Page 8 of The Traitor's Curse
Four: Whoever had set events in motion must be waiting, lurking, ready for Fabian to raise the hue and cry that the duke was dead—again. At some point, the palace staff might start simply rolling their eyes and keeping on with the mopping when someone started shouting about dead dukes. Honestly, I would.
And five: I had a dead body by my bed. The wind raged with renewed force around the palace and there was nothing but my own harsh breaths here within, and my spine had started trying to escape out through the base of my skull and run away shrieking.
A tapestry against the far wall flapped loudly, its motion…out of proportion to the draft?
There were a few hidden passages in these walls. I knew about some of them. My father had likely known them all, but he’d kept many of his secrets to himself—or had he? He could have told Benedict. Or the dowager duchess. Or someone like Zettine…
Benedict.
Benedict’s rooms opened out of a side corridor only a few yards away from my own door. His magic and his sword would be enough to handle an assassin if my guards didn’t trouble themselves. Or to handle my hand-picked guards, for that matter, if they’d fully turned against me too.
The visceral force of my urge to run to him left me flushed, fists clenched, desperately trying to root my feet to the floor. Or better, to seize the knife I kept beneath my pillow, cross the room boldly, and whip the tapestry aside to deal with whatever I might find. (I’d read enough classic literature to know one didn’t simply stab through the tapestry without looking, no matter how afraid one might be.) Surely I could hold my own in a fight, even against a trained killer, long enough for the guards to hopefully come.
Another glance down at Fabian’s contorted body and the black stains on his lips had the bile creeping back up my esophagus.
My viscera almost won. I nearly turned tail and bolted for the corridor.
But I had to think first. No rash actions.
My dressing gown flapping around my calves and my damp feet sticking to the tiled floor—gods, still wet from the bath, even though it felt like hours had passed rather than a few short minutes—I went around the other side of the bed and fished for my knife. I wouldn’t need it, because no one would be behind that hanging. If someone had been watching Fabian die instead of me, he’d have either come to finish me off in the bath where I’d be at a disadvantage and could be drowned to create the appearance of an accident, or he’d have disappeared into the walls again like a giant rat after seeing the miscarriage of the plan.
Pulling the tapestry aside still took all the courage I had in me.
The sight of bare stone nearly had my heart leaping out of my chest with shock.
I hadn’treallybelieved no one would be there.
A quick check of the room’s other corners and wall hangings revealed nothing but the normal furnishings. These rooms had been my father’s, long ago when he’d been the heir himself, and surely he wouldn’t have told anyone their secrets, would he? Anyone but me, his rightful successor. He’d shown me the hidden door in the dressing room that led to a tunnel under the palace, and he’d implied that was all. His rooms, the duke’s usual quarters, would surely have more. But he’d never told me anything about those.
The lack of clarity about who might be able to come and go from the ducal chambers had been my real reason for declining to move to them—that and nausea at the memory of his death. The reason I’d given had been respect for the dowager duchess. No one believed me, because everyone knew I didn’t respect her one whit. I didn’t particularly care.
Fuck. Fabian’s body still lay there, catching my eye every time I turned my head, weighing on my consciousness. Not myconscience; I hadn’t been the one to poison the wine or tell him to drink it. But heavy all the same.
And inconvenient as all fucking hell.
My feet had started to freeze to the floor, so I moved to the fireplace and stood on the hearth rug, letting the warmth of the blaze heat the backs of my legs as I surveyed the shambles before me.
Thank the gods Fabian had his face turned away from me. I couldn’t stand looking at his fixed eyes, but I equally didn’t think I had the fortitude to close them.
All right. Someone had tried to kill me. My wager would be on either whoever had murdered my father, since the method appeared to be the same—or on Lord Zettine, given the way I’d stood up to him today. And of course Zettine might be the original murderer. Nothing ruled him out.
Could Zettine have some kind of alliance with Benedict? Zettine would be too canny to destabilize Calatria without a plan to bring it under his organized thumb and profit off of it. He wouldn’t murder me without someone to install in my place. And so many of my relatives had come to sticky ends, almost entirely deserved, that I really couldn’t think of anyone else with a claim. My remaining cousins were on my mother’s side. They didn’t count.
Or the murder attempt could be far less calculated than that. It could be anyone. And I had no practical way of finding out—at least not immediately.
And no matter who had coerced or bribed the kitchen staff to poison that wine, I had to hide that the attempt had even occurred. With three visiting ambassadors in the palace, all of whom I’d been trying to convince of the stability of my reign, I couldn’t afford to show weakness.
Fabian’s death needed to appear to be an accident to the world at large. If he’d fallen, hit his head, dropped the winebefore anyone could drink it…
He’d need to be moved. Arranged. I shivered, either from the thought of touching his corpse or from the chilly draft that swept about my ankles. When I turned my head, I almost thought I could see him breathing. The smell of death had begun to permeate the room.
At least one other full-grown man would be needed to stage the body.
If he had powerful magic, so much the better.
Gods, I couldn’t really imagine that Benedict would use poisoned wine to try to kill me. If he wanted me dead, he could use his magic to do it in a hundred subtle or unsubtle ways, and he wouldn’t need to depend on an accomplice.
Besides, he might not want me dead at all. Even though they’d been spoken years ago, his words to me the day he’d left Calatria had never left me, as if he used his magic to whisper them in my ear whenever I let down my defenses.
