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I knew something was off as we approached Sebald’s cottage. We weren’t the only people approaching, for one. We ended up part of a veritable parade of servants from the palace carrying baskets and hampers. Granted, delicious scents wafted out of the hampers, and the servant closet to me as we stepped through Sebald’s front door had a basket entirely filled with bread that was so fresh I could feel the warmth of it when I bumped into her as we crossed through the doorway.
That was the good part. The bad was apparent as soon as we realized the line of servants were walking straight through the cottage and into the back garden.
The same back garden where, I assumed, a dead body lay.
“This should be interesting,” Magnus said in a low voice as we picked up speed and nudged in front of some of the servants to reach Sebald’s back garden.
I was surprised by what we found there.
“Set up that table over there,” Jace and Sai’s mother ordered at least a dozen servants in palace livery. “We’ll put the food on that one, then arrange the other tables for dining. It’s cold today, but not too cold for wolves.”
“I guess she didn’t like it when she found out we weren’t joining everyone else for lunch,” Peter said as the three of us approached a visibly frustrated Jace and Gennadi just outside of the garden door.
Jace glanced flatly at Peter, then on to Magnus and me. “She’s angry about the ‘savage wolves’ refusing the hospitality she worked so hard on,” he said. “Vera and Taisiya suggested they send lunch here to the cottage, and once Mother got ahold of the idea, she took it to extremes.”
“Ah,” Magnus said, as though Jace had explained that his mother was planting roses to make our stay more pleasant. “There is no force on earth as powerful as a mother who wishes to prove a point.”
I was tempted to laugh. It would have been a paradoxical reaction born out of the sheer absurdity of the situation we now found ourselves in. Between murders, spies, collapsed negotiations, and Jace’s mother, I didn’t know what to think or feel about anything anymore.
I tried to be subtle as I glanced around, looking for a body around the edges of the garden. For some reason, I expected Barthold’s body to be splayed and bloody right there in the middle of the patio. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary in the immediate area, though. Perhaps Sebald and the others had moved the body behind the tree near the wall?
“Magnus,” Hati hailed Magnus as he joined us. Nikandr was with him, and to my surprise, Hati held the young man’s hand. Hati didn’t strike me as the sort to hold his pup’s hand at all, but Nikandr looked decidedly uneasy. “Nice of you to join us,” Hati finished, sending Magnus a wary look.
“And not a moment too soon,” Magnus said, nodding toward the table where Jace and Sai’s mom was directing the servants from the palace as they laid out lunch. At least no new servants were flooding into the garden. “It looks as though preparations in the garden have progressed adequately?”
I assumed he was asking about Barthold’s body.
Hati assumed the same. “We were ready just in time,” he said. “Jace and his pup gave us just enough warning to tidy up the garden and put away a few things that our guests didn’t need to see.”
I noted Peter’s scowl over the way Hati referred to Gennadi as Jace’s pup and nothing more. I also noted that his disapproval was laced with weariness, as though he didn’t have the energy to argue the point anymore.
“So Lady Rozynov saw nothing?” Magnus asked.
Hati shook his head. “Nothing, but it was close.”
“Where is…it now?” Peter asked with a sick swallow in the middle of his question.
Hati sent him a wry look. “I had no idea your…husband was so squeamish, Magnus.” The way Hati said “husband” made it sound like he was saying “pup”.
Magnus replied with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, which was a sure sign to me that Hati had offended him. He slipped an arm around Peter and drew him close to his side. “My Peter was made for love, not…this sort of unpleasantry.”
Hati huffed a laugh and sent Peter a look that had me wanting to punch the grin from his face. It was one thing for me to tease Peter about being softer than he wanted to admit to being, but I wasn’t about to stand for it from someone else, even if Hati was almost a king.
“You lot,” Jace’s mother called to us from the center of the garden, where the tables had been set up. “Your luncheon is ready.” She lowered her voice to say something else that we couldn’t hear. That wasn’t much of a way to address kings either.
Jace let out a breath and dropped his arms from where they’d been crossed. “I apologize for her,” he said, resting a hand on Gennadi’s back and starting forward to the tables with the rest of us. “I don’t like what this peevishness on her part represents.”
“None of us do,” Magnus said with surprising sympathy. Magnus actually did sympathize with Jace quite a lot, but he hated to let it show. Sometimes I thought that if he and Jace had been the same age, they would spend as much time fucking as they did fighting. Maybe in another life.
“I trust everything will be to your liking,” Jace’s mother said as we all gathered around the tables. Her tone said she hoped we choked on the food. “The palace kitchen staff has gone to great trouble to provide this feast for you.”
“And I can assure you, Lady Rozynov,” Magnus said with far more graciousness than the woman deserved, “we will appreciate every bite of it. A thousand thanks for all of your efforts.”
“Yes, many thanks,” Jorgen said in a far curter tone, striding up with Sebald and Avenel on one side, Kliment on the other. Lefric and Olympus followed shortly behind them. “And now, we wouldn’t want to keep you from your very important work.”
Jace’s mother gaped at Jorgen as though he’d insulted her. She did have cause, I thought, since Jorgen had, for all intents and purposes, dismissed her. She had been the wife of a ruling duke and was now the mother of a king, so I was certain she was furious at being told to go away by someone she likely thought of as pond scum.
“Vera, Taisiya, come along,” he called to her daughters, who stood near Jace between the serving table and one of the ones where we would sit.
