Chapter Eight #2
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Blake said. “Of course, I’d love for Larz to return home for a visit. It’s long past time that we reconcile with him and Janos.”
“Larz is a stubborn ass,” Prince Mikos said. “The only way to get him to board one of our ships is to take him by force.”
General Vargarra shook his head. “No necessarily, Your Royal Highness. For example, if your consort were to be taken somewhere, against his will, and you couldn’t stop it, would you not insist on going with him at the very least?”
Mikos glanced over at Ryan possessively. “I’d kill anyone who tried to stop me.”
General Vargarra nodded. “And you and your brother Larz are alike in many ways, sir.”
“Wait a minute,” Blake interrupted. “Are you suggesting we take Janos? On what grounds could we force Janos to come with us? That doesn’t seem right to me at all.”
“I’m sorry to disagree, Your Highness,” the general replied.
“But interest in finding the missing boys, the ones who were kidnapped and sold into slavery from that vessel, has never faded on Tygeria. The parents of the missing boys still need answers and have been demanding it for years. They need closure. Janos has always maintained that he had nothing to do with the initiating event, but we need to settle that once and for all and declare his innocence in the kidnapping in front of the king’s council.
The people need to see that you, Your Majesty, and your Consort both believe your son and his mate and believe in Janos’s innocence.
Prince Mikos too. That might go a long way toward mitigating some of the anger against Laltana. And against Prince Larz, as well.”
“The general makes a good point,” Mikos said. “You’ve been insulated against it, Omak, for years now, but there’s still resentment around the idea that Larz could be with a man who was responsible for the deaths of those boys.”
“But Janos wasn’t responsible. His brother was punished for that.”
“Maybe we need to make that clear,” Davos said.
“The people need to see that we believe Janos and Larz, and that the entire family is united in this. And while we wish Janos had told us where to find Larz or returned him once he knew what his brother had done, but that man was punished. Anything else is being treated as a family matter.”
Mikos sighed and finally nodded. “I hope you realize that Larz is going to be furious if we take Janos in custody to go back with us. He’ll say we tricked him into meeting us here on Moravia just to get a chance at Janos.”
“Larz is short tempered. Like Blake,” Davos said. I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I’d do myself an injury but managed to stay quiet. For now.
“He seems to look for any excuse to be upset over everything we do or say these days,” King Davos said. “It’s time to put an end to this once and for all. Make the arrangements, General Vargarra. As soon as their son is able to travel, we’ll go back to Tygeria and straighten all of this out.”
“But what if Larz doesn’t take the bait?” I asked. “What if he won’t go after Janos?”
“He’ll go, nobyo. Nothing could keep me from going with you in a similar situation, and as with Mikos, Larz and I are very much alike.”
****
General Vargarra
The storm continued to rage through the night, with the power finally going out completely sometime around midnight.
I was in bed by then, watching the lightning flash outside my windows and wondering if Taran was alone by this time or if his parents had stayed with him.
I had guards on all of them, just in case, but I didn’t like the idea of Taran being alone and possibly uneasy because of the storm.
I didn’t examine the idea of exactly why that bothered me so much.
I still wasn’t convinced that Taran had been any kind of real target. I didn’t think the attack on Larz had been a serious threat on his life either. Though I hadn’t shared my theory with the royal family yet, I believed the real target had probably been Janos.
His position at the table, right next to Larz was not coincidental.
I didn’t believe in anything so random as a “coincidence.” My late husband Merik used to say I had a need to control everything around me, but it wasn’t that.
I believed more that I had a heightened sense of patterns and connections among events. It was just the way my mind worked.
Blake had been right about Larz—he seemed to be very popular among his men.
What reason would any of them have to kill him?
Opportunity was the most important factor, like I said earlier, and truly believed.
But once that was established, it was good to think about motive as well.
It wasn’t the most important thing, but it did explain why.
That transformed a random event, a coincidence—there was that word again—into an understandable behavior.
It also helped with intent, which was crucial for determining premeditation.
I believed the murder attempt was meant not for Larz or Taran, but for Janos.
The storm hadn’t been in the murderer’s control, but they’d been ready to take advantage of the lights going out, because it was supposedly a regular occurrence.
Larz had been deliberately taken out by the blow on his head—which wasn’t intended to be lethal and not even meant to seriously harm him.
The attack on Taran had only occurred when Taran pushed past Janos to defend Prince Larz and simply got in the way of the knife.
Or else someone mistook him for Janos in the dark.
It was plain to me that someone—probably one of the Royal Guards—had been trying to murder Janos. And he was still in serious danger.
It was why I had thought it a good idea to accompany him to the infirmary and why I had put guards on the room he was in.
I was saving this information to tell Prince Larz if he made too much of a fuss when we took Janos into protective custody.
I believed I could convince him that his mate was in real danger, and that it was in his best interests to leave his Royal Guards here on Moravia, or better yet, send them all back home where they belonged.
If he refused, then Prince Mikos could exert his authority like he wanted to, and he could take charge of them.