Allies & Assassins

by Justin Somper

  “What are you suggesting?” Logan asked Prince Jared.

  Jared met Logan’s gaze. “I’m saying we are now looking at the strong possibility of three murders in the court. First Anders, and now Silva and their unborn child. Three murders within three days, striking right at the heart of the court and right at the heart of my family.”

  There was a long pause. “It’s possible,” Axel acknowledged.

  “It’s more than possible,” Jared retorted sharply. “And I’m guessing that since Michael Reeves was executed yesterday afternoon, you can’t pin this one on him.”

  “Of course not,” Axel said, seeming shocked by the very suggestion. “But we must rely on the evidence before us. Silva has exhibited marked signs of instability since her husband’s death. Her behavior has been noted by others within the court and let’s not forget that the Physician’s niece was even employed as on suicide watch on the day of Anders’s death because we were so concerned. The destruction of Anders’s bathing house is further testimony of Silva’s state of mind. And then to leave the key where she did…”

  “It sounds like your mind is made up,” Jared said. “Will you not even consider any alternate possibility?”

  “Prince Jared is right,” Logan broke in. “We must keep an open mind about all this. We don’t know that Michael Reeves was working alone. A second assassin may have come into play…”

  Axel frowned. “I know you trade in matters of the imagination, Logan, but I’d like to keep this investigation rooted in reality rather than fantasy.”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss Logan’s thoughts,” Jared said, struggling to contain his impatience. “We need to gather the Twelve. I will hear everyone’s thoughts on this matter.”

  Jared felt like he was beginning to gain control again. The feeling did not last long.

  Axel raised his hand. “With respect, Prince Jared, I am Captain of the Guard. The inquiry into Silva’s death is already under way. And the investigation into the assassin from Paddenburg continues. I’m asking for you to let me and my team handle this in the best way our experience advises.”

  Jared shook his head. “Not this time, Axel. You’ve already had three days to pursue my brother’s murder and I am far from convinced that you’ve made any significant headway--I believe that last night you executed the wrong man. And now you’ve got two more deaths on your hands. From now on, I want to be kept informed of every move you make in these investigations.”

  “Cousin Jared!” Axel could not keep the note of protest out of his voice.

  “That’s Prince Jared, to you.” Surprised at the vehemence of his response, Jared continued in a more measured tone. “I am the Prince of All Archenfield and if there is an assassin or, as you have suggested before, that Paddenburg is hell-bent on threatening the peace of this Princedom in the most profound way, then I need to be at the center of the fight back.” Refusing to entertain any further argument, his eyes met Axel’s. “Summon the Twelve, Elias permitting. I understand that he has a more important job to do at this point. But I’ll see the rest of you in the council chamber in thirty minutes’ time.”

  Jared observed Axel glance briefly at Logan. Was he looking for support from his fellow member of the Twelve? If so, he did not receive it. Logan’s eyes remained fixed on the middle distance.

  Axel exhaled deeply, then nodded.

  “I understand, Prince Jared. I shall summon the remainder of the Twelve, as you command.” He turned on his heels and left the Prince’s quarters.

  After he had gone, Jared felt himself trembling, and he was unsure whether it was a result of the exceptional strength he had had to summon to face down the latest challenge from his cousin, or if it was it the well of his emotions at the heartbreaking news about Silva and her unborn child? Whichever it was, the physical effect was profound and he retreated back into his chair, shuddering.

  He found Logan at his side, the Poet’s hand resting on his shoulder. “Just breathe,” the Poet said with a gentleness bordering on tenderness.

  Jared shook his head. “It’s so hard,” he said. “Silva didn’t deserve to die. Nor her child.” He felt a new wave of cold fear snake through his insides. “I know it wasn’t an accident, or suicide. I can feel it. They were murdered, just as Anders was murdered.” He glanced up at Logan.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” the Poet said. “But you should try to keep an open mind, at least for now.”

  Jared shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t think rationally about this. It’s too much and too close. It feels like my family is under attack. Who will be next? My mother? Edvin?” He paused. “Me?”

  Prince Jared glanced up at the Poet. More than anyone else, it was the Poet who had enabled him to get through the past few days. He had never needed a friend’s reassurance more. But, on this occasion, Logan Wilde did not have a reassuring answer, or indeed any kind of answer at all.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Council Chamber, the Palace

  “AND SO,” AXEL WAS CONCLUDING HIS ADDRESS to the council of twelve, “once elias completes his postmortem, we should have a better indication as to whether Silva’s untimely death was accident, suicide or murder.”

  “It wasn’t suicide.” The outburst came from Lucas Curzon. All eyes turned toward him.

  “Lucas,” Jared said, taking control. “You sound very sure about this.”

  “I am,” the Chief Groom said. “I think I was the last person to see her alive.” His face was red and, as much as he wanted to speak, he seemed short of breath.

  “Tell us what you know, Lucas,” Jared said, encouragingly.

  “I was out exercising the horses this morning,” Lucas recalled. “I ran into Asta Peck, down by the fjord. She had been talking to Silva, close to Prince Anders’s bathing house.”

  “Asta Peck?” Logan Wilde repeated. “The Physician’s niece? That girl is turning up everywhere. Someone needs to…”

  “Lucas, please continue.” Jared was keen to move the focus away from Asta.

  “Silva was really upset. She told me she had set off on a walk this morning. It’s become her habit of late. She had acquired the key to the Prince’s bathing house and decided to go there and look inside. I think she thought it would be a way to connect to him, for her and her baby…”

  “Such sentimental superstitions,” Emelie Sands interrupted. “Prince Anders is not to be found in his old bathing hut.”

  Father Simeon cleared his throat softly. “Perhaps not for you, Emelie. But maybe his grieving widow found some presence of him there. Something to comfort her.”

  The Priest’s soothing tone was swiftly shattered by Lucas. “What Silva found in the place was proof of her husband’s betrayal.”

  The word ricocheted around the room. “What do you mean exactly?” Axel asked the Chief Groom.

  Lucas looked deeply uncomfortable. “I don’t want to go into details—it’s not my place—but there were notes there. Love notes sent to the Prince by someone other than his wife.”

  Once more, the room was united in stunned silence.

  “Did you see these notes for yourself?” Jared asked.

  Lucas shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nor would I have wanted to. And, before you ask, she didn’t tell me what was in them—only the gist. What I did see very clearly was the effect they had on her.” He sighed. “It wasn’t pretty.”

  “The notes upset her?” Axel spoke again.

  Lucas met his comrade’s eyes. “They left her quite distressed,” he said. “And who could blame her? It was the ultimate betrayal.”

  “Distressed,” Axel savored the word. “Distressed enough, in your opinion, to burn the bathing house to the ground?”

  “Absolutely,” Lucas responded, with a nod. “It was the best thing for it, if you ask me.”

  “But Silva was not, according to you, of a mind to take her own life and that of her baby?”

  Lucas recoiled at Axel’s latest question, but took a moment
to consider. “She was angry. And yes she was upset. I’d have said she might have done harm to someone else—the person who had written those notes, for instance. But to herself? No.”

  “Did she know who had written the notes?” Logan asked. “Do you know?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as all eyes turned once more to Lucas.

  He shook his head, but Jared couldn’t help but wonder if he was being truthful. “All I know,” said the Chief Groom with renewed vehemence, “is that Silva was not in the frame of mind to harm herself. I’d lay my own life on that.”

  Nova Chastain shuddered.

  “Don’t say such a thing, Lucas,” Emelie Sands spoke. “Don’t summon any more death into this chamber.”

  “It does feel,” Morgan Booth observed, “as if we are being picked off, one by one.”

  “No,” Jared shook his head. “Anders was the Prince but Silva wasn’t one of the Twelve. It’s not the court but my family that is under attack here.”

  “It amounts to one and the same thing,” Axel said. “Either way, someone has launched an attack on the leadership of Archenfield. But, for now, let’s focus on specifics.” He returned his attention to Lucas. “When and how did you leave Silva? If she was so distressed—as you put it—wouldn’t it have made sense to stay with her and try to calm her down?”

  “I agree,” Father Simeon said, lifting his hands. “What were you thinking, leaving her alone when she was clearly in such a fragile state?”

  “I did try to calm her,” Lucas insisted. “But she was very adamant that she wanted to be alone.” He paused, took a breath. “It was what the girl, Asta, told me when I came across her. I gave her a talking to about leaving someone in such a state. I’d heard Silva scream, you see. It was a scream that carried right across the fjord. The girl had heard it too and was obviously shaken by it but Silva sent her on her way.” Lucas’s face spoke of defeat and dejection. “And then she did just the same to me.”

  “So the last you saw of her,” Emelie Sands rejoined the interrogation, “she was in the bathing house?”

  “No,” Lucas corrected her. “Close to the bathing house. But she was sitting on a rock, by the edge of the fjord.”

  “And, to be clear, what time was this?”

  “It was very early. There was still mist on the surface of the fjord. The Captain of the Guard’s Bell had not long sounded”

  Axel’s eyes swept across the company. “And no one else saw Silva after that, until Jonas noticed the smoke coming from the burning hut and, journeying there to see what had happened, discovered Silva’s body—not at the edge of the fjord but back along the river, but back along the river?”

  He was met by a further stunned silence. “Is that right?” Axel pressed them. “None of you, no one in your teams, saw her in the intervening time?”

  Their continued silence was answer enough. “Well then, Lucas, it appears that you were indeed the last person to see Silva alive.”

  “Except,” Emelie spoke again, “the murderer.”

  “I understand, Lucas, that you don’t believe she killed herself,” Axel said, ignoring her. “But your own testimony convinces me otherwise. It’s clear she was very angry and distressed. Let’s suppose that, not long after you took your leave, she got the idea to set fire to the place—to destroy, as she saw it, every last trace of her husband’s betrayal. As the bathing house burns, and it would have burned swiftly, she turns back in the direction of the palace. Perhaps she moves at speed now. I suspect that her progress was erratic, for now her mind is not only filled with thoughts of Anders but also the act of destruction she has wrought. Perhaps she regrets her actions or, at least, feels conflicted about them.—in torching the house, she has destroyed the place where she might have experienced some lingering sense of connection to her husband. Now she reaches the wooden bridge and, having exhausted herself physically and emotionally, pauses to take a breath.”

  All eyes were fixed on Axel as he continued his hypothesis. “We know she was there because she placed the key on the low wooden rail, where it was found later this morning. I considered that she might have slipped, but there was no sign of this, no marks on the planking and no threads from her clothing, snagged on the rough wood. And then there is the key—perfectly positioned like a sign of her intent. If she fell, would that key not have been dislodged?”

  He paused, letting the question take seed with the others, before continuing.

  “The current would certainly have carried her back in the direction she had come. And the combined shock of the cold water and the still fresh discovery of those notes would have made for a hellish journey. Even though the current spared her a battering in the rapids, it was too strong for her fragile body. The undertow dragged her into the tranquil pool to die.”

  He took another breath. “That is what I believe happened to Silva. There is no evidence of anyone else having been there. No one was seen leaving that area after Lucas.”

  Morgan Booth raised his hand. “You’re assuming, of course, that Lucas is not our killer.”

  Lucas paled at the Executioner’s words.

  “That’s correct,” Axel said. “Negligent in his actions concerning Silva, yes, but Lucas does not strike me as the killing kind.”

  “Nor me,” Prince Jared said, with conviction.

  Morgan Booth turned to Lucas with equanimity. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. I was just posing a necessary question.”

  Lucas did not return the Executioner’s gaze, let alone voice a response.

  Prince Jared took the floor once more. “Cousin Axel, the case you lay out for us is indeed persuasive. I, for one, have been skeptical from the outset about suicide. As I said to you, when we spoke of this before, I do not think it likely that a pregnant woman would choose to end her child’s life, however despondent she felt about her own. But, from what Lucas has told us, in her final moments, Silva sounds to have been at the very end of her tether.”

  “But,” Lucas protested.

  “Moods can change as suddenly as the direction of the wind,” Vera Webb, never short of a proverb, observed.

  Jared glanced now at Axel. “Obviously, we are all waiting to know what Elias has to say, on completion of the postmortem. But I think you should pursue the investigation into either death by either accident or suicide.”

  Axel nodded. “Yes, Prince Jared.” He turned to the others. “Well, if no one else has any further business…” He rose to his feet, clearly more than ready for the meeting to dissolve.

  “There is one additional matter we need to discuss.” It was Logan who spoke. “It concerns Silva’s body and her funeral.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Vera Webb. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can stomach.”

  Prince Jared nodded. “I’m sure we all feel the same but we have very little choice. Logan, please continue.”

  Logan nodded. “I understand it’s not a pleasant subject but firstly we need to send word to Woodlark.”

  “By a rider? Or by one of Nova’s falcons?” Axel asked.

  “A rider would be more sensitive and certainly better received,” Logan acknowledged. “But a falcon would be the swiftest means of communication. And I do feel that time is of the essence here. In two days’ time, we have Prince Anders’s funeral. What I’m wondering is if we should make this a double funeral for Anders and Silva? The people are still new in grief for Prince Anders. When they hear of his Consort’s death, they will be further… unsettled.” His eyes swept across the rest of the company. “That’s why I feel a joint funeral would be useful. It would bring Prince Anders’s reign definitively to an end and clears the path for Prince Jared’s coronation and a new beginning for Archenfield.”

  Emelie Sands let out a low breath. “Could you be any more callous?”

  But Axel came to the Poet’s defense. “Logan is simply doing his job,” he said. “It’s no different from you dividing the hives when your queen bee dies…”
/>   “That’s not how it works,” Emelie said crossly.

  “I’m sorry,” Axel said with a dismissive shrug. “But I don’t know your job and I don’t tell you how to do it. Perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to Logan.”

  Emelie’s face flushed with anger but she said nothing further.

  Jared turned to Logan. “Shouldn’t we ask Silva’s parents, Queen Francesca and Prince Willem what their preference would be regarding Silva’s funeral?”

  “That’s a laudable sentiment,” Logan agreed. “But, strictly speaking, once Silva married into your family, she became subject to the laws of Archenfield. It’s far more important how her death is received by our people than by those of Woodlark.”

  Jared frowned. “Can that really be true? Aren’t the people who matter most in this her parents and her siblings?”

  Logan shook his head, with visible sadness. “No. The people who matter the most are your subjects. They are already deeply shaken at the news of your brother’s murder. Reports of Silva’s demise will push them further to the brink. The fairy tale of Archenfield is over. Of course, we will usher in a new era of history with your coronation. Nothing must overshadow the joy and hope embodied by that ceremony.”

  Jared looked at Logan with new eyes. He hadn’t realized until this morning how hard-hearted the Poet could be.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Physician’s Quarters,

  the Village of the Twelve

  ASTA FOUND IT A CONSIDERABLE CHALLENGE TO remain detached from the bruised and battered corpse lying before her on the slab. The last body she had been confronted with like this was Prince Anders. That had been different somehow because she had only ever known him from afar. But over the past few turbulent days, she had gotten to know something of the psyche of Silva Lindeberg Wynyard—from their first meeting only hours after the Prince’s death to their final painful encounter at the bathing house that morning. It made her uncle’s request for her presence in the ice chamber challenging to say the least.