Chapter Thirty-Three
“I know it’s late,” Silas said as Mirinda entered the office, “so I appreciate you meeting with me.”
‘Late’ was an understatement, as he hadn’t sent for her until long after midnight, and it’d taken her almost an hour to answer the summons.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” she murmured, her voice raspy from interrupted sleep. She cleared her throat delicately and asked, “What’s happened?”
Even if he hadn’t called her in the middle of the night, there were obvious signs of trouble: Silas hurriedly returning to his office in the palace, despite the smoke still staining the walls; the two guards standing outside his office door, and another standing in the corner.
Does this look like an invasion to her? Thanks to Griselda’s quick orders, they’d suppressed any news about the body found in the Vault—and who it potentially belonged to—which meant people could already be coming up with all sorts of explanations for the increased number of soldiers swarming over the palace.
Some may have been wearing Bellacostan blue, but twice as many were wearing Arnsveldian green.
“We opened the Vault today,” Silas said.
Mirinda nodded, brow furrowed in confusion. “Felicity informed me we would be transferring the documents, but then a guard delivered your message that you wanted more time to review the accounts.” The confusion shifted as her face pinched in distress. “Is it …”
The guard in the corner tensed, her hand flexing as she waited for Mirinda to give something away.
“Is it worse than we thought?” She twisted her hands in her skirts. “We should have done more than a cursory examination, but the crown jewels were all present. The gold stores seemed robust. But with all the new expenses since the fire …”
Silas relaxed back in his chair, taking a few careful breaths to mask his own relief.
If the last of his old council had betrayed him, he would have questioned his right to remain king.
How could people trust him to lead if none of his advisers did?
“Actually, there was more inside than we expected.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We found a body inside.” For now, Silas withheld the details on Griselda’s recommendation. First, because she thought it was too ‘convenient’ for the body to belong to one of the traitors. Second, as a way to test the waters, see if anyone knew more than they should.
The blood drained from Mirinda’s face. She tried to sit down, but the chair was farther away than she expected.
As she started to fall, Silas’ personal guard grabbed her arm and held her upright.
The guard hooked the chair with one foot and dragged it across the stone floor with a loud scrape, then pushed Mirinda into it.
Silas flinched as he watched the interaction, wishing the guard had handled the situation more delicately. At least she didn’t let Mirinda fall on her ass.
“W-who … what … a body.” Mirinda struggled to get the words out.
“The investigation is still ongoing,” Silas said, repeating the line Griselda had given him.
Mirinda nodded slowly. Then, as the fog of confusion lifted, her expression smoothed. She placed her hands in her lap and examined Silas carefully. “You suspect me.”
Silas’ first instinct was to reassure her, to soften the blow. He swallowed the words and pulled a piece of parchment toward him. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
She nodded once and waited patiently for the interrogation.
“Have you entered the Vault without me present?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, to fetch the crowns for your formal address with King Archer.”
“Nothing since the fire?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
The Vaults typically had at least two guards standing at the door.
While they wouldn’t stop an adviser from entering the room, they would notice if she entered with someone else, then left alone.
There were only two times the Vault would have been completely unguarded—during the battle in the courtyard, when all soldiers had left their stations to defend the palace; and during the fire, when everyone would have fled to safety.
Since Silas and Mirinda had done a cursory inspection of the Vault after the thwarted coup and found no body inside, the only logical time for the murder had to be during the fire.
As the People’s Representative, Mirinda was a well-recognized figure among the citizens, so everyone knew how she’d spent the crises: rounding up people, directing the efforts to put out the flames, and trying to maintain order in the chaos.
If she’d had time to murder someone on top of all that, Silas might have been impressed despite himself.
“Have you given your copy of the key to anyone?”
“No, sir.”
“Did anyone ask you for the key?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you still have your key with you?”
She plucked a keyring from her belt, found the appropriate key, and presented it to Silas. He confirmed it was the correct one and nodded for her to put it away.
“Do you know of any palace staff who went missing during or after the fire?”
“No, but Felicity would have more information on the palace staff than I do.”
Silas had already spoken to Felicity, and she’d confirmed that the only staff casualty of the fire had been Mr. Oakley.
“When was the last time you saw Jacoby?”
For the first time, she hesitated.
Silas silently waited.
“The morning the Arnsveldian army … arrived. I met him in the hallway outside of the Treasury offices. You had—I mean, Varro had called me in to discuss King Archer’s approach and how to confront him.”
Silas’ quill scratched a too-long line over the parchment. “Why did Varro want your opinion?” He’d never asked why she was standing on the steps with Varro that day—too many other things had been on his mind.
“The people recognize me,” she replied. “He said if I stood with him, they would put more faith in his words. At the time, I didn’t know he was …”
“Impersonating me and purposefully inciting a war,” Silas finished.
She nodded. “I apologize—”
Silas held up a hand, cutting her off. “You’ve already apologized for your unwitting part in their schemes. Let’s focus on the current issues. So, you haven’t seen Jacoby at all since the battle in the courtyard?”
“No, sir, if I had, I would have reported to you immediately.”
“Do you have any information that may help us? Anyone acting suspiciously in the past few weeks?”
She sighed, her shoulders drooping in exhaustion. “Sir, between your disappearance, the war, and the fire, everyone has been on edge for the past several months.”
“Fair point.” Silas set his quill down and stood up, and Mirinda followed suit. “A guard will escort you back to the inn and stay with you for the next few days. If you think of anything else, please tell me right away.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
Once she left, Silas leaned against the doorframe and sighed. He hoped whatever tentative rapport they’d built in the last few weeks hadn’t degraded with every question. But it didn’t matter. He’d told Griselda he would handle the interrogations, and he meant it.
“Who would you like to speak to next, Your Majesty?” one of the guards asked.
Murder investigations didn’t stop just because the sun went down. Silas rubbed a hand down his face, trying to wipe away the exhaustion. “Juniper,” he decided. The guard started to turn away, but Silas stopped them. “Any updates on the body?”
“Nothing solid, sir,” the guard replied. “General Griselda still questions the identity of the victim.”
Silas grimaced. While part of him was hurt that Griselda doubted him, the rest understood her caution. After all, the ring could have been planted on the corpse so Jacoby could fake his own death rather than live as a traitor with a bounty on his head.
“The body is too decomposed for traditional identification, but a healer could potentially identify it through magic. Unfortunately, the only healer the general trusts is in Arnsveld.”
At the mention of Adelaide, Silas flinched.
He’d almost forgotten about her order amongst all the other chaos.
“Have the search parties found any signs of Emmaline yet?” He’d expected some news by now and a restlessness twitched in his muscles at the thought of her somewhere out there, alone and afraid.
“Still nothing on the roads or in the nearby towns.”
“Let me know immediately if you find any signs of her.”
The guard bowed their head, then walked off to fetch Juniper. Less than ten minutes later, they guided Juniper into the office.
“Your Majesty,” she greeted, no energy in her voice.
Her auburn hair hung in messy strands around her shoulders and puffy, dark marks circled her eyes.
Manacles bound her hands in front of her, but her brown wrists didn’t appear bruised or abraded, so the cuffs had likely been removed during the long hours of waiting and only replaced for her interrogation.
Again, Silas’ instinct was to apologize for her treatment, but for now he swallowed it down. “I have a few questions for you, Juniper.”
A muscle ticked in her jaw. “I didn’t kill anyone and stuff their body into the Vault.”
Silas cleared his throat awkwardly. He didn’t know how to acknowledge that statement without accidentally conveying absolution or forgiveness, so he jumped straight into his questions. “Do you know anything about the body?”
She took a deep breath to settle herself and answered steadily, “No, sir.”
“Do you have a copy of the Vault key?”
“No, sir, only Jac—the Treasurer had a key.”
“Have you ever borrowed the key from him? Or asked anyone else for the key?”
“No, sir.”
“When was the last time you saw Jacoby?”
She blinked, her gaze going distant as she considered the question.
“A few days before the Arnsveldian Army arrived. My family was concerned about war coming to the city. My mother has lived alone ever since my father passed, so I went to help her prepare for the—” she stopped short of saying ‘invasion.’ “Well, to help her feel more secure. I didn’t return to work until two days after the battle in the courtyard. By then, Jacoby was already gone.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“If I had, I would have reported him to you, Your Majesty.”
As Silas wrote down her answers, someone knocked on the door.
He glanced up and nodded for his guard to open it.
Another Arnsveldian soldier stood in the doorway, holding a leather wrapped package.
“We found this while searching the aides’ apartments,” the soldier announced, stepping forward and handing the package to Silas.
As he accepted the package, he watched Juniper’s face carefully for alarm, concern, fear. Her only reaction was a furrowed brow and slight interest as she leaned forward to see what the guard had found.
Silas unwrapped the package and flipped it open to reveal a copy of the Vault key. Still, he waited for Juniper’s reaction.
She glanced at it with no recognition and then settled back in her seat.
Silas wrapped it back up and set it aside without addressing it, then continued down his list of questions.
None of her answers provided any further insight into the investigation.
She answered clearly and concisely, wary but not nervous.
Once he reached the end of his list, he dismissed her and called the guard back inside.
“Have you finished searching their offices?” Silas asked as he wrapped the leather package back up and handed it to the soldier.
“Not yet, sir.”
Silas nodded and dismissed them, then asked the guard standing outside the door to bring Quentin in.
They heard Quentin’s arrival long before the door ever opened. Shouted, pleading words echoing in the hallway.
Silas pinched the bridge of his nose. If the sun was up, he’d have gathered quite the audience. Thankfully, with the palace still undergoing cleaning and reconstruction, only the soldiers helping with the investigation would witness Quentin’s caterwauling.
The door opened and Quentin immediately fell to his knees. Tears streaked his pale face as he blubbered, “Your Majesty, I’ve done nothing to deserve this treatment!” Unlike Juniper, his wrists were red and scraped from the manacles, as if he’d tried to claw them off.
Silas sighed and broke his own rule, reassuring the frantic aide, “Quentin, this is a murder investigation. No one is trying to harm you; we’re simply trying to find the truth.”
Two guards each grabbed Quentin under the elbows and dragged him to his feet, practically carrying him to the chair across from Silas.
Snot dripped from the aide’s nose. He tried to sniff it back into his nostril, but it just continued on a steady path. Silas found a handkerchief and started to hand it to him, but a guard grabbed it and passed it to Quentin instead.
Quentin flinched away from the movement, raising his chained hands to block his head. He sat there, quivering, for several seconds before lowering his arms and accepting the handkerchief to blow his nose with a loud honk.
Silas waved to the two guards, dismissing them. If they hovered over Quentin the whole time, he’d be less cooperative. They bowed and left, closing the door behind them, leaving just the one guard with Silas.
“I have a few questions for you,” Silas said. “Some details to clear up.”
Quentin blinked at him with red, puffy eyes. “And then I can go?”
Depending on your answers. Silas kept that thought to himself, unsure how Quentin would react. “Do you have a copy of the Vault key?”
“No, sir! Of course not! Otherwise I wouldn’t have had to ask you for it!” Quentin insisted.
It took Silas a moment to remember their earlier conversation. It seemed like days ago instead of only hours. “Have you opened the Vault without me or Adviser Mirinda present?”
“With Jacoby, of course,” Quentin replied. “Before he fled, I mean.”
“Did he ever loan you the key or give you permission to open the Vault on your own?”
Quentin’s hand clenched around the handkerchief. “No, never, he always kept the key on him. Guarded it jealously. Probably so he could steal more easily.”
A loud scraping screeched over his words, hurting Silas’ head. He flinched and looked around for the source. The chair legs scraping against the floor? he wondered before shaking his head and focusing on the interrogation. “When was the last time you saw Jacoby?”
Quentin made a long, drawn-out humming sound. “You know … I don’t remember … it was, before he left, obviously. Ran away, I mean—”
A knock on the door interrupted his prevarication. The scene played out just as it had with Juniper. Silas nodded to his guard, who opened the door to reveal another soldier standing in the hallway, holding a leather wrapped package.
The soldier stepped forward and repeated the same line, “We found this while searching the aides’ apartments.”
Quentin’s eyes locked on the package, following its movement as the soldier stepped into the room and handed it to Silas. What little color was in his pale face completely drained away as he watched Silas flip the leather open to reveal the Vault key. “But I melted it …”