For the better part of the next week, things were mostly quiet. A few more nobles died, but this time neither Lucas nor anyone in his employ had anything to do with it. He was so enchanted with his fiancée that he barely paid attention, and unless a couple of assassins paid him a visit one night, or an army came marching toward them, he had no plans to change that. Even thoughts of sneaking into the castle in the heart of town to murder his fiancée's brother rarely disturbed him, though he did sometimes think about it.

Adin really is the last loose end, he thought to himself. I really should pay someone to take care of him, or at least find out if Duke Torvin already did. I really doubt he'd let him live.

Lucas' murderer achievement was up to three now, and while he wasn't eager to bring it to four, and he definitely wasn't eager to see what happened when it reached ten, it still needed to be done. Adin's fate wasn't any more public than the viscounts and baronesses that woke up dead the next few days, though. It wasn't pretty, but at least it wasn't a full-blown civil war. After a week, the pattern of deaths made it likely that they were being done by Duchess Morana, in a bid to put her own elderly ass on the throne.

Out of everyone at the duke's dinner party, she'd struck him as the most capable, which was why he'd picked the other two to spread his lies and half-truths. So, he was glad to hear that her bid for power had met with failure.

Lucas would have liked to thank his threats, but after a few whispered conversations, it seemed far more likely that there were enough men in the nobility who refused to unite around a woman as their leader. Sexism hadn't been Lucas's plan, but he'd take the win where he could. Instead, after a few tense nights, something close to a governing body started to come into being.

Some called for a council, others called for a proportional vote based on acres owned, serfs ruled, or taxes paid. Lucas didn't really care about the details. He wouldn't be participating in politics no matter how it turned out. Instead, he focused on the basics, which meant more about planning for a couple hundred guests than it did for the alchemical reagents that were flowing into his alchemical workshop so he could get back to work.

He didn't have the time or energy to worry about wizened gnome caps or goblin bile, not when he was trying to make sure there would be enough beer and food for the big day. "No one tells you that the hardest part of being a gang boss is making sure you have enough beer for three hundred guests when you throw a party," he griped to Hura'gh and Kar'gandin one afternoon, drawing gales of laughter from both of them.

They'd be holding the ceremony itself in a picturesque meadow not so far from the village, but the reception would be in a party in the town square. That meant lots of work, as it turned out. Suddenly, instead of gathering herbs or delivering cargo, he had every man he could spare making paper lanterns and knocking together trestle tables from whatever lumber they could buy in the area.

"Don'a worry, lad," the dwarf answered. "I'm sure it will all be worth it, even if they come to put your head on a pike partway through the party."

"Yeah, that's what I keep telling myself," Lucas grumbled. While he didn't mind some honest work, in some ways he would have rather fought the dragon all over again. That wasn't out of stress over his impending marriage, or even the fact that there was so much work to be done. It was the fact that he was constantly in the spotlight.

Before, everywhere he'd gone, he'd been Milord or Mr. Blue; now, every time he was walking through town, he knew that he and his partner were being judged as man and wife. It felt weird, and he wasn't quite sure how to handle that.

Lucas had never been particularly good with his feelings, which was fair, considering half of his girlfriends had been as secret as their mutual drug addictions; being in the public eye as a member of the community felt entirely different. He did his best to cope by spending time in his alchemy lab. This time he wasn't making Blue or Lwynthenll, though; he was making fireworks, or at least bootleg copies of them.

The ingredients for gunpowder were common enough, and when mixed with iron and copper shavings and a little mana thanks to empowered alchemy, he got something suitably impressive. They weren't mind-blowing or anything, but he thought it would be a good party favor for the crowds during the wedding feast.

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No matter how busy he tried to stay, though, he couldn't ignore the outside world completely. As the date drew ever closer, the government in Lordanin continued to firm up. Eventually, a messenger was even sent by the city to them because of the turmoil. This time, though, it wasn't sent to Lucas, but to Danaria, the sole remaining member of house Parin.

Well, at least the sole remaining Parin who wasn't locked up beneath the castle. Lucas still hadn't found out if he was actually breathing, but he'd yet to find anyone that said he was.

The messenger wouldn't say what it was about, but when she opened it, it was a ballot of sorts, and she was instructed to choose from three fairly complicated forms of quasi-representative government. "Which one is correct?" she asked, turning to Lucas. "I wish my brother were here. He'd know the right choice to make."

If he were here, he'd get high and tell us all how he should be king, Lucas told himself.

He didn't say that, though. Instead of badmouthing her dead brother, he just looked the thing over and then explained the options. "In this first one, a few of the most powerful people get to decide everything. I guess you'd call that an oligarchy, or maybe a plutocracy. I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I've been in school. After that, it's more like, I don't know a republic, or a limited democracy maybe?"

The words meant nothing to her, so after a side track into the nature of representative government that made its way out of his mind thanks to an ancient civics class that had lodged in there somewhere, he said, "Look, do you want a few people to run the government, more people, or a lot of people, because that's pretty much what this amounts to."

"Can't I say that all of the people should get a chance to decide?" she asked. "It doesn't seem fair that it's not an option."

"I mean you can," Lucas said with a shrug. He wasn't going to try to stop her. Medieval democracy sounds like a good time, and he was here for it. "Just skip those boxes and write in that—"

"Excuse me, madam," the messenger said, interrupting their conversation, "But I was instructed that you must select one of the three—"

"She's the one that will decide that, not you," Lucas chastised. "Leave her alone."

If he wasn't going to try to influence her vote, then no one else would. In the end, he doubted it would matter anyway, in the grand scheme of things. Governments were messy things, and whatever they created would probably collapse two or three times before the rubble finally settled, and if they played their cards right, all of that could be someone else's problem.

The messenger looked at them crossly, but didn't say anything else while Denaria wrote down a bit about how nice it would be to have a direct democracy. While she did that, Lucas smiled blandly and wished he remembered what it was like to be so idealistic, and he wasn't alone in that regard. That evening, when he relayed the event to his comrades, Kar'gandin regalled them all with a long diatribe on dwarvish law and the Council of the Clans.

No matter how many times Lucas tried to change the subject, the dwarf returned to it, insisting that it was the fairest system devised in the history of the world. "Each dwarf is a member of a clan, unless he's an outcast who shouldn't have a voice at'tall," the dwarf repeated. "However, it would be unfair for all clans to have the same vote, so every year a census is held, you see? For population and productivity…"

He went on at length, but what it boiled down to was every dwarven representative had an icon of very specific weight, and there were these giant scales that they all voted with. They literally weighed the productive output of the kingdom, and moved it around in a series of complicated votes. It sounded pretty dumb to Lucas, but then he supposed that's what happened when you put a race of merchants in charge of such things.

As tedious as all that was, though, it was probably better than the orcish equivalent. "The people of the plains vote with blood," Hura'gh explained. "Champions are chosen, battles are fought, and the winner sets the rules."

"Isn't that wasteful?" Lucas asked. "Killing every time people disagree?"

"Better that a single champion die than whole clans go to war," the half-orc insisted. "It's for the best."

"But wouldn't it be better if, you know, everyone lived?" Lucas asked, trying again.

"Better for who?" Hura'gh asked suspiciously. "Those who wish to persuade the people must be willing to set their lives on the line for their causes. Nothing less is acceptable."

"So what if someone is right but they are weak and—" Lucas asked before the half orc cut him off.

"The weak are never right," he insisted. "If they were right, they would have the strength to show it."

Lucas sighed, sorry he'd brought any of it up. He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and closed it again.

"Why would you let the powerless have a say?" the half-orc asked again. "Their weakness already brought them low. Why let them bring everyone else down with them?"

"Oh, democracy is terrible," Lucas agreed, not caring that his burned friend would entirely miss the irony of his statement. It was probably better that way. "It's the worst system of all, besides every one that's been tried before, that is. Maybe this time they'll think of something better? Who can say?"

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