He made sure to clear away from the guard who had memorized his name and began his day's work. That interaction was as subtle a warning shot as he could have asked for. The encounter, while innocent enough, was memorable—and he couldn't afford to be remembered. Not by his face, and especially not by his name, even if it was a fake one. For an assassin, memorability was a death sentence.

  Fortunately, he'd already committed most of the estate's layout to memory. With that knowledge, he was confident he could move undetected without the need for disguises or pretenses. All that remained was securing a key to the emergency exit. Once he had it, he could bypass the servant's entrance entirely and discard his employed fa?ade for good.

  His first task of the day was in the estate's sprawling back gardens. The area was secluded, far enough out of the way that no other servants were close enough to notice the finer details of his movements. Taking advantage of the privacy, he discreetly pocketed a handful of soft clay.

  The key's location was his next puzzle, and the most obvious guesses were Jocund's bedroom or office. Odds were, there was one in both.

  Jocund's history was that of a peasant and an adventurer. An adventurer renowned for his ability to take hits to the head. The picture didn't suggest that he was a man who was much for the arduous management of paperwork. He seriously doubted Jocund spent much time in that office at all.

  He slipped into Jocund's office, the pristine cleanliness of the room confirming its near-abandoned state. In fact, it seemed so unused that he began to worry the key might not even be there. His concern was thankfully short-lived as he was able to find it tucked into a not-so-hidden compartment under the cedar desk.

  Testing the key for a magical signature, he let out a quiet sigh of frustration—it was imprinted. Replicating the signature was possible but would take time, and time was something he didn't want to waste. He poked his head out of the office; the hallway was mercifully empty.

  Magic wasn't his strong suit. It was his one glaring weakness as an assassin. Despite all the wizards he'd killed, it was surprising how little magical knowledge his work required. Wizards, in his experience, were hypocrites—the epitome of not implementing the systems which they espoused.

  He didn't need to be an expert, though. He couldn't tell you the difference between arcana and essence or explain what a loka was, but copying a key's signature? That, at least, was within his grasp.

  It took him a few minutes longer than he would have liked, but he eventually memorized the signature. With practiced efficiency, he pressed the key into the soft ball of clay he had collected earlier and carefully shaped it into a precise mould. Once satisfied, he gently freed the original key from its cast, methodically cleaned off any traces of dirt, and returned it to its original position, untouched and undisturbed.

  He followed the next batch of servants out of the estate on some random errand and casually detached from the group. A short visit to a smithy after hours, and he now had his very own emergency exit key. The next few days would be dedicated to Jocund.

  Every day, along a constantly shifting schedule, the assassin would sneak through the emergency exit and study his mark. His observations only confirmed the complaints he'd overheard from the wall sentries a few days prior. Just watching Jocund's militia's gruelling training regimen made his muscles ache in sympathy. Worst of all, Jocund—the fifty-year-old amputee—was going through the exact same routine, not even breaking a sweat.

  It was not long until the assassin had a thorough picture of the man named Jocund. He was a chronically busy individual who loved to mingle with his servants. There were few opportunities to catch him alone, which meant any method of taking him out would need to be from a distance—and most likely, delivered by someone else.

  The obvious choice would be poison, but the death had to look natural. Jocund was a big man, and any poison potent enough to kill him would be far too traceable. Poison was out.

  Jocund was old though. A fifty-year-old man, especially one who had pushed their body to the utmost limits of a war veteran, must have some weaknesses. Surely, he had some medical conditions to manage. If that condition could be manipulated, perhaps Jocund could be convinced to take his own life, with a little help from nature.

  The problem was that Jocund had the constitution of a juggernaut. He never once showed any sign of illness or strain. Day to night, rain or shine, he seemed unflappable. That was until his granddaughter arrived.

  Jocund met her in one of the guest rooms for their weekly sessions. They would blabber about over mostly trivial nonsense. The granddaughter would complain about how much work and study she was forced to endure to be an educated noble, while Jocund would occasionally scold her for failing to give the servants the proper respect they were due. As if it actually mattered whether she thanked the servant for bringing in the pastries or not.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  There it was, his weakness. Thank the devadoots for children's sweet teeth. A servant had brought in a large platter of diverse pastries, a comical multilayered carousel of sugary delight. My goodness, the granddaughter had a sweet tooth indeed.

  Along with the heartstopping thousand course desserts, the little lady was provided with a cup of tea and Jocund with coffee. The granddaughter gaily proclaimed her praises for her grandaddy Jocund through stuffed cheeks and powdery fingers. Her hands shot for some more coconut-flaked confections as her story transitioned to the typical juvenile complaints, like how her desserts were greatly limited and monitored at home. Her final huff of exasperation was punctuated with shoving another coconut-sprinkled candy into her endlessly chattering mouth hole. My goodness, she really liked the coconut-flavoured ones.

  He was getting distracted. What mattered more was the clear visual discrepancy between the two halves of the platter—well, aside from the obvious fact that one side had far fewer pastries left. The pastries on the half facing Jocund were paler, with less powder on them. Jocund must have some dietary restrictions, preventing him from enjoying the same sugary indulgence as his granddaughter.

  It would take a few more weeks of observation to confirm if this was a regular arrangement, but it was a promising start.

  He started watching the kitchen attentively throughout the following days, and he didn't even have to wait long to find out that Jocund had a blood pressure problem. Salts, sugars, and fats were heavily monitored for all of Jocund's meals.

  The week came and went, and the granddaughter's visit arrived once again. Something interesting happened that day. The staff had to go out and collect some coconuts as an ingredient for her favourite pastry of their batch. Coconut was never stocked in the estate and was collected exclusively for the granddaughter's visit.

  On this day, the food tester meticulously watched the entire baking process down to the final step and even added the coconut sprinkles herself to all save one pastry. Once the pastries were finished, she immediately washed her hands and grabbed the one piece without coconut sprinkles to test it. She gave the chef a thumbs up and brought it to the guest room. The food tester had an allergy.

  Jocund had high blood pressure, the food tester was allergic to coconuts, and Jocund always had coffee while his granddaughter drank tea. A plan was forming.

  It was time for his favourite part of the job, the part where the deed was done. His plan was simple: he would find the source of the coconuts and inject a subtle reagent inside the fruit. Then, on the day of Jocund's meeting with his granddaughter, he would plant an inert enzyme in Jocund's coffee. Upon eating the dessert, the reagent inside it would react with the drunken coffee to activate the enzyme inside his digestive tract. The enzyme's activation would break down the more complex ingredients inside the pastries until they unravelled into the more basic unfiltered sugars, which would increase his blood pressure and lead to heart failure.

  Everything had to be perfectly untraceable, which was why he had to divvy up his poison across three sources. Each source would be harmless on its own and indistinguishable from the usual food Jocund was served. The only conclusion upon his death would be that he had high blood pressure and had recklessly continued his gruelling exercise routine. A heart condition was inevitable.

  Source One: The Altered Pastries

  The pastries were the easiest part of the plan. The servants would unwittingly construct this element of the "poison" themselves. His role was simply to ensure that the ingredients they used could, in fact, be broken down into their base sugars. A midnight perusal of the kitchen stores, followed by a discreet lab experiment, confirmed that, yes, they could. With that assurance, all that remained was perfecting the enzyme and its activator to integrate them into the other sources.

  Source Two: The Coconuts

  The coconuts were easy enough to locate—he simply tailed the servants during their weekly collection trip. Injecting the fruits with the reagent, however, posed a unique challenge. Damaging the coconut shells was out of the question as it was a potential avenue wherein which he could get discovered.

  If breaching the coconut was out of the question then that only left one option: breaching the tree itself. The reagent he was using was a substrate, specifically one that already naturally existed in dilute amounts as an enzyme activator in living organisms. If he injected the reagent into the pruner blades of the coconut tree, then it would identify the substrate as a natural component of itself and the tree would feed the substrate to the coconuts through its own chemical processes.

  Source Three: The Coffee

  The coffee presented the most significant hurdle. Altering its composition at the source was impossible—it was imported and closely monitored. While accessing the stored coffee grounds in the estate wasn't entirely out of reach, it was risky.

  The real issue was timing: the enzyme he needed to introduce had a limited lifespan. Enzymes are designed to function in living systems, and last time he checked, ground coffee beans were anything but alive. This meant he had to insert the enzyme within an hour of the coffee's preparation. The kitchen, bustling and well-staffed during that critical window of meal prep, made this task particularly daunting.

  Dishes were washed before and after every meal. While he couldn't get to the coffee itself within the necessary time frame before it reached Jocund's lips, he could target the water used to wash the utensil that was used to draw the foam on the coffee's surface.

  The estate's well, carelessly left unguarded outside, became his target. By infecting the water supply with the enzyme, fortified with nutritional proteins and acids to enhance its resistance to soaps and natural diffusion, he ensured its survival through the cleaning process. From the well to the dishes, to the spoon, and finally to the coffee, the enzyme would complete its journey seamlessly.