One must be cautious when making deals with immortals. Often their sense of timing is severely out of alignment with we shorter-lived beings. You hire one to show up as your bodyguard at a social function next week, they get momentarily distracted, then show up twenty years later wondering why their employer is dead.


    <hr>


    Lilin didn’t want to be left behind, but she hadn’t spoken since arriving in the courtyard. Their plans for partying their way across Veor suddenly lost their playful veneer.


    Jair was used to Sekir’s ordinary methods, but this was dramatically outside the norm. It was more like the sort of thing he’d expect once he’d already killed the man a time or three, not as a first contact.


    Jair closed his eyes and thought back. He could revert to any point he''d memorized, but once he went back he couldn''t come back forward except by living through it. He could set his own handholds to revert to, so long as he was able to remember it clearly enough to visualize as he reverted. What had been happening an hour or so ago? Recapture the moment.


    Fortunately, this whole party was a new and novel situation. He didn''t have any old memories of the day to jumble things up. The Serin Solaria parties he''d looked in on in the past carried an entirely different atmosphere.


    It wouldn''t be precise. He hadn''t been memorizing moments intentionally at the time, since they''d been planning to revert the whole day, but he could still recall enough events throughout the day to use as rough checkpoints.


    The closest brought them back a little under an hour to start, which let them reach the courtyard before the scene was fully set. But not entirely before. Ajriol wasn’t present, but three of the servants had already been killed and set up in their places at the table.


    Lilin made a small noise and held Jair’s arm tightly, staying half behind him. Raina looked around, then ran for the house. A servant stepped into the courtyard carrying a tray, yelped in shock, dropped the tray, and screamed.


    Jair looked around, but didn’t see Carn. The location part of reverting time was always questionable, half the time it seemed to leave them wherever they’d been at the time and the other half they went where Jair intended, and often without warning as to which would be which.


    He wanted to go back further, if he were alone he’d have jumped back already, but right now the only one of the group he had in reach was Lilin.


    “Mersine was right about him moving up the timeline.” Jair sighed. “This is going to get very complicated very fast.” Carrying Raina back with him every time was one thing. Bringing all four of them was another.


    He couldn’t let any of them get too far, or Sekir could take them out individually and whatever they learned would die with them. He could revert the timeline, but he couldn’t return people’s memories once their soul was reset.


    "You sure you want to stick through this?" Jair asked, turning to Lilin. "I can leave you out of this. There''s a high probability that bringing you in will make you a target."


    "I wouldn''t be a target already? Being your sister?" her voice was small but with a spark of defiance in it. "If I''m going to live my own life, I don''t want it to be something where I opt out every time something goes wrong. I don''t want to be the innocent sheltered thing you need to drag from place to place without ever letting on that something more is happening." She took a deep breath, looked out at the scene of carnage and the abandoned tray from the fleeing servant, and shifted her grip to lightly hold Jair''s forearm instead of clinging to his bicep.


    She was trembling, but that was only natural for someone who''d unexpectedly witnessed an entire courtyard full of violent murder. He suspected it hadn''t really sunk in yet, or she''d likely be reacting a lot more dramatically. Still in the numb semi-disbelief stage.


    "It''s alright," he told her, patting her hand in turn. "None of it will last. We''re going to prevent this."


    Lilin nodded and let her hand fall to her side, still staring out at the three dead servants. Jair walked over and looked at each. One was the head cook, Lisa. She lay slumped over a tipped-over goblet, lips the wrong color and eyes frozen in an expression of horror.


    Same as an hour later. Her position wasn''t changed in the slightest.


    "So he''s setting these up one at a time," Jair mused. The other two were unknowns, hired staff for this event. The murdered people weren''t clustered together, however, scattered out around the table. "He has a specific order in mind, and takes the opportunity whenever one comes in?" Jair looked around, but the courtyard was empty. "So where is he?" There''d been no one when he arrived except the servant who''d run off, one he recognized from the original tableau. He would have been seated at the far end, in the seat where Raina sat in the morning ceremony, with a steak knife through his eye.


    Jair''s appearance had saved his life, but if he was about to discover the scene, where was Sekir? There''d been no premature scream. This man would have been silenced within a minute of when Jair arrived.


    He ran a finger across the bladed edge of Maelstrom''s pommel as he looked around, searching for anywhere Sekir could be hiding to watch from. Then laughed at himself for staying land-bound. He tossed Maelstrom into the air and drifted upward, searching the area from above. He kept forgetting Bladewalk was available, out of the habit of verticality without his gravity imprints.


    No sign of the sorcerer. No one behaving suspiciously, only the one servant still running for the main house full tilt, breathless from the unaccustomed intensity. Jair would have preferred to search the area fully before the scene was disturbed.


    He could watch how this played out, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. Those initial moments after they arrived were too essential. The servant''s scream would have alerted any watcher and Jair wasn''t moving fast enough to catch them. He needed to go back, try the past few minutes again.


    Without really meaning to the intensity of his desire to be back a few minutes before flared golden and reset time to the same point again.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "—to kill y..." Raina blinked and swayed dizzily. Lilin grabbed Jair''s arm to steady herself. Jair gave her a second, then jumped into the air, Maelstrom beneath his feet as they ascended rapidly.


    The scene below was exactly the same, except the servant with his tray was walking carefully toward the courtyard instead of running away. Jair watched for any movement from anywhere in sight, eyes unfocused to take in as much of the scene as possible.


    Raina was talking with Lilin, hand on her arm. The servant stepped inside, bowed politely to Raina, then saw past her and screamed. The tray fell. The man stared for a stunned second, then he turned to Raina—who hadn''t gone rushing off yet this time—with a wild look of panic. "What happened? What do we do?"


    Jair ignored their conversation as he continued to scan the immediate surroundings for any movement out of place.


    Nothing.


    The entire conversation played out, with Raina comforting the terrified servant until she took him inside to speak to her father. Lilin glanced up at him, then trailed after the others when he showed no sign of leaving his perch in the sky.


    No Sekir.


    Jair stared at the three bodies, anticipating some kind of trick. Maybe one of them was faking? Sekir''s manabody was flexible enough to shift from form to form within a day. Jair once killed him three times in two days in a particularly chaotic past timeline, but none of these were bodies he recognized and none of them showed signs of being anything but fully dead. Though he watched until Ajriol and Carn emerged with Raina and Lilin, no one else came or went.


    Jair reluctantly descended, convinced that he''d seen all there was to see.


    Carn briefly explained the scene they''d seen in the future to his master, while Ajriol looked between his murdered staff, Jair, Raina, and Carn.


    "My house is cursed," he said at last. "There''s no other explanation. One dragon, could happen to anyone. But this kind of targeted and personal devastation? This cannot be a coincidence."


    Raina didn''t look at Jair.


    Jair grimaced. "There is another explanation. I believe this is the work of the sorcerer Sekir, who has until recently been working to install himself as an advisor to King Farshen. After my appearance upset his plans by returning the king to his right mind, rather than going along with whatever plans Sekir was building, he''s changed his target entirely."


    "Why would an immortal sorcerer target my family? What has House Serin ever done? What benefit does he gain from my death?"


    Jair took a breath. "I believe his plans are multifold. First, he distracts Raina and puts her into an unfamiliar situation, which would also distract me. Second, he begins to sow chaos between houses and within the Councils."


    Carn scowled fiercely. "How would an outsider murdering our lord do anything? We know this sorcerer has no political associations. He is only making more enemies for himself."


    "Remember, he doesn''t know that I''m aware of his existence, so he has no reason to think that we''d be able to immediately pinpoint the source of the chaos. As far as he knows, making a statement like this would drive us to suspect rival houses. And since there''ve been quite a few upheavals in the financial world. The economy is in confusion, half the nobles are at the throats of the other half, and the trade cities are closer to the edge than they''ve been in decades."


    Carn''s fists tightened. "So this sorcerer would murder Lord Serin just to disrupt the economy?"


    "And weaken House Serin. Raina isn''t a full mageblade yet, so it''s reasonable to anticipate the house being a bit thrown awry with her being suddenly thrust into a leadership position. There''ll be the usual succession squabbles, cousins thinking they''re older and wiser and deserve the position. And," his eyes met Raina''s, an unshakeable promise of relentless justice, "it''s one of the best ways to distract me."


    Carn frowned at him, eyes briefly flaring with green light. "And who are you that''s so important? You''ve always been a quiet student, and now you''re slaying dragons and healing kings? How are we to know this isn''t your doing?"


    "Carn, peace," Ajriol said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Jair is a protector to Raina and a friend to us all." But there was a tension around his eyes, one Jair hadn''t seen since the timelines where Raina didn''t survive. "You can fix this, my daughter tells me?"


    Jair nodded. "I can undo it all as if it never was."


    "And there''s a reason you have not done so already?"


    "The closer in to the event itself the more likely I am to catch the culprit in the act. Sekir is incredibly slippery, if any slightest hint of something going wrong throws him off, he can change his plans wildly on a moment''s notice. He''s infuriatingly flexible."


    As if in answer to his words, someone in the main house screamed.


    Jair slashed out reflexively and darkflamed himself, Raina, and Lilin inside without pausing to think.


    It took them another moment to find the commotion. The servant who''d gone running lay at the bottom of the back kitchen stairs, his body broken and twisted the wrong ways by the impact.


    "What happened?" Jair stared around at the assemblage—Moira the assistant baker had been the one to scream. Most of the rest were guests who stared either with horror or shocked fascination at the gruesome sight.


    "I—he was—I…" Moira couldn''t seem to manage more than a word or two, stuttering over them again and again.


    "Were you here when he fell?"


    She shook her head. "He was—he''d already—I wasn''t—"


    So, even after the situation changed and the target moved inside, Sekir continued his way down the checklist. That… was new. "Thank you. This is very helpful."


    He grabbed Raina and Lilin and rushed them back out to where Ajriol and Carn were coming in. "I''m going to revert us the past twenty minutes again, and a little bit further. Carn, you know where that man was assigned?"


    "Molash?" Carn shook his head, grief clouding his eyes. "He was new, but such an eager kid. Good worker."


    "So you can find him before he comes out to the courtyard?"


    Carn nodded slowly. "Yes, probably. Why?"


    "I believe Sekir is executing your staff in some particular order. For whatever reason, he went ahead and killed Molash even though it was more public and less exhibitive. Shoving him over the stairs doesn''t have the same impact as setting him at the table with a— well, it''s the first hint of a pattern we have."


    "Can''t you take us back to before any of it happened?" There was a note of frantic desperation in Carn''s voice now. "Save everyone?"


    Jair raised his hands. "We will, eventually. But with an event like this, once we go back to the start there''s the chance the timeline is corrupted. Working our way gradually back is the best way to figure out what happened."


    Of course, he was used to doing it in chunks of days or weeks, piecing together events from careful repetition and painstaking observation. The ability to go back by minutes or hours was such a luxury, he couldn''t get used to how nice it was not to have to relive an entire week to change a few minutes of a single day.


    "If you don''t want to come--"


    Carn''s expression firmed, resolute. "No, I''m the best poised to watch everyone. I won''t let this happen again."


    "Ajriol, you want to come along too this time? Just keep an eye out for anything unusual. And obviously, if anyone tries to kill you, do your best to prevent it and let us know what''s happening."


    Ajriol nodded, and the four of them grabbed Maelstrom''s blade.


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