Chapter 14 The Scapegoat
Chapter fourteen
THE SCAPEGOAT
Amira
Riordan issued a series of commands for the army to help clear rubble from the city and provide aid to the civilians of Erétria.
There was already a contingent of Summer fey on the way to help treat the wounded.
He also directed his forces to sort through the battlefield to search for a few griffins who were lost so proper rites could be performed.
Then he returned to where I remained with Orion.
“With me,” he ordered before shifting. He ducked his shoulder to indicate I should ride with him, so I climbed onto his back while Orion shifted.
We took flight and left the battlefield behind. I was not sure where we were going as we flew into the city and landed on a deserted street. There was very little damage in this part of Erétria, so I imagined the people had gone to other parts of the city to help their neighbours.
I wanted to ask Riordan what we were doing exactly once he and Orion shifted back. But there was an aura of tension about my mate that made me hold my tongue.
We entered what seemed to be a residential building with several flights of stairs.
My armour seemed suddenly even heavier, and I began to fall behind the two men who tackled the stairs without any issue.
I was about to yell at them to slow down, but then Riordan stopped in front of one of the apartment doors.
I heard him curse and quickened my pace in spite of my protesting lungs and muscles to catch up as he pushed the door open. As I reached the landing, I saw the frame had been splintered from someone breaking the door open with a powerful kick.
“Ilias!” shouted Orion once the two men had burst into the apartment. “Markos!” he added.
The unit was ransacked. Two couches had both been flipped and the stuffing in the cushions had been pulled out and strewn all over the floor.
Every drawer had been pulled right out of the cabinets and contents were dumped all over the ground.
Loose tiles, floor boards, and wall panelling had all been torn up, pictures all ripped from the walls and the canvases shredded to expose the frames.
Someone had been looking for something, and it did not seem as if they had left a single inch of the apartment unexplored in their search for it.
“Fuck!” hissed Orion, but Riordan stood in the middle of the room looking lost and unsteady. The look of numb devastation on his face gave away all I needed to know.
“Your father?” I guessed and reached tentatively for his arm while Orion began searching the house.
“He… was supposed to write three days ago but with everything going on… I lost track,” Riordan whispered.
“This was not your fault! And you don’t know that he was even taken. Maybe he was not here when they came and now he is hiding somewhere else,” I pointed out.
“Well, well, look who we have here!” Orion shouted from the bedroom with a tone of loathing I had not heard in his voice for some time.
Riordan and I rushed for the bedroom just in time to see Orion had grabbed someone under the bed by their ankles and was now dragging a protesting man out.
“Nikos?” I blurted at the sight of Riordan’s arrogant cousin who fled Kórinthos after Riordan had threatened punitive measures for endangering the Vale. Ares’s sister, Althaea, had been keeping a close eye on him whilst he was in árgos, but he hadn’t done anything to warrant any further concern.
“What are you doing here?” Riordan demanded as he advanced aggressively on his cousin. I genuinely worried he might unleash the violence brimming under his skin on the other man. “Was this you all long?”
Nikos held up his hands and shook his head frantically. There was no sign of the conceited aristocrat I had met in the Mountain City as he inched back from his infuriated cousin. His dark eyeliner was smudged, his hair unkempt, and his clothing was wrinkled.
“I received a message from your father! He wanted to meet me here, so I came!” Nikos tried to defend himself. “The apartment was already destroyed without a sign of Ilias or his skiá anywhere. I had nowhere to go, and then the city was attacked, so I had to hide here!”
“You never respected my father. Why would you come here to meet with him?” Riordan demanded.
“Because… Because I think someone might be trying to kill me!” Nikos admitted. His voice was shrill enough that I believed that he at least believed that.
“Is that so?” Orion smirked, sharing an amused glance with Riordan who seemed equally skeptical.
“Yes! Here,” said Nikos as he reached for his robes.
Orion unsheathed his sword and had the tip at the other man’s throat in the blink of an eye. Nikos made a squeak as he gasped and held both hands up again, but Riordan gestured for Nikos to produce his proof.
We all watched closely as he retrieved a missive from his cloak pocket and held it up for Riordan with trembling hands. My mate snatched it, which made Nikos flinch and then try to slide away from us across the floor. But Orion tsked and stepped up behind him to block his escape.
We all waited in silence for my mate to read the letter, his golden eyes flitting over the message at least twice.
“It says to burn it after reading,” he observed finally, and Nikos rolled his eyes with the attitude I remembered of him from our brief meeting.
“Yes, well, it had the address on it.”
Riordan stared down at the missive a moment longer before he lowered his eyes to Nikos and narrowed them.
“This is not my father’s writing.”
“What?” Nikos gaped, his face paling.
Orion took the letter from Riordan to examine it for himself and nodded after a moment.
“Someone familiar enough with his hand to replicate, but it is not a fully faithful impression,” he agreed.
“So the question becomes… who lured Nikos here?” Riordan mused aloud as he turned to stare around at the ransacked apartment as if looking for clues. “And why.”
“The why seems simple enough. Maybe someone is trying to kill him and thought they could get him and your father at the same time,” Orion suggested.
“Or they wanted you to find him here and think Nikos is the one behind your father’s abduction,” I pointed out. “Unless it was usual for your father to request his letters to be burned after reading them, then it is strange that the sender would ask for the evidence to be destroyed.”
“It is unusual,” Riordan agreed reluctantly as his eyes narrowed on his cousin again in thought. “My father was not hiding his presence here, nor would it be strange for him to have requested to see his nephew. There would be no reason for him to ask for this letter to be burned.”
“How do you know he did not plan all of this just so?” Orion demanded.
“Removing our forces from the outposts is the reason the Fuath were able to amass as they have, and he is the one who gave that order! He is a powerful magic user, perhaps even strong enough to create a spell to repel your magic, and he has—”
“You think I could repel his magic?” sputtered Nikos, his gaze shooting to Riordan in shock and fear.
“—the sympathy of some members of the council,” Orion finished with a glare at Nikos who scowled back.
“Need I remind you that it was the King’s Council who manipulated me into this very situation in the first place?” Nikos demanded in exasperation.
“Riordan?” Orion prompted, his hand tightening on the hilt of his blade as if he were aching for the command to dispatch the other griffin.
“It all makes such perfect sense. Like a carefully laid trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to him,” mused the king as he stared down at Nikos with growing clarity.
“And?” Orion prompted with impatience.
“Nikos is not smart enough to orchestrate something at this level of intricacy,” Riordan admitted. He ignored his cousin who gaped in offense and turned to me to nod.
“Why did you order those outposts to be abandoned?” I asked my mate’s cousin when I realized what Riordan was suggesting.
“I already told you there was unrest in the Rookery!” Nikos hissed in frustration at Riordan.
“You were too stupid to check on the report yourself, or you would have quickly deduced as I did that there was no unrest in the city,” Riordan said.
He advanced on his bristling cousin who immediately began to cower again.
Riordan grabbed Nikos by the front of his robes to hoist him up to his feet. “Who told you there was unrest?”
“No one! Everyone,” Nikos corrected, so flustered and confused that he looked ready to cry. “The report came in from multiple sources. I had no cause to question it!”
“Do you think someone may be attempting to use you as a scapegoat?” Riordan demanded impatiently.
“I would have said as much earlier if you were not such a brute—”
“Then stop trying to defend yourself and try to help me figure out who is doing this,” Riordan commanded.
Nikos glowered as the king released him, but then he stood up straighter, regaining some of his composure as he tugged his robes back into place.
“As I said, I had no reason to question the report as it had come in from multiple sources,” he reiterated.
“Elaborate,” Orion commanded with a growl.
“Multiple sources!” Nikos yelled at us in frustration.
“City patrols, sentries in the watchtowers above the city, even guards in Ergastiri reported a suspicious increase of activity among the Ktínos. I took the informants at their word and acted as best as I could with the information,” Nikos insisted, rolling his eyes.
“With no small amount of prejudice,” Orion reminded him resentfully.
“What do you want me to say? We both know Ktínos and Imítheos could never work together!” Nikos stated.
“And yet they do for Riordan,” I pointed out.
“Do they?” Nikos scoffed unkindly. “I have not been in the city of late, but it seems to me that you now have an insurgency of dissenters on your hands.”
Orion moved toward Nikos threateningly, but Riordan calmly held up his hand to stop him.