by Laura R Cole
*
Jezebel was caught off guard by the man's hurried exit, and he was out of the library before she could respond. Her temper flared at his attitude of superiority and obvious assumption that she was completely in the dark about the Order. She rose from her chair to pace the room. Well, he might be surprised to find that I have quite a few secrets myself. And not all of them are pleasant. She let herself have a momentary daydream about unleashing Devon’s ‘skills’ on the horrid man. I’ll bet even when he broke he wouldn’t be able to tell me much more than I already know. I know about more of their secrets then he realizes.
She grumbled to herself. Someday she would be the one with all the power and then she would crush all those people who had done her wrong. I wonder what kind of guise I could give him for coming to see me that would embarrass him, she wondered with a sudden inspiration. He had not presented himself with any title, so she was unsure of what his actual rank was. He acted like higher nobility and certainly thought that he was better than her. I'll prove to him how wrong he is, she thought to herself. Already she knew far more about the Order than he could possibly suspect, and she had every intention of setting Devon to the task of learning the real reason behind this assignment she was being ‘asked’ to do.
If she had learned anything about people in power, it was that very rarely did they tell the truth of what they were doing. Not that she could blame them; it was much easier to get a task accomplished by not bothering to explain the real purpose to all of the pawns involved. If she had to get it through the servants’ thick heads the whys of all her orders, she'd never get things done. However, she was not going to sit around and let the Order pull her strings, she was not a worthless servant who should blindly accept commands without question.
She sat back down in the chair and sipped her wine, having forgotten about her pledge to stay away from the stuff. She let the wheels in her mind turn to find that special something that would allow her to stand the man's arrogance just knowing that he had arrived here as...something. But what? She asked herself.
The day wound down and still no brilliant ideas had hit her. Jezebel was frustrated enough to give up and go to bed when Devon entered the room through one of the secret entrances. His appearance startled her and she felt a wave of disapproval that he would enter her presence with no preamble. He looked serious, however, so she just sat silently, watching him as though she had known he was going to come through the wall at that particular time and had been waiting for him. He swiftly approached her chair and knelt next to it, a letter in his hand.
“Apparently, the Order wants to make it clear that they have been checking up on us as well, my lady. I found this letter in the confession box where I first learned of their society.” Jezebel raised an eyebrow in a bored expression, and Devon quickly continued. “The priest whose lips uttered the secrets of the Order now lies dead, sprawled in a locked room in a pool of his own blood that spread seeping from a dozen wounds. The members of the church say that although his office was filled with rare treasures and items of value, the only ones missing are books, documents, and a few coins from a purse he carried. No one saw or heard anything, and I barely got out with this before the officials came.”
Jezebel's expression had changed from boredom to worry and he held the letter out to her tensely. She knew that the Order protected their secrets vehemently, but it disturbed her that they had found out so quickly about the betrayal of trust, and reacted with such violence. She took the letter from Devon with slightly shaking hands, and fought hard not to show any hint of fear. Fear was an emotion she was neither familiar nor comfortable with, and not one that she cared to show any sign of. She carefully ran a nail across the wax seal to break it. ‘Consider this your warning’, it said, ‘We guard our secrets with our lives and our lives are forfeit if we fail. You would be wise to think upon this before reading further’.
She glanced up at Devon and dismissed him with a nod, forgetting to reprimand him for his carelessness in her anxiety. He left reluctantly, obviously having hoped to be filled in on the contents of the letter, but Jezebel had no intention of sharing her secrets with anyone and ending up like the priest, her earlier confidence shaken.
Once he had exited back through the secret passage, Jezebel dropped her gaze to the letter in front of her. ‘With that said,’ it continued, ‘we would like to invite you to use your extensive network of informants (run by your fine man) on a matter of real importance rather than waste his expertise trying to find answers to issues you don't even know the questions for’. Jezebel frowned at this jab, and she could feel her face growing hot. ‘We have learned that our eastern neighbor, Treymayne, whose borders have been closed to us for hundreds of years, has started filtering a few people across at a time. We believe these people are spies, and we'd like Devon to help us identify them. For now, we'll expect his people to gather any information on traders, nomads, or any other person that cannot give a definite place of origin inside of Gelendan and report back to us anything that you learn. We will be in touch with you again soon at which time you may relay your findings and we will fill you in on more of the details. Thank you for lending us your help in this matter. We trust that you will dispose of this letter once digesting this information’. It was unsigned and written in perfectly scribed letters which gave no clues to indicate anything to Jezebel about the author, though she knew it must be that worm Jonathan.
She reread it several times before walking over and tossing it into the fireplace where it crackled and curled up as it burned into a blackened fragment. She stood staring at the fire for some time. Why is the Order suddenly interested in spies? A log snapped and a spark flew out towards her. I suppose that spies would pose a threat to their way of life if those spies were a prelude to conflict between the two countries. Perhaps there is already something brewing.
Treymayne had silently been their eastern neighbor since the end of the Massacre and the erection of the barrier between them, and so far they had held on to a tentative peace with Gelendan. If the Order was suddenly paying attention to a country that had been ignored for so long, perhaps it was an indication of a future dispute.
This led Jezebel to a happy daydream; maybe she would get the chance to increase her kingdom if Treymayne chose to attack and was defeated. She could start an empire, claiming the mysterious Treymayne to the east and taming the savage lands to the north.
Jezebel's train of thought was punctuated by a yawn, and she decided to head to bed. Tomorrow she would think on this further. With that decision made, she headed to her suite. But it wasn't until several hours later that she actually fell into sleep, as she was unable to stop her mind from whirling. Some of it was happy thoughts of her eventual rule. But what kept her awake most of all, was the unwelcome fear that perhaps the Order was a force to be reckoned with after all.
