Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series

by Lindsay Buroker

  “The elves have an evolution hypothesis. I’m aware of it.” Targyon turned back to the cabinet, pulled out a drawer, flipped a few cards, then grabbed a lantern and headed for a corner of the library. “I’m not aware of any diseases that struck my family in the past, but I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t studied my own lineage that much. The future has always drawn my interest more so than the past. To my father’s consternation. He teaches global history at the university in Rokvann.”

  Jev followed his king, having a notion that he shouldn’t let Targyon out of his sight as long as the bodyguards weren’t around.

  “Ah, here we go. Everything you wanted to know about the Alderoth family line, plus fifty or sixty tons of paper more.” Targyon spread his arms, shining the lantern on a bookcase stuffed with scrolls, boxes of letters, and old books with yellowed pages trying to fall out. “I wonder if anyone has mapped it out in a nice chart? Fifteen-hundred-odd years might defy the constraints of a scroll though. That’s a lot of parchment. A whole flock of sheep would have been sacrificed.”

  “I was going to feel guilty about foisting my work onto you,” Jev said, accepting the lantern Targyon handed him, “but this is the most excited I’ve seen you since we spent that night decrypting that dwarven courier’s message.”

  “You know research and solving puzzles get me excited. I’d happily work on this with you in the Crown Agents’ office, but I fear people would be reluctant to speak openly with me around.”

  As Targyon removed books and scrolls, handing some to Jev and piling more into his own arms, Jev thought about mentioning Zenia having a similar problem when it came to Order representatives, but he doubted she would want him sharing her difficulties with the king.

  “I also fear I might get myself in trouble if I were seen openly poking into the mystery of my own coronation. Like I might seem ungrateful and intractable and—” Targyon grunted as he pulled out a final thick book and headed to the nearest table. “I don’t know, Captain. Am I being paranoid? They chose me, so someone must want me here. I just don’t know if I’m what they expected.”

  “Were you what your parents expected? You’re not very zyndar-ish.”

  “Neither are my parents. My mother didn’t think my father was from a zyndar family at all when they first started seeing each other. I think she wanted to marry a commoner. Maybe to ensure her children would never be considered for the throne.” Targyon carefully set down his collection. “Alas for her, Father is from the Mayjarin family, the seventh son of a minor zyndar prime. No chance of him inheriting. Or so you’d think.” Targyon spread a few scrolls, then made a delighted noise, almost like a cat’s purr. “There are genealogical charts. But look at that tiny writing. This is going to take a while, especially in this light.”

  Jev brought over more lanterns while Targyon used books to pin down the corners of four scrolls’ worth of charts. They had to drag over a second table to fit everything.

  “I assume we’re looking for Alderoths who had oddly short lives?” Targyon glanced at Jev.

  “I think that’s all we can hope to deduce from those charts.” Jev waved at the trees of who married who over the centuries, where they had come from, and the children they had spawned. Dates indicated how long each person had lived, but there was no other information there. “It’s certainly possible that older people could have died from the disease, too, but cause of death won’t be listed on there, I assume.”

  Targyon bent low over one of the charts. “No. And I can tell already that a lot of my ancestors died young. It seems that being royal wasn’t an antidote to the short life expectancy that plagued the kingdom until rather recently. Nothing here about pustules on the bodies of the dead.” He grabbed a pencil and a stack of papers from a box on a nearby table.

  “Pustules?” Jev asked. “Is that one of the symptoms?”

  “All three of my cousins had them near the end.”

  “Do you know the rest of the symptoms?” Jev didn’t see how he could, since Targyon had been with him sailing back from Taziira when the princes had been afflicted and died.

  Targyon straightened, drew a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket, and handed it to Jev before returning to his bent stance. While Targyon started writing down names, dates, and ages of death for notable people, Jev unfolded the paper. The symptoms were listed in a neat column. Jev recognized Targyon’s tidy handwriting.

  “I did a little research of my own,” Targyon said, anticipating Jev’s next question.

  “To find out if you recognized the disease?”

  “To find out if… to know what to expect if some of the symptoms start appearing. In me.”

  “Ah.”

  Jev imagined how he would feel in Targyon’s place, returning to his homeland only to learn that he had to go be king and live in a castle and a city that had belonged to his ancestors and relatives but never to him. Knowing his cousins had all died recently in this very castle. Lying awake at night, wondering if what had killed them was gone or if virulent bacteria still lurked in the halls, waiting to jump into his skin…

  Jev didn’t know if it was allowed, but he patted Targyon on the back.

  Targyon looked at him curiously.

  “Just checking for pustules,” Jev said.

  Targyon grunted. “Those come last. The fever is first. And fatigue.”

  “If it helps, you look perky for this hour.”

  “Because you gave me research to do.”

  “Have you taken the symptom list to a doctor to see what one thinks? If you didn’t hear already, Dr. Bandigor was dead when we went to question him.”

  “I heard. I took the list to Dr. Astnar.” Targyon scribbled two more names on his paper.

  “The army’s Dr. Astnar? The man who said amputation never slows a good man down for long?”

  “I was fairly certain I could trust him.”

  “But he’s a field surgeon, not a… researcher of rare diseases.” Jev didn’t even know what such a doctor would be called. Nor did he know for certain this disease was rare.

  “Which possibly explains why he didn’t have any ideas.”

  “Can I take this list?” Jev held up the page. “I’m planning to speak with a medical expert at one of the universities. Or maybe that unicorn doctor at the Second Korvann Hospital. Their kind are reputed to be indifferent to politics, economics, and humans in general, except as specimens to study.”

  “Take it. I’ve got it memorized. I did consider visiting Dr. Oligonite, the unicorn, but there’s someone else I came up with who may even be a suspect.”

  Jev slipped the paper into one of his pockets. “Oh?”

  “Zyndari Dr. Ghara Nhole. She’s a scientist, a mad scientist if the tales are to be believed. She appeared in the newspapers a few years ago in relation to the wheat and barley crops that were annihilated by locusts. You were gone but may remember news of famine back here in Kor.”

  Jev nodded.

  “She predicted that it would be a horrible year for locusts months before they showed up. Based on some climate and weather analysis, I gathered, but the common and uneducated, being what they are, came up with notions that she’d caused the locusts because she predicted them. There were riots outside her university office. Since then, she’s stayed in her family’s castle and avoided going to the city.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I looked her up back then. She studied medical science as well as environmental science at Trakmeer University and was at the top of her classes. She published a research paper on ingested anti-fungal and antimicrobial substances being useful for fighting infections. She may know something about diseases that strike down certain families.”

  “I can take Zenia and go out and see her.”

  “Don’t tell her I sent you. In fact, don’t tell anyone I’m doing research on this at all, please.”

  “If anyone asks if I saw you tonight, I’ll say you were merely snoozing under the piano,” Jev said.


  “That could still happen.”

  While Targyon wrote down more names, Jev sat at the table and opened one of several books that had been written over the years on the Alderoth family. If their ancestors had been known to suffer from some blood disease, maybe a scribe of the time would have mentioned it. Tomorrow, he would head out to Nhole Castle.

  The sooner he and Zenia got to the bottom of this apple barrel, the sooner Targyon could rest a little easier. Not, ideally, under a piano.

  7

  Zenia spooned small bites from a bowl of cinnamon-dusted porridge while agents ambled into the kitchen to join her. She had selected a table at the rear, so they wouldn’t be interrupted often, though the banging of pots and scrapes of spoons in the main part of the kitchen did mean there would be noise. This, however, was where the staff ate, and the Crown Agents, if they chose to eat in the castle, were included in that category.

  She hadn’t expected to dine at the royal table every day, but she couldn’t help but feel this was a demotion, at least in social standing, from being a temple inquisitor. She had been near the top of the food chain there, dining with the other senior mages at the same table as Archmage Sazshen.

  Not that such things mattered, Zenia told herself firmly. Jev would likely plop down next to her with his own porridge and not think it insulting for a zyndar to eat in the kitchen with the staff. He truly was the least egotistical zyndar she’d met, though, as he’d once implied, ten years in the field had helped cultivate that. Sleeping on the ground in the elements and eating from a common cookpot must have rubbed away some of his delusions about the superiority of the nobility.

  Every time the door opened, Zenia looked up, expecting Jev. She’d mentioned when they parted the night before that she wanted to have a staff meeting this morning to hear if the rest of the agents had found anything useful. She also wanted to get to know them better, to start to get a feel for who she could trust.

  “What’s going on, ma’am?” Lunis Drem, one of the younger Crown Agents, asked. A woman in her late twenties who wore her thick brown hair up in a strict bun, she had been promoted out of the city watch’s investigative division.

  She was, aside from the secretary, the only other woman in the office.

  “I want to hear what you all think,” Zenia said, deciding that most of the staff had arrived and that she could start without Jev, “about who wanted King Targyon on the throne and why he might have been chosen.”

  “The archmages of the Orders chose him, as they always do.” Brokko frowned at her, managing to avoid eyeing her chest this morning.

  Zenia wondered if Jev had punched him yet. Not without her there to watch, she hoped.

  “But did they decide of their own accord or were there outside pressures?” Zenia asked, thinking of how seldom Sazshen had mentioned the king or her thoughts on the succession.

  “I think one of the underworld criminal organizations may have played a role.” Lunis leaned forward, clasping her hands. “May I share my hypothesis with you?”

  Two men groaned. Zenia, believing she may have found an eager-to-prove-herself colleague she could understand completely, nodded.

  “With King Abdor gone for so many of these last ten years,” Lunis said, “the underworld guilds have taken advantage, many of them growing bolder and more powerful. Tiger Hunters, Future Order, and the Fifth Dragon have all increased the sizes of their territories and extended their reach outside the capital. Far outside. We’ve inspected shipments and found they have trade relations with other nations.”

  A door opened, and a yawning Jev walked in, his hair mussed.

  Zenia waved for Lunis to continue with her report but scrutinized Jev as he approached, surprised he had been late. And also surprised he was wearing the same clothing from the day before.

  As if he’d spent the night here. Or… with some woman?

  Zenia frowned at herself and stomped out the jealous thought before it could take root. Besides, if he did sleep with a woman, could she blame him? She never had accepted his offer of a date.

  And why hadn’t she?

  She would enjoy spending time with him in a non-official capacity—once they solved their current case. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she might enjoy it too much, as she had that kiss they had shared in his castle—when she should have been going after that artifact. What if they dated and she ended up succumbing to temptation and having sex with him? She didn’t want to put herself in a situation where she ended up with child, not when she had a new career to establish and certainly not when she wasn’t married. And she couldn’t imagine Jev proposing to her. Even if he was less zyndar-ish than most zyndar, he was still the oldest son and heir to his father’s estate. His family would have expectations, expectations she did not have the blood to meet.

  Even if her zyndar father had acknowledged her, Morningfar came from such a minor family that she doubted it would suffice. And she’d eat her own sandal before asking the odious turd to acknowledge her. She didn’t want to be zyndar. To become someone without that status meant so much more.

  “What are you mulling over this morning?” Jev whispered, sliding into the empty chair beside Zenia and nodding to Lunis, who was listing everything the criminal guilds stood to gain if they had a king on the throne who was friendly, or at least indifferent, to them.

  He’d grabbed a bowl of porridge on the way over and dug in with a spoon.

  “Underworld guilds.” Zenia felt her cheeks warm. She hated lying, but she also had no intention of confessing the path her mind had wandered down when he’d walked in.

  “Have they done anything inimical this week?”

  “Besides stripping us naked?”

  “That was last week.”

  “Are you sure? I think it was only five or six days ago.”

  He considered that. “It’s been a long and eventful week.”

  “Yes.” Zenia turned back to Lunis, not wanting to miss the report she’d asked for. The young woman barely seemed aware that she’d been whispering to Jev.

  As Lunis was wrapping up, explaining some of the recent activities of the organizations, the door opened again. A castle page of twelve or thirteen burst in. He looked around the table, then raced to Jev.

  “Zyndar Dharrow?”

  “Tamordon?” Jev asked.

  He knew the names of the pages? Zenia abruptly felt like a heel because she did not.

  “I wasn’t sure who to tell. Steward Merkish said for me to mind my business.” The page wrinkled his nose distastefully. “But I’m zyndar. I have to watch out for my king!”

  “Indeed you do. Tell me.”

  By now, Lunis had stopped speaking, and the rest of the agents at the table were watching the exchange. The boy noticed them and hesitated.

  Jev patted him on the shoulder encouragingly.

  “There’s a woman seeing the king. A dangerous woman. His secretary tried to refuse her, said she wasn’t on the appointment book, but then he got confused because when he checked, the woman was on the book. He said he was positive she hadn’t been penciled in the day before. The woman patted him on the cheek and strode into the king’s office. The bodyguards didn’t stop her.” The page lowered his voice. “I recognized her. On account of—you heard about what happened with my uncle? How he was, uhm, acquitted? Is that the word? Even though he was, uhm, doing things?”

  Zenia gripped her chin, struggling for patience as the boy babbled on.

  “I hadn’t heard that,” Jev said, “but go ahead.”

  Zenia suspected Jev knew the boy’s name but not much else about him or his family, at least not much that had happened in the years he’d been away. The page had likely latched onto him because he was zyndar and a soldier who’d seen action during the war. A hero, Zenia decided. That was how young people would see someone like Jev. She wished someone would see her that way. Or at least that the city would decide she wasn’t to be an outcast.

  “It’s Iridium,” the page s
aid. “The Fifth Dragon leader.”

  “I knew it,” Lunis whispered, clenching her fist. “The criminal guilds are already trying to assert themselves on the king.”

  “Audacious that she would show up at the castle,” another agent said. “That didn’t happen when Abdor was king.”

  “Because he or Prince Dazron would have had such a person arrested,” someone else said. “Can we arrest her now? The watch detectives must have enough on her to have her shot.”

  “Multiple times, I should think.”

  Zenia pushed her chair back to stand.

  “We’ll look into it,” she told the agents and the page, then extended a hand toward the door and nodded to Jev.

  “We will?” Jev gave his porridge a mournful look. He’d only taken a bite. “What if Targyon invited her to come up to the castle and doesn’t want us looking into it?”

  “Do you think he would have?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s been doing some investigations on his own.” Jev touched a breast pocket, but he did not unbutton the flap. “He could consider her a resource and be asking her questions.”

  “And did he also sneak in and alter his secretary’s appointment book?”

  “I don’t think it’s considered sneaking if you’re the king, but you’re right. He could have ordered the secretary to change it himself.”

  Zenia, aware of several sets of eyes watching them, pushed through the swinging door and stepped into the nook where she’d dined with Jev and Targyon a couple of mornings earlier.

  “Is it within our right as agents to barge into the king’s office and make sure the woman isn’t physically or emotionally manipulating him?” Zenia asked, concerned about Iridium’s appearance. She highly doubted Targyon had invited her up of his own accord, and the others were right. This was highly audacious of her. Zenia could hardly believe the castle guards hadn’t arrested her instead of showing her in.