One Mistake, That's All

Having dismissed her majordomo again, in order to read and digest the report returned to her after several days of work at undermining the reputation of the kaldorei embassy, Silendiel once more found herself in the grand room she still called her retreat. Her sanctum. On the chaise, once more, the furniture she favored the most, a richly cushioned cluster of comfortable chairs and couches in one corner, a semicircle of even deeper, softer chairs spread before the extinguished fireplace, and yet more shelves and comfortable surfaces upon which to sit or lie dotted around the place, with blood red rugs and bare, white floor space between. Room enough for many, many couples to dance, and enjoy the opulence the house was capable of producing.

That evening, Silendiel was alone. In the gentle blue light of the arcane globes, she had naught but twin, enormous flags of Quel’thalas on the interior wall for company. Both of those, at least, refrained from judging her. Less so than her majordomo might have, or her servants might have, reading what was brought to her. She had long ago ensured that she not be brought sanitized and rewritten documents, but rather was exposed to the full, raw truth, no matter its nature.

Three agents had, within a short span of time, gone missing. Each woman had been gone for but a few days, three or four, no more, but when they turned up again, they proved unwilling to work for her. Money was irrelevant, they simply no longer wanted to slander the kaldorei, or their embassy. Doubling it, even producing implied threats had seemed insufficient to convince them to take up their previous mantles of saboteur.

Each agent, it seemed, was found mid-work. Telling some version of the agreed-upon story. They were lured back to the kaldorei embassy, where it was no longer possible to track them in detail. It was known that none left for several days, and that, when they did leave, their allegiance and mood had turned. Attached to the general, more superficial report was the loose transcript of an interview conducted with one of the former agents, who seemed not to object to talking to her former paymaster, even if she would no longer take coin to do the same job she had happily performed a week before.

It was clear, even with the transcript obviously glossing over some of the more in-depth details, that the agent had been roughly handled, but in a way which she did not object to. Convinced, first, by the words of the embassy’s seneschal, Liriel, and then the deeds of a handful of sentinels, to stay around. To indulge in, to seemingly move into, the room of one such squad of kaldorei, where the agent evidently, as the report put it, found herself enjoying the attentions of the well-equipped, large elves for two full days. After which she was taken to the priestess, the ambassador, praised, and asked to cease her efforts to undermine the embassy. Which she agreed to, on the condition that she could return to the embassy at a later date, a wish which was granted.

According to the report, all three agents who had lost interest in sabotaging the reputation of the night elves had experienced something similar. As ludicrous as it was, apparently the kaldorei ambassador conducted diplomacy by having her sentinels fuck her counterparts into submission, into seeing her side of an issue. Absolutely preposterous. And not at all a sustainable way to carry out her duties in a place so refined as Silvermoon City.

Silendiel flicked the report away, the pieces of paper swerving around and through the still air until they came to a sliding stop on the marble floor. It would be difficult for the kaldorei to find any noble willing to negotiate with them, if their presence began to carry the unspoken assumption that they were fucking into the ground anyone so much as seen near them. A social deathblow, in the more refined circles.

If only the fools had come to her, first. She could have spoken to the priestess. Guided the idiots, and shielded the agents, and her servant, from their fumbling efforts. Entirely selflessly, of course. She had no desire to be near the feral, predatory creatures, and even if she did, it would be impossible. Social suicide.

Three lost agents or not, though, there were still things to try, efforts to make, employing people who would not switch sides simply at the prospect of an incredible lay. Silendiel sighed out a breath, and went over the next plan in her mind. Slowly. Examining each thought, so that it did not get away from her. So that it did not start to circle around towering, strong, purple-skinned figures, closing in around her.

A small troupe of forsaken debt collectors, four or five of them, along with a few of her remaining agents, and a handful of new hires, would incite a small riot upon encountering any of the sentinels outside the embassy. With any luck at all, that would produce more material for her efforts to destroy the embassy’s reputation. A single sentinel slipping up just one time would be enough, one night elf lashing out violently, however briefly, would do. That was all the fuel she required to begin inflaming public opinion against the people she had come to portray as invaders, foolishly let through the border, into the city, past its walls.

One mistake, that was all.