she had heard.
She wasn’t, though, because everyone nodded.
“Well, this puts the other elven faction into perspective,” Dotty told Lyle. Their first adventure together had involved the yearly shipment of magical goods from Berghold to Insea, an ongoing gesture of thanks from the dwarves to the elves. As far as anyone knew, the elves had enlisted the dwarves’ help to build Insea and had then taught the same magic to the dwarves, who used it to build Berghold.
But if the ruler of Insea had never been seen, it made a great deal of sense why a new faction of elves would jockey for power. In fact, she thought, it was more interesting that it hadn’t happened sooner—a fact she shared, only to get blank looks from Lyle, Zaara, and Kural.
“It’s always been like that,” Zaara said.
“No visible monarch, no guards, no army, and no wars,” Dotty said. She looked at Justin and Tina, who both frowned in consternation. That was a relief, as she had begun to feel like she was going crazy. “And you never thought that was weird?”
“Well, think about it,” Lyle said. “It’s not easy to get an army to Insea with those narrow roads.”
“Yeah, you told me that last time. It doesn’t make sense, though. Insea isn’t equipped for defense, there’s no strong government in place, and no one is visibly running it at all. Why hasn’t anyone tried to take it over? Hell, why haven’t the nobles staged a coup?”
“I…” The three natives of the game shrugged their shoulders.
“One moment.” She turned and raised an eyebrow at the sky. “Prima, the answer doesn’t happen to be that all of them are morons, does it?”
“No.” The AI laughed.
“I merely wanted to make sure,” she said. She pivoted to the others again. “Okay. You all seem like a group of fairly smart people.”
“And Justin,” Prima interjected.
“Hey!” he protested.
Dotty struggled to not laugh. “Do other nations have wars?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” Lyle said.
“Merely not Insea,” she said and waited for the nods. “So doesn’t it strike you as odd that there’s never been any strife related to Insea? And more to the point, that none of you think it’s weird?”
An awestruck silence followed her challenge. Dotty exchanged a look with Tina, who contemplatively consumed what seemed to be a magically regenerating slice of pizza. She would have to ask her where to get some of that.
“But now,” Kural said slowly, “something is happening.”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“Which is why the Master of Ceremonies is trying to train the populace of Insea to serve as warriors,” Justin said suddenly. “He said he needed me. After the championship, he said I must find more warriors from my land.”
“So the Master of Ceremonies knew something was coming,” Dotty said thoughtfully, “and now, things are starting to go wrong in large and small ways all across the world. And there’s one thing none of the rest of you know, I think.”