The Way of Shadows
Page 74

This had all the marks of a move, a big move, a play for the throne. But why this way? Killing the prince shook everything, of course, but killing the Gyres’ servants and Lady Gyre did nothing politically. Did it? As of today, his birthday, Logan Gyre became the Gyre in his father’s absence. If you wanted to wipe out a family, you started with the heirs, not everyone else, and unless the news was still en route, both Gyre heirs were still alive.
The prince’s death wasn’t only a terrible blow to the Gunder line, it was an enormous scandal. The king’s affairs had been ignored, but finding the prince dead after apparently having had relations with the king’s mistress would shed all sorts of unflattering light on the entire Gunder line. The assassination, if it were such, wasn’t just a tragedy. It was a horror and an embarrassment.
The lord general wondered whether the horror or the embarrassment would be foremost on the king’s mind. What would the queen do?
He approached the throne and climbed the stairs. The usual men were there, talking with the king. Agon trusted none of them.
“Out,” he roared. “All of you, out!”
“Excuse me,” Fergund Sa’fasti said. “But as the king’s chief—”
“OUT!” Agon bellowed in his face.
The mage shrank and joined the men streaming out of the room. Agon motioned to his bodyguards to step outside, too.
The king didn’t even look up. At length, he said, “I’m ruined, Brant. What will history say about me?”
That you were weak, ineffectual, selfish, and immoral. “Sire, we have more pressing matters.”
“Everyone’s talking about it, Brant. My son—she murdered my boy—” the king started weeping.
So the man is capable of thinking of others. If only he’d show his humanity more often.
“Your Highness, the duchess didn’t kill your son.”
“What?” the king looked up at Agon through bleary eyes.
“Sire, it was a wetboy.”
“I don’t care who actually did it, Brant! Trudana was behind it. Trudana and Logan Gyre.”
“Logan Gyre? What are you talking about?”
“You think you’re the only person I have working on this, Brant? My spies have already told me. Logan was behind it all. That bitch Trudana just cooperated. I’ve already sent men to arrest him.”
Agon reeled. It couldn’t be. In fact, he was sure it wasn’t. “Why would Logan do such a thing?” he asked. “Logan was one of your son’s best friends. He’s isn’t ambitious in the least. By the gods, he just got engaged to Serah Drake. A count’s daughter!”
“It didn’t have anything to do with power or ambition, Brant. It was jealousy. Logan felt that my son had totally humiliated him over some trivial matter. You know how boys get. It’s just like the Gyres to covet our every success. Besides, I have witnesses who heard Logan threaten him.”
It was all rattling together, the pieces spinning and falling into place. Kylar Stern, the false noble, the wetboy, was a close friend of Logan’s. In a fit of rage, Logan hired Kylar to kill the prince. It all fit—except that it was Logan. Agon knew him, and he didn’t believe it.
“Which wetboy did they hire, Brant?” the king asked.
“It was Kylar Stern,” Agon said.
The king snorted. “Huh. The gods must be with me for once.”
“Sire?”
“I just hired Hu Gibbet’s apprentice to go kill him, a girl wetboy, if you can believe it. Kylar is Blint’s apprentice. Or was. He’s probably dead by now.”
Kylar is Blint’s apprentice? The picture that had been slowly spinning together burst apart. The king had hired Blint! Blint’s apprentice wouldn’t have killed his employer’s son. Would he?
The name Hu Gibbet had been carved into the bodies at the Gyre estate. Of course, only a fool would carve his own name onto such a massacre. But from his hours at the estate, Agon was sure that all the murders had been the work of a single man. He could think of no one who could kill so many people except a wetboy, and the style certainly fit what he had heard of Hu Gibbet. He couldn’t imagine Durzo Blint mutilating bodies. Blint would consider it unprofessional.
Hu Gibbet would only sign his name if he thought the authorities would never have a chance to come after him. The king said the prince’s murder didn’t have anything to do with power, but this was Cenaria. Everything had to do with power.
If Durzo Blint’s apprentice really had killed the prince, why would he have left a witness? Blint’s apprentice would be as professional as Blint himself. A witness was a loose end that was easy to tie up.
It was all about power.
Agon scowled. “Has there been any word from our garrison at Screaming Winds?”
“No.”
“So the Khalidoran army is at least four days away. What are you planning to do about the festival tonight?”
“I’m not going to celebrate Midsummer’s on the day after my son’s death.”
The lord general had a sinking feeling. “My king, I think perhaps you should.”
“I will not host a party for my boy’s murderers.” The king’s eyes flashed, and he looked less like a petulant child and more like a king than Agon had ever seen. “I have to do something!” the king said. “Everyone will think . . .” He went on, but Agon ignored him.
Everyone will think. That was the key. What will everyone think?
The prince was dead, killed in a shameful way either by the king’s mistress or by a wetboy. The beloved Gyres were dead or imprisoned. Agon suspected now that an assassin had probably made his way into Screaming Winds and killed Regnus as well. It wouldn’t make sense to leave him alive. Not when someone was going to such pains to set plans in motion.
Everyone will think that the king ordered his own son killed in a jealous rage, and that to get back at his unfaithful mistress he framed her.
With the right rumors, everyone’s bewilderment over why the Gyres had been murdered could be turned, too. People would connect all the murders, but how?
The Gyres were next in line for the throne after the Gunders, though the family had never challenged the king. The king, weak and jealous, could be portrayed as paranoid all too easily. And the Gyres were far more respected than the Gunders. Lord Gyre’s faithful service would be seen as being rewarded with treachery and murder.
Logan—the new Lord Gyre—had been seized by the king, and the king’s natural inclination would be to keep him in prison. But Logan was known to be absolutely moral, without ambitions. For the gods’ sakes, he was betrothed to a lowly Drake!
So if the king were to die, who would succeed him?
The vastly popular Logan Gyre would be in prison, where he could easily be killed. The king’s son was dead. His eldest daughter was fifteen, the others even younger, too young to hold the throne in a nation at war. His wife Nalia might try to take the throne, but the king had feared her and marginalized her as much as he could, and she seemed content to stay out of politics. The Jadwins were finished after their part in the scandal. That left the kingdom’s two other duchies. Either Duke Graesin or Duke Wesseros, the queen’s father, could make a grab for power. But the queen’s brother, Havrin, was out of the country, so he seemed an unlikely usurper. Duke Graesin was feeble. Any of a dozen lesser families might try for the throne.