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Riona opened the door to the adjoining chamber—the sitting room where Cathal took his meetings—and the acrid stench of smoke washed over her. She wrinkled her nose and stepped inside, Prince Domhnall and Art trailing behind her.
“Treasurer Cathal pushed fabric under the doors so we wouldn’t smell the smoke,” the guard said, pointing to a tightly-rolled wad of fabric wedged in the gap under the door to the hall. Several of the windows had been left open to air out the room. “He did the same under the door to his office. He didn’t want anyone to discover what he’d done until it was too late.”
“You’re certain it wasn’t his killer who destroyed the documents?” Riona asked. “Perhaps they were trying to hide something.”
Art shook his head. “No one entered these rooms after he left, and the windows are a straight shot down the cliff. It’s a hundred-foot drop, too treacherous for anyone to climb. He burned them.”
As he said it, Riona walked over to the open window, where a metal chamber pot sat on the sill. Prince Domhnall followed her, and together they stared down at the remains of the Treasurer’s documents. Riona picked it up, tilting it from side to side to see if anything had survived the flames, but only ashes remained.
“Why? What was he trying to hide?”
The prince shook his head sadly. “I’m not sure. It seems we did not know our Treasurer as well as we thought we did.”
ChapterSixteen
The Liar
Auberon was sitting upright in his cot, anxiously awaiting news of the Royal Treasurer’s fate, when a knock sounded on the door. At a nod from him, one of the guards opened it, and his brows shot up when he saw who stood just beyond the threshold.
“I hope I did not wake you, Your Highness,” Duke Valerian said with a small bow. He spoke the common tongue of the southern continent fluently, but his words were lilted with a soft Kentari accent.
“No… No, not at all,” Auberon replied, trying to mask his surprise. He smoothed the wrinkles in his tunic, infinitely grateful that Drystan had thought to send him a fresh change of clothes. It was rumpled from lying in the cot, but it was better than nothing. “Come in.”
Auberon gestured to the chair beside his bed and, as the duke sat, exchanged confused looks with the guards standing watch at his door. He had barely spoken to the man. Why had Valerian come to visit his infirmary room? “Are there any updates on the situation with the Treasurer?”
“They found his body in a brothel, stabbed to death. I believe they’re still searching for his murderer, but the guards are trying to keep it quiet for now.”
Auberon sagged against the cot’s headboard, his shoulders slumping. Cathal was dead, and whatever knowledge he held about the supposed eudorite mines had gone to the Beyond with him. Worse than that, he’d liked the man. Useless as he’d been the night of the banquet, Cathal had struck him as kind and good-natured, with an easy smile and a loud, warm laugh.
He shook his head. “Word of the murder will spread across the city by nightfall, if it hasn’t already. Seems life in the court will get much more interesting before the negotiations are over.”
“That’s…part of the reason why I came here today, Your Highness. I wanted to say thank you for speaking up last night in the dining hall—when Eamon brought up the tensions in my father’s court. Anything I said would have come off as defensive. You helped diffuse the tension, turn the focus away from me. So…thank you.”
Auberon raised a brow.Thatwas why the duke had come? “You don’t need to thank me. I’ll take any opportunity to knock Eamon’s ego down a few levels. The man is an ass.”
Duke Valerian grinned. “In that, you and I are in total agreement, Your Highness. Believe it or not, this is him on good behavior. I pray the king does not promise his niece to Eamon; she will see the true face of that snake when they sail to Kostos.”
“You know each other well, then?”
A shadow passed behind Valerian’s pale green eyes. “It’s my great misfortune to say that we are better acquainted than I would have ever liked. Every time there is so much as a hint of unrest in the duchy, Eamon’s father sends him to put an end to it. He marches into Glenkeld with hundreds of soldiers at his back, makes a grand speech and some thinly veiled threats, and then demands that we throw a feast in his honor. The man is nothing more than a thief.”
“Thieves have principles.”
“He’s a parasite.”
With that, Auberon wholeheartedly agreed. “He and all his people.”
The duke tilted his head. “Why doyoudislike him, Your Highness? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Dislike is too kind a word.” It made his blood boil to know that Eamon was out there, charming the king and council, while Auberon was stuck in the infirmary. “If I recounted all the reasons why I detest Eamon and his father, you’d be here all day.”
Valerian nodded, although he looked disappointed. “Another time, then. As much as I would like to bond over our mutual loathing for that blight on the world, I should leave you to rest. Healer Barra threatened to have the guards throw me out if I disturbed you for too long, and I’m only half-convinced he was joking.”
The duke started to rise, until Auberon asked, “Did Eamon’s father really give your father the duchy?”
Valerian’s grip on the chair’s arms tightened, his fine features twisting in anger. “King Jericho did notgivemy father anything. My parents were steadfast supporters of Grand Duke Finnegani for decades, but after King Jericho declared war on us, they watched the Grand Duke flounder, losing city after city to the Kostori. The year-long siege on Glenkeld was the final straw. The people of the city were starving, and our dead were piling up in the streets. After my sister died, my father led several other noblemen to the Kostori camp under a flag of truce and negotiated the city’s surrender.”
The duke’s gaze had gone distant and haunted as he spoke, lost in the memories of those terrible days. Images filled Auberon’s mind: bodies slumped in alleys, poisoned wells boarded up, columns of smoke rising in the air. A sea of army tents beyond Glenkeld’s mighty stone walls. The people, gaunt-faced and hopeless, waiting for the reprieve of death.
