THE EARLY EVENING was still bright, the clouds departed after dropping their snow everywhere. Since Gasanen had asked for such a late appointment, many of the roads and sidewalks were cleared, either by shop owners and neighbors or by the city’s street men. So Mikael walked down along the streets, heading for the northern edge of the town, away from the river. He could have taken one of the coaches from the royal stables or hired a cab but walking and mulling through the last few days’ events might help him gain some clarity.
Deborah had an idea who had wanted Shironne, and he couldn’t blame her for not telling him. Deborah took her responsibilities and oaths seriously. If it was a Family secret that she couldn’t tell him, she wouldn’t, no matter what it was. No matter how bad she felt about it.
Did Dahar know? He had barely spoken to Dahar since the night Shironne was kidnapped. His mentor had too many other worries at the moment. But that brought him to the question of whether Anna knew. If it was a Family secret, he supposed she shouldn’t, but she’d been comparatively unconcerned about the question of who wanted to take Shironne. That hinted she did.
They were all trusting that Shironne’s location in the Fortress would keep her safe, but incidents like last night’s were inevitable. They needed a better plan, and to create one, Mikael needed an idea who would be the farthest end of the line . . . their enemy.
The colonel suspected it might be someone in the Cince Empire, a possibility that seemed farfetched. Larossa simply had too few dealings with that side of the continent. He ran through the options in his mind as he walked, then ran through them again, and again.
Mikael sighed, letting his frustration have free rein since he wasn’t around any sensitives.
He’d reached more tailored streets now, the cobbles better laid. The snow had been cleared back, likely by those who owned the expensive homes in this part of town. They rose, buildings of pink granite, roofed with darker slate and bearing accents of marble. Many had gardens as well kept as the colonel’s, although far larger. Stone walls surrounded the properties to keep the riff-raff like him out, no doubt.
He reached the end of the street he traversed, where it opened into a cobbled central area off of which four houses had their drives, with a large well-maintained park on the opposite side. One was Gasanen’s, vaguely recognizable from the previous night’s errand. Pamini sat cross-legged on a bench in the park not far from the drive, cleaning her nails with the tip of a small knife.
“His guards know I’m here,” she told Mikael as soon as he neared. “I figured there was no point in staying hidden. Too uncomfortable and I would get tired faster. If they know I’m here, might as well sit.”
Mikael couldn’t argue that logic, except that it limited what she could see. “What if he goes out another gate?”
“There isn’t one,” she said. “Messine triple checked.”
“I can’t imagine someone like Gasanen not having an escape route.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are a couple of ways out on foot, but you know how that works. Every egress is also a possible ingress.”
And therefore, Gasanen wouldn’t expose them, much like the Family tried to keep their underground exits out of the Fortress secret. The more people who knew, the more likely someone would find out and use one to sneak in. “No movement?”
“I think we’re wrong. Gasanen isn’t going to whoever wants that horse. The buyer is coming here.” There was certainty in her voice, which suggested she had inside information.
“All the more reason not to be seen,” he pointed out.
Pamini gestured toward her drab servant’s garb, then swept one hand toward him to indicate his black uniform.
“I take your point,” Mikael said.
Pamini nodded once, never taking her eyes off the gate. “So, go away,” she hissed.
Mikael walked off at a strolling pace, heading for the spot where she was supposed to be hiding. At least the trees would offer cover for his overly obvious Family garb.
He watched the traffic on the street, the occasional carriage rolling by, along with a handful or workmen passing periodically. This part of town, solely residential and wealthy, was one where traffic didn’t flow without purpose. Everyone here had a reason to be here.
A young woman emerged from behind the walls of a large household two down from Gasanen’s, her clothing giving away her status as a servant—likely a kitchen maid. She crossed the street to where Pamini waited and sat next to her on the bench, not quite touching. The pair talked softly under the sunlight like a courting couple.
Mikael smiled. It was a brilliant cover, since it gave Pamini a reason to be waiting there.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t last forever. The girl would surely have to return to her employer’s home shortly. But a quarter hour passed before Pamini’s maid got up and dashed back toward her employer’s house. Pamini made a discreet gesture behind her back, and Mikael spotted a carriage slowing to turn into the gates of Gasanen’s estate. A burly armed guard came out to speak to the driver, opened the side door and peered inside the carriage, and then waved them on. The gates opened, and the carriage rolled inside.
Mikael hoped that meant he would have answers soon.
After almost an hour, the carriage rolled back away from Gasanen’s estate, a man leading the questionable horse emerging behind it, along with two other men. The horse was apparently to be guarded like the king. The carriage moved away at a normal clip, the horse’s train began walking slowly along the road.
Mikael still didn’t know who was in that coach, but Pamini got up and strolled away, lazily following in the wake of the horse. Eventually they would know.
He was considering leaving his hidden spot when the estate gates opened again and the large bodyguard walked out. He looked toward Mikael and then gestured sharply.
Mikael sighed, used his shoulder to push away from the tree, and walked that way. Never good at hiding.
Perhaps this way he wouldn’t have to wait for Pamini’s answers.
The bodyguard gestured for Mikael to stand still before the gate, then searched his pockets, his sash, and his boots. “No weapons?”
Given that the man in front of him had one pistol visible in the sash about his waist, a knife in his boot, and a suspicious lump in one pocket of his overcoat, Mikael suspected he found that scandalous. “No. Why would I?”
The man peered at Mikael through slitted dark eyes, then gestured for him to walk on up the drive to the house. A separate guard closed the gate behind them. The drive to the house was level, wide enough for two carriages, and snowless. The cobblestones were patterned, waves of dark and light, and he pondered that choice as he strolled silently up to the house. The guard was clearly not a man who believed in talk.
The house itself was not much larger than the colonel’s, of pink granite with accents of pale marble. It was attractive, but not in any way distinctive even though it seemed a newer place. Mikael decided that was Gasanen’s way of not revealing anything about his personality other than his guardedness. It put him in mind of the Family’s refusal to have any indicators of locations on the Fortress’ inner walls, so invaders wouldn’t know where to find things. That bizarre parallel caused him to laugh aloud, drawing another odd glance from the bodyguard.
The man led him up to the front door of the house—a rarity for Mikael. A large-boned woman in beige servant’s garb opened the door, her hair braided back from a very dark Larossan face. Young and very strong, Mikael judged. She glanced once at the bodyguard, then let Mikael pass inside. She claimed his overcoat from him and walked away, no doubt to search his pockets more thoroughly.
The bodyguard led him down a beige stone-tiled hallway where beige wool runners softened their footfalls. The wall hangings, chairs and benches, and paintings along that hall seemed expensive, well coordinated, and impersonal, as if this were a hotel. None of the pennants that Larossans used to designate their hopes and dreams, no red for luck, and no Anvarrid trappings among them, either.
The bodyguard stopped him with one hand to his chest, then passed him and opened one of the white-painted doors. “Wait inside.”
Mikael walked into a pleasant library that smelled appropriately musty, the hearth lit with two comfortable-looking chairs set before it. The books on the shelves that filled the room were all bound in leather with gold-imprinted spines. He peered curiously at the selections for a time, more and more convinced that these books were never read. Not because there was dust on them or the spines looked stiff . . . but because they were the sort of books that a man of consequence should have in his library. Histories, philosophy, the great poets—no doubt a book of his ancestor Jan Lee’s poetry was on these shelves somewhere. It was a façade.
“Mr. Lee,” Gasanen said from behind him.
“Mr. Gasanen,” Mikael inclined his head. “Thank you for taking time to see me.”
Gasanen regarded him as if he was a particular annoyance, a faint hint of the matching emotion flaring about him. “You arrived too early. I can’t have a member of the Family lurking outside my home. My neighbors would ask complicated questions. Please sit down.”
This was an office, Mikael decided, for all that it was dressed to look like a library. He sat where Gasanen indicted, in one of the leather chairs. It was quite comfortable. A small table sat next to the second chair, into which Gasanen settled. The man regarded Mikael with an untroubled brow.
He pointed to a case that sat on the table. “Hedraya left all his files on Faralis’ activities with me. I assume you’ll hand them over to Anna, who will know how best to use them to edge Faralis out of office and into a prison. I’ll let you take it with you.”
So he definitely knows Anna. Somehow Mikael wasn’t surprised. Perhaps the two of them met regularly for spiced tea and exchanged gossip in these very chairs. “Thank you.”
“We had a deal,” Gasanen said. “I uphold my bargains.”
“Then who killed Aman Jusid?”
A quick curl marked Gasanen’s upper lip. “One of my employees, Aron Ledesine, did that. He was my contact with Lieutenant Messine and thought to impress me by his initiative. If you go down to the police station in the Old Town, you will find that he turned himself in this morning. I don’t appreciate initiative as much as he believed.”
Mikael had no doubt every word of that was true. He would track down that name and information later—the given name Aron hinted that Ledesine was Family raised. He also suspected that the charges against Ledesine would be dropped in short order and the man would be freed. His insistence on working with Gasanen had given him the name of a man who would likely not even stand trial, and the Hedraya, who were already under the tightest watch the Daujom could manage. He hoped he could salvage something out of this fiasco. “Do you know why the Hedraya were willing to destroy their ties to Faralis?”
Gasanen regarded him with a dry expression. “I am paid for information like that.”
Well, no harm in asking, was there? “How much?”
Gasanen’s head tilted. “I want to know how the girl is faring. Since they’ve placed her in the Family, Cerradine’s man no longer has access. You do.”
“Are you talking about an ongoing agreement?”
Gasanen’s lips lifted at one corner. Not a smirk exactly. “Once a month, and I’ll answer your questions as far as I see fit.”
Mikael kept his features neutral. He was not good at games, and he had the feeling that this man was. “That’s acceptable for now. The girl is in with the nines—the children who are nine-year-olds, I mean—and from what I’ve heard, enjoying herself spectacularly. She apparently wants to learn to fight.”
“Is she healthy and safe?” Gasanen asked.
“Yes. I saw her last week, on her first day.”
Gasanen inclined his head. “Hedraya correctly thinks that Faralis’ little empire is about to collapse anyway. He’s taking advantage of that by getting rid of Faralis before any candidates other than the one he’s selected can prepare to take the commissioner’s place.”
That was a great deal of information. Mikael tucked it all away in his head to pick apart later. “So they’ll have a new police commissioner in their pocket, and they’ve gotten . . . a racehorse? Does it say in here to whom Faralis intended to sell the girl?”
“No,” Gasanen said. “But your answer is that Hedraya arranged the whole thing, to sell the girl to some of his foreign friends.”
Mikael swallowed. “Pedraisi?”
Gasanen smiled. “We have been so frightened of the Pedraisi for so long that we’ve forgotten our older enemies.”
Older enemies? This echoed Cerradine’s revelations, although that didn’t mean it was true. “The Cince?”
“The whisper is that the Cince have been experimenting with people captured from all over the world. Very secret, very worrisome, and possibly false.”
Mikael felt sick to his stomach. “Would they take these people to the empire?”
Gasanen shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps you should discuss it with Anna, then you could tell me.”
Mikael felt his jaw flex. Anna again. “And they are Hedraya’s foreign friends?”
Gasanen laughed softly. “Friends might be an overstatement. Hedraya is merely their man here in Larossa. Any House that follows Hedraya is dangerous to your Miss Anjir, though.”
My Miss Anjir. “Are you among those I shouldn’t trust then,” Mikael asked, “since you seemed to know Hedraya?”
Gasanen smiled. “When you talk to Anna, ask her who I am.”
“Does your birth make that much of a difference?”
“Let’s say I have reason to despise the Hedraya.”
“Ah,” Mikael said, wishing Anna had been more forthcoming with him. He hated looking like an idiot even when he was one.
“And no, I’m not a child of that House,” Gasanen volunteered, handing over the case from the table along with that tidbit.
Mikael wished Gasanen wasn’t enjoying this quite so much. “Is there anything else?”
Gasanen smiled secretively, another burst of pleasure accompanying that. “A reminder that when you need that question answered, I have the proof.”
The man loves his secrets. Mikael shook his head and rose. “I don’t know which question you mean.”
“Your half-brother,” Gasanen said, dark eyes amused. “There is proof of his parentage, and I can lay my hands on it.”
Numbly, Mikael collected the case, took his coat from the servant at the door, and when he got outside, settled into the private coach that Gasanen’s man insisted he use to get back to the palace. He held the case on his lap, mind whirling tight and angry. He didn’t want to upset Shironne, though, who could surely feel his reaction, so he concentrated on breathing slowly to calm himself.
That was the secret.
All along he’d thought his father had wanted him to know something. Reaching out to his son in death . . . it had to have had a purpose. Otherwise Mikael had spent the last decade annoying every sensitive in his proximity, entrapping a young Larossan girl to serve as his dreams’ interpreter, and coming closer to death with every dream for no reason. If there was no purpose, he would have thought it cruel.
But now he knew.
I have a brother, and my father wanted me to know.
NOT The End
To be continued in
Dreams from the Grave
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