The weight of silver coins pressed against Nyelle's ribs, sewn carefully into a hidden pocket she'd added to her dress. Three weeks had passed since her first meeting with Lord Greymoor, and today marked her third visit to his private study. Each encounter had followed the same pattern—expressions of humble gratitude, carefully constructed stories of hardship, and the increasingly predictable reward of silver coins pressed into her small hands.
Today would be different. Today she would escalate the con.
The late summer sun beat down on the cobblestone streets as Nyelle navigated the familiar path toward the Upper Quarter. She'd chosen midday deliberately—Lady Emmeline always visited her sister on Thursdays, and Lord Greymoor's steward would be occupied at the dockside warehouses inspecting new shipments. The household staff followed predictable routines, leaving a twenty-minute window when the upper floors would be minimally staffed.
"Just like clockwork," she murmured, watching the Greymoor family carriage disappear around a corner, Lady Emmeline's distinctive parasol visible through the window.
Slipping into the now-familiar servants' entrance, Nyelle nodded to the kitchen staff who had grown accustomed to her periodic appearances. Marta intercepted her near the pantry, wiping flour-covered hands on her apron.
"He's in a foul mood today," the maid warned, voice barely above a whisper. "Lost a considerable sum on those racehorses he favors."
Nyelle adjusted her strategy accordingly. "Thank you, Marta. Perhaps these will brighten his spirits." She produced a small bouquet of wildflowers she'd gathered along the riverbank that morning.
Marta's expression softened. "Sweet child. Follow me, but tread carefully with his lordship today."
They ascended the servants' staircase, Nyelle mentally rehearsing her performance. Today's objective was ambitious—securing not just silver coins but patronage for her "adoptive family." Specifically, recommendations for Torvald at the shipyard's security force and a position for Aerik with one of Greymoor's merchant associates. Such connections would be invaluable, both financially and socially.
Lord Greymoor's study door stood ajar. Marta knocked softly before announcing, "The Harringer child is here, my lord."
A grunt from within served as permission to enter. Nyelle stepped across the threshold, immediately assessing Greymoor's state. His cravat hung loosely around his neck, his jacket discarded over a chair. A half-empty decanter of amber liquid stood on his desk—early for drinking, even by noble standards.
"My lord." She curtseyed deeply, presenting the wildflowers. "I hope I find you well today."
Greymoor waved dismissively toward Marta, who curtseyed and retreated, closing the door behind her. "What is it this time, child? Another leaking roof? Medicine for a convenient illness?" His tone carried an edge she hadn't heard in previous meetings.
Nyelle's instincts flared in warning. Something had changed. She needed to recalibrate quickly.
"No hardships to report, my lord," she said, adopting a more subdued tone. "I came merely to thank you for your previous generosity and to bring these humble flowers as a token of appreciation."
She approached his desk carefully, placing the bouquet near his hand. Close enough now to smell the spirits on his breath, she noticed the redness in his eyes, the slight tremor in his fingers as he reached for his glass.
"Generous, am I?" Greymoor's laugh held no warmth. "My steward seems to disagree. Just this morning, he questioned certain discrepancies in my personal accounts. Amounts withdrawn with no corresponding household expenses."
Nyelle's pulse quickened, but her expression remained neutral. "How troubling for you, my lord. Perhaps he misplaced some records?"
"Perhaps." Greymoor swirled the liquid in his glass. "Or perhaps I've been too free with my coin where more discretion was warranted."
The implication hung between them. Nyelle's mind raced through contingencies. This was a delicate juncture in any con—the moment when a mark begins questioning the relationship. Nirei had navigated such moments countless times, calibrating the precise balance of reassurance and misdirection.
"Your generosity has transformed our lives, my lord," she said, allowing genuine-seeming emotion to color her voice. "The Harringers speak of you as a guardian angel, though of course they know nothing of our... connection."
She hesitated deliberately, then added, "Perhaps I should not come so often. I would never wish to cause complications in your household."
The strategic retreat often served to reinforce a mark's investment—suggesting withdrawal frequently strengthened their desire to maintain control of the relationship.
Greymoor studied her face, his expression unreadable. For a moment, Nyelle thought her approach had worked. Then his eyes narrowed.
"Curious," he said softly. "I made inquiries, you see. About Lydia Summerton."
Ice formed in Nyelle's stomach. A fundamental rule of confidence schemes: never create verifiable falsehoods.
"My lord?" She kept her voice steady through sheer determination.
"No woman by that name ever worked at my hunting lodge." Greymoor's voice hardened. "Nor in any of my properties. I have complete staff records for the past twelve years."
Nyelle shifted strategies immediately. "She wouldn't have used her real name, my lord. She feared her family's disapproval of her position."
"A convenient explanation." He rose from his chair, his considerable height allowing him to tower over her. "I've been generous, child. Perhaps too generous. But I'm not a fool to be played by some street urchin with a clever tongue."
He moved toward the fireplace, turning his back to her—a deliberate display of dismissal. "I don't know what game you're playing, but it ends today. Take yourself back to whatever gutter spawned you, and be grateful I don't call the city guard."
Nyelle assessed her options rapidly. The con was unraveling, but total failure wasn't inevitable. A partial recovery might be possible with the right emotional appeal.
"I understand your doubts, my lord," she said, her voice quavering slightly—a calculated effect. "Mother warned me you might deny everything. She said powerful men often protect their reputations above all else."
Greymoor turned, his expression darkening further. "You dare question my honor?"
"Never, my lord." She took a step backward, projecting vulnerability. "I only know what Mother told me. Perhaps she..." She allowed tears to well in her eyes. "Perhaps she lied to comfort a fatherless child."
The performance was masterful—a perfect blend of innocence and heartbreak. But Greymoor wasn't following the expected script.
"Enough!" His fist crashed against the mantelpiece. "Your act may fool scullery maids, but I've navigated the imperial court for twenty years. I recognize manipulation when I see it."
He strode to the door, yanking it open. "Hemmons!" he bellowed. "Send for the watch captain immediately!"
Panic fluttered in Nyelle's chest—not the controlled tension Nirei had employed during difficult negotiations, but genuine fear. The city watch would mean public humiliation at minimum, possibly imprisonment. Worse, it would shame the Harringer family, who knew nothing of her deception.
"Please, my lord," she said urgently, abandoning pretense. "I meant no harm. I'll go immediately and never return."
"Too late for that." Greymoor's voice was cold. "You've stolen from me through false pretenses. That's a crime punishable by flogging in Yorkton."
A flogging would likely kill someone in this child's body. Nyelle edged toward the study's second door—the one leading to the family's private quarters.
"Stop right there," Greymoor commanded, recognizing her intent. "Hemmons will be here momentarily, and the doors are watched."
Heavy footsteps approached from the hallway. Nyelle made a split-second decision and bolted for the window instead. It overlooked a small decorative garden one floor below—a dangerous drop, but potentially survivable.
She threw open the casement, calculating angles and landing zones as Greymoor lunged toward her. His fingers caught her sleeve just as she slipped through the opening, tearing the fabric but failing to maintain his grip.
The fall seemed to happen in slow motion. Nyelle tucked her body as Torvald had taught her during their secret training sessions, aiming for a mulched flower bed rather than the stone path. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs but resulted in no broken bones. She rolled, absorbing momentum, before scrambling to her feet.
Shouts erupted above her. Greymoor leaned from the window, his face mottled with rage as he pointed toward her fleeing form. "Thief! Stop her!"
The garden gate was locked, forcing Nyelle to scale a decorative trellis to reach the adjacent property's wall. Thorns from climbing roses tore at her skin, leaving bloody scratches across her palms and forearms. She ignored the pain, hauling herself over the stone wall and dropping into the alley beyond.
For ten frantic minutes, she raced through streets and alleyways, utilizing every shortcut and hidden passage she'd mapped during her explorations of Yorkton. Behind her, whistles signaled watchmen joining the pursuit. Greymoor's influence meant they wouldn't abandon the chase easily.
Doubling back through a narrow gap between buildings, Nyelle emerged onto Commerce Street, immediately blending with the crowd of market-day shoppers. She'd almost begun to believe she'd escaped when a heavy hand clamped onto her shoulder.
"Got you, little rat," a gruff voice growled. The watch captain's weathered face leered down at her, his grip painfully tight. "Lord Greymoor wants a word about your thieving ways."
"There's been a misunderstanding," Nyelle began, but the captain's laugh cut her off.
"Save it for the magistrate." He jerked her forward roughly. "We've got special cells for little thieves like you."
Two additional watchmen materialized from the crowd, blocking potential escape routes. One produced iron manacles sized for a child's wrists—a sickening reminder that young thieves were common enough to warrant specially made restraints.
Desperation surged through Nyelle. With strength born of panic, she twisted suddenly, driving her knee upward into the captain's groin. His grip loosened with a pained grunt, allowing her to tear free and sprint toward a narrow side street.
"After her!" the captain wheezed, doubling over.
Nyelle ran as she'd never run before, her lungs burning, legs pumping furiously as she navigated Yorkton's maze-like lower districts. She knew these streets now, every twist and shortcut, every hiding place and dead end. If she could reach the tannery district, the processing pits would mask her scent from tracking dogs.
She rounded a corner at full speed, only to find herself facing a solid brick wall. Wrong turn. Fatal miscalculation. She spun to retrace her steps, but the entrance to the alley was already blocked by two watchmen, their expressions grim beneath leather helmets.
"Nowhere left to run, girl," one called, advancing slowly.
Nyelle looked frantically for any escape—a drain pipe, a window ledge, a forgotten doorway—but the weathered brick walls offered no purchase. She was trapped.
The watchmen approached cautiously, as if expecting another desperate attack. Behind them appeared Lord Greymoor himself, having apparently joined the pursuit in his personal carriage. His normally immaculate appearance was disheveled, his face flushed with exertion and anger.
"That's her," he confirmed, pointing a trembling finger. "The little fraud who's been bleeding my accounts dry."
"We'll take her to the magistrate immediately, my lord," the captain said, having recovered enough to rejoin the chase. "Breaking and entering, theft by deception—she'll see the flogging post by sundown."
Nyelle pressed her back against the wall, mind racing through possibilities, finding none. The alley offered no weapons, no distractions, no leverage of any kind.
"I have one request," Greymoor said, his voice tight with controlled rage. "Before her public punishment, I want her questioned thoroughly about accomplices. Someone put her up to this scheme—someone with knowledge of my household and movements."
"We have effective methods for loosening young tongues, my lord," the captain replied with an ugly smile.
The implication sent ice through Nyelle's veins. Torture wasn't an abstract concept in this medieval world—it was standard procedure for extracting confessions. In her panic, she thought of the Harringers. If forced to name accomplices, would she implicate the innocent family who had taken her in?
As the watchmen closed in, Nyelle made her final attempt. "Lord Greymoor, please," she called. "I acted alone. No one else knew of my deception."
"Save your lies," Greymoor snapped. "Take her."
Rough hands seized her arms, twisting them painfully behind her back. The cold iron manacles bit into her wrists, tightened until they pinched her skin. One guard produced a length of coarse rope, securing it around her neck like a leash.
"Walk or be dragged," he growled, giving the rope a sharp tug that nearly pulled her off her feet.
The humiliation of being paraded through Yorkton's streets struck deeper than Nyelle had expected. Passersby stopped to stare, some pointing and whispering, others calling out suggested punishments. Children ran alongside, jeering at the captured thief. The public spectacle was designed to amplify the punishment—social shame before physical pain.
At the central square, where the magistrate held public court on market days, a crowd had already gathered. News of a nobleman personally attending the judgement of a child thief had spread rapidly. Lord Greymoor strode ahead, conferring with a severe-looking man in formal robes—the magistrate himself, preparing to hear this unexpected case.
The watchmen forced Nyelle to her knees on the raised stone platform where judgements were pronounced. The rough surface scraped through her dress, bloodying her skin. From this position, she could see the implements of punishment arrayed at the square's edge—the stocks, the pillory, and the dreaded flogging post with its blood-darkened base.
"Silence for the magistrate's court!" a crier called, his voice cutting through the crowd's excited murmurs.
The robed man stepped forward, thin lips pressed into a disapproving line as he surveyed Nyelle. "The charge is theft by deception against Lord Callum Greymoor, a peer of the realm. How does the accused answer?"
Before Nyelle could speak, Lord Greymoor interrupted. "She has already confessed, your honor. I request immediate sentencing and punishment as deterrent to others who might target noble houses."
The magistrate nodded, requiring no further evidence. In this world, a nobleman's word outweighed any defense a commoner might offer, let alone a child.
"The accused is found guilty and sentenced to fifteen lashes, followed by three days in the stocks," the magistrate announced. "Sentence to be carried out immediately."
A murmur rippled through the crowd—fifteen lashes would likely kill a child Nyelle's size. Even hardened criminals rarely received more than twenty.
"Your honor," a watchman interjected quietly, "standard for a first offense at her age would be five lashes."
The magistrate glanced at Lord Greymoor, who shook his head slightly. "The severity of the crime warrants the full measure," the magistrate declared. "Proceed."
Guards dragged Nyelle toward the flogging post—a stout wooden column with metal rings at various heights to accommodate different prisoners. They selected the lowest ring, forcing her arms upward until her toes barely touched the ground. The position stretched her back into a taut, vulnerable canvas for the whip.
A court official approached with shears, cutting away the back of her dress to expose bare skin. The public humiliation burned almost as much as the anticipation of physical pain. In the crowd's faces, Nyelle saw the range of human response—disgust, pity, sadistic anticipation, uncomfortable obligation to witness punishment.
The designated punisher stepped forward, uncoiling a multi-tailed whip. He was a large man with muscled arms, clearly experienced in his grim profession. He measured distance with practiced eyes, test-swinging the implement to establish range.
"Count the lashes aloud," he instructed Nyelle. "Any missed count restarts the number."
The first lash came without further warning—a whistling sound followed by explosive pain across her shoulders. The leather thongs bit into her skin, tearing flesh in thin lines of fire.
"One," she gasped, the word emerging as a strangled cry.
The second stroke crossed the first, creating a burning lattice that sent white-hot agony through her small frame. "Two," she managed through gritted teeth.
By the fifth lash, Nyelle's vision had narrowed to a dim tunnel, her consciousness flickering like a candle in wind. Each breath sent fresh waves of torment through her shredded back. Blood ran freely down her spine, soaking what remained of her dress and dripping onto the stones beneath her feet.
"Six," she whispered, no longer sure if sound actually emerged from her raw throat.
The seventh stroke produced an audible crack as leather connected with increasingly damaged tissue. Nyelle's body convulsed, her mind fragmenting under the assault. The crowd's faces blurred into a meaningless smear of color and movement.
"S-seven," she choked, tasting blood where she'd bitten through her own lip.
The eighth lash never registered as a separate sensation, merely an intensification of the all-consuming agony. Her count, if she gave one, existed only in her fading thoughts.
Darkness crept inward from the edges of her vision. As consciousness slipped away, Nyelle became aware of a strange doubling of perception—as if she were simultaneously hanging from the post and floating above the scene, watching her own punishment from a distance.
In this detached state, her final coherent thought was a bitter observation: after all Nirei Harringer's complex schemes and manipulations, death would come not from federal agents or revenge-seeking investors, but from a medieval whip on a child's back.
The ninth lash fell on a body already surrendering to death. As darkness claimed her completely, Nyelle heard—or perhaps imagined—a whisper from the void.
*"Return by Death."*
Absolute blackness. Suspended awareness without physical sensation. Had this been death all along? Not an ending but a void between existences?
Then, with disorienting suddenness, gasping breath filled her lungs. Nyelle's eyes flew open to find herself staring at a familiar ceiling—low wooden beams crossed with drying herbs. Morning light filtered through a small window. No crowd. No whip. No blood-soaked stones.
She sat upright, hands flying to her back, expecting torn flesh and agony. Instead, she found smooth skin beneath her nightdress. No wounds. No scars. No evidence of the flogging that had killed her.
Confusion and disbelief warred in her mind. Had it been a nightmare? A fever dream so vivid it seemed real?
But the details remained too sharp, too consistent. She remembered every step of her final approach to Greymoor's house, every word of their confrontation, every second of her desperate flight through Yorkton's streets. Most of all, she remembered the pain—too precise, too excruciating to be imagined.
"Nyelle?" Elina's voice called from the main room. "Are you awake, child? Breakfast is nearly ready."
Reality shifted and realigned in Nyelle's understanding. Somehow, impossibly, she had returned to a point before her final visit to Lord Greymoor. Before her capture. Before her death.
*Return by Death.*
The whispered phrase echoed in her memory, its meaning suddenly, terribly clear. She had died—and returned to relive the day.
As the implications cascaded through her mind, Nyelle felt something beyond fear or confusion. For the first time since awakening in this child's body, she confronted the possibility that the rules governing this world were more complex—and more dangerous—than she had imagined.
"Coming, Mother," she called, her voice steadier than she felt. Whatever impossible thing had happened, she had been given another chance. This time, she would not squander it.