Batata slammed his glass down. “Avior loved his brother,” he said, “and I love my prefecture. Excuse me.” He swept up the half-empty brandy bottle and stormed out, banging the door behind him.
The fire crackled, sending sparks up the chimney. A log crumbled to ash. The room breathed.
“What’s eating him?” Tey wondered.
“He’s prefect of Batata,” Canopus drawled. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Ha, yes.” Tey braced his palms against the mantle, basking his face in the firelight. He stayed that way when the door swung open and a new prefect entered.
“Here you are,” Silvertip said, elegant in tea green and silvery gray, his tone self-amused. “Was that Batata I saw stomping off? Oh, you’re here, Canopus. No wonder he couldn’t bear to stay in this room.”
“It wasn’t me, little man. Ask the boy.”
Tey pushed off the mantelpiece. “It’s hardly my fault that—who in blazes are you?”
He had stopped mid-spin to gawk at me.
If my face showed any change in expression, it wasn’t by design. My eyes rested on him as if by mistake, my posture indolent to the point of insult. I had been waiting for him to see me. In our current positions, it had been impossible that he wouldn’t.
“What are you doing here?” Tey demanded, voice rising from astonishment to panic. “You’ve been spying on us!”
My eyebrows made for my hairline.
“Who are you talking to?” Canopus wanted to know, though not badly enough to ruin her elegant pose.
“There’s a woman here. She’s been spying on us!” Tey seized my upper arms and shook them. “Say something! Who sent you?”
If I projected any more scorn, I might give myself an aneurism.
“What are you going on about?” Canopus demanded. “Hemmel, go see what he’s talking about.”
“Go and see for yourself, you lazy biddy,” Silvertip said. “Pour me one of those, my good man.”
Tey’s eyes were like pheasant eggs, and you could’ve pushed another egg through the O of his mouth. “You’re the king’s agent!” he breathed. “You’re the one who made us come here!”
“What?” the others cried, rushing over to see for themselves. Canopus ripped Tey aside only to be herself forced aside by Silvertip.
“You!” Silvertip exclaimed.
“Hello, Lord Ostberg,” I said.
“You know her?” pressed Canopus.
“She spoke to him,” Tey muttered. “Why would she speak to him and not to me?”
“So what if I know her?” Silvertip said. “It isn’t any of your business who I know.”
Canopus bristled. “It is if you’ve been talking to a king’s agent!”
“Don’t be any more of a fool than you already are, Canopus.”
“You’re the fool, Silvertip, if you’ve let a king’s agent into our midst! Don’t think I’ll stand for this.”
“Naturally not,” said Silvertip. “You prefer to take defeat lying down.”
“You—”
“For instance,” he cut in with his politician’s smoothness, “when I tell you that she isn’t the king’s agent. She’s Avior’s.”
“What would one of Avior’s agents be doing here?” Tey wanted to know.
“To keep junior prefects from spilling secrets, I imagine,” said Silvertip. “And to make things run smoothly. Isn’t that right, agent?”
“It’s always wise to have a backup plan,” I acknowledged.
Tey’s mouth fell open. “You don’t mean she’ll be the one to—”
Canopus slapped her hand over his mouth and pulled him back, unapologetically rough.
I’d grown up admiring Prefect Canopus. All the girls in my school had. She was so classy, such a perfect example of a powerful woman. The only other female prefect at the time had been the current Tey’s aunt, and she had been old to our minds. When I was ten, Canopus was in her early twenties, and I’d desperately wanted to be like her. I’d wanted to dress like her, to be important like her, to be respected like her.
Now, Canopus must’ve been nearing her fortieth year. She was still a good-looking woman, and she still knew how to dress, but I could no longer admire her.
“Avior should have told us,” she said. “I’m going to complain.”
“Like you ever do anything else.” Silvertip licked his lips, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that the only thing stopping him from taking me outside and devouring me was what the others would think. “Is everything running smoothly?” he asked me.
I lifted my shoulders and dropped them again. “No plan survives with any certainty beyond first contact with the main hostile force,” I said. “But listen—the clock strikes seven. It’s dinnertime. Shall we?” I flowed to my feet, and the prefects parted before me like the Red Sea.
Dinner came and dinner passed, and the final three prefects did not arrive. Neither did my boss, whom I expected to come with Avior. It made a certain sense that my boss wouldn’t call, text, or otherwise update me beforehand, and that he would not answer my calls. He probably didn’t even have his phone on, lest a distraction raise Avior’s suspicions.
But it would’ve been nice.
I didn’t have dinner with the prefects; I wanted to give them a chance to gossip about me. So I joined Francis in finagling sandwiches out of the Gulbransens, and we ate in our room, looking out the windows at the darkened woods to the east and the darkened parking lot to the north.
Francis is seldom talkative when exhausted, and this evening, he nodded over his food. I didn’t realize how far gone he was until he keeled over between bites and I had to dive to rescue his plate. I gave him a few minutes to fall into a deeper sleep, then arranged him on his bed and wrapped blankets around him. With luck, he’d sleep until morning. Without luck, he’d wake up around midnight and spend the early watch pacing Edenfield Manor—making his third nearly sleepless night in a row and leaving him grumpy and useless.
I pulled my chair right up to the north window so I could close the curtain most of the way without obstructing my view. Pulling my knees to my chest, I rested my chin on them and settled in to while the hours away.
Fjordland arrived at the manor five minutes before midnight. Lindo and Avior didn’t arrive at all.
“I expected they’d be with you,” Edenfield said. “Is there a problem? Have you spoken with them?”
Fjordland trumpeted his ear. “What’s that?”
Edenfield inhaled into his stomach and projected. “Lucio and Graça. Where are they?”
“Not with me.”
“Are they coming?”
“What?”
“ARE THEY COMING?”
Fjordland’s frown added extra layers of wrinkles. “You don’t need to shout; I’m not deaf. Of course they’re coming. Don’t you know how late it is? Man doesn’t know how late it is.”
Edenfield smiled politely.
“No need to show me my room,” Fjordland cackled, tottering forward. “I’ve been using the same one for as long as I can remember.” He tapped Edenfield’s shoulder. “Good man. You can carry my bag for me and tell the prefect I’m here.”
Edenfield didn’t correct Fjordland; he was too much of a gentleman, and it was a lost cause anyway. He simply picked up Fjordland’s bag and followed the elder prefect up the stairs.
He was back a quarter hour later. “You’d better go to bed,” he told me. “Cai will answer the door if anyone else comes.”
“Maybe you should call Prefects Avior and Lindo,” I suggested. “If there’s a problem—”
Edenfield shook his head. “I think we both know what the problem is. Graça is not pleased with me and is kicking up a fuss, but Lucio will talk her around. He always does.”
“The conference begins in under ten hours.”
“Yes,” Edenfield agreed, “and Graça wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I supposed I knew that.
“Good evening, Agent Cartier.”
“Good night
, Lord Holst.”
Chapter 23:
Cruelty to Animals
Before the morning sun had poked his inquisitive head above the horizon, papery hands shook my elbows and patted my cheek; and a voice hoarse and gravelly with years of use whispered my name. “Miss Cartier! Miss Cartier, the prefect needs you!”
I groaned. Without the adrenaline and excitement of the previous evening, my litany of minor injuries ached and burned at me, and the knitted-up graze itched like a colony of ants.
I focused on ungluing my eyes and enunciating. “What time is it?”
“The prefect needs you,” she repeated. “Please come. It’s urgent.”
I hooked on my glasses, and Mrs. Gulbransen snapped into as much detail as the darkened room would allow. She had drawn the curtains all the way back and left the door open. The hall light was on, and my sleep-adjusted eyes could see just fine. I shot a look Francis’s way, but he was fast asleep for once.
“I’m coming,” I whispered.
Mrs. Gulbransen backed away enough for me to swing my legs over the side of the bed and hunt for socks and robe. Her eyes were opened wide and over-bright, and she moved jerkily, though yesterday she’d been popping spryly about town and the manor. Tight shouldered, she held one palm to her chest, nearly high enough to clutch her neck, and the other cupping her lips and chin.
In thirty seconds, I was ready. In another ten, we were standing outside of Edenfield’s bedroom door. I gave Mrs. Gulbransen an incredulous look, but since Edenfield didn’t have Gil Winter’s reputation, I didn’t wrestle my voice to full wakefulness. Mrs. Gulbransen knocked once and turned the knob.
Edenfield’s bedspread was striped red wool and tremendous—it had to be, to cover that bed and its typical occupant. It had been pulled half back to reveal dark-chocolate bamboo sheets beneath. The man himself sat on the side of the bed in a knee-length night shirt: deathly pale, skin spongy as if dehydrated. He stared blindly at the thing he held, deaf to our entrance.
I squeezed his shoulder. “Lord Holst.”
He raised his face to mine and met my eyes, uncomprehending. I held his gaze for a second; with him seated like this, we were of a height. After holding his shoulder and eyes firm for another breath, I gently pried the bundle of cloth and twine from his hands, which fell limply to his lap. He watched me, a broken man, as I examined the bundle.
It was a doll, made in Edenfield’s likeness with tremendous cleverness but limited skill. The face had been drawn on with a black permanent marker, and the hair was real. It was, in fact, Edenfield’s hair: auburn and messily glued on. The doll wore a bag of an outfit, badly hand sewn—purposefully badly, I thought—in ice blue and midnight purple.
That alone would’ve been enough, but the caricaturist had gone a step further and had both inscribed ultra-thin red lines on the nose to mimic broken blood vessels and glued extra fabric to the jowls. Under the too-short outfit, the doll’s belly was bloated and round, with a slit down the middle. Into this slit and up around the neck wove a strand of barbed wire. Where the barbs dug into the doll’s flesh, flecks of dark reddish brown marred the cloth; and where the ends of the wire dove into the doll’s body, the red stain spread thick and moist. I lifted one hand and found blood smeared on the palm.
Edenfield swayed but remained fixated, as if he could not look away.
Gingerly, minding the barbed wire, I used my thumbs to pry open the belly slit. The sides parted easily, blood oozing over my thumbs. Inside the doll lay something solid.
I tipped the doll over Edenfield’s bedside table and shook it. A small brown bird flopped out. Its fragile body was mangled and crushed, its wings cracked, its head hanging on by a sliver of skin and feather—but I recognized it.
A faint keening reminded me of Edenfield. I turned to him, amazed at how calm I felt. It wasn’t really calm, but I thought at the time that it was.
“In my bed,” Edenfield croaked. “I woke, and it was in my bed.” He extended unsteady hands, sleeves grubby with blood and sweat. “In my arms, against my chest. Like hugging a baby, its face pressed—” He touched a jowl, broad as extra fabric glued on.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “The barbed wire.”
He heaved a laugh that was not a laugh. “No. Maybe. I could feel it cutting me, but look—no scratches. Its blood, not mine. The smell. I thought it was me. It was in bed with me, in my arms.”
The smell. It wafted up to me, hot, sharp, metallic, tanging inside my nose. Blood, yes, but stronger than that were the organs, the beginning of rot. It had been dead for hours.
I dropped the doll next to the bird on the bedside table. I had a sudden, vast desire to wash my hands. Edenfield’s bathroom was attached, and I made speedy use of its sink.
Mrs. Gulbransen hadn’t left. She tidied the room, running her forefinger disapprovingly through the dust atop the dresser and rearranging the photos. Edenfield might not have had a wife or children, but there were people he loved—or once had loved.
“Mrs. Gulbransen,” I said. She jolted guiltily, snatching her hand to her breast. “Please go to the knighthouse. Bring Captain Nass here if he’s available; if not, bring one of the others.”
Gladness flushed her face. “Of course! Captain Nass will fix everything; he always does. He’ll know what to do.”
“Don’t tell anyone else what’s happened,” I warned her. She nodded, and escaped—relieved for a reason to, I thought.
“Torben,” Edenfield grumbled. “Always Torben. I don’t want Torben; that’s why I told her to get you.”
“He’s your head knight,” I pointed out. “He’s in charge of your security. I might not like the man, but I thought . . . I was sure . . .”
“That I like him? That I chose him? What choice did I have? I must have a competent head knight, and there’s no one else who can do his job—not who will stay in Edenfield, anyway. He runs the border patrol, law enforcement, security . . . and he runs me. He’ll tell you this was my fault.” Edenfield’s eyes closed and his head lolled. “Oh, God, please help me. What have I done?”
“Of course I’ll help you,” I said, before I realized he hadn’t been addressing me. “This is not your fault.”
A whimper began in the depths of his chest, mutated into a sob, and scuttled out between his lips. “I was warned. He warned me. He knew—he saw . . .”
I stood next to Edenfield again, gripping his shoulder and hand. He squeezed my fingers, but his gaze hit the floor. “Saw what?” I prompted softly.
Edenfield shook his head. “I should have listened. How can he protect me when I never listen? This is my punishment.”
“Captain Nass threatened you?”
Edenfield shook his head. “He knew about the threats. He told me to leave until the conference was over, let him go in my place so no one could hurt me. Told me to go fishing, to let one of the knights protect me while he investigated. But instead I’ve kept the madman here and brought him others to prey on.”
“Someone’s snuck into your bedroom before,” I said. “How many times? What did they do?”
Edenfield moaned and buried his massive head in his equally massive hands, his breathing hacking out in a laugh, a sob. “Last chance. That was my last chance, and now we will get what we deserve. I should have told you. Forgive me.” He grabbed my wrists, pulled me closer, on the verge of falling off his bed to his knees before me. “I deluded myself. Pride, Agent Cartier. Beware pride. Pride dragged me down, destroyed the man I was. Torben warned me. . . .
“I have to get out of here!”
Edenfield released me and stood, absolute in his decision although wobbly on his feet and jerky as a marionette. He dragged a suitcase out from under his bed and began throwing clothes into it. He never once glanced at the bedside table, though he avoided it well enough.
“You can’t leave,” I said blankly. “The conference!”
“What good does a conference do me if I’m dead? What good does it do anyone? I have to get away. He wo
n’t come after the others if I’m away. I’ll lead him on a merry chase, and if he catches me—”
“Lord Holst, please, calm down. Think clearly. If you keep your bedroom door locked—”
Edenfield rounded on me.
“It was locked. Don’t you understand? It was locked.”
I didn’t understand, but I tried again. “Then what you need is a guard. If you have someone watch over you—and over the other prefects—”
There was that hacking laugh-sob again. “It wouldn’t do any good; the madman would find a way. Always listen to Torben Nass, agent. He’s always right. He was right about this, and he was right about—”
He shook his head and kept packing. Some instinct made me turn then, though I can’t say I heard the door open. But it was open, and Captain Nass stood under the frame: leaning inward, reedlike, having heard Edenfield’s rant. Mossy-green eyes took in everything. “You’re leaving,” he observed. It wasn’t a question.
Edenfield jolted. “Torben! You’re here!”
The fluffy white dog from before trotted up to Edenfield, tail wagging. But the moment it got a good whiff of the air, it changed direction: snuffled around the bed and then jumped up against the side table. Its nails scrabbled against wood, but its twitching nose didn’t come close to the tabletop. It was only a puppy, really. When it realized it couldn’t reach the bird, it whined piteously at its master.
Captain Nass stepped around the dog and picked up the doll. He looked at it a long time, and then down at the bird. “Regal sparrow,” he said in his dry, rustling voice. He didn’t add our national bird or interpret the reasoning behind the choice of animal. Again, he said, “You’re leaving.”
Edenfield gave up trying to get his shirt to fold properly and tossed it on the heap of his suitcase. “You mean I’m running away. Abandoning my duties. The others won’t be surprised, not with what they think of me. But you think I should have run away weeks ago.”
“You can’t leave,” I said. “What about the conference? How will it look if you bring everyone here only to disappear?”
“I learned a long time ago not to judge things based on how they look,” Edenfield snapped. Captain Nass tilted his head humorously, but didn’t comment. “Especially not to that group of vipers.”
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