Chapter 66 Zarek
Zarek
VSENROG’S SPY
The key is to look bored.
If you’re trying to be somewhere you’re not supposed to be, and if you’re attempting to impersonate someone slightly official, you should look like you’re working. And like you’re not especially enjoying it.
Which is why I’m sitting with my back against the wall of the palace courtyard with a sack of half-moldering potatoes and a bucket, slowly peeling the potatoes with a dull knife.
It’s an odd thing to be doing in the middle of the night, sure. But who’s going to question it? Why in the name of the gods would someone sneak into the palace courtyard to peel potatoes?
Besides, the palace of Marion has enough to worry about right now.
Petrys told me the emissary of Vsenrog arrived with a full squad of soldiers from the very heart of the kingdom, a force that is now stationed in army tents outside the city walls.
It’s not an invasion, of course. They aren’t even flying any flags.
Officially, the armed men are only here to escort the king’s emissary as he sorts out the diplomatic disaster of my wife apparently running away to be with the man she was supposed to marry, the prince of Ethiria.
No one seems to care that Lilias hardly knew the prince of Ethiria. She was betrothed to him, and there were already whispers about her fidelity. And when King Malrik announces something, well, it’s usually unhealthy to disagree.
My jaw clenches. I try to force myself to relax.
I’m trying to watch all the doors at once.
A few guards are wandering around the courtyard, and a few lights still burn in the palace windows.
The stable hums with activity; clearly, someone important is going somewhere tomorrow. That’s probably not good news.
A door on the far side of the courtyard creaks open. From the smell and the location, I’m guessing that door leads to the dungeon. A tall man dressed in black steps out of the darkness, carrying a lantern in his hand. The light catches his face as he turns toward me.
My attention snaps down to my own trembling hands. My heart screams inside my chest. I stare at the cobblestones beneath my feet as the sound of the man’s boots echoes through the courtyard. I watch the edge of the pool of light from his lantern stretch toward my boots.
I hold my breath. The light gets closer. Closer.
Then it turns. The footsteps head toward the palace doors. I exhale slowly, then press my dull knife against the soft white flesh of the wrinkled potato I stole from the kitchens. I drop my head and close my eyes, letting my hood hide me.
That was Lilias’s tutor.
He’s the man I found with his pants off, attempting to fuck my wife in my private bedchambers. The man whose face seemed vaguely, irritatingly familiar.
And now, I realize I have seen him before. I saw him in the dark, with the light of a lantern catching his features just as he turned. In fact, I’ve seen him twice before.
Both times, he was leaving King Malrik’s private quarters.
The first time, I’d been summoned to meet with the king to discuss some nasty business he needed taken care of.
The door was closed, so I waited in the hallway, as I’d been taught.
When the door finally opened, that tall man slipped out, ignoring me. One of Malrik’s spies, I’d assumed.
The second time I saw him, I was sure of it.
I was watching the entrance to the king’s private quarters through a hole in the wall, safe in the darkness of one of the servants’ tunnels.
Malrik left dinner early that night, and I wanted to know why.
When the door finally opened, the light in the hallway washed over a man’s face for only a moment before he turned away.
It was him. The man who then went to Marion to become my wife’s tutor and lover.
He’s a spy for the kingdom of Vsenrog.
I clench my jaw and count to one hundred, trying to calm the storm inside my chest. I thought our marriage was about the new gold mine, or whatever the hells that hole in the ground was supposed to find. But if Malrik had a spy in Marion for years, slowly seducing the princess, setting her up for—
For what, exactly?
My hands shake. I take a deep breath, steadying them.
I remember the look on Malrik’s face when he called me into his private quarters to tell me he’d uncovered something horrible, that my bride was compromised.
What was it he’d said? Something about a black mark on our honor that must be redressed.
And I remember the look on his face when I insisted that wasn’t the case, that my bride had been a virgin and I’d deflowered her. The king looked almost disappointed. I assumed he was going to demand the gold mine to appease his wounded honor, but perhaps he had another plan entirely.
Perhaps he wanted to start a war.
But when I insisted my wife was a virgin, I ruined his plans. King Malrik couldn’t demand redress from Marion for my honor.
So he had another plan, of course. He had a spy with access to my wife.
All of my wife. Including her signet ring.
And if he sent us far enough into the mountains, with soldiers loyal to Prince Syvan?
Well, he could use my royal blood for his twisted magic in the Dragon Mine.
And then he could make up any story he wanted about where Princess Lilias went and why.
With that story, he could get whatever he wanted out of Marion.
My knife bites into the moldy potato. My hand is shaking again. I tighten my grip on the handle and exhale in a hiss.
Still. Why would King Malrik’s spy be visiting the dungeons at night?
Something horrible rises in my mind; I feel like I’m about to be sick. I don’t want it to be true, but my gods, it makes sense. The king of Marion has an army at his doorstep, claiming his daughter offended Vsenrog by running out on her marriage.
And if his daughter somehow showed up? If she came in through the front door, wearing a stained servant’s dress, claiming that the armies of Vsenrog were massing on the western borders?
Would the asshole sitting on the throne of Marion welcome her with open arms?
Or would he lock her away until he could give her back to King Malrik like some sort of bargaining chip?
I gag, then spit on the cobblestones. The stables still hum with activity, the lights and voices of the servants readying carriages. They’ll probably leave at first light. And now, I think I know why. I come to my feet and slip the rusty knife into my belt.
Wherever that caravan is going, I need to make sure I’m with them.