It turned out that aside from the terribly tight red dress that made bending over a nightmare, the job itself was rather simple. Jin was quickly shown where things were located by another of the home attendants, named Marcus, who also wore that same style of dress despite being a guy about a head taller than her.

  Marcus was more subdued than Karam had been and didn’t talk as much despite guiding her similarly. He seemed almost lifeless as he pointed out everything and listed off the lord’s preferences that she would need to remember. It was just as Salman had said; she was just there to clean and be eye candy for the lord, who spent the majority of his time away.

  When Nabil finally was there was the time she started getting nervous. He eyed the servants lasciviously as they followed his requests, cleaned nearby, or simply stood at the edges of whatever room he was in, waiting to be called to serve.

  “New girl, come here real quick and let me look at you,” Lord Nabil ordered, gesturing for her to stand in front of the chair he was currently reading in after he had finished his dinner. Jin was already tired from the long day of cleaning things that already seemed clean or standing around and being bored, but she quietly moved forward, hoping to get this over with and go back to not being paid attention to.

  “Has Marcus been teaching you well?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s ‘Yes, milord.’ I see you still have a few things to learn, but I am a merciful Speaker,” he said, leaning back in the chair like it was a throne. His eyes slowly trailed up and down her as he said with an amused smile, “I must say, you do clean up nicely, at least.”

  Then he surprised Jin by leaning forward and saying in an almost conspiratorial whisper, “I also wanted to thank you for ruining my cousin’s cake. That was the best piece of entertainment I had that entire day.”

  He leaned back again and reached a hand out to the side that held a now-empty glass. Marcus quickly refilled it with some kind of amber drink before stepping back into the lord’s shadow. Nabil took a long swig from it and said, “Delicious, Marcus. You always know exactly how to sate my thirst.”

  He turned back to Jin, and said, “I admit I was surprised to hear that you ended up in the Service Sect. I thought, with the absolute delight you were at the party, that the Pleasure Sect would have been better suited for someone like you.”

  “Like me?” Jin ended up asking with a wrinkle of her nose.

  Most of the city had been an odd mixture of various human ethnicities that she thought rivaled major cities in America with how diverse it seemed. She even saw some people who looked more like her and thought she wouldn’t stand out that much for her appearance alone.

  The Lord frowned slightly but clarified for her, “A Wayfarer that fell from the sky is a unique being no matter what color, gender, or accent they have, which yours is very different from anything I’ve heard before.”

  “Is that why you requested me?”

  He smiled. “Of course. Aside from wanting to thank you, I now have plenty to talk about among the other Speakers. None of them have a Wayfarer servicing them, after all.”

  Jin made a mental note to visit the kitchens and procure a knife to protect herself with as his eyes trailed down her body again, and he drank from the glass. While she might be okay playing maid just to stay alive, she wasn’t gonna service him in other ways that he seemed to be implying.

  Nabil gave a satisfied sigh before waving her off and ordering, “Why don’t you go prepare my bath now, then go home for the night? I don’t have the space for more live-ins, which I hope Salman explained to you.”

  Jin nodded. She had been told before that this was a day-job style assignment where she’d normally be expected to be here from dawn to dusk. It had been difficult to wake up on time, but Karam had been an absolute hero by coming to wake her and lead her here.

  Before she had finished leaving the room, however, she heard the lord say, “Now, Marcus, you can sate my other thirst. Show me what a good Servant you are and put that mouth—”

  She let the door close and hurried to the bathroom to start drawing the bath, as Marcus had explained earlier. Perhaps the lord’s tastes were actually a blessing in disguise for her, and he really did just want her there for bragging rights.

  Jin felt sorry for Marcus, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Marcus had mentioned that he had been serving Lord Nabil for over five years now—a decade in her mind. She was sure that the quiet man was used to it by now… which she realized was a whole other level of depressing.

  “Good set, Miss Jin,” Karam greeted her when she left the lord’s mansion through the service entrance he had brought her to earlier.

  She smiled at him and jokingly asked, “Is your assignment really just to follow me around and make sure I don’t get lost?”

  That brought a small chuckle out of him as he answered, “A little. I’ve helped show transfers around before. Salman doesn’t think I’m good for much else, and nobody has requested me to be an attendant.”

  “Well, they’re missing out,” she replied as she fell into step with him to walk back to her room. “How often do you all get transfers? Is it just kids hitting sixteen—I mean, eight, and getting sent to a different Sect?”

  “Mostly that, but we’ll get older transfers sometimes. It’s not necessarily discouraged to transfer between Sects so long as you dedicate yourself to their cause. Sometimes, people discover later in life that they’re better suited for something else. Sometimes, their Sect gets angry with them and denounces them, forcing them to transfer. Others just want something new and different.”

  “Were you a transfer?”

  Karam nodded, his smile fading. “Yes, technically. I was born missing a limb that the healers’ magic couldn’t fix. We don’t have Life magic that is powerful enough to grow an entire arm like that. Normally, people don’t get transferred before turning eight, but my Fighter parents argued that I wouldn’t be able to live any kind of normal life among them. The Speakers agreed and allowed them to transfer me to the Servants, where there were things I could learn to do within my limits. They thought I could clean at least, even if I might be slower at it.”

  “Well, that sucks, but I guess it makes sense to a certain degree. Have you thought about transferring to somewhere else?”

  He seemed surprised by the question at first, then flushed as he looked to the ground. “Um, well, yes. I’ve thought about joining the Workers before.”

  “Oh, is there something you’re good at making?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a bit embarrassing…”

  “All the more reason to tell me,” she replied with a grin, then shook her head. “I’m joking, though. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’m more curious now that you think it’s embarrassing.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  They walked in silence for a moment as Karam seemed to think about it. When they reached her door, he finally said, “Maybe I’ll show you some other day. Good night, Miss Jin.”

  “Good night, Kar. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  The next day was much the same, and Jin thought she could see herself getting used to the boring routine. It wasn’t exactly what she had imagined doing with her life, but considering she had expected to be dead soon before landing here, it was something. Given her prospects here, staying quiet and out of the spotlight actually seemed the best way for her to keep not dying if that was something she actually wanted.

  She honestly wasn’t sure if living was still worth it. Some of the people here seemed okay, while others were obviously psychotic, but it didn’t seem like she would catch any more attention from the crazy royals. Even the semi-creepy lord didn’t pay much attention to her after that first day.

  It was her third day working there when she made a mistake.

  “Hey, go take this back up to Lord Nabil’s chambers,” one of the other attendants told her, handing over a small stack of neatly folded clothes. “You know where they go in his wardrobe, right?”

  “Yeah,” she responded, having done a similar task just yesterday.

  She made her way through the mostly empty mansion. The lord was usually gone, and the house was quiet at this time because he took care of managing the royal gardens and overseeing the workers there. He had been especially busy providing flower arrangements for the upcoming opening ceremony and was gone even more often during this busy time.

  Jin was about to push open the door when she froze at the sound of a loud moan on the other side. Apparently, the lord was home and had bed company.

  Unsure about what she should do, she floundered in the hall for a moment, looking back the way she came and wondering if there was some sort of protocol. Did she knock? Did she just wait? Did she try later? She didn’t think just leaving the clothes outside the door was an acceptable option.

  The moaning got louder, and when she heard a muffled cry from the other side, she decided to knock and play the dumb new girl.

  “What?” Lord Nabil’s voice called out.

  “Um, I have clothing to put away, milord,” she said.

  “Oh, for Rabbit’s sake… Can’t you hear I’m busy?”

  “Should I just leave it out here?”

  “No, no,” he replied, then she heard a slap and a yelp. “Just wait there a few minutes.”

  So she waited and tried her best to not listen to the sounds of the lord and whatever poor soul was in there with him.

  It must have been only ten minutes later when the sounds stopped, and Lord Nabil opened the door. He was thankfully clothed with some loose pants as he gestured for her to enter.

  Jin was mildly surprised to see Marcus curled up in the bed, wrapped up in a blanket, and leaning against the headboard as he stared out the window of the far wall. She didn’t call out to him but hoped he was alright and quickly made her way over to the wardrobe to put the laundry away.

  “Tell me, Wayfarer, have you ever serviced someone like Marcus just did before?” Nabil asked as she heard him move into the room.

  She shook her head and replied through her clenched teeth, “No, milord.”

  “Well, there’s always a first time to learn everything,” Nabil said, and she was startled to hear him directly behind her.

  As she turned and tried to back away from the half-naked lord, he grabbed her shoulder, and she responded by punching him right in the face.

  “Spawn of a—” he began to curse, grabbing at his bloodied nose, and she kneed him right in that completely unprotected groin. He dropped to the ground and vomited before groaning, “You fucking bitch—”

  She kicked him in the face, not caring at all about the pain in her hand and now her foot, and reached up her dress to grab the dinner knife she had swiped and tied to her thigh after that first night.

  This world would be better off with one less dick, she thought and lifted the knife to plunge it into that lecherous eye.

  “Woah, there, Killer,” an unfamiliar voice whispered in her ear as a gloved hand caught her arm to stop her.

  She ripped herself away from the stranger and held the knife towards them, only to be completely baffled by the sight of a man dressed in all black with only golden eyes showing through the wrapped fabric. He looked like some kind of Arabian ninja as he held up those gloved hands and said, “Hey, now, I’m all for a good murder, but you can’t do it like that.”

  Jin blinked at him and asked, in all her eloquence, “What?”

  He pulled out a much larger and sharper blade to show her as he explained, “You don’t just go all wild stabby on the guy. You do it like this,” then he bent over, grabbed the still recovering lord by the hair to yank his head back, and in a swift clean motion, slit his throat.

  She watched in morbid awe as the noble quickly struggled for air, clutching at the gushing wound, and bled out all over the rug-covered floor. The crazy ninja dude held him down by the shoulders to keep the lord from crawling away. “Ah, wait here now. No need to make a bigger mess than necessary, Lord Nabil.”

  Less than a minute later, the lord stopped moving, and the murderer looked over at her. “See? Much cleaner this way than what you were going to do. You would have sprayed blood all over the walls, and he would have probably run all over the place if he managed to overpower you.”

  He took a step toward her, and she lifted the knife up again in warning. He tilted his head, and his eyes crinkled in amusement as he said through the black fabric, “Are you going to try stabbing me next, Killer?”

  “Well, you did just show me a good way to do it,” she said, trying to keep the tremor of fear out of her voice.

  He laughed, shaking his head as he turned to walk over to Marcus instead, who had curled up into a ball to hide in the furthest corner from them.

  “Leave him alone!” Jin yelled, taking a step toward them with the knife still held out. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I know,” the assassin called back to her. He bent down to look Marcus in the eyes and ordered the Servant, “Tell me what you saw happen here.”

  “I saw nothing, Whisper,” Marcus said, and Jin definitely heard the tremble in his voice. “Only darkness and the whisper of a swift death.”

  “That’s a good boy,” the stranger said, gently patting Marcus on the head before turning back to look at Jin. “Marcus here didn’t see Jin walk into the room until after a Whisper assassinated Lord Nabil, right?”

  “Yes, Whisper,” Marcus replied obediently.

  “And Jin didn’t see anything that happened in here. She just walked in to find a scared Servant and a professionally assassinated Speaker. Right, Killer?” he asked her with a pointed look, and she nodded numbly.

  When he moved back towards her again, Jin didn’t raise the knife, realizing that the Whisper had moved to save her and give her a cover. He had killed the noble for her so she wouldn’t get killed in turn. However, when he held out a hand and gestured for the knife, she hesitated to let the actual murderer disarm her.

  “Hey, I’ll deal with anyone who you might need to use that on, okay?” he softly said, never looking away from her face. “It’ll be easier to prove your innocence if they don’t find a weapon on you.”

  “Are you watching me?” Jin asked with sudden horror at the idea of being spied on.

  Those golden eyes crinkled again with mirth as he cheekily replied, “Of course. Good thing, too, since you’ve been here less than a week, and I’ve already had to kill someone for you. You know I lost a bet because of this, right?”

  “A bet?” she asked incredulously. “Of what?!”

  “Of how long you could go before I had to take someone out to keep you alive. I was hoping you would at least last till the Season started,” he answered with a regretful sigh. “Now, I owe that loverboy a whole Crystal Bit. Try your best to stay out of any more trouble, okay? Like I said, I love a good murder, but we’re trying to keep attention away from you so Salman doesn’t see you as a leaf to get pruned. Alright, Killer?”

  Jin slowly nodded and handed over the knife. It disappeared into the folds of black fabric, and the Whisper leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “Can you take Marcus to the Pleasure Sect’s emergency clinic for me? I can’t really be seen by others, and the healers there can take care of him. He’s a good boy that didn’t deserve what happened here.”

  She glanced over to the naked, trembling man and grimaced but gave a firm nod. “Yeah. I’ll make sure he gets there.”