Chapter 13 #3
Drezzen had hit the ground hard, and he hadn’t tried to get up in the two seconds it had taken me to give Anders my order. I put a foot on the middle of Drezzen’s chest to pin him there as I looked down at him, but the second I laid my eyes on him, I realized there was little point.
His eyes were half-closed and glazed with pain, and he moaned softly as I removed my foot and crouched down beside him.
“Where are you going?” I demanded as I grabbed the lapels of his jacket. “Who do you work for? Is it just Queen Sybil? What does King Giles know about this?”
The questions flooded out of my lips before I could organize them, and finally, my brain caught up with my body.
I’d lifted Drezzen off the ground by his lapels, and now I could see the blood dripping from the back of his head onto a flat stone in the grass.
“Shit,” I hissed.
Drezzen groaned a low note in the back of his throat as his eyes rolled back in his head.
“No, no, no!” I growled. “What do you know?”
“Ken.” Carissa placed a hand on my forearm. “He hit his head.”
“Yeah,” I sighed and lowered him back to the ground. “I know.”
He was still breathing, but his breaths were shallow, and I knew how bad a simple-looking head injury could be on the inside.
He might not be all that injured, but he could also be bleeding into his brain at that very moment.
The only thing close to medical training that I had was my penchant for medical drama TV shows like House, and we certainly didn’t have any imaging equipment out in this damn field.
Either way, he was definitely unconscious at the moment.
He might not have been able to tell us anything, but somewhere in his pockets was whatever message Sybil had written and given him.
“The note,” I said, and I started to pat the front of his jacket.
“Wha–” Carissa’s eyes lit up. “Of course!”
The sound of footsteps drew my attention, but it was only Anders returning. He was holding a wooden tube that reminded me of a flute without all the little caps.
“Sire,” Anders said. “I had to kill it.”
“Damn,” I said. “That’s unfortunate.”
I did an actual double-take as Anders finished tucking the tube back into his pocket.
“Wait.” I shook my head. “How did you do it?”
“Poison dart,” he explained.
“Huh,” I huffed and nodded in admiration. “Fascinating.”
“Is it a painful death?” Carissa asked.
“No,” Anders said in a reassuring tone. “It’s quick and painless.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“Mmm,” Anders hummed in agreement.
My attention was snapped back to the situation when I found the shape of something rectangular in Drezzen’s front pocket.
“We couldn’t let the horse go,” Carissa said. “Even without Drezzen, it could have gone to their next destination and blown up what we’ve learned here.”
“Exactly.” I pulled the parchment from Drezzen’s jacket.
“What’s it say?” Carissa asked.
She leaned forward to have a look at the parchment, and Anders crouched beside me as I flipped it over.
The piece of parchment was heavy despite being only one page, and even with my limited knowledge, I could tell it was a quality bit of stationery.
It was sealed on the tri-fold with a lump of purple wax.
The stamp that had sealed the wax bore the design of a sea bird clutching a stick with four leaves.
“That’s not the symbol of the Silver Coast,” Carissa said.
“No, it’s not,” I agreed.
“Queen Sybil may have a private seal,” Anders suggested. “One she only uses for personal correspondence.”
“So, separate from the official one she uses in her capacity as queen?” I asked.
“Yes,” Anders said.
“It’s not unheard of,” Carissa said.
None of us moved for a moment, and the only things I could hear beyond the pounding of my own heart were the chittering sounds of crickets, the rush of the breeze through the tall grass, and the soft rhythm of Carissa’s breaths.
“Should we open it?” Carissa asked.
“It’d be pretty silly not to,” I said.
I slid my thumb under the folded edge and pried the wax seal until it popped off and left nothing but a soft purple stain along the bottom edge of the parchment. The paper was crisp and stiff as I unfolded it, and the message was short.
“‘My dearest, Tamas Khorr,’” I read aloud.
My voice clogged in my throat.
“My god.” Carissa shook her head.
“Fuck,” I said.
At the very least, Sybil was sharing information with our enemy, but I kept reading before I allowed my mind to spin out of control.
“‘Things are moving forward,’” I read. “‘Though not at the pace we wished. I will need more time before I can safely join you in the south, but it is necessary. One main task is taking longer than expected.’”
“What do you think it is?” Carissa asked.
“I don’t know,” I said before I read the last bit of the note. “‘I can’t wait to rule at your side. We will be together again soon, my darling.’ She just signed it ‘Your Sybil.’”
Anders, Carissa, and I all stared at one another without a single word spoken between us for a solid two minutes. My brain felt like an old computer with an overloaded command queue, and it was trying desperately to catch up instead of crashing on me.
The still tension of the night was shattered when Drezzen suddenly sucked in a sharp breath below us.