Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Ashort, charged silence met her words but she noted no one disagreed with her.
“Trask and Welliver,” Peredur said, naming the obvious suspects. He’d moved away from Dudon’s body, coming to stand next to them. He looked across the room to where Accalon was coming back towards them. If there was a door on the other side of the room, it was still closed.
“It doesn’t fit, though, does it?” Hallie let go of Girard and scrubbed her hands over her face, pushing her hair back, closing her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them she found everyone nearby - Peredur, Girard, Cotovatre, Emmet, the two Conclave members who’d been trying to open the door, and their aides - all staring at her. Heat rose in her face. “What?”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t fit?” Peredur asked, tension in each word.
“Not Findo Trask, at any rate,” Hallie said. “He was more than content to run his schemes and stay hidden. He is smart. He must know that even if he wipes out the entire Conclave, he will never be safe. Every single hochlen in the world will be after him.”
“And while Welliver likes to blow things up, he’s never been this brazen before,” Girard added. “Blowing up a container ship is one thing. But this is different. This is … I don’t have words, actually.” There was a deep crease between his brows. “Hallie’s right. It doesn’t add up.”
“There’s something else going on,” Hallie said, emphasising the point.
“I don’t precisely know what. Just that it’s not only Findo and Russet involved here.
I mean, neither of them has magic. We found magic around the vehicle.
They must have had some kind of convincing disguise to get past the gate guard and into the building in Brade Watkin’s vehicle and with his ID. ”
“Zurine Halinburn?” Peredur suggested. He believed her, Hallie could tell. He was trying to work things out, too.
“I don’t think so. She makes fake IDs so that people can take on a new identity, not imitate another person.
And the gate guard will have seen Brade Watkins before now, plenty of times.
” She shook her head, trying to calm the whirl of her thoughts into something coherent.
Even as she tried to parse out what might have happened, she had the sense that they were all missing something.
There was something larger and deeper going on.
And, as awful and dramatic and deadly as the molten river had been, she was sure that there was more to come.
“A glamour,” Emmet said, breath catching. “That’s some powerful magic.”
“What are you all gossiping about over here?”
The interruption came from Lamorat Lucas, who had left his aides and was standing on the final step, a careful distance away from Dudon’s body. The Conclave member looked around the group and his already grave expression tightened.
“We’re not getting out of here, are we?” Lamorat asked.
“Not this way and not right now, no,” the director answered. He lifted a brow at Accalon.
“The door at the other side is blocked as well, sir,” Accalon reported. “After what happened here, I didn’t want to try too hard.”
“No. Quite right,” Peredur said, eyes travelling back to Dudon’s body. He’d closed the young man’s eyes, Hallie noted, but the body was far too still to be anything but dead.
“We have a very serious problem,” Cotovatre said, addressing Lamorat.
“Somehow two criminals - one human, one non-human - got into the building earlier. Let’s assume for now that they are the ones who set the explosives.
Even though they are both skilled in their own way, they had to have had help. ”
“You’re saying someone in the building was helping them,” Lamorat said slowly.
“And you’d already thought of that,” Hallie said, eyes narrowing as she looked at the man. “I don’t believe that you would have had anything to do with this. Any idea who might?”
“Thank you,” Lamorat said, inclining his head to Hallie, and letting his gaze stay on her face for a moment before he looked at Cotovatre. “A truly remarkable young woman. A worthy heir.”
“I agree with you, but you haven’t answered her question,” Cotovatre said, lifting her brows in a silent prompt.
“You will have your own guesses,” Lamorat responded. He moved, coming up the last step to stand beside Cotovatre, gaze travelling over the room. “One or more of us.”
Hallie heard sharp intakes of breath around her.
It seemed that despite the awful events of the afternoon, with a river of molten metal, death and explosions, the thought that one or more Conclave members might be involved in the events was still shocking.
She found herself unsurprised, some of the puzzle pieces clicking together in her mind.
“We’ve had really bad luck,” she said to no one in particular.
“Girard and I spent two weeks travelling, trying to track down Findo Trask and, honestly, I don’t feel we ever got close.
And I am good at finding people,” she said, with no vanity.
It had been her job for ten years. “Then, when we did eventually find a broker who might lead us to Findo, we were attacked. The broker and two other people were killed. When we tried to bring in a forger who might have given us information on Findo, more attackers turned up.” She glanced at Girard.
“We have wondered how anyone knew where we were or how to find us.”
“The daily reports. They would have contained enough information for someone to piece together where you were, what you were up to,” Peredur said, his face white, purple shadows from strain and exhaustion stark under his eyes.
“And not just them, but calls from various Conclave members wanting an update on the investigation.” The pallor on his face bloomed into fury.
“Someone has betrayed those confidences.” His eyes fell on Dudon’s body and the fury deepened.
“Someone in this room has betrayed all of us, and caused all of this.”
Hallie found herself nodding. It made sense.
It was not comfortable, but it fit what they knew and what they had suspected so far.
She had a hard, ugly knot in her stomach, the sense that there was more to come growing with each moment.
Too much planning had gone into the events so far for the schemers to simply stop now.
“But who?” Lamorat asked. He didn’t seem to expect an answer, eyes continuing their sweep of the room.
Hallie noted that he didn’t look at Cotovatre or the other two Conclave members standing nearby.
He’d ruled them out. Knowing Cotovatre better than any other Conclave members, Hallie had no difficulty in deciding her ancestor was not responsible.
But she took a long, hard look at the Conclave members and decided Lamorat was almost certainly right about their lack of involvement in any plot.
They had been trying to get out of the door, after all, and had been very close to the explosion.
It was only luck that neither of them had been seriously injured or killed.
They had shown nothing but shock at the events, and the idea that one or more of their fellow Conclave members had betrayed them.
“Let’s ask some questions, see what we can learn,” Girard suggested, looking at Hallie.
He, Cotovatre and Emmet were the only ones who knew about her truth sense.
A chill washed over her skin as she realised she might be the only one in the room who could uncover the traitor.
Girard turned to Peredur. “Sir, if I may, we still need a way out of this room. The exits are all blocked.”
“Do you think the commander and the others will be trying to get to us?” Hallie asked, directing her question between Girard and Peredur.
Commander Rojas was extremely competent, and she could not imagine him and the rest of his team simply sitting still waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.
Assuming they had survived. Which she was choosing to believe until it was proven otherwise.
Not only had she seen too many people die already, but she had a strong feeling that the commander and his team would be needed before the day was done.
“Without question,” Girard said.
“I am sure he will,” Peredur said, with the same quiet confidence that resonated with Hallie’s truth sense.
“Right. You two go, ask your questions. Call for backup if needed. Meantime, I’ll work with the others to find a way out.
” The director turned to the pile of rubble in the doorway.
“This is the obvious place for Rojas and the others to try and get in. We might be able to clear some of this, find a way through.”
“Emmet and I will come with you and Girard,” Cotovatre said to Hallie. She held up a hand before Hallie could object. “We will stay at a distance, but if we’re right and someone in here has betrayed us, they will be extremely dangerous.”
With a brief exchange of glances with Girard, Hallie left the small group and headed down the steps, going first to Hoel Buchanan and his group by the meeting table.
She couldn’t say precisely why she headed there first, but she couldn’t help notice that they were in the safest part of the room for now - far away from the exits - and none of them had made any move to help clear the door or make any helpful suggestion about a way out.