Ceria stared. She stared long and hard. This had to be a joke, right? The High Lord wasn't asking her for an assassination, he was asking her to empty the entire province of people! It was madness! This piece of paper was pretty much her death warrant.
She should leave. She should just turn around and go, she'd seen enough to know that he was asking too much, that it was far too many people, but she couldn't stop. She felt the overwhelming urge to read everything on the scroll. Every name; every man, woman and child; every soul, unaware of the strings being pulled to bring their life to a close, that was written down on this paper was burned into her eyes, into her brain.
To pull something like this off would take master planning and certainly more than one person but would the High Lord really be willing to depopulate his entire province? And for what gain? This was a trap. It had to be. Whenever their deal was worked out, guards would jump out and she would be taken away.
But what if she was wrong? What if he was serious? Never mind the implications, she could easily ask for a price that would keep her in comfort for a very, very, very long time. Long enough for the heat to die down at least and she could spend her time in Adela or take a long, well deserved vacation, or almost anything really.
Would she be willing to snuff out this many people in exchange for for a few - okay, quite a bit more than a few - shiny coins? Would she be able to live with herself knowing that any comfort she acquired would be bought and paid for by blood of innocents?
Well, at this point she didn't really have a choice, did she? She had already signed that contract and, if this wasn't a trap, he had said that she would be killed if she ever talked about it. Whether by magical or mundane means, she didn't doubt that he would kill her if any word of this escaped her lips.
"Alright. I'll do it but it won't be cheap. I'll need enough to set me up for a good, long while. Meaning it'll cost you quite a bit of gold."