“I suppose we should start,” Kaldar said.
George dragged a large freestanding corkboard into view.
Mirth drained from Kaldar’s face. “Now then.”
He opened the leather file and began pinning images to the board, five in all. Charlotte felt a pang of regret. She still saw Tulip in her dreams, but now, when she awoke, Richard held her, and the feeling of lying next to him was indescribable. He never said it, but the way he looked at her, the way he listened, the way they gave pleasure to each other made her feel loved, and deep inside her, a pathetic little hope had reared its head. She hated herself for that hope. It chipped at her resolve and at his. This path demanded sacrifices. They both knew it. They had both agreed to accept it. But each moment she had him to herself felt like a gift. Now that hope was dying, and its death throes brought her at once relief and a sickening fear.
“Lord Casside.”
Kaldar pointed to the first image. A dark-haired man with a strong profile stared back at them.
“Minor nobility, of the lesser-known branch of the Dweller family. An only son and a self-made man. About five years ago, he quietly began to liquidate his assets and invest all of his money into Blackwolf Imports and Exports.”
“Blackwolf?” Richard grimaced.
“Not really an imaginative guy.” Kaldar tapped the picture. “You were right, by the way. Height, weight, skin and eye color. Everything is consistent. If it wasn’t for the nose and the chin, he could be part of the family.”
“What family?” Charlotte asked.
“Our family,” Richard said. “I’ll explain in a minute.”
“Then we have Earl Maedoc.”
Kaldar tapped the second picture. On it, an older man glowered, his features harsh, his stare direct. His gray hair was shorn close to his scalp, and his hooded eyes looked unfriendly.
“Veteran of the Adrianglian Army, decorated, praised, respected. He oversees recruiting efforts. He also supplies new muscle to the slavers.”
“Being in charge of the recruiting allows him to weed out those unsuitable to military service,” George said. “Those with a penchant for sadism, for example. He steers them toward the slavers.”
“Lady Ermine.”
Kaldar touched the next image. A woman in her late twenties. Delicate bone structure, coils of caramel hair, narrow eyes but a rare, highly prized color: a translucent light green.
“Another investor. Lady Ermine also takes a special interest in female slaves. She selects several each season and trains them to increase their value.”
“How do you know this?” Richard asked.
“The Mirror has a list in her file, which she had forgotten in her room at one of the state functions. It details purchases of personal items, including slinky garments and various inappropriate but entertaining things for seven women with different garment sizes and detailed prescriptions for Midwife’s Bane . . .”
Those bastards.
“. . . which is apparently . . .”
“Used as a means of birth control.” Charlotte ground out, furious. “If the dose is large enough, it can cause damage to the lining of the uterus, rendering a woman infertile.” They were robbing the slave women of their fertility to prevent inconvenient offspring. She was infertile, and she understood the full enormity of their loss. She would crush that Ermine woman like a maggot under her shoe.
“What she said,” Kaldar said. “The names on the list had the flair of the Broken. There was a Britney, which doesn’t occur here that often, but there was also a Christina, which is a completely Broken name.”
Good point.
“Why?” George asked.
“Because it’s derived from the word ‘Christian,’” Charlotte said. “In the Broken, Jesus Christ was viewed as the son of God, and his followers are Christians. In the Weird, it was John the Nazarite, whose followers are called the Nazaratians. In the Weird, a Christina would be named Johanna.”
Kaldar shrugged. “It’s clear that at least some women on that list came from the Edge, if not from the Broken itself. There’s no logical reason for Angelia to have made that list, and when a covert Mirror operative posing as a servant attempted to return it, Lady Ermine claimed she had never seen it before. The Mirror put it into her file as an oddity. Now that we know she’s connected to the slave trade, it makes much more sense.”
Richard was staring at an image of an urbane, groomed blond man with sharp features and an overly elaborate haircut. There was a focused, predatory edge to his glare. “What about him?”
“Baron Oleg Rene.” Kaldar crossed his arms. His face had gained an unexpected vicious edge. “You wouldn’t believe who he’s related to. You see the family resemblance?”
“Spider.” Richard spat the word like it was poison.
“A distant cousin. How about that?”
The two men glared at that picture, the hate on their faces so similar, they looked like twins.
“The same Spider who killed Sophie’s mother?” Charlotte asked.
Kaldar nodded. “Rene is Spider’s younger half sister’s son, the Adrianglian branch of the family. Because of this inconvenient connection, he’s been blacklisted from military service, the Department of the Interior, and the Diplomatic Corps.”
“What does he do?” George asked.
“Arts, sports, and entertainment,” Kaldar said. “He travels around the country working as a glorified event planner. Organizes festivals, tourneys, and so on. The Department of the Interior has no issue with it as long as somebody else provides his security. He’s very good at it, apparently.”
“So he can move around the country pretty much at random,” Richard said.
Kaldar nodded. “I’m thinking they use him as a buyer / scout / trouble fixer.”
He turned to the last photograph. On it a man in his middle forties looked at the world with hazel eyes. He was handsome, with a masculine beauty that was just a shade too rugged to be perfect, and that slight roughness only added to his appeal. His expression was dignified but free of pretense. An engaging smile played on his lips and in his eyes, proclaiming loudly that this man was worthy of loyalty because he was good and would do the right thing. Its power was so pronounced, Charlotte felt compelled to smile back.
“Viscount Robert Brennan,” Kaldar said. “The main head of this twisted hydra.”
He sat down. “How do you want to go about it?”
“We need a confession,” Richard said. “Or at the very least, an admission of guilt.”
“Brennan is a tough nut to crack.” Kaldar’s face turned grim. “It’s not just that he’s a cousin of the king. He’s also popular. Blueblood ladies think he’s darling, and men think he’s a man’s man. He’s athletic, charming, funny, and they all love him. You’ll be fighting against the tide of public opinion.”
“Then we’ll need to turn it against him,” Richard said.
“How the hell are you going to do that?”
“Why can’t we simply remove him from the equation?” George asked.
“Because if we kill him, the organization wouldn’t die,” Richard told him. “Think of a monarchy. One king dies, another takes his place, but the institution survives.”
“Richard is right.” Charlotte rose.
The two men and a boy immediately stood up.
“Why did you get up?” she asked George.
“You’re a woman,” George answered.
“Yes, but what is the reason?”
“I don’t know.”
“You rose because hundreds of years ago, when a woman entered a room full of men, she wasn’t exactly safe. Especially if she was beautiful or had holdings. Our magic is just as deadly, but physically, an average male is stronger than an average woman, so when a woman entered the room, men who knew her stood up to indicate that they would shield her from danger. The three of you just declared yourself my protectors.”
They looked at her.
“A modern woman is hardly in
danger of a direct assault,” Charlotte said. “So why do men still get up?”
George frowned.
Charlotte smiled at Kaldar. “You know, don’t you?”
“We get up because women like it.” Kaldar clapped George on the shoulder. “You don’t want to look like an unmannered bumpkin in front of a girl. And if you get up and she notices you, she might sit by you.”
“Exactly. There is no law that says men should rise, but you still do because women enjoy this show of attention. It’s so ingrained in your nature that when we first met, Richard refused to sit down until I did, even though he was half-dead at the time.”
Richard cleared his throat. “That’s a wild exaggeration. I was a quarter-dead, at most.”
Kaldar swiveled toward him and peered at his brother’s face. “That’s two jokes in less than an hour. You feeling all right?” he asked quietly. “Feverish, eh?”
“I’m fine. Get out of my face.”
Kaldar looked at her, then back at Richard, then at her again.
Charlotte sat down. The three men sat.
“The monarchy survives because the bluebloods like it,” she said. “Most Adrianglians like it. It’s an idea that appeals to them on some level. The king has less power than the collective Assembly or the Council, for example, so he can be overthrown. But we like to pretend we’re still a warrior nation under a single strong leader, and we idealize the throne and those who sit on it.”
“Or stand close,” Richard added.
“The bluebloods don’t fear laws,” she continued. “Some of us still think they don’t apply to us. We fear only public judgment. The public has judged the royal family to be paragons of virtue. We can’t fight that, or we’d have to rub the blueblood noses in the fact that their long bloodlines don’t bestow them with nobility of spirit the moment they pop out of their mothers.”
Richard nodded. “The bookkeeper on the island is a prime example—she was so committed to Brennan, her eyes practically glistened at the thought of him. In her mind, he could never do anything base.”
Their minds ran on parallel tracks. “We can’t fight the system,” Charlotte agreed. “But we can tarnish one individual. To crush the slaver ring, we have to get Brennan to admit to an act so base, so at odds with the standard of blueblood behavior, that society will have no choice but to judge him as defective. He will be viewed as a freak, unworthy of his pedigree. Anything he engaged in would become unclean. The bluebloods will destroy him just to escape the taint.”
“I like the way you think,” Kaldar said.
Richard nodded. “I agree. The public disdain and disgust must be so severe that it would cause a cry of outrage. The slave owners must recognize that being discovered would make them instant social pariahs. That’s the only way the institution of slavery can be rooted out.”
Richard rose and walked to the board. “Brennan built this organization. He made it efficient, resilient, and profitable. We don’t know why. He doesn’t need the money, and if it ever became public, he’d lose everything. Something must’ve compelled him to create it. He cares a great deal about it. When we fought the Hand, we suffered setback after setback, but we didn’t break until the end.”
A muscle jerked in Kaldar’s face. “Erian.”
The half brother Richard had mentioned. “I don’t understand,” Charlotte said.
“Our youngest brother betrayed the family to the Hand,” Kaldar said.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared,” Richard said.
“Richard let him go,” Kaldar told her. “He saw Erian walking away, and he let him go. We’ll all regret this one day, mark my words.”
“Back to Brennan. We make him think he’s being betrayed,” Richard said. “Make him think there is a coup and one of the others is trying to take over. It will drive him over the edge.”
“You’ll need at least two people for that,” Kaldar said. “A single person stirring up trouble is too easy to trace. You need at least two people pretending to act independently. And you’re right out, my dear brother, because your mug has by now reached Brennan’s desk.”
“I can do it,” Charlotte said. “They don’t know me. I don’t even have to pretend to be anyone but myself.”
“Okay, that’s one,” Kaldar said. “But I can’t help you and neither can Audrey. The Mirror would have our asses, and, besides, we’re on call. The Grand Thane Callis is marrying Marchesa Imelle de Lon in a month. Why couldn’t that old geezer find himself an Adrianglian woman to marry, I’ll never know. There is a realm full of old ladies waiting for him, but no, that old goat had to go to Louisiana to get himself a wife.”
The Grand Thane never concerned himself with playing by the rules. Roughly eighty years ago, when Rogan Brennan sat on the throne, his sister Solina Brennan married Jarl Ulrich Hakonssen of Vinland in the north. After Rogan, the crown passed to his son Olred, which made Jarl Ulrich Grand Thane, a title traditionally held by the king’s oldest uncle. As Grand Thane, he had defended the realm, leading the Adrianglian Army and Fleet to victories in the Ten Year’s War. Olred managed to get himself killed before he produced an heir. Because of Jarl Ulrich’s foreign birth, Solina couldn’t assume the throne, and their daughter Gallena became the monarch of Adrianglia. Now Gallena’s son sat on the throne. The Grand Thane was father to the previous queen and grandfather to the current king and Brennan, but he had kept the title that made him famous. Charlotte had seen him twice from afar: he was a massive, battle-scarred bear of a man, famous for his magic, physical might in battle, and roaring voice. Lady Solina had died almost fifteen years ago, and now he finally chose to remarry. She imagined he didn’t want to spend the twilight of his life alone.
“Anyone who is anyone in both Louisiana and Adrianglia will be at that wedding,” Kaldar continued. “The entire Mirror is on full alert.”
“That would be an excellent place to expose Brennan,” Charlotte thought out loud.
“It is, but I can’t be the one to do it. I tried to hint at it to Erwin, who is in charge of operations for my unit, and he shut me down, fast. You’re still short a player,” Kaldar said. “You need that overlap of influence. That’s the way that con works. You must work completely independently from two different angles toward a common goal.”
“Perhaps I—” George said.
“No,” all three of them answered in unison.
“You have your future to think about,” Charlotte told him. “If we fail, Brennan will make it his mission to ruin you in the most gruesome way possible.”
“Not only that,” Richard added, “but you are well-known and well connected. If you fall, you will drag your sister, your brother-in-law, and your brother down with you. You can help, George. But you must do it covertly.”
“We’re out of luck,” Kaldar said.
“Not if I become Casside,” Richard said.
What?
“Come again?” Kaldar asked.
“I’ve met him,” Richard said. “He wouldn’t be difficult to impersonate. You said yourself, there is a strong resemblance between us.”
“You’re good with prosthetics, I’ll give you that.” Kaldar crossed his arms. “But this isn’t some meeting in the middle of the night in a dimly lit tavern. You don’t look enough like him to pass, and if you glue shit to your face, it will be clearly visible in the bright lights of all those ballrooms.”
“Not if it’s under my skin,” Richard said.
She realized what he was saying. “Facial surgery?”
He nodded.
Charlotte stared at the picture, comparing the two faces. Richard’s chin was too sharp, his nose bridge too low, his features too defined, and the eyebrows too high . . . No, too much, too many differences. It would never work.
“You’re insane. Who’s going to do this?” Kaldar demanded.
“Dekart,” Richard said.
Kaldar frowned.
“Who is Dekart?” she asked.
“He
is a defector from Louisiana,” Kaldar answered. “They were going to exile him for some creative surgeries, and he turned tail and ran across the border into the waiting arms of the Department of the Interior. What makes you think he’ll go for it?”
“I have access to the Camarine and Sandine combined finances,” Richard said. “Dekart needs money.”
“Ridiculous,” she told him. “You’re going to trust your face to some defector?”
“Charlotte is right. The man is an artist with a scalpel, but you’ll still die on the operating table,” Kaldar said.
“Not necessarily.” Richard looked at her.
No. Not in a million years. “Forget it.”
“Charlotte . . .”
“I said forget it!” She got up off her chair. “I would have to continuously heal you while the surgeon cut at your face. Look at your chin and look at his. It means cutting the living bone, Richard, and reshaping it. I will have to regrow it beyond its natural shape. Do you have any idea how difficult that is? I’ve assisted in reconstructive surgeries before. I know exactly what’s involved. What you’re proposing is suicide. There is no guarantee I can keep you alive. Best-case scenario, you would be disfigured. Worst case—dead. It’s too dangerous.”
He simply looked at her.
“It’s too dangerous, Richard. I won’t do it. One slip of the blade, one overlooked infection, and you’ll be gone.”
“Charlotte,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to assist. I can hire a healer.”
“First, then you will die for sure. Second, no healer is going to do this for you. It’s suicide.”
“What other way is there?”
“I don’t know, but this isn’t the way.”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” Richard said.
“I’m not!”
“I ask that you respect my commitment,” he said.
The words lashed at her. She had said the same thing to him when he tried to dissuade her from going with him. They had agreed that they would keep their relationship from interfering with the mission. If they hadn’t made love and he was simply a man she knew, she would caution against the operation, but she wouldn’t become borderline hysterical trying to prevent it.
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