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“Oh, shut your clam hole,” another apprentice scolded the one who’d made the disparaging remark. “You can see she’s not stupid, or crazy. And I think she’d know what she’s talking about—she’s a Center trainee.”
Unease snaked through Merletta once again. She wasn’t speaking for the Center—surely they all understood that. She’d been asked if she personally would risk living outside the barrier, not if the Center sanctioned it. Everyone knew the answer to the second question.
She made no attempt to clarify. Her instinct told her that trying to explain the distinction between her views and the Center’s would only draw attention to her own discomfort, which was the surest way to give extra intrigue to gossip and speculation.
But as she swam back toward the Center a short time later, her pleasure over the new pair of shells was tempered by an undefined foreboding as she pictured the faces of her audience. For every skeptical expression, there had been two looking at her with awe, and just as many with excitement.
Hopefully she hadn’t paid too high a price for the free gift.
Chapter Nine
Heath shifted his weight from one leg to the other, wincing as pain shot through his muscles. Who knew crouching in one position for a few hours could be so blasted uncomfortable? And no one had done more than pass through the guardhouse in all that time. He was losing patience for his poorly thought through plan. He definitely wasn’t cut out for the life of a spy.
He suddenly realized how ridiculous that thought was. Who could be better suited to being a spy than someone who had the ability to surveil others from afar, using only his mind?
This is ridiculous, he grumbled internally, as the cramp in his leg gave another painful twinge. I shouldn’t need to be physically present to see what’s happening anyway. If only I was better at farsight, or if it wasn’t limited to people I had some connection to.
The thought drew him up short. Was he really complaining that he couldn’t just watch anyone anywhere and at any time? He felt sobered at the reminder of just how powerful his magic had the potential to be, and how easily it could be abused. It was a weighty business, being the first human in history to possess farsight.
Chastened by his own conscience, he returned to his more primitive surveillance.
It wasn’t yielding much. He knew that if he really wanted to see or hear something that would shed light on Percival’s attack, he should have staked out the guardhouse immediately afterward, instead of waiting for weeks. But he’d initially returned to Bexley Manor, and even once he’d been called back to the capital, he had other things on his mind.
He had other things on his mind now, if it came to it. But the question of who had actually attacked Percival had grown larger in his thoughts in recent days. His brother had no difficulty attributing the attack to the crown, because he was convinced King Matlock wanted him out of the picture. Heath, however, was skeptical about whether the king really saw Percival as so unconquerable a threat. And, more importantly, in spite of the rising tension and the king’s recent perplexing decisions regarding the power-wielders, Heath still had too much faith in King Matlock’s integrity to believe he had attempted to murder Percival.
Heath had made no secret of these views, and it hadn’t won him any favor with Percival. But although Heath had wondered often who was really behind the attack if not the crown, it had only recently occurred to him to ask the more troubling question of why. If Percival hadn’t been attacked for the convenience of the crown, that meant there was another reason someone wanted him dead. And Heath couldn’t be at ease until he knew what that reason was. Which placed a little more priority on figuring out who had been behind the attack.
And that was why he’d been crouching in a tiny unused storage cupboard inside the guardhouse of the royal guards for the last three hours.
The royal guard was made up of the elite among the guards, led by the king’s most trusted knights. They didn’t live in the sprawling barracks utilized by the general guard. Many of them were older and more experienced than the average guard, with homes and families of their own. And the knights certainly weren’t expected to slum it in the barracks.
Their base of operations was a large and well-appointed guardhouse attached to the castle, with smaller guardhouses at each city gate. Their main focus was not on the city itself, however, but on the royal family. They were the most highly trained fighters in Valoria, and the most fiercely loyal to their sovereign.
Which obviously gave some credibility to Percival’s belief that the crown was out to get him, given he swore he’d seen the uniform of the royal guard on the men who’d attacked him. It also made it all the more troubling that—assuming Heath was right, and the king wouldn’t send his guards to murder someone—another party was attempting to blame the attack on this elite force.
Unfortunately for Heath, the guardhouse wasn’t quite the hub of activity he’d imagined it to be. Guards occasionally passed through, but generally the two on duty simply sat at a table, one of them filling out a report of some kind while the other whittled a stick into a passing semblance of a dog. He’d heard only the occasional catches of conversation during his surveillance, none of them remotely relevant.
“You’re back early.”
The voice of one of the guards drew Heath’s attention, and he shuffled forward slightly to peer through a crack in the wooden door of his cupboard. A third guard had appeared in the doorway of the room.
“I’m still on duty, just here on an errand for Prince Lachlan.”
“What does His Highness need?” asked the whittling guard, without looking up from his work.
The newcomer shifted his feet uncomfortably. “He wants to read the record of that complaint from the head laundress.”
“What?” The guard who’d been writing a report looked up, clearly exasperated. “How does he even know about that?”
“Well, uh…” The new arrival scratched his neck. “I told him.”
“Why would you do that?”
“He was asking all about our uniforms. He was direct. I would have had to lie in order not to tell him,” the guard said defensively.
His companion sighed. “Well, you can’t do that,” he acknowledged. “You’ll have to ask the captain for it. The complaint was made to him, so he’s likely got the report in his office. I believe he was dealing with the laundress directly, so I doubt he’ll thank you for getting the crown involved.”
The standing guard let out a sigh of his own. “No help for it. Do you know where he is?”
