Honor’s Revenge: Masters’ Admiralty, book 4

by Mari Carr

  “You think it is someone from one of those territories?” Nyx asked softly.

  “Nyx, where are you, right now?” James’s question was sharp, urgent.

  “Antalya,” she replied.

  “In Turkey?” Karl asked. “Are you with Grigoris?”

  Nyx didn’t reply.

  “Maybe that is it?” Josephine once more sounded hopeful, the emotion completely at odds with everyone else’s grim expressions.

  “Josephine,” James barked. “Enough. What aren’t you telling us?”

  She seemed to deflate. “Kievan Rus’ was the name of the medieval state. The people who founded Kievan Rus’ were the Varangians, but that’s not what they called themselves. It was the name given to them by the Greeks and Rus’ people.”

  “So who were they?” Cecilia asked.

  Josephine looked around, then whispered. “The Varangians were Vikings.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Hugo’s whole body went cold. “Eric. The mastermind is Eric.”

  Josephine shook her head. “No. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I know him. It’s not him.”

  “He’s smart. Smart enough to manipulate the situation so that he was the only possible person to become the new fleet admiral,” Karl said.

  Josephine was pale, shaken. “You can’t think it’s really him.”

  “I don’t…don’t,” Karl paused before quietly adding, “want to.”

  “Sylvia,” Hugo breathed. “Sylvia is with him right now.”

  Everyone went still.

  “I’m calling Arthur. He and the knights, including Lancelot, can be there in two hours. Wait, fuck, the airport is closed.” James was stabbing at his phone.

  “It’s not Eric!” Josephine yelled. “Everyone stop. It’s not him. I know him!”

  “I agree,” Cecilia said. “It’s not the Fleet Admiral.”

  “Sylvia is with him right now,” Hugo repeated.

  “Perhaps there’s another traitor in the Spartan Guard,” Nyx said.

  “I thought Charlotta cleaned house after Mateo left and Derrick was killed,” James said.

  “She did. That included pulling in some new members from the reserve guard in Stranraer.” Cecilia was married to the former captain of the Spartan Guard, and knew more about how it worked than the rest of them. “Maybe one of the new guards has been a, what is it called? A sleeper agent.”

  “It makes sense that it’s Eric,” Nyx pointed out with that same, detached calm.

  “No,” Josephine practically snarled.

  “I don’t want it to be him. I don’t think it’s him. Eric may be brusque at times, but he is a good man.” Karl sighed, then shook his head. “But there are many things we don’t know about him.”

  “I know him,” Josephine was starting to look grim.

  “You say you know the fleet admiral well.” Karl turned to her. “Tell us how.”

  “There’s no time. Is there an armory here?” Hugo’s fingers were shaking with adrenaline. Some calm, rational part of him said he needed to wait, to listen and reason through this information. But the part of him that was a new husband, newly in love, was screaming in fear that his wife—his wife—might be alone with a killer. “The castle must have one. Does anyone know where?”

  “It’s in the Spartan Guard house, on the grounds, but not in the castle,” Cecilia told him.

  “Consider your options,” Nyx said. “How would you get past the guards to reach the armory? I would not suggest you try and tell them Eric is the mastermind.” Nyx raised one brow. “First of all, there are still possibilities we need to discuss.”

  “You’re the one who said it makes sense it’s him,” Josephine snapped.

  “And it does make sense.”

  James cursed. “Too much sense.”

  Hugo ignored them. All he could think about was Sylvia.

  “The Spartan Guard won’t turn on him, even if he is the mastermind,” Cecilia confirmed.

  “I have to save her,” Hugo said. “I’ll kill him if he’s hurt her.”

  He could feel their stares on him, even though they were looking at him through a computer screen.

  “Calm down,” James warned.

  “This is perhaps a terrible idea,” Karl said.

  “Hugo, if you attack him, they’ll kill you, and maybe Sylvia.” Cecilia leaned toward the camera. “Eric probably isn’t the mastermind.”

  Panic was clawing at his guts. He needed to move, to save her, but he was frozen. He’d left her with him, been happy about it.

  “Stop!” Josephine flipped the big map book closed, lifted it, and let it thwack onto the table. The fact that she’d abused a book was a good indication of her emotional state. “I know it’s not Eric because I know he never wanted to be fleet admiral. He spent eight years doing his best to get himself killed!”

  “And how do you know that?” Karl asked.

  “Because in between mercenary work, he lived in a little cottage on the corner of my parents’ farm.”

  “In…between…mercenary work.” James’ voice had gone low. Rumors surrounding Eric had flown like bees around a hive for years. And now, here was Josephine, confirming one.

  She nodded as if the idea of their leader as a mercenary was as boring as mentioning there was a leaky faucet in the kitchen. “My ma and da own a dairy farm in Galway. It’s hard work, not a lot of money. Eric rented the cottage, helped around the farm, whenever he was in Ireland. Whenever things got too dark and he needed to hide.”

  “Hide from who?” Cecilia asked.

  “Himself. I told you, he wasn’t in a good place. He’d lost Dahlia and Trina. He didn’t want to live. But no matter how dangerous the job, how big the risk…he just couldn’t die. Somehow he always ended up walking out of the job alive.”

  “Unscathed,” James murmured.

  “No. You’re not listening. You don’t understand.” Josephine had never sat still for so long. Hugo hadn’t realized that until this moment, when she looked so sad, talking about someone she clearly cared for very much. “His body may be relatively unbroken—though believe me, it’s taken some hits—but he wears countless scars on his soul. Whenever things got too dark, he came to Galway.”

  “How old were you when Eric stayed on your family farm?” Nyx asked.

  “I was fourteen the first time we met. My brother Colum was fifteen. We were scared of him.”

  “Wise children,” Nyx said with a slight smile.

  “You have to understand, my parents are simple people. Neither of them finished high school. They married at sixteen and went to work. So they had a hard time understanding me and Colum.”

  “Understanding you?” Hugo asked.

  Josephine gave them a rueful grin. “The kind of kids who never stopped reading. We didn’t have a lot of money, most of the time just enough for the essentials—food and clothes. So all our books came from the library, but we were expected to work on the farm, and Ma didn’t have a lot of time to take us there.”

  James rubbed his eyes. “Josephine, I assume there’s a point to all of this that ties to our discussion.”

  “One that you’ll get to quickly,” Hugo said, glancing toward the door of the library, fighting the urge to race to Eric’s office. He had no weapon, and Josephine had just confirmed Eric was a mercenary—a trained killer. If only Lancelot were still here...

  Josephine waved her hand away as if his complaint was inconsequential. “Eric had books, big books about history and science and language in his cottage. My brother Colum was, is, a bit of a shit. Always skirting the line, pushing the limit. Problem was, he was smart enough to always avoid getting into trouble. Anyway, Colum wanted those books. Thought we should…borrow them.”

  “Borrow or steal?”

  “That’s what Eric asked, when he caught us in his cottage, trying to slip out the back with his books.”

  Cecilia, ever the lover of history, was captivated by the story. “What did he do?”


  “He asked us if we planned to sell the books.” Josephine’s eyes widened as she said it. “Can you imagine…selling books? When we said we wanted to read them, he handed each of us one—the biggest ones, which I’m sure he thought would teach us a lesson about stealing. Told us we had one week to read them, and then we were to come back and discuss them with him. If we could do so intelligently, he’d give them to us. If we failed, he would tell our parents that we’d broken into his cottage with the intent to steal from him. My da,” Josephine shuddered, “he’s a loving man, but strict. If he’d found out we’d been stealing, well, it wouldn’t have been pretty.”

  “And?” Cecilia persisted, her enthusiasm prompting James to roll his eyes.

  “We were back at his cottage two days later. The three of us talked so long about both books that we had to move our discussion to the fields, continuing it while we did our chores. After that, whenever Eric came home, he brought us books, always the same deal. Read and discuss intelligently and it’s yours. Those books from him are my most treasured possessions.”

  “While it’s a lovely story, Josephine,” Karl started. “I’m not sure it helps Hugo, who is understandably concerned—”

  “It does,” she insisted. “Did you know he paid for my brother, for me, to go to college, even paid our living expenses while we were in university? Every penny. We wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise. He submitted our names for membership to the Masters’ Admiralty and got Colum the apprenticeship with the old Archivist. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for Eric. I’m telling you, he’s not capable of what you’re accusing him.”

  “I agree,” Cecilia said.

  “As do I,” Karl confirmed.

  “Same,” James said. “So that means—”

  “Would you be so confident if it was someone you loved alone with him?” Hugo asked.

  There was a pause, a brief one, before everyone started talking at once, but it was there. A momentary hesitation. Eric was, in many ways, a wild card, a player who didn’t always follow the rules, who wasn’t predictable.

  “But if you’re wrong—” Hugo raised his voice to make himself heard.

  “If she’s wrong, and Eric is the mastermind, and he knew you were about to meet with us, that you would tell us the term Varangian, he would assume we would figure it out.” Nyx stopped. “In that case, Sylvia is already dead.”

  Hugo’s vision went black with horror.

  “And you are probably about to die,” Nyx continued.

  “Enough,” James all but roared. He was a massive man, a former All Blacks rugby player, and he could be loud and commanding when he wanted to be. “Nyx, no more talking. Eric formed this group, put us all together. He knows we’re discussing all of this right now. Surely he would expect us to figure out the significance of the name Varangian.”

  “I can’t stay in this room. Sylvia…” Hugo said.

  “Hugo, you’re going to hang up on here and call the number I just texted you. Leave your phone on in your pocket. We’ll record everything you hear. Everything is going to be fine. Eric isn’t the Mastermind, but, uh, just in case...”

  “You’ll hear if I die?” Hugo asked.

  “You’re not going to die.”

  Hugo snarled at the other man and slammed his laptop closed. He ripped his phone out of his pocket and called the number James had sent.

  “Hugo?” James answered as Hugo unlocked the library door.

  “We’re going silent on our end,” James said softly. “It’s going to be okay. Good luck.”

  Hugo shoved his phone in his pants pocket. It took three tries, he was shaking so badly.

  He took the stairs as fast as he dared, following the circuitous route to the third-floor private apartment that had been their wedding venue.

  He wished Lancelot were here. He would know what to do; he would figure out a way to rescue Sylvia and then get all three of them off this island.

  But he was glad Lancelot wasn’t here. At least this way, if he and Sylvia were both dead, there would be someone to tell their families what had happened. Someone to mourn them. Their love was still new, their marriage less than seventy-two hours old. Lancelot would be able to marry again, love again.

  That was assuming Eric didn’t figure out some way to wipe all members of the Masters’ Admiralty off the map.

  Charming. That was one of the traits of a psychopath. Eric could be charming. He could also be a sarcastic ass.

  Arrogant. He was that.

  Master manipulator. Again, that fit Eric, but all the good fleet admirals probably had been.

  Hugo put a hand on the doorknob.

  Please be alive. Please be alive.

  Remorseless. Unable to feel emotions, only mimic them. That didn’t describe Eric at all. He might hide his feelings, cover them with sarcasm, but Hugo would bet his life—was about to bet his life—that Eric felt emotions as deeply as any of them.

  So didn’t that mean Eric couldn’t be the mastermind? Couldn’t be the killer they were seeking.

  He turned the knob, opening the door.

  Eric was standing, bare-chested, before the wall of glass that looked out over the cliff and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

  And Sylvia lay on the floor at his feet.

  Hugo’s heart stopped.

  “Sylvia,” he breathed. Before Hugo had made the conscious decision to move, he was running toward Eric. Rage and grief flooded through him. He would rip this man apart with his bare hands.

  “What should the aperture setting be?” Sylvia asked. She wiggled on the floor, turning so he could see the large black camera she held.

  “You need to be shooting between f 2.8 and 4.” Eric’s tone was resigned. “This picture is going to be stupid.”

  “It’s going to be beautiful. A scarred angel warrior.”

  “This is a terrible angle. You’re looking up my nostrils.”

  “This is the only way I can get the light behind your shoulders to look like wings.”

  Hugo had skidded to a stop and was staring at them, mouth agape. She wasn’t dead. She was…lying on the floor taking pictures of a half-naked Eric.

  Hugo dropped into a chair and put his head in his hands.

  “I think you gave your husband a heart attack.” Eric sounded only mildly interested. “I told you he wouldn’t like it if he walked in and I was half naked.”

  “Nudity for art doesn’t count,” Sylvia said.

  “That’s a good excuse. Can I use that?”

  “Hmm. Too cliché for a man.” Sylvia clicked the shutter.

  “Is she dead?” a voice yelled from Hugo’s pocket.

  He fumbled for his phone, pulled it out, and put it on speaker. “No. She’s not dead. I thought she was, but she’s not dead. She’s just strange. Lovely, brilliant, and strange.”

  Alive. She was alive. And Eric wasn’t the mastermind.

  “Hey!” Sylvia protested. She turned to look at him for the first time. His face must have showed the mingled relief and leftover panic he felt because she set the camera aside and jumped to her feet, racing to him. “Hugo, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  “Who’s on the phone?” Eric asked.

  Hugo held out the phone. Eric shrugged on his shirt and then took it. “Who am I talking to?”

  “I told them it wasn’t you!” Josephine yelled.

  “Told who I wasn’t what?”

  There was what sounded like a brief scuffle, then James was back on the line. “Fleet Admiral, we have a problem.”

  “We almost always do. What’s today’s?”

  “The name Alicia gave you. Varangian. It means Viking.”

  Eric went stiff, seeming to grow an inch. “What?” His voice was cool and calm.

  Sylvia gasped and looked at Hugo, who nodded.

  “Fleet Admiral,” James continued. “You’re being framed.”

  * * *

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  Hidden Devotion

  Prologue

  * * *

  SHE PULLED the scarf over her hair out of habit. Her mind was thousands of miles away from the sun-warm streets of Istanbul, her thoughts of home, of Boston.

  She held up a small laminated badge, skirting the line and the admission fee for the Aya Sophia. Called the Hagia Sophia by westerners, the museum was one of her favorite places in the world. Though hundreds of thousands of people visited the church-turned-mosque-turned-museum every day, it was far more than it seemed. Aya Sophia’s secrets were right there, waiting to be uncovered—hiding in plain sight.

  The same could be said of Juliette, and of the man she’d come here to meet.

  Sebastian Stewart was waiting for her on the second floor. The crowd in the gallery was an eclectic mix of people and styles of dress. From the back, with his dark hair, jeans and long-sleeved button-down dress shirt, Sebastian could have passed for a variety of ethnicities. Rather than tap him on the shoulder—though in this heavily trafficked place, in the less-than-strict Istanbul, she doubted anyone would have taken offense—Juliette stood beside him, close enough that he’d notice her.

  They stood in silence for a moment, a silence that was anything but tense. Sebastian was one of her oldest friends. The kind of friend who knew all her secrets.

  “It always awes me that this wasn’t destroyed.” Sebastian gestured to the Deesis mosaic of Christ, which had been preserved under Islamic decoration and calligraphy when the church was converted to a mosque and uncovered during restoration in the twentieth century.