CHAPTER 29
Fucking shit! Of all the fucked-up, shitty, damn fucking assholes . . . Why?”
I stomped around my study.
“Was that not enough? Was the Butcher not enough?! Fuck you. Fuck you, Latour! I hope you die and rot in some ditch, you filthy motherfucker! Fuck Kair Toren, fuck Rellas, this whole damn world can go and jump in the fire for all I care!”
Solentine blinked and looked at Everard. “Who is Latour?”
“No clue,” the Sleepless Duke said.
I finally ran out of steam and collapsed into my chair.
The two men waited.
“Rough journey?” Everard asked.
Solentine nodded. “Thunderstorms over the Glades. Added three hours.”
I met Everard’s eyes. “He’s dead, right? He didn’t regrow a face and resurrect?”
“I swear to you, he is dead,” Everard said.
“Magic has a limit, and its name is Death,” Solentine said. “Last I checked people didn’t come back to life. That would be utterly ridiculous.”
“Ha!” I put my hand over my face.
“Maggie, the Butcher is no more,” Everard said. “I will prove it to you tonight.”
“It has to be an impostor,” Solentine said.
“I got a good look at the body before the guards pulled it off the bridge. It lacked the Butcher’s artistry.
Cutting humans open to display your handiwork requires a skill set most people do not possess.
The cut on Velpor was a single smooth slice.
It took the new killer four cuts to open up the body, and his edges are ragged. ”
“So he imitates without understanding the purpose behind the kill,” Everard said.
“In essence, yes,” Solentine said. “Also, the Butcher dueled his victims. He was looking for that moment when the tide turned, and his target saw their death approach. The man sought to prove his superiority. The new murderer put an amulor through the target’s eye.”
“What’s an amulor?” I asked.
“A narrow-bladed dagger. About this long.” Solentine indicated about fourteen inches with his fingers.
“Triple-edged, convex grind. Very stiff. Basically, a sharp, rigid spike designed to crack links in chain armor. The killer stabbed our dead man in the eye with enough force to scramble the brain behind it. Instant kill. The victim didn’t even know he died. ”
“Hreban hired a replacement,” Everard said. “It’s the simplest explanation.”
“Probably Cai of Sunder,” I told them. “That’s his go-to assassin.”
Solentine frowned. “That complicates things.”
“Is he good?” Everard asked.
“Yes. Fast, precise, professional. The man doesn’t get emotionally involved,” Solentine said.
“Can you find him before the opening of the judicial session?” Everard asked.
The head of the Shears shrugged. “Doubtful. I will try, but only saints can work miracles.”
Everything I had gone through, all the pain and suffering, and the assassination was still going forward. Not only that—we were worse off than when we started.
The Butcher was an assassin of opportunity.
Hreban had hired him for his cruelty and shock value, but before the Butcher became a serial killer, he was a knight.
He told me so when he declared that I was not one of them because I didn’t have the right heart.
Skulking around the city didn’t come to him naturally.
Cai of Sunder had been trained by one of the best assassins of the age, and assassination was his profession from the start.
He wouldn’t make the Butcher’s mistakes.
I’d managed to escalate things again. Every time I crawled a foot forward, Rellas kicked me two feet back. I’d scream but I had already made enough of a spectacle.
“There is one thing that puzzles me,” Solentine said. “We know that Hreban becomes the Sun Margrave.”
He’d read the pages I’d given him. “Yes.”
“But Hreban himself can’t possibly know that,” Solentine said.
Everard sat up straighter. “That’s true. Sauven is volatile and Hreban is an unlikely man for that post.”
“So why does Hreban want to kill the Sun Margrave?” Solentine asked. “Why him of all people?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
We knew what would happen, because of me. Hreban didn’t have me. Trying to assassinate the Sun Margrave was incredibly dangerous. It would infuriate Sauven beyond anything Rellas had seen. Hreban had to have figured out that much. So why risk it?
“Are there any charges in the High Court against Hreban?” Everard asked.
“Before I left, I told my people to look into the High Court docket. There is nothing. There is no bad blood between Colart Jenicor and Ulmar Hreban. They know of each other, but they’ve never come into conflict.”
The two of them looked at me.
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“If Hreban doesn’t have an obvious reason to kill the Sun Margrave, it must be Silveren,” Everard said.
That made sense.
“We wondered why Silveren decided to back Hreban,” I said. “Perhaps they struck a deal. Hreban kills the Sun Margrave for Silveren, and in return, the Redeemers support Hreban’s climb.”
“But why would Silveren want the Sun Margrave dead?” Solentine asked.
“I don’t know. But after the Sun Margrave was buried, Silveren did go to Jenicor’s family tree.”
Everard leaned forward. “Did he deface the burial plot?”
“No. He just sat there for several hours. Another Redeemer knight came to see him, and Silveren told her that life was a chain that anchored you to the past like a rope that secures you as you scale a wall. One link attached to the other, each coming full circle. If you failed to close the links, the chain would come apart, and you would plummet.”
Solentine frowned again. “This new Silveren, the one who is running around the city in disguise, plotting with Hreban, and contemplating the meaning of life, I don’t know him. I find it troubling when people act unlike themselves.”
“Which Silveren do you know?” Everard asked.
Solentine sighed. “He says little. When he’s forced into small talk, he is dull, save for a rare quip.
If you attempt to converse with him, he will inevitably turn the topic to the burdens of war or his old injuries.
Silveren broke his legs somehow during his service and they bother him when it rains.
He tends to Inhan and hangs behind him like a bitter shadow.
Considering his face, he should be far more coveted, but he is so unresponsive that he isn’t pursued by either women or men.
The only time Silveren comes to life is when the discussion touches on matters pertaining to the Redeemers.
He is a zealous advocate for his order, and he doesn’t back down from either Arvel or Bors, I will give him that. ”
“That is not the Silveren I met,” I said.
“I gathered,” Solentine said. “Who did you meet?”
“A dargan in mel’s clothing. Sharp, menacing, clever. Hreban walked into the Garden wrapped in loud luxury, and Silveren referred to him as a rare beauty who couldn’t be kept waiting.”
Solentine raised his eyebrows.
“You said he attached himself to Inhan?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Silveren kills Inhan in the future. Slits his throat and watches him bleed out.”
Solentine swore.
“There must be a connection between the Sun Margrave and Silveren,” Everard said. “His graveside speech at Sonndor suggests it may not be about him. It may concern his parents or his siblings.”
“I’ll take a deeper look,” Solentine said. “However, that will take time, and the start of High Court is a month away. We could always take a direct approach. Eliminating Silveren would be problematic, but we could remove Ulmar Hreban from the picture.”
“No,” Everard and I said in one voice.
“Why?”
“It’s not about eliminating the man himself, but about removing the opportunity he’s taking advantage of,” Everard told him. “If we kill him without changing the circumstances that allow his rise, we risk someone else sliding into his place. Better the dursan we know than the one we don’t.”
“I see,” Solentine said. “A pity.”
Up to now everything I had done was in response to Hreban’s actions. The abduction of Galiene’s daughter, smuggling iron, the string of serial murders, all of those had already been in motion. I had stopped them, but that didn’t address their source.
No, we had to eliminate Hreban not as a man, but as a force.
That’s what I had set out to do when Everard was still Reynald and I told him for the first time that I would stop the nightmare that was about to swallow Rellas.
But then the salt and the mercenaries became a pressing issue, and I’d defaulted to stopping the disasters as they came.
“We have to take Hreban apart,” I said.
“How would we do that?” Solentine asked.
“I don’t know yet. Let me think about it.”
Hreban had manpower and money on his side.
He was truly the richest man in Rellas, and that wealth bought him a lot of protection.
Nothing about that had changed since we’d started.
But back then, I was a woman lost in a new world, trying to protect two teenagers and relying on a blademaster who didn’t trust me.
Now I had four seasoned mercenaries, a lady’s maid, a locksmith’s son, possibly the assistance of the Shears, and best of all, the Sleepless Duke. There had to be a way forward.
“To topple the head of a Great Family, we would need unassailable proof,” Solentine said.
“I know,” I told him.
We didn’t have much time. This was the point where the isekai heroines usually got struck by a brilliant idea in a flash of intellectual lightning. My mental skies were blue and clear. Not a thundercloud in sight.
I had to think of something fast, or both Matheo and the Sun Margrave would lose their lives. I had failed to save Reynald, but I had to save his son. I had to.
“Speaking of families, thank you for averting a disaster about to befall mine,” Solentine said.
“Things went well?” Everard asked.
Solentine nodded. “I arrived just as my uncle was doing a final review of the loan. To say he was shocked would be a grave understatement. We had a long and productive chat with the noble in question.”
I could only imagine.