Eventually, Kasper came and took me back to my room. He suggested I shower, since I had Cyrano’s blood all over me, and then he headed back upstairs, promising to help with the investigation.
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The shower lasted a very long time. I know this because it started out hot, but when I’d finished, the water was icy cold. I walked across the hall from the bathroom, wearing only a white robe. I’d thrown my clothes away in the trash can. I didn’t need them anymore.
When I went into my room, I still felt vaguely as though I was in a dream. I just couldn’t seem to feel my body. It was as if I were floating above everything, not a part of this world, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to be a ghost.
“Bryn?” Kennet asked, and I looked over to see him sitting on my bed. His usual smile was gone, and his eyes were dark.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
“Long enough,” he said, like I would know what that meant, and he stood up so he could walk closer to me. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, and I wasn’t sure I had the ability to lie right then. It seemed out of the realm of my abilities to make things up. “I just killed a man. ”
“I know. ”
I waited a beat before adding, “I’ve never killed anyone before. ”
It was so much simpler than I expected. Taking a life seemed like it should be a much greater challenge, but my sword had gone through him just like it would through anything else. And then he was dead.
There was a weight to that that I hadn’t expected. No amount of training or even belief that I had done the right thing could change the way it felt. A man had been alive. Now he wasn’t. And it was because of me.
“You were doing your job, what you needed to do,” Kennet said. “That’s why I came here. To thank you for saving my brother’s life. ”
“Is the King okay?”
I tried to collect myself, realizing that I had a job to do. I was a tracker. I’d been training for years to do what I’d just done. I just needed to get through the shock of it all.
“Yes, he’s fine, thanks to you. ” Kennet smiled. “Mikko wanted me to extend his gratitude to you, and I’m certain he’ll do it personally later on. He thought you might need time to collect yourself. ”
“No, I’m fine. ” I brushed my fingers through my tangles of wet hair and turned, walking away from Kennet and toward the window. It was still daylight out, and a few rays of light managed to break through the murky water. “I’ll do whatever they need me to do. ”
“No one needs you to do anything right now. ” Kennet followed me, his steps measured to match my slow place, before stopping behind me. “The King has given you the night off to do as you wish. ”
“But isn’t there an investigation to be done?” I turned back to face him.
“The King, Kasper, and Bayle are handling it right now,” Kennet reassured me. “You can join them tomorrow. But for now, I think it’s best if you get some rest. ”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I don’t need rest. I need to figure out what’s going on. ”
“Bryn, take a break when you’ve earned it. ” Kennet sounded weary, probably growing exhausted from trying to convince me that there was more to life than work. “And by Ægir’s might, you’ve earned it. ”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Kennet was close enough that I could breathe him in again—the heady scent of the sea and fresh rain and ice. He smelled of water in all its forms, so wonderful and soothing.
Without thinking, I leaned into him, resting my head against his chest, and he responded by wrapping his arms around me and holding me to him.
“I’m sorry if I come on too strong. ” His words were muffled in my hair as he spoke. “It’s just that this palace can be awfully lonely day after day. But I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give. ”
I buried my head deeper in his chest.
“You smell like home,” I whispered, realizing too late that my inability to lie had also become an inability to filter. Words were tumbling out without hesitation. “But not like the house I grew up in. ”
“It’s water that you smell,” he explained, his words muffled in my hair. “And water is your home. ”
Home. It was the last word that echoed through my mind when sleep finally overtook me that night.
TWENTY-FOUR
afflicted
I remembered nothing from my dreams, but I couldn’t shake the fear. I was sitting in my bed, in the strange darkened room of the Skojare palace, covered in a cold sweat and gasping for breath, and I didn’t know why I was so terrified.
Kennet had slipped out after I’d fallen asleep, which was only proper. But I missed the comfort of his presence, and I realized that in spite of all my best intentions, I now considered Kennet a friend.
“Bryn?” Kasper cautiously pushed open my bedroom door and looked in. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah. ” I sat up straighter and used the blanket to wipe the sweat from my brow. “Yeah, you can come in. ”
“Are you okay?” Kasper asked. Even in the darkness, my distress must’ve been apparent.
“Yeah, I’m fine. ” I brushed it off. “What do you need?”
“I know I told you to rest, and I understand if you want to—”
“Just tell me what’s going on,” I said, rushing him along.
“We’re going to check out Cyrano Moen’s house, and I thought you’d want to join us. ”
The clock on my nightstand said it was nearly midnight. “Now? Why haven’t you already gone?”
He let out an irritated sigh. “I don’t know. Bayle insisted that we do all this other pointless stuff first. ” He shook his head. “Honestly, I want you to join me so I can have another set of eyes that I can trust. ”
“I’ll go with you. ”
I hopped out of bed, and Kasper turned away since I’d been sleeping in just a tank top and underwear. I hurried to throw on a pair of jeans and a shirt, and then we left my room.
Cyrano Moen’s house was three miles from the palace, counting the long walk on the dock that connected the palace with the mainland. Storvatten itself was a strange, quiet village with no street lights and no real roads to speak of, just dirt paths meandering through the darkness.
Most of the houses were burrows—squat little houses half-buried in the ground with thatched roofs and moss growing up over them. Cyrano’s was no different, but unlike the other houses surrounding it, his actually had the lights on.
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The front door was open, and five steps led into a living room. Bayle was already inside when Kasper and I arrived, looking around the small space. The house was round, and everything inside it was visible from the front door—the living room, the kitchen, even the bedroom in the back corner where a crib sat next to a full-size bed.
“Cyrano had a family,” I realized, and guilt hit me like a sledgehammer.
“Neighbors said they left earlier today,” Bayle said, then motioned to discarded clothes on the bed and a pacifier on the dirt floor. “By the look of things, I’d say they went in a hurry. ”
A picture hung on the living room wall of Cyrano with a lovely young wife and a small, pudgy baby with a blue ribbon in her hair. She was an adorable baby, but there seemed to be something off about her eyes, something I couldn’t place.
That wasn’t what struck me, though. It was that this man had a family, one I’d taken him away from.
“Bryn. ” Kasper touched my arm, sensing my anguish. “You were protecting the King. ”
“What was that?” Bayle asked, looking over at us.
“How old is the little girl?” I asked, not wanting to let Bayle in on my private feelings, and pointed to the picture.
“A little over a year, I think,” Bayle said. “Cyrano talked about her from time to time. Her name was Morgan, and I think she was diagnosed w
ith some sort of disorder a few months ago. ”
“Disorder?” I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember what it was. ” Bayle shook his head. “Something with her brain. She started having seizures, and she couldn’t crawl because she didn’t have any strength. And there was something with her eyes. They kept darting all around. ”
“Salla disease,” Kasper said, filling in the name Bayle had forgotten.
Bayle nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. ”
I’d heard of Salla disease before. It was some kind of genetic disorder that affected a small percentage of the troll population, but it wasn’t common enough that I knew much about it.
“My little sister Naima has it,” Kasper said, and his whole face softened when he mentioned her.
“What is it exactly?” I asked.
“It affects the nervous system, and it made it hard for Naima to talk or move, not to mention the seizures,” he said. “Fortunately, my parents caught it early with Naima, and they got the medics involved right away. With a combination of medication and their healing powers, along with a couple other things, they really helped her. ”
Our medics had the ability to heal with psychokinetic powers, but they weren’t all powerful. They couldn’t undo death, and they couldn’t eliminate most diseases. They could take away some symptoms, but they couldn’t eradicate disease entirely.
“I mean, she’s not cured, and she never will be,” Kasper elaborated. “But Naima’s ten now, and she can talk, and she loves to dance. ” He smiled. “She’s really happy, and that’s what counts. ”
“I’m glad she’s okay now,” I said.
“Me too,” he agreed. “But the treatments my parents got for her cost a fortune. My dad had to get a second job to help cover them. ”
“That’s terrible, but if the two of you are done talking about your families, do you wanna start looking around to see if we can find any clues about Cyrano?” Bayle asked, sounding awfully patronizing for someone who had hired Cyrano in the first place.
“Yes. Of course. ” I saluted him, which made him scowl, and I started to look around the room.
In reality, there wasn’t much to investigate. The house was small and ordinary, and it didn’t appear that Cyrano had left behind a manifesto. But since Bayle had been condescending, I wasn’t going to leave a single stone unturned.
I lifted up the blankets on the bed, riffled through the baby’s toys in the toy box, and leafed through the few books on the shelf. None of them were too exciting—there were a few books on parenting and Salla disease, a dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged, and a book by Jordan Belfort.
While I dug around their living room, Bayle walked around not doing much of anything, and Kasper scoped out the kitchen. I was flipping through one of the books when I glanced over at the kitchen to see that Kasper had dropped to his knees and was reaching underneath the stout wood-burning stove.
“What are you doing?” I asked, setting aside the book to check it out.
“I thought I saw the light catch on something. ” He squeezed himself against the stove, reaching all the way to the back, then he scooted back out.
“What is it?” I asked, and Bayle came to look over my shoulder.
Kasper sat back on his knees and opened his hand, revealing two blue stones each about the size of a marble but not quite as round. Their dark blue color sparkled as Kasper tilted his hand.
“Those are big sapphires,” I said.
Kasper looked up at me. “This has to mean something. ”
TWENTY-FIVE
incentives
“What is going on in my kingdom?” Marksinna Lisbet asked, and for the first time since I’d met her, she truly appeared her age.
Her golden hair fell in loose curls down to the middle of her back. Her satin dressing gown flowed around her, creating a half-circle of shimmering fabric on the marble floor of her chambers. She sat at her vanity, her makeup and jewels spread out on the table beside her.
The only jewelry she wore was the large sapphire wedding ring from her long-deceased husband, and even though it wasn’t yet six in the morning she’d already applied a coat of mauve lipstick.
“Nana, it’s not so bad,” Linnea said, attempting to comfort her. She sat on a plush chaise behind her grandmother, and based on her lack of makeup and loosely tied robe that revealed a lace-trimmed camisole underneath, I suspected she hadn’t been awake long either.
Lisbet had summoned Kasper and me very early this morning to have a private meeting in her chambers, with only her and her granddaughter. When we arrived, she apologized for the early hour, but said she thought it was the only way a meeting among us would go unnoticed.
“It’s not so bad?” Lisbet shot a look over her shoulder at Linnea and scoffed. “Just two weeks ago someone attempted to kidnap you, and last night your guard tried to murder your husband! How can you say it’s not so bad?”
“Well…” Linnea faltered for a moment, frowning. “Both Mikko and I are alive and well. So it can’t be that bad. ”
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“My child, you know you are the world to me, but things are very bad indeed when the only positive thing you can say is that you’re simply alive,” Lisbet said. “You’re a vibrant, healthy, young Queen. You are supposed to be alive!”
“Kasper and Bryn are here,” Linnea tried, gesturing toward where we stood at attention near the door. “They’ll help us sort out this mess. ”
The Marksinna looked toward us, an unsettling weariness and fear in her eyes, and she nodded once. “You are here, and I am very grateful for it, because without you I have no idea what would have become of my grandson-in-law. But what do we do about all this?” Her gaze fell heavily on Kasper and me. “Who is behind these attempts on my family’s lives? And how do we stop them?”
“Bayle Lundeen has launched a full-scale investigation—” Kasper began, but Lisbet immediately held up her hand to stop him.
“I don’t trust that man. ” Lisbet grimaced. “I haven’t trusted him for so long, but Mikko refused to hear anything about it. Lundeen was his father’s lackey, which really tells you something about him. Rune Biâelse was an awful, cold tyrant, and anybody he trusted can’t be good news. ”
“Nana!” Linnea exclaimed.
“I’m just stating a fact, my dear,” Lisbet said, brushing her off. “And worse still, Rune left his son too terrified to act even long after his death. ”
“I don’t trust Bayle Lundeen either,” Kasper agreed. “But now I’m a part of the investigation, and I’m hoping to steer it in the right direction. ”
“A noble intention, but I’m not certain it will bear any fruit,” Lisbet said. “That is why I called you both here. You have no connection to this guard, and you’ve already proven yourselves to be far more intelligent and capable than anyone we have here. I want you to look into it, separate from whatever farce it is that Bayle Lundeen is spearheading. ”
I exchanged a look with Kasper, who nodded his encouragement.
“That was already our intention, Marksinna,” I said. “We did not trust the guard when we arrived, but after the incident with Cyrano, we trust them even less. Now we must determine how widespread the betrayal is, and who is behind it. ”
“Excellent. ” Lisbet smiled at us. “What have you uncovered so far?”
“Cyrano was supposed to be guarding Queen Linnea over the lunch hour, but he informed her that he had a meeting with Bayle he needed to attend,” Kasper began.
“I already know that,” Linnea said. “I’m the one who told you that. ”
“Right. ” Kasper gave her a look but kept his voice even. “We have confirmed that the meeting did exist and that Bayle was there with ten other guards who all vouch for him, along with the kitchen staff and footmen. Cyrano wasn’t supposed to attend because he wasn’t allowed to leave the Queen unguarded, which he did. ”
“He told me I would be fine because I would be with Bryn,” Linnea said. “And as it turns out, I was much safer with Bryn than I would have been with him. ”
“So Cyrano lied to get a moment alone with the King so he could kill him?” Lisbet shrugged. “That doesn’t tell us why he wanted to. ”
“No, but it does suggest that Bayle wasn’t directly involved,” Kasper said.
“It’s also worth mentioning that Cyrano had a wife and a young child,” I said, and by the surprised looks Lisbet and Linnea gave each other, I guessed this was news to them. “His daughter has a rare disease that requires costly treatment, which makes money an excellent motivator. Both the wife and the child appear to have left in a hurry. ”
“Clothes were scattered over the beds, but there were no signs of a struggle,” Kasper said. “They seem to have left very suddenly but of their own accord. ”
“That’s not that surprising if they heard Cyrano was a traitor who’d been killed,” I continued, not letting the darkness of his death cloud my words. “We would expect them to run away lest they be punished for his crimes. ”
“If they are innocent, they have nothing to fear,” Linnea piped up, and that was her naiveté showing.
Another time, I would have to explain to her how Viktor Dålig’s young children had been punished for his transgressions. The world was not a fair place, and a Queen needed to know that if she wanted to help rule a kingdom.
“We did find something odd, however,” Kasper went on. “Under the stove were two sapphires, a little smaller than a marble. We suspect that in the commotion of leaving, they fell out and rolled under the stove, and Cyrano’s wife either didn’t notice or was in too much of a hurry to be bothered with them. ”
“Sapphires nearly as large as a marble?” Lisbet shook her head. “Are you certain they were real?”
Kasper nodded. “Based on the color and size, Bayle estimated they were worth at least twenty thousand dollars apiece. ”
Linnea gasped. “How could a guard have sapphires worth that much? And how could his family be so careless as to leave them behind?”
“That is an excellent question,” I said. It was one that Kasper and I had been quick to answer last night. “The only way Cyrano’s wife wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have cared about leaving behind nearly fifty thousand dollars was if she had a lot more. ”
Queen Linnea shook her head with her forehead scrunched up, clearly still baffled by what I was saying. “We pay them a decent wage, but it’s nowhere near enough to have that kind of money. Was Cyrano stealing them?”
“That is one consideration,” Kasper allowed. “The other is that Cyrano was paid off. ”
Lisbet rested her chin on her hand, staring off at nothing, but her eyes darted back and forth as she thought. The Marksinna had most likely come to that conclusion long before her granddaughter had and was trying to make sense of it.
“With his daughter’s illness and the rising cost of medical bills, Cyrano was very vulnerable to bribery,” I said. “He probably believed that it was worth risking his life to take care of his family. ”
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