Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Petur
Arven was all right. That was the most important thing, Petur kept reminding himself. His nephew had survived the assassination attempt virtually unscathed.
That was the only thing that was all right.
The effort had been tuned with precision to a moment when the prince had been on his own.
Arven, being a sociable type and carrying the expectations of his station, was almost never on his own.
He preferred to spend time with his sisters, train with his guards, or even endure personal time with his father or his mother to solitude.
He was only alone when he was in his room or between engagements.
It was between a pair of his engagements that the assassin struck, and only Arven’s sharp hearing saved him.
The blow came from a distance, fired from a crossbow across the length of the palace courtyard.
The weapon was so powerful that the bolt flung at Arven ended up stuck a full half inch into the mortar of the stone wall behind him.
It would have killed him if he’d been there, but he wasn’t.
Arven was a gifted shifter. Petur and he had worked hard on that, and his senses had warned him of the danger just in time to shift. He flew upward a seagull, and the sound of his harsh cries brought guards running. Despite their haste, though, the assassin was nowhere to be found.
“It was a High Harrier,” Jemal insisted once Petur and Deyvid were back in the palace.
The color was high in his cheeks, and his hair was disheveled as though he’d been running his fingers through it relentlessly.
“It had to be a High Harrier. Who else would be able to sneak so far into the palace without being detected?”
“A mage,” Petur replied, a little embarrassed that he even had to say it.
“High Harriers are most effective against mages since their magic won’t work on them.
Mages, in turn, are more effective against us since their magic works on us perfectly.
They have spells that can mask their scent and allow them to walk unseen. ”
“Then why did they use a crossbow?” Jemal demanded. “Why use a weapon like that when they could use a spell to attack?”
“Maybe they were already using as many spells as they could,” Petur replied in frustration. “How am I supposed to know? I wasn’t here. I didn’t get the chance to—”
“No,” Jemal shouted, pointing his finger straight at Petur’s face.
“No, you weren’t here. You were out on the water, fucking your second-in-command, when you should have been looking after the royal family as is your duty.
If Arven had died …” His voice broke and with it, so did some of his rage.
“If Arven had died, Tania and I would never have been able to forgive you.”
That didn’t seem fair to Petur, but he understood the sentiment. He wouldn’t have forgiven himself either. But it was cruel to look at the prince and see someone who was solely in need of protection.
“He saved himself,” Petur told his brother-in-law gently. “We’ve been training since he was a child so that he could do exactly what he did. He saved himself, Jemal, and that’s cause to celebrate.”
“None of this is cause to celebrate,” Jemal replied grimly.
“Tania’s on her way back, of course. It’s not as though I would dare attempt to hide something like this from her even though Arven tried to insist that informing her wasn’t necessary.
The girls have been clinging to him, crying nonstop.
I don’t know why you sent Deyvid to them.
There’s no way he’s going to be able to calm them down. ”
“Deyvid is very good at calming things down,” Petur said.
“Well, not this time,” Jemal snapped. He lowered his voice. “If you know what’s good for you and for him,” he murmured, “you’ll find something else for him to do when your sister gets back here.”
Petur opened his mouth to reply, then paused. “You might be right,” he said after a moment.
“Oh, I know I’m right,” Jemal replied, something both prideful and pained in his eyes. “I’ve been married to Tania for over twenty years. You think I don’t know how she reacts to things that scare her? I know better than anyone.
“Get him out of the palace,” he repeated. “It doesn’t matter what task you have him doing, just make sure he’s not doing it where she can see him, and you had better look forward to a near future of waiting hand and foot on her if you know what’s good for you.”
It wasn’t what Petur wanted to hear. It wasn’t what he wanted to do. The last thing he wanted to do right now, in fact, was lavish attention on his sister, when he ought to be part of the crew hunting down the assassin. Speaking of which …
“I’ll put Deyvid on finding out more about the assassin,” he said. “He’ll probably have some ideas as soon as he lays eyes on the crossbow. Which,” Petur added a bit sharply, “is not a Harrier weapon as you well know. They don’t care for crossbows, too impractical from horseback.”
Jemal sighed. “I know that,” he said, “and you know that. And in her heart of hearts, Tania knows that. But it’s not going to matter to her if we don’t present her with an alternative that she can believe in.”
No, it wouldn’t. In Tania’s mind, life was very black or white. If it wasn’t this, it was that. There were rarely third options. “I’ll do what I can,” Petur said.
“Do more,” Jemal replied, “and do it quickly. Tania will be here by tomorrow at the latest. That’s how much time you have.”
“It’s all the time I’ll need.” Petur projected a confident tone, but inside he was worried.
“Let’s hope so,” Jemal said. “Go, get started.”
Petur left his brother-in-law going over the reports he had gathered from every palace guard who was working during the assassination, looking for holes in their defenses.
He’d already handled the interviews himself, he’d assured Petur.
And his nose was good enough to track a lie. It wasn’t an inside job.
But if it hadn’t been, how did they know the schedule so clearly? Had they just gotten lucky? What was going on?
Petur’s mind swirled with such thoughts, so much that he was a little bit surprised when he found himself outside of Arven’s room. He knocked, then entered without waiting for a reply. He was the uncle, dammit—he didn’t have to stand on ceremony.
He was surprised to find neither tears nor sobs when he entered the room but laughter.
Deyvid, Arven, Delanie, and Givencie were seated around Arven’s table.
There was a stack of cards in the center of it, and each of them held a hand of their own.
As he watched, Deyvid reached toward the pile. He turned it over, and—
“Double!” Givencie jerked a card out of her hand and slapped it down on top of the one on the table before anyone else could move to do so. “Double! I doubled it,” she said. “I can use a four, right? Because four is two doubled.”
“Very good,” Deyvid said. “Absolutely. That was a very good play.”
“Oh,” Delanie sighed. “I have a six, I could have tripled!”
“You should learn to do math faster,” Givencie said, picking up the cards and adding them to the pile in front of her. “I’m so good at math.”
Arven, who looked none the worse for wear that Petur could see, smiled at his little sister. “Good for you.”
Petur stopped in front of their table. “No greeting for me?” he asked, heavy affront in every syllable.
“Greetings are for people who knock,” Arven said.
“You’re interrupting our game, Uncle Petur,” Givencie said. “I want to keep playing the game.”
“And you’re free to do so.” He caught Arven’s eye. “Come talk to me for a moment if you please.”
“Of course.” Arven laid his cards down and got up from the table. “I’ll be back before too many hands have passed,” he promised his sisters, then let Petur guide him over to the quietest corner of the room.
“I’m glad to see you’re all right,” Petur told him in a low voice as he clasped his upper arms. Arven’s determined smile broke a little bit at the corners with the touch, and Petur pulled the younger man into an embrace.
“You did well,” he said as his nephew shuddered with pent-up tension. “So well.”
“It was so stupid,” Arven mumbled against his shoulder. “I should have been looking out more carefully. I should have—"
“You had every reason to expect you would be safe in your own home,” Petur said determinedly. “That’s not on you. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you.”
“Ugh,” Arven groaned. “Don’t let Father distract you with that. What could you have done? It’s not your job to follow me around either.”
“It’s my job to make sure the palace is secure for the people who live here,” Petur pointed out.
“It was a mage; there was nothing you could have done against them.”
Petur frowned and pulled back so he could look at his nephew clearly. “I was under the impression we didn’t know who tried to assassinate you.”
“I mean, we don’t know specifically,” Arven said with a little eye roll, “but when I took Deyvid to the spot, he was able to determine immediately that it had been a mage.”
“And how did he determine such a thing?” Petur asked.
“They left the crossbow behind,” Arven said. “The butt end of it was freshly blackened, like something had burned there. He says he’s seen that kind of thing before. It’s a spell you can put on an object for extra accuracy, but it has to be triggered by someone with magic.”
“Why doesn’t your father know this?” Petur demanded.
“I told him, but he doesn’t believe me,” Arven replied. “He wants to think it’s Harriers. You know how paranoid he gets about them.”
Petur wiped his hand across his tired eyes. It was like all the relaxation he and Deyvid had managed to store up had been dashed in under an hour. “So your father’s convinced it’s a Harrier. Deyvid is convinced it’s a mage. Where’s the crossbow now?”
“Vandry has it.”
Oh, naturally. Vandry was a good choice, solid and reliable. “Send Deyvid over to me, would you?”
“Of course.”