“Y-yes. I know who it was, but I can’t quite believe it.”
He held me back away from him to search my face, frowning at what he was seeing. “You’re hurt,” he said touching my cheek. I winced as he touched the bruise that must have been forming but tried to smile and reassure him.
“It’s nothing. He kicked me when I tried to stop him from killing Janos.”
“Who?”he asked, his voice urgent.
“I-it was Luc Dimitri. General Dimitri,” A little sob escaped before I could stop it. “Oh goddess, This is going to kill Larz.”
He glanced around the room with a fierce expression on his handsome face. “Where is Dimitri? Where did the bastard go?”
He ran out the door, but I didn’t see which way he went down the hall. He could be hiding in one of the rooms or off the hall altogether.”
He turned and began barking orders at his guards, who ran quickly out into the corridor to start searching. If Luc tried to fell, his options would be somewhat limited, since the bridge had collapsed. He had plenty of hiding places in this huge, old palace, however. Enough to keep the guards searching for a while. That must have occurred to Kirstos too, because he drew me away from the side of Janos’s bed to speak to me more privately.
“Who might know the hiding places in this castle? “
“The servants, maybe. Or Vannos’s sons. They grew up here and probably played in these halls. It was much the same for me when I was living in our palace on Laltana.”
“Good thinking. I’ll try to find one of them and go inform Mikos and King Davos, and King Stefan, as well, of what’s happened. In the meantime, stay in this room or go back to your own and lock the door. Barricade it too, in case Dimitri has a passkey. How else was he able to get into Janos’s room?”
“I-I’m not sure. Though if he’d simply knocked or called out, Janos would have let him in. Luc is one of Larz’s most trusted friends.” I put a hand up to my cheek and rubbed it, not really aware of what I was doing. It was beginning to throb. “This is going to be so hard for Larz.”
“Put some ice on your cheek, Taran. And lie down for a while. Janos will be fine now that Larz is here, and you’re still recovering from when thatfuloqstabbed you.” I didn’t question what he meant by that Tygerian word—it was pretty evident that he wasn’t paying Luc any kind of compliment.
Before I could answer further, we heard a woman’s loud, shrill scream coming from the front yard outside the castle, and both Kirstos and I, along with some others in the room, crowded to the windows by each side of the bed to look out and see what the hell was going in now.
A cleaning woman was standing in the yard, pointing down at a man sprawled in the mud of the driveway, face down. His arms were flung out in front of him, one broken so badly that white bone was sticking sharply out at an angle from his arm. His entire body was twisted and broken for that matter, and he wasn’t moving at all. It looked like he’d fallen from one of the rooms or maybe the roof.
I turned to say so to Kirstos but he was already running out of the room, along with the rest of his guards that had been leftin the room with us. From the other side of me, I heard a gasp, and saw Larz standing beside me, his hand on the window pane.
“Luc!” he cried out in a choked voice, and I whirled around to take another look down at the person on the ground again.
“Wait…you think that’s Luc?”
“I know it is. I was talking to him at first meal, and he was wearing that same jacket.”
“Oh my god,” I said softly, taking another look, and this time I could see it, though we were about three stories up. The short, graying hair and the muscular body—the jacket that was in the Royal Guard colors.
Larz looked so upset that I laid my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, but he wasn’t the man you thought he was, Larz. I have something to tell you. And it’s going to shock you…”
Chapter Fourteen
Kirstos Vargarra
The yellow Moravian moon was larger than the moons on Tygeria. And it was so big that even on the brightest days, it was prominent in the sky above, though appearing mostly like a pale outline of itself in the sky. A cool breeze fanned my face and teased the back of my neck, as I went up to the roof that morning, looking for the place where Luc Dimitri might have jumped to his death. I put up the hood of my cloak against the cool breeze as I made my way toward the western wing of the palace roof. During my interview with Vannos’s son, Bryos, he had informed me there were broad terraces that people sometimes used as an overlook for the view below.
The terraces offered views of the purple-colored mountains in the distance at the rear of the fortress and in the front of the palace, just beyond the driveway, you could see the dizzying drop down to Mithram Deep. Hard to believe that we had been dangling over that deadly drop yesterday and I’d thought we could easily be at the bottom of the chasm soon. I had to wonder if Luc Dimitri must have sabotaged the bridge in what would have been his second attempt at killing Janos, apparently unbothered by the fact that he’d also almost killed Taran twice now too. It made me seethe with fury, and I was glad the human was dead. It made me seethe with fury that I couldn’t mete out my own justice, but it would save me the trouble of killing him.
Up here from this vantage point, I could see the entire palace grounds. On either side of the palace were the numerous outbuildings, including the barracks of the guards, a barn, and the stables where the king’s arrizes were kept. Narrow walkways on the roof had been designed to be used by soldiers to firedown at any attackers, and they were a part of the king’s defensive measures. This was his mountain fortress, after all. The walkways ran along each side, but there were only low walls around the edge to prevent someone from falling to their death. Ahead I could see the walkways open up into broader terraces, but at first glance, these seemed empty and deserted.
I had come up here looking for some proof that Dimitri had committed suicide. I hadn’t expected to find a helpful note, but I still thought it would be worth a look to see if he’d left some sign of his intentions behind. But I found nothing, except for some displaced gravel, as if someone had been involved in a scuffle near the area he must have jumped from. Had someone been on this roof with him? Some accomplice or perhaps the one who was paying him? Had they fought here on the edge of the roof and had this person managed to throw Dimitri off it?
I considered the possibility to be a good one. If Luc Dimitri had been paid to kill Janos—and there was certainly no shortage of people who wished him dead on Tygeria, at least, then that would provide the motive I was failing to see. Money, especially large sums of money, had been known to influence people before.
It was only as I made my way out the door that I spotted a flash of something gold-colored out of the corner of my eye. I stooped to pick it up and found that it was a brass button from a man’s coat. There was no way to tell how long it had been there, and no identifying marks. I slipped it into my pocket, just in case it might be some kind of evidence I could use.
I went directly downstairs to find King Davos and Prince Mikos to let them know about what had happened. I found them eating their midday meal in the dining room. Both their consorts along with Prince Vannos were all at the table, and I noticed that the two consorts were eating a totally different meal than theirhusbands. Vannos was splitting the difference and had a little bit of everything on his plate.
