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Magnus hummed, losing his humor. “I think you are right about that. It might be time to consider departing the Kostya Kingdom for the time being. Perhaps our talks could reconvene in a more pleasant, friendlier setting, such as Good Port?” He glanced to Olympus.
Olympus jerked up from where he had been eating and listening, as if surprised to be drawn into the discussion with kings. I’d noticed him doing that a lot of late.
“I…I would be glad to host you in my father’s compound,” he said. He glanced to Lefric for a moment, then said, “It isn’t the most convenient time, however. There’s a murder to be solved.”
“Perhaps we can help you to solve it,” Magnus said. His eyes suddenly lit up with inspiration. “It is entirely possible that we may have a few tools at our disposal to assist with the investigation.”
“Such as?” Lefric asked, frowning curiously.
Magnus reached into his pocket and came out with the small journal we’d found in Hadrian’s fireplace. For some reason, seeing it again filled me with an excited buzz.
“What was the name of the man who was murdered?” Magnus asked, opening the journal.
“Gregorius Ali,” Olympus said.
Magnus thumbed through a few pages in the journal, then lit up like a pyre on Solstice night. He grinned madly, then turned the journal so that Olympus and Lefric could see the page he held open.
I craned my neck to look, but wasn’t able to see anything before Lefric let out a wordless shout of triumph and grabbed the journal from Magnus.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, glancing from the journal to Magnus and back. “What is it, even?”
“We found it in Hadrian’s house,” Peter said.
All eyes snapped to the three of us. Jorgen and Hati looked particularly impressed with Magnus, and Sebald and Jace raised their eyebrows at me and Peter.
“We asked around at the palace to find out where Hadrian lived,” I filled them in. “Then we found the address and did a quick search of the place.”
“We found that journal, which we think is a list of other spies and contacts Hadrian might have had here on the frontier,” Peter continued the story.
“Oh my God,” Olympus blurted. We all turned to him. He’d gone pale and had a look of pure panic in his eyes as he stared at the journal. I was dying to know what had caused his reaction, but he turned to Lefric, showing him something in the journal.
“Fuck me!” Lefric shouted, so loud I nearly laughed. There was nothing funny at all in Lefric’s reaction, though. He stared at Olympus with wide eyes and said, “Eneko! I knew it!”
Olympus shifted to look at Magnus. “We have to return to Good Port immediately,” he said with utmost urgency. “My father’s steward is one of the spies.”
Magnus didn’t seem surprised, which was very Magnus-like. “We will leave tomorrow,” he said, then continued eating his lunch…which was also typical Magnus.
“We found some coins from the Old Realm,” Peter continued with the story, seeing as most of us at the table were too stunned by the turn of events to say anything else. “That’s in addition to the seal that Hadrian was wearing around his neck when he was, er….” He glanced to Lefric and Olympus.
“Seal?” Gennadi spoke up.
I was surprised that he, of all people, would find that detail more interesting than the murder of a spy in the household of the leader of Good Port.
Magnus evidently thought so too. He studied Gennadi with a curious look, then reached into his pocket. “Yes,” he said. This one.”
Gennadi nearly choked as he stared at the seal with wide eyes. I thought it was odd, until he reached into his own pocket and took out a nearly identical seal and placed it on the table next to Hadrian’s.
Everyone reacted with astonishment. Peter reached out and took the seal Gennadi had placed on the table, comparing it with Hadrian’s.
“Where did you get that?” Magnus asked Gennadi in a serious voice.
“From Gregorius’s house,” Gennadi confessed.
“That’s what I saw you pocket when we were there,” Lefric said, even more excited than before. “I knew you’d taken something, but you’re not the sort of person to steal things.”
“The seal has Magnus’s sigil on it,” Gennadi said, peeking at Magnus.
“My brother’s sigil,” Magnus said with a wry smile. He sat back in his chair. “Well, then. I suppose that proves the theory that the Old Realm has spies all over the frontier.”
