The squat man shook his head. “I’d already lost one man, sir. I didn’t know what he would do if we told him.”
“Fair enough. Thank you.” It wasn’t the dismissal Agon would have given to one of his subordinates, but though the lord general’s rank was the second only to the king’s, the captain of the king’s guards wasn’t technically under Agon’s command. Fortunately, though they weren’t friends, they were on good enough terms that Captain Arturian took the cue and excused himself.
It wasn’t going to be fun to tell a man who’d been jailed for a murder he didn’t commit that his family had been slaughtered, but it was Agon’s duty. He always did his duty.
Before he unlocked the door, Agon knocked as if he were coming for a visit. As if they were anywhere else besides the Maw. There was no response.
He opened the door. The nobles’ cells were ten feet square, all rock polished smooth to prevent suicides. Each had a bare rock bench that served as a bed, and fresh straw was brought in every week. It was luxury only compared to the rest of the Maw, and even with fresh straw, nothing could erase the rotten-egg stench or the ripe tang of massed humanity in an enclosed space that wafted up from the rest of the cells. Logan looked oblivious. He looked like hell. Tears streamed down his bruised face. He looked up when Agon came in, but his eyes took a long time to focus. He looked lost, his big shoulders slouched, big hands open on his lap, hair askew. He wasn’t alone. The queen was seated beside him, holding one of those limply open hands as one would hold a child’s.
Bless the woman. She’d come to tell him herself.
King Aleine IX had totally missed with Nalia Wesseros. Nalia could have been one of his greatest allies. What a queen she would have made for Regnus Gyre. Instead, she’d accepted being pushed to the fringes of Aleine’s Cenaria, even welcomed it, and had done everything she could to mother her four—now three—children. Agon had long suspected that the children were all that kept her alive.
“My queen. My lord,” Agon said.
“Pardon me if I don’t rise,” Logan said.
“None necessary.”
“They say that my father is dead, too. Or they say that he did it. That the king sent men to arrest him for killing my mother. What happened?” Logan asked.
“As far as I know, your father is alive. He arrived with only one or two men. He was attacked outside the city. Someone was trying to wipe out all the Gyres but you. Men were sent to arrest him, but not on the king’s orders. I haven’t found out who did give the orders. Not yet. Those men either fled the city, or they joined your father. I don’t know which.”
“Lord General, I didn’t kill Aleine,” Logan said. “He was my friend. Even if he did . . . what they say he did.”
“We know. We—the queen and I—don’t think you did it.”
“He talked to me last night, you know? He knew I was going to propose to Serah. He tried to persuade me not to. He reminded me of the rumors about Serah getting around. He had this crazy idea that I marry Jenine. I thought it was strange, but that he was being magnanimous. It wasn’t magnanimity. It was guilt. Damn him!”
Logan looked at the queen. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk this way, but I’m so, so angry—and I feel so guilty for it at the same time! I would have forgiven them, Your Majesty. I would have. Gods! Why didn’t they just tell me?”
They cried silently together and the queen just squeezed Logan’s hand.
After a minute, Logan looked up at Agon. “They say Kylar did it. At Count Drake’s, I saw him move. He was fast. Too fast. But are you sure?”
Gods. The boy had just been betrayed by his fiancée and the prince. Now he wanted to know if he’d been betrayed by his best friend as well. Agon didn’t know if he would survive it—and he needed him to survive it—but Logan deserved the truth. It wasn’t in Agon to give him less. “I’m sure Kylar was upstairs when Aleine died. I’m sure he’s a wetboy. I doubt his real name is Kylar or that he’s a Stern, but I won’t know that for two weeks. We’ve sent a rider to their estates but it’s a week’s ride each way. I can’t put everything together in any other way, son, and I’ve been trying.”
“Your being here is a kindness,” Logan said. His back straightened. “And I don’t want to take that away from you, but I’m guessing that you want something from me or you wouldn’t both have come here. Not now. Not so soon.”
The queen and the lord general looked at each other. Something passed between them, and the general said, “You’re right, Logan. The truth is, the kingdom’s in peril. I wish that we could be sensitive to your grief. You know that your father is one of my dearest friends and what happened to your house is more than a tragedy. It’s a monstrosity.
“But we have to ask you to put your feelings aside, for a time. We don’t know how bad the threat is, but I believe that it’s dire. When the king decided to get rid of your father one way or another ten years ago, it was I who suggested Screaming Winds. I knew that your father would make the garrison there a real stronghold, and I believed that Khalidor would invade sooner or later. Perhaps because he did such an excellent job, that invasion hasn’t come. Most people want to believe that it won’t come, because they know that if the might of Khalidor marches, we don’t stand a chance.
“I believe that the prince, your mother, and your servants were the first casualties in a war. A new kind of war that uses assassins instead of armies to gain its will. We can stop armies, we’ve been preparing for that. Assassins are a different story.”
“Begging the queen’s pardon,” Logan said, “why should I care if the king’s head rolls? He’s been no friend to the Gyres.”
“A fair question,” the queen said.
“On a personal level,” Agon said, “you should care because if the king dies, you’ll either stay in prison forever or you’ll be killed. On a national level, if the king dies, there will be civil war. Troops will be called back to the respective houses to which they are loyal, and Khalidor’s armies will pour over our borders. Even united, our country couldn’t stand against Khalidor’s might. Our only strategy has been to make it so costly to take us that the price would be too high. With our armies scattered, we’d be defenseless.”
“So you think an assassination attempt is coming?” Logan asked.
“Within days. But Khalidor’s plans rest on certain assumptions, Logan. So far, they’ve been valid assumptions. They knew that you would be arrested. No doubt they’ve already planted rumors to stir up the people against the king, suggesting that everything that’s happened has been his fault or his plan. We have to do something beyond anything Khalidor has considered.”
“And what’s that?”
The queen said, “Khalidor has hired Hu Gibbet, perhaps the best wetboy in the city. If he wants to kill Aleine, he probably can. The best way to save the king’s life is if the taking of it won’t gain Khalidor anything. Maybe it’s the only way. We have to assure the line of succession. In a time of peace or if she were older, Jenine might take the throne, or I might, but now. . . . That simply wouldn’t be possible. Some of the houses would refuse to follow a woman into war.”