Elara lined them up on her desk—all damaged beyond function now, thanks to judicious application of heavy objects. Three small mechanical cockroaches that had been watching, listening, recording everything.
"Someone spent at least fifteen hundred gold on surveillance," Elara said quietly. "Minimum. Possibly more depending on enchantment quality and recording capacity."
"That's a lot of money just to spy on you," the System said.
"No. That's a reasonable investment in intelligence gathering." Elara studied the devices. "Fifteen hundred gold to potentially learn my strategies, my alliances, my vulnerabilities? That's incredibly cost-effective. Whoever commissioned these understood return on investment."
