Chapter Thirty-Seven
After Quentin’s slip up with the key, they couldn’t get a single word out of him.
When it became clear he wouldn’t cooperate, they moved him to the barracks, where some of the rooms had already been converted to prison cells to hold the suspicious soldiers.
It’d been two days, and the only response they’d gotten from Quentin was soft, pitiful sobs.
“He’s quite the performer,” Emera drawled as she escorted Silas through the barracks.
“As soon as he hears anyone approaching, he begins wailing like a baby. But if you soften your steps …” She held her finger to her lips and padded ahead of Silas on quiet feet.
Aside from the ambient sounds of people going about their daily business, it was silent.
As Silas followed her, his own footsteps echoed in the hall.
Immediately, a trembling whimper and audible sniffle leaked through the room’s door.
A soft snort came from behind Silas. He glanced back at his usually stoic personal guard, but Langley stared back at him with a perfectly blank face, boldly pretending he hadn’t made a sound.
Silas knocked on the door and called out, “Quentin?”
A prolonged wail answered him.
Emera flinched and twisted a finger in her ear. “Hate when he does that.”
Two can play that game. Silas heaved a beleaguered sigh, “I wanted to offer leniency to a long-time, respected palace employee, but if you refuse to speak to me—”
The wailing cut off immediately. “Your Majesty! Please, I can explain everything!”
“You couldn’t have done that sooner?” Emera whispered.
“I’ve been busy,” Silas replied. Just as murder investigations didn’t stop when the sun went down, a king’s work didn’t stop simply because he’d found a gooey corpse in his Vault.
Actually, it increased, because on top of normal kingdom business, fine-tuning the alliance with Arnsveld, and palace reconstruction, Silas now had to coordinate both cleaning the Vault and accounting for all of its contents.
Several of the boxes within the Vault had been pillaged, and while a fair amount of the stolen gems and coins had ended up underneath the body, some of it was still missing.
Since they hadn’t found the funds stashed away in Quentin’s rooms, the theft was another problem added to Silas’ ever-growing list.
Emera gestured for Silas to stay where he was. “Stand back from the door,” she ordered, raising her voice to be heard clearly. “Do not approach the king. Keep your hands visible at all times.” She pulled a pair of manacles off her belt and listened.
Langley shifted closer, hand on his sword as he watched the door.
Shuffling footsteps moved away from the door. Satisfied, Emera unlocked it and stepped inside. Quentin obediently held his wrists out to her, though he flinched as the manacles closed over them.
Once he no longer posed a threat, Silas stepped into the room.
It was a much nicer prison cell than the one Alistair had stuffed him into.
A simple bed with a thin mattress and clean sheets.
No windows, but a lantern on the table illuminated the space.
Sparse, but almost anything was better than soiled straw on a hard stone floor.
“Would you like some fresh air?” Silas asked.
Quentin blinked at him. “I … what?”
“This room is a bit stuffy, not the most pleasant place to hold a conversation.”
Quentin looked at Emera, as if asking for permission. When she arched an eyebrow, he flinched and hunched his shoulders forward. “Yes, Your Majesty, that would be quite refreshing.”
“Excellent.” Silas turned on his heel and led the way down the hall.
A few seconds later, Quentin scampered after him. He looked around the barracks like he expected someone to jump out from the shadows and drag him into a torture chamber.
Langley walked a short distance behind them. Any time Quentin’s steps angled him closer to Silas, Langley cleared his throat, and Quentin hastily corrected his course.
“So,” Silas began, his tone casual, “You promised to explain.”
“Oh! Yes! It’s not what you think, Your Majesty,” Quentin insisted, surging toward him.
This time, a hand separated them, and Quentin quickly scurried backwards. Langley hadn’t drawn his sword yet, but the look he sent the potential-murderer said loud and clear: that was your last warning.
“What do you think I think?” Silas asked, acting as if there’d been no interruption.
“Umm, that I murdered someone.”
“You did lie to me about the key,” Silas reminded him. “If you’d never handled it before, you would have had no opportunity to melt it.”
Quentin was quiet for a long time.
Eyes followed them as they walked through the courtyard, the king and criminal casually strolling side-by-side.
Although they’d delayed the news of the body found in the Vault, they couldn’t keep it a secret forever, especially since housekeeping needed to clean the scene.
Rumors passed between the palace faster than a magical missive.
“I wish Jacoby had taken the key with him,” Quentin finally confessed.
Something scratched at the edges of Silas’ mind. Not quite painful, but unpleasant. He shook his head instinctively to dislodge the sensation. He had suffered enough headaches over the years he’d been ensnared in Alistair’s curse that a mild one barely registered as more than an annoyance.
“Why didn’t he?” Silas asked.
Quentin said nothing more, eyes darting self-consciously at their witnesses.
Silas knew it was a risk to have this interrogation in full view of the public, but he had a destination in mind. “Why melt the key instead of turning it in?”
“And say what? ‘Here, your majesty, I conveniently found this key in Jacoby’s things’?”
“Is that not what happened?”
Quentin snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.
An image flashed in Silas’ mind, Jacoby’s wrinkled hands clasping his in a painful grip. “You’ll do this one thing for me, won’t you?”
Silas frowned down at his hands, where he still felt the clammy phantom touch. There had been something odd about the imagined reenactment, though it’d been too quick to pinpoint exactly what. Do I need to get more sleep?
Every day since Archer left, Silas had woken up at dawn to join Griselda and the soldiers for morning exercise.
Even if work kept him awake until midnight.
The less time he spent lingering in an empty bed, the easier it was to ignore Archer’s absence.
To pretend they’d only be separated for a few hours, rather than indefinitely.
There were fewer onlookers once they entered the palace, only some soldiers and the staff cleaning the hallways.
Usually, the servants were quiet and unobtrusive, trying to go unnoticed so they wouldn’t disturb the nobility living in the palace.
Either the nobles’ absence or the addition of new staff emboldened them, making them livelier as they worked.
Down one hall, a group of maids sang together as they scrubbed smoke stains from the walls and floor, a bawdy tune with lots of lengthy pauses and giggling. They were too absorbed in their work and their singing to notice Silas or Quentin.
As they neared their destination, Quentin’s nerves visibly worsened.
The chains of his manacles clanked. Sweat plastered his pale hair to his forehead.
Panic oozed from him, cloying and sick, until Silas wanted to dunk himself in the maid’s water buckets to clean it from his skin.
“Umm, Your Majesty ...” he trailed off without asking where they were going.
Twice as many guards as usual stood outside the office door. One of them handed Silas a clipboard. He carefully wrote his own name, Quentin’s, and Langley’s in the entry log.
“Is this really necessary?” Quentin asked, his eye skating to the door and away repeatedly.
Silas’ own eyes ached from watching him. “I’m a visual learner. It will be easier for me to envision your version of events this way. I considered starting in the Records Room, but Mr. Morten’s crew is still clearing out the rubble.”
Quentin flinched. “The fire wasn’t my fault. I told them—”
“Careful! One false spark could send the whole thing up in flames.”
“Stop bitching,” the soldier growled, snatching something from Silas’ hands. “Unless you don’t want our help?”
The words and images pounded into Silas’ head. Brow furrowed, he tried to focus on them, to identify that oddness he’d noticed earlier. There was a grayish quality to everything, as if he was watching it through a filthy window.
Silas breathed through the pain and confusion. “Just tell me what happened.”
Quentin glanced around the office. The staff had been dismissed, offering him some privacy for his confession. His eyes landed on the closed Vault door, and he gulped. “When we heard that the Arnsveldians had invaded the city, Jacoby was already preparing to flee.”
Silas stood in the doorway to the treasury offices, watching Jacoby stuff book after book into a canvas bag. “Sir—”
“Hand me that ledger.”
Silas skittered forward and grabbed the ledger Jacoby pointed to, passing it over. “Sir, are you really leaving?”
“Of course I’m leaving! And you should, too, if you know what’s good for you.
Juniper’s already gone—smart girl, barely waited for me to approve her leave before running out the door.
Only reason I stayed was because the mercenary said he could fix Alistair, and what do we have to show for it?
Not a damned thing! I never should have listened to them … ”
“I don’t know what happened,” Quentin’s quavering voice broke through the images, “but in the chaos, Jacoby left behind the current month’s ledger.”
“You idiot! You gave me the wrong book!” Rage darkened Jacoby’s expression, usually so meek. Silas barely had time to duck as one of the ledgers was thrown at his head. The book slammed against the wall and dropped onto the floor facedown, opened to a random page.
But it was the book you asked for. The thought floated through Silas’ mind in Quentin’s quiet voice.