Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Xilarshyar,” Jev supplied. “They’re the ones who, with their anti-human talk, caused King Abdor to preemptively and perhaps prematurely start a war. I don’t know if they were ever actually going to be a threat.”

  This new development made Jev wonder if perhaps Abdor hadn’t been premature, after all.

  “He’s no longer welcome in his homeland because of his association with them. That’s all the ambassador knew for certain. This guest—I believe it is Yilnesh, the one you saw—didn’t confess anything to him. He simply showed up, asking for asylum, and the ambassador granted it without question, as that’s their way.” Zenia met Jev’s eyes. “If we could find this elf, and I could question him, perhaps we could get a confession.”

  “And he could tell us who his inside ally is,” Jev said grimly, looking at Targyon, at the sweat gleaming on his forehead. “And if that ally just struck again.”

  Targyon grimaced, but he didn’t deny the possibility. Maybe he knew in his heart that someone had gotten him. Damn it, how? Jev knew he was being careful—he’d seen Targyon carrying around a sealed water bottle that he’d pulled up from a well himself. And Jev hadn’t seen him eat anything lately.

  Zenia looked toward one of the exits. It was the one the ambassador had gone out. Two guards in the hallway were whispering to two more guards stationed inside the door.

  “Trouble outside,” she whispered, a distant aspect to her eyes. Her dragon tear glowed softly again.

  “Sire?” Jev considered the nearby bodyguards, wanting to know they were capable, determined, and deadly before leaving Targyon. “Will you excuse us?”

  Targyon waved them toward the door without hesitation, but he added, “Don’t dally for long. I have more people I want Captain Cham to help me drive out of the ballroom.”

  “She would be happy to do so, Sire.”

  Zenia gave him a dirty look but strode for the exit without responding.

  Jev hurried after her. As soon as they stepped into the hallway and out of sight of the guests, her walk turned into a run.

  “I sense—er, my gem does—that there’s magic being used in the courtyard.”

  A distant crack sounded, muffled by intervening walls.

  Jev grimaced, running to catch up with her. “I sense that there are guns being used in the courtyard.”

  Castle guards flowed out of side passages ahead of them, the armed men also sprinting toward the courtyard. More shots rang out, louder as Jev and Zenia drew closer. He passed her and raced out on the heels of the guards.

  The uniformed men drew pistols and ran straight across the garden-filled courtyard after a cloaked figure sprinting for the front gate. There should have been guards standing at that gate, but Jev only glimpsed one man, and he lay crumpled and unmoving on the ground.

  Jev ran after the guards, intending to join them in chasing whoever was fleeing, but a gasp from one of the garden aisles made him pause. A familiar young woman lay on the ground, slumped against the side of a fountain and clutching her abdomen.

  “Lunis!” Zenia yelled, racing up behind Jev.

  The young woman grimaced and shook her head. By the light of the lanterns burning along the walkways, Jev could see blood on her fingers.

  He stepped toward her, but Zenia gripped his shoulder.

  “Go after that elf,” she ordered. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “You’re sure that was him?” Jev flung a hand in the direction the cloaked figure had gone.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Think he’ll be heading back to the embassy?”

  “Or fleeing the city. But start there. He may have belongings to collect.” Zenia ran up the garden aisle to kneel beside Lunis.

  Jev raced toward the gate. Just as he was thinking that a horse would make chasing down a criminal easier, two guards rode around the castle from the direction of the stable. They stared intently at the gate even though the elf had disappeared through it already.

  Jev lifted his hands and stepped into one man’s path. “Hold!” he cried, hoping he wouldn’t spook the horse. “I’m Zyndar Dharrow, and I know where that elf is going. I need a mount.”

  “Elf?” one of the guards blurted. “It was an elf? Did you see—”

  Jev ran to the man’s side and dragged him off the horse. There was no time for chitchat now.

  Fortunately, the guard didn’t fight him. His comrade was already riding through the gate. Jev guided his horse to follow him, hoping they could overtake the elf before he made it to the city walls.

  But as soon as Jev cleared the castle, he saw the cloaked figure far, far down the road. He was on horseback too.

  Jev nudged his mount into a gallop and leaned low over the horse’s neck. He doubted he would catch his fleeing foe before he reached the city, so he hoped he knew where the elf was going.

  Zenia gathered Lunis in her arms, her gut lurching at the sight of blood—so much blood—smearing the young woman’s hands and leaking onto the flagstones.

  “What happened?” Zenia knew Lunis would want a hospital, not an interrogation, but she had to find out what was going on, how that damn elf had sneaked into the castle, and if he’d been there long enough to infect Targyon with more of that bacteria.

  “I… screwed up.” Lunis squinted her eyes shut, and tears leaked from the corners.

  “It’s not your fault that you didn’t get him. He’s evaded all of us so far.”

  Zenia closed her own eyes, listening as the sound of hoofbeats faded, and brought one hand up to her dragon tear. She had absolutely no knowledge of how to use magic to heal wounds, but so far, the gem had shown itself powerful and versatile. Was there any possibility it could heal Lunis?

  Unfortunately, she received a sensation of uncertainty, followed by apology.

  Not your fault, she told it silently. Can you sense anyone around with a dragon tear geared toward a healer? Doubting the gem understood the Kingdom Tongue, she changed the words into thoughts, hoping the dragon tear could work through her to do as she wished.

  “It is my fault,” Lunis whispered after a long pause. “I knew he’d be here, but I still missed finding him. I should have warned the king. I just couldn’t without…”

  Zenia shifted her attention to Lunis, to her face, but she hadn’t opened her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you?” Zenia asked quietly.

  She wasn’t sure how, but she had the sense of another dragon tear in the castle on the move. Coming toward them?

  “Ma’am?” a guard asked, one of the men who had come too late to chase after the elf. Other guards were lifting the fallen man at the gate. To take to a healer? Or to bury? “I can carry her inside.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe to move her,” Zenia said, hoping she understood her dragon tear correctly and that a doctor was coming to them. “If you see any doctors, please send them. Agent Drem took a gut wound. It’s bad.”

  “I see, ma’am. I—all right, stay there. I’ll be right back.”

  “Lunis?” Zenia prompted again as the man jogged away. “Help is coming. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Lunis laughed shortly—it sounded like more of a cough—and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. “Got what I deserve.”

  “What? Why? You didn’t answer my question about the king.”

  More tears trickled from Lunis’s closed eyes. “Do I need to?” she whispered.

  It took Zenia a moment to realize Lunis referred to her profession, her ability to interrogate people and read minds with the help of a dragon tear. Something she now had once again.

  Zenia hesitated, reluctant to stress Lunis further by poking into her mind, but she suspected she needed the answers locked away in there. And she also sensed Lunis wouldn’t say any more. Why?

  Images floated into Zenia’s mind, more vividly than she had ever experienced when seeking out truths with her old dragon tear. Instead of simply getting the gist of whether someone was lying or telling the truth, along with a few fleeting though
ts, it was as if she relived Lunis’s memories with her. More, she could pull up the memories she wished… Such as one from the month before.

  Lunis was at her home in the city, a modest one-room flat that she’d had since she’d first become a detective for the watch. She could afford a larger place now that she received a Crown Agent’s salary, but she was comfortable here, and didn’t see a need to move. Perhaps one day, when she found an endearing man to share her life with, she would consider a change. Or if her father ever relented and agreed he should stay with someone who could help him. She’d stopped by to visit him on her way home from work, but, oddly, he hadn’t been there. With his missing leg, lost in a factory accident, he rarely went anywhere, not wanting to deal with the stump and cane.

  A knock sounded at the door, and Lunis rose, wondering who would visit her an hour after dark. A stranger stood in the hallway outside, wearing a hood and a cloak. She glanced toward the chair where her weapons belt hung, the pistol in its holster.

  “There is no need for a weapon,” the cloaked figure said in a lilting accent. “Not if you cooperate.”

  Lunis frowned and stepped casually toward the weapons belt, but the figure’s hand darted out, capturing her wrist before she realized he’d moved. With his other hand, he pushed his hood back, revealing short brown hair that stuck up in spikes around his head—and around his pointed ears.

  She gasped and tried to yank her wrist away. He appeared slender, but a grip like iron held her tight.

  “That is not cooperating,” he said coolly. “Your father would not approve.”

  Lunis froze. How could this strange elf know about her crippled father? For that matter, how did he know her? Why had he come, and what did he want?

  He smiled, a cold smile, and withdrew a vial from a pocket. “I need you to deliver something for me.”

  She shook her head.

  “If you don’t, your father will never be returned to you. Nor will he see another sunrise.”

  Ice ran down her spine. “Where is he?”

  “Safe. For now. As long as you do what I say.” The elf tilted the vial so she could see murky liquid inside. “You work in the castle and can get close to the princes whenever you wish.”

  Four founders, what horror had come stalking her?

  “Not easily,” she whispered. “I work in the basement.”

  “You are trusted. You’ve worked there for two years. Your colleagues—and the princes—find you earnest and attractive.” He smirked, an unfriendly smirk.

  How could he know all this?

  The inside of her skull itched, answering the question for her. He was an elf. He had magic. Maybe mind-reading magic.

  “I need you to divide this into three doses and slip it into the drinks of the three princes. All on the same day. Tomorrow.”

  She shook her head again, and his grip tightened painfully on her wrist. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  “You will do it, or your father will not live.”

  She blinked, trying to keep tears of pain and horror from forming in her eyes. “I can’t betray my oath, my king, or his sons.”

  “You’ll be betraying nothing. All this will do is make them more willing to listen when my ambassador goes to visit them this week, to make another attempt to end this war your people have started and dragged on and on.”

  “The princes aren’t the ones who made that decision. The king—”

  “If it works on them, we’ll then use it on him. I’m a scientist, you see, and I’ve made a serum specifically for those of their bloodline.”

  “A negotiation serum?” she asked skeptically. She had never heard of such a thing.

  “It is merely designed to make them more agreeable, more sympathetic to my people.”

  A thousand objections sprang to her lips, but his grip tightened again, and he leaned forward, holding the vial before her eyes.

  “The choice is yours.”

  He pressed it into her hand, then strode out, disappearing into the hallway.

  “Some choice,” she whispered, staring down at it.

  “It wasn’t a serum,” Lunis whispered, finally opening her eyes, though they were glazed, and Zenia worried she didn’t see her, didn’t see anything anymore. “It was a poison.”

  “Actually, it was a bacterium,” Zenia said, aware of someone walking up behind them.

  “I’m Dr. Hy,” a woman said.

  Zenia knelt back from Lunis so the healer could get close.

  “The result was the same,” Lunis whispered, not acknowledging the doctor even when she knelt on her other side and helped lie her flat on the flagstones.

  Zenia sensed Lunis hoped the doctor wouldn’t be able to help her.

  “Lunis…” Zenia whispered.

  “I’m sorry I sent that message,” Lunis whispered.

  “What message?” Zenia thought of the man who’d come out to the Nhole cottage. “The one threatening Targyon?”

  “Just a bluff. I swear. I knew you’d find out eventually that I’d done it if you kept picking at the loose threads. I knew… I love this job, this career. I wanted to be an agent forever. Maybe one day captain of the agents. I worked so hard as a detective and then here. I just wanted to be someone. Can’t you understand? My family… We were nothing.”

  “I can understand.” Zenia did her best to keep judgment out of her tone, but it chilled her that Lunis could have sent the threat. She must have known it would be the end of her career, if not her death, if she were caught. But then, what more did she have to lose? Lunis was right. Zenia and Jev would have figured it out eventually.

  “It wasn’t worth it,” Lunis whispered. “My father…”

  “The elf killed him?”

  “No. Oddly, he kept his word on that, even though he lied about what the liquid would do. He returned my father to me, but Father was irate. He said I’d given in to a coward and an elf. It would have been better if I’d let the elf kill him. It—”

  Her voice broke off in a choke or a sob—or both. The doctor frowned at Zenia, as if it was her fault she was upsetting her patient. But Lunis had been upset for weeks. It was amazing she’d held it together in the castle, kept playing the role of the earnest agent, trying to deter Zenia and Jev by putting forth the criminal organizations as the lead suspects.

  “He said I’d ruined my life for nothing. We haven’t spoken since.”

  “Were you the one to light the farmhouse I was staying at on fire?” Zenia said.

  “No.” Lunis bit her lip and turned her head again. “Not on purpose. I hired the Night Travelers to scare you. That was all. Nobody was supposed to be hurt. I just hoped… I hoped you’d be scared enough to go back to the Water Order and give up the case.”

  As if Zenia could have gone back.

  “There was nothing to be gained by solving the mystery,” Lunis said. “Why couldn’t you all see that? The princes were dead. Targyon should have been happy he inherited power he never could have dreamed of receiving.”

  Power that he didn’t, Zenia was fairly certain, want.

  “If you’d known me better, you would have known threats and scare tactics wouldn’t make me cast aside an assignment, certainly not one given to me by the king.” But might Zenia have cast it aside if her mother had still been alive and someone had kidnapped her and threatened to kill her? She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not that her mother hadn’t lived long enough to be used as a handle on her by some blackmailing criminal.

  “I guess, but I had to try. It was either that or flee the kingdom in ignominy. Exile forever with the fear that the agents would one day catch up with me.” Judging by the wistful expression that crossed Lunis’s face, she wished she’d made exactly that choice.

  “Did you dump a vial into Targyon’s drink today?” Zenia asked.

  If Lunis had, neither Zenia nor Jev nor anyone they had talked to knew of an antidote. Not to a bacteria protected by some elf’s powerful magic. Some elf that seemed to h
ave a vendetta against the entire royal family. Why?

  “No.” Lunis lurched upright, her shoulders lifting from the ground. “I tried to save him. To make up for—” A coughing fit stole the rest of her words.

  “Easy, Agent Drem,” the doctor said, frowning and pushing her gently back down. “You were stabbed in the gut. Even with a dragon tear, this will not be a simple procedure. Please cooperate.”

  Lunis, her gaze locked onto Zenia, did not look at the doctor. “Please believe me, Captain Cham. You must, right?” Her gaze dipped toward Zenia’s dragon tear. “Must see the truth?”

  “Tell me, and I’ll know if it’s the truth.” Zenia thought about willing the gem to let her dip into Lunis’s memories again, but she feared that had taken several long minutes, and she was worried about Targyon—and also about Jev. He’d ridden off after a murderer, someone who might have an ally in the elven ambassador. “Tell me,” she urged, putting some of the dragon tear’s power into the command.

  “He came to me last night, the elf scientist. I did research on him afterward to learn what he’s capable of. I believe he may have been testing his concoction on the princes. With the intention to use it on the king if it worked. He said as much, even if he was lying about what it did. He knew I never would have… Zenia? I never would have done it if I’d known it would kill them. Not even for my father.”

  “I understand,” Zenia said, struggling again for neutrality. It would be up to Targyon to decide what would happen to Lunis after this. Assuming she lived. “Did he come here to infect the king himself?”

  “Yes. I told him to stuff his vial up his ass. If I hadn’t been such a coward, I would have come to you today, told you everything. I almost did. But I thought I could catch him if he showed up. Maybe if I caught him, and he was interrogated and explained how he’d made me…” Lunis rolled her head to the side. “Maybe the king would understand. I never meant to hurt him.”