Allies & Assassins

by Justin Somper

  This at least was something to which Logan could provide a ready solution. “Why don’t I take that tray of food away and have a fresh one sent up?”

  “Thank you,” Jared said. “But perhaps they can find something other than another ladle of this greasy soup? I’ve seen more tempting pools of mud on the moors.”

  The Prince and the Poet exchanged a smile. Logan lifted the tray and carried it toward the door. Balancing it in one hip, the Poet used his other hand to turn the door knob; a maneuver at which the chamber servants always showed great proficiency. He repeated the operation with the second of the two doors, stepping out into the corridor.

  As the second door opened, a figure shot past him into the Prince’s suite, tripping Logan off balance, the contents of the food tray coming perilously close to falling to the floor.

  “Who was that?” Logan asked Hal Harness, as the Prince’s Bodyguard joined him at the threshold. “How could you let that happen?”

  “It’s the Physician’s niece. Asta Peck. She was arguing with me to let her in, but I said no—as per your instructions that no one was to disturb the Prince. Certainly no one of her standing.”

  “Well, she’s in with the Prince now,” Logan said, with clear disdain.

  “She can just as easily be removed,” Hal said, stepping to the closed door. His broad shadow fell across the Poet’s slighter frame.

  “You stay here,” Logan said. “I’ll handle this. Please send for another tray of food. And no more of that fetid soup! It’s supper for a prince, not slops for a sow!”

  Passing the unwanted tray to Hal, Logan opened first one door, then the second. Returning to the room, he found the tableau of Asta standing in the center of the rug, angrily confronting Prince Jared, who had risen to his feet. The thick oak desk formed a barrier between him and the girl.

  Her face was red and wet. Logan’s first thought was that she had been crying, but then the Poet noticed that her hair and clothes were wet too. Of course, the rain. Clearly, she had been caught unaware by the torrents on her way to the palace.

  “How could you?” she was asking Jared now, her voice raw with emotion. “You said you’d show him mercy! How could you?”

  Logan registered the impact of the girl’s words, of her presence, on the Prince. Jared could not have looked more floored if she had punched him in the stomach. What was she talking about? And how dare she address the Prince in such a fashion?

  “I said I’d talk to the Captain of the Graude about the things you told me,” Jared said, glancing from Asta to Logan quickly.

  Logan was impressed by the Prince’s calmness in the face of this uninvited guest. He seemed to have transformed himself in the time the Poet had stepped out of the room.

  Asta’s gaze was locked on the Prince. “Yes. And I, foolishly, took you at your word. I thought you meant you would actually think about it and come to the only decent and honorable decision.” Her face blazed with fury and she wasn’t yet finished. “I see I had you all wrong, Prince Jared, didn’t I?”

  Jared walked around the desk, until he was standing directly in front of her. “Asta, it’s more complicated than you understand.”

  Logan nodded approvingly. Jared was acting every inch the Prince.

  Asta, however, seemed resolutely unimpressed. “It’s not in the least bit complicated, your highness” she said quietly. “It’s the simplest thing in the world. It’s the truth.”

  Her words hit home. It was plain to see as the veneer of control slipped from Prince Jared’s face. Suddenly, he was a boy again. Logan was disturbed. What history did this girl share with the Prince? How did she possess this power to make him so vulnerable? And, more important, how had she been allowed to escape the Poet’s notice until now?

  “Your silence,” Asta told Jared, “speaks volumes.”

  That was enough. It was clear to see that Jared was now stripped of all his defenses. Logan stepped forward.

  “You’ve had your say,” the Poet addressed Asta. “Now it’s time for you to go.”

  Asta’s feet remained stubbornly rooted to the spot.

  “Should I summon the Prince’s Bodyguard to carry you back to the village?” Logan asked her.

  Asta glared over her shoulder. “That would be very dignified for all concerned, wouldn’t it?”

  In answer, Logan gave a casual shrug, moved past Asta and started busying himself with some papers on the Prince’s desk. Surely, she would understand the message. We have business to get on with—business far beyond your understanding or importance.

  Logan registered her sigh and then the stamping of her boots as she made her way to the double doorway.

  The next sound was the gruff voice of Hal Harness. “No, you don’t get to slam it. Off you go!”

  The door closed quietly but firmly behind the intruder.

  Logan immediately dropped the papers he held onto the desk and turned back to Jared, who still stood motionless in the center of the room. “What was that all about?”

  “I’d have thought it was self-explanatory.”

  “That girl seems to be unusually involved in matters of the state. Is the reason you changed your mind about Michael Reeves because of something she has said?”

  Jared couldn’t deny it. “She has some ideas about my brother’s murder, which she shared with me. Not all of them wide of the mark, in my opinion.”

  There was a pause. “You need to be very careful,” Logan said. “It’s not a good idea to let an outsider into an investigation of this magnitude.”

  “No,” Jared snapped back. “Because the rest of us are doing such an outstanding job of it, aren’t we?”

  “She’s got under your skin,” Logan said, sighing. “I’d suggest you steer clear of her path for the time being. Let others deal with her and her hypotheses.”

  “I really don’t think we have anything to fear from Asta.”

  “All the same…”

  “All right! You’ve made your point.” Jared brought his clenched fist down on the desk. The force of its impact made the papers and other items on its surface jump.

  Prince Jared seemed surprised by the force of his own temper. When he turned back to Logan, his face was drained of its previous anger. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and I’m angry and, right now, I probably just need to be alone with my thoughts.”

  Logan nodded. “There are some matters I should attend to myself. If you need me, call for me. Whatever the time, whatever the matter, I am here for you.”

  “I know,” Jared said. The Prince reached out his hand to the Poet’s shoulder and rested it there. “Quite frankly, Logan, I don’t know what I’d have done without you these past few days.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. It’s what we are all here for.”

  Jared nodded. He walked back to the chair behind the desk, sat down and closed his eyes wearily.

  Logan stood for a moment, in the center of the room, observing Prince Jared, just as he had often watched Prince Anders sat at the very same desk. Logan knew that the new prince still felt as if he was trespassing in his brother’s quarters. He suspected that might be the case for some time to come. Archenfield’s new prince was considerably more sensitive than his past two predecessors.

  Though the Prince’s eyes were closed, still his face looked far from peaceful. It was clear that the girl’s visit had unsettled him. It was time to do some digging on her. And then to assess whether it might prove necessary to take preventative measures.

  The Poet hastened toward the chamber door, opening it soundlessly, then glancing back once more at the Prince in repose. Logan smiled to himself—as if he had conjured up a piece of artwork for the palace walls. The Prince in Repose. Well, as long as it wasn’t painted by Queen Elin! Logan shook his head and smiled as he walked softly away, careful not to rouse the Prince from his much-needed slumber.

  DAY FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Prince Anders’s Bathing House

  ASTA WAS SURPRISED T
O FIND THE DOOR TO prince anders’s bathing house ajar, its wooden door banging to and fro in the morning breeze. Silva must have come here ahead of her—perhaps soon after taking the key from her the previous morning. The fact that she hadn’t bothered to lock up the place again, after departing, spoke volumes about her state of mind. As Asta stood in the threshold of the little wooden house, feeling the frigid air rising from the fjord cooling the back of her neck, she wondered how long it had taken Silva to deduce what the key from Prince Anders’s chain was for. Maybe she had known all along and it had simply been a matter of retrieving the key from Asta’s possession.

  Asta felt that, in the past twenty-four hours, her ideas about everything connected to the Prince’s assassination had been turned upside down. She had sought out Prince Jared to share with him her developing theories but, through talking to him, had come away with other, still more disturbing, possibilities. Could Silva herself be the murderer? Worse—if it was possible to conceive of a “worst” in this instance—could Silva be a cold-hearted assassin at the heart of a complex and ruthless plot from Woodlark?

  Asta had slept fitfully after leaving Prince Jared’s quarters and walking home to the village in the rain. She knew she hadn’t handled that second meeting with the Prince well but she had been so shocked to learn of the steward’s execution, especially after the assurances Prince Jared had given her. He’d acted differently toward her in his rooms at the palace than during their earlier meeting in the forest. Of course, at the palace, they had not been alone and, doubtless, Jared had not felt quite as free in the way he might talk to her.

  She knew in the cold light of morning that she had overreacted—and very possibly wrecked their fledgling bond—but she could not easily get past the fact that an innocent man had been executed. With the new Prince’s consent. Lying awake, hearing the dawn birdsong, Asta realized that, at the first opportunity, she must not only resume her investigation but that she had to start turning up some more conclusive proof to take back to Prince Jared.

  Seized with fresh purpose, she now pushed open the bathing house door and stepped inside. The place comprised of one main room, with a smaller washing chamber adjoining at the back.

  The main room was set up as a simple living room, with a wide chaise—offering ample room for two—and two further armchairs. There were a couple of tables too—a high one behind the chaise and a low one in the center of the room over a patterned rug. Evidently, a vase of deep red roses had stood until recently on the more central of the tables, but the vase now lay on its side, most of the heavily scented roses strewn over the table, in a pool of water that, for some reason, instinctively made Asta think of tears.

  On the wall were some paintings—mostly watercolors by the looks of it—as well as a pair of antlers and a glass case containing a stuffed fish. Asta noticed that, behind the chaise, a large urn containing fishing rods had also fallen over. Against one wall was a small but elegant bookcase, crowded with volumes—though now she noticed that a number of these were scattered across the floor. The overall effect was of affluent, comfortable simplicity. The room lacked the scale or formality of the chambers at the palace but nonetheless, it was far from a rustic dwelling—Asta knew what it was to grow up in a genuinely rustic home.

  The room was also definitely an intimate space. Prince Jared had told her that the idea behind the brother’s bathing houses was to give the royal princes a place of privacy and tranquility, away from the court. But, looking around, Asta was sure now that Prince Anders had used his house to meet with whoever had sent him the love note. There was something about the place that, in spite of all the emphatically masculine touches, spoke of femininity. Perhaps it was the woven throw, draped over the chaise, for added comfort, and the upturned vase of roses, even if it was now lying on its side.

  The roses made Asta think of her mother. Few things brought more delight to her mother’s face than when Asta’s father gave her a bunch of wildflowers to remember her birthday or the day they had been wed. Thinking of her parents in this way, Asta felt a sudden tug of loneliness and fatigue.

  Fighting these emotions, she forced her attention back to the room.

  At first glance, she had thought that the small signs of disarray—the spilled vase, the scattered books—might simply have been due to the door being left open and the wanton destructiveness of the wind coming off the fjord. Now, as she looked more closely, she suspected that this was not the full story. The areas of mess were somehow too contained, too specific.

  She stepped across the room, closing the door to shut out the insistent sound of the wind in order to get a better sense of things.

  Ever practical, she looked around for something with which to mop up the spilled flower water. She decided that the throw was probably her best bet, though it seemed almost sacrilege to use the fine cloth in this way.

  She cleaned up the water and set the roses back into the vase, where a minimal amount of water remained. As she did so, she caught the musky perfume of the wild roses. The scent was so strong, it filled the small room—and not in an altogether pleasant way. She realized that though the blooms were still vibrant, they were on the verge of decay.

  Next she turned her attention to the fallen urn containing the fishing rods. She righted this, realizing that it might easily have been knocked over by accident as someone—Silva?—had moved between the chaise and the bookcase.

  Moving carefully in this direction herself, she crouched down over the pool of books, fanned open on the carpet. It pained her to see books mistreated like this. Silly, really, because books were only inanimate objects, weren’t they? All the same, she began taking each book in turn and closing it properly, then stacking them in a neat pile to her side.

  As she lifted away the books, however, she noticed that hidden among them were narrow slips of paper, bearing familiar handwriting. She picked one up, her hand trembling as she brought it to her eyes. It was another note, in the same hand as the one she had retrieved from Prince Anders’s locket.

  One day, we will be together—in public as we are in private.

  The note was almost identical in size and appearance to the previous one. The only significant difference was that, where the first had been curled to fit inside the locket, this one lay flat.

  Setting the note carefully on the low table, Asta cleared away another couple of books, revealing another note lying beneath them.

  You call me your mystery, but I will share all my secrets with you, my love.

  Asta’s heart was racing, but not from any romantic notion. On a sudden impulse, she made her way over to the bookcase and selected a book at random. She lifted it up and let the pages fan open. As she did so, just as she had expected, another slip of paper fluttered to the rug below. It was another, similarly sized, note.

  She reached for another book and upended this too. Another note fell to the floor. Same size, same handwriting. She didn’t bother reading it before choosing another book at random. Same procedure. Out came another note, in the very same hand. No wonder the notes were so smooth. They had been used as the most intimate kind of bookmarks.

  She sat down on the floor, resting her head against the arm of one of the chairs. Things were starting to come together. This was Prince Anders’s secret space—a place where he could not only meet his mystery woman but also where he could safely stow the evidence of their relationship, away from the prying eyes of his wife. Until now.

  Asta suddenly realized from the increasing chill in the hut that the door to the hut was open again. She knew she had shut it securely and that, however strong, the wind could not have twisted the handle. There could only be one explanation and, indeed, as her eyes turned toward the doorway, she found Silva standing there, at the threshold, her face cold with fury. Asta could not restrain the shiver that came not only from the fresh gust of outside air but from Silva’s sudden arrival and obvious distress.

  Silva’s face was contorted with pain, her usually perfect skin str
eaked with tears. When she spoke, her voice was raw and husky, as if she had been out too long in the cold. “This was the place he came to—to be with her.”

  Asta rose slowly to her feet. “Yes, I think you’re right. But do you know who he came here to meet?”

  Silva’s face was as expressionless as a mask. “I don’t know for certain. But I have my strong suspicions.”

  “Who?” Asta asked.

  Silva opened her mouth but then seemed to think better of speaking. She smiled at Asta instead, but it was a bitter smile. “Someone whose traitorous lips are as red as those rose petals.” Her eyes lingered on the few petals that were still strewn across the floor.

  Asta waited, barely daring to breathe, hoping Silva would say more. When she did not, Asta heard her own voice, reaching out as tentatively as a cat’s paw.

  “You know you can talk to me, don’t you?” she said. “We haven’t known each other long but perhaps it would help to share your thoughts with a friend?”

  Her words were intended to gain Silva’s confidence but they seemed to have the opposite effect.

  “How can I be sure you are my friend?” Silva asked, shaking her head slowly. “How do I know who I can and cannot trust in this godforsaken place?” The poor woman seemed utterly broken.

  Asta decided that bluntness might prove the best means of getting to the heart of the matter. “Silva, did you know when I showed you the Prince’s key that it would open the door to this bathing house?”

  Silva nodded. It was a very small movement and her expression called to mind a child caught in a mischievous act. “I always wanted to come here but he would never let me. He said it was his one private place.” Her cornflower-blue eyes glistened, as if with unshared tears, as they absorbed the room and its contents. Asta knew her companion was torturing herself, conjuring up all the betrayals—some small, others large—that might have happened within the flimsy wooden walls.

  “You knew your marriage was politically motivated to forge the necessary alliance between Archenfield and Woodlark,” Asta said now. “You’re nobody’s fool, Lady Silva. I’m fairly certain you knew exactly what you were getting into here.”