have working on this, Brant? My spies have already told me. Logan was behind it all. That bitch Trudana just cooperated. I’ve already sent men to arrest him.”
Agon reeled. It couldn’t be. In fact, he was sure it wasn’t. “Why would Logan do such a thing?” he asked. “Logan was one of your son’s best friends. He’s isn’t ambitious in the least. By the gods, he just got engaged to Serah Drake. A count’s daughter!”
“It didn’t have anything to do with power or ambition, Brant. It was jealousy. Logan felt that my son had totally humiliated him over some trivial matter. You know how boys get. It’s just like the Gyres to covet our every success. Besides, I have witnesses who heard Logan threaten him.”
It was all rattling together, the pieces spinning and falling into place. Kylar Stern, the false noble, the wetboy, was a close friend of Logan’s. In a fit of rage, Logan hired Kylar to kill the prince. It all fit—except that it was Logan. Agon knew him, and he didn’t believe it.
“Which wetboy did they hire, Brant?” the king asked.
“It was Kylar Stern,” Agon said.
The king snorted. “Huh. The gods must be with me for once.”
“Sire?”
“I just hired Hu Gibbet’s apprentice to go kill him, a girl wetboy, if you can believe it. Kylar is Blint’s apprentice. Or was. He’s probably dead by now.”
Kylar is Blint’s apprentice? The picture that had been slowly spinning together burst apart. The king had hired Blint! Blint’s apprentice wouldn’t have killed his employer’s son. Would he?
The name Hu Gibbet had been carved into the bodies at the Gyre estate. Of course, only a fool would carve his own name onto such a massacre. But from his hours at the estate, Agon was sure that all the murders had been the work of a single man. He could think of no one who could kill so many people except a wetboy, and the style certainly fit what he had heard of Hu Gibbet. He couldn’t imagine Durzo Blint mutilating bodies. Blint would consider it unprofessional.
Hu Gibbet would only sign his name if he thought the authorities would never have a chance to come after him. The king said the prince’s murder didn’t have anything to do with power, but this was Cenaria. Everything had to do with power.
If Durzo Blint’s apprentice really had killed the prince, why would he have left a witness? Blint’s apprentice would be as professional as Blint himself. A witness was a loose end that was easy to tie up.
It was all about power.
Agon scowled. “Has there been any word from our garrison at Screaming Winds?”
“No.”
“So the Khalidoran army is at least four days away. What are you planning to do about the festival tonight?”
“I’m not going to celebrate Midsummer’s on the day after my son’s death.”
The lord general had a sinking feeling. “My king, I think perhaps you should.”
“I will not host a party for my boy’s murderers.” The king’s eyes flashed, and he looked less like a petulant child and more like a king than Agon had ever seen. “I have to do something!” the king said. “Everyone will think . . .” He went on, but Agon ignored him.
Everyone will think. That was the key. What will everyone think?
The prince was dead, killed in a shameful way either by the king’s mistress or by a wetboy. The beloved Gyres were dead or imprisoned. Agon suspected now that an assassin had probably made his way into Screaming Winds and killed Regnus as well. It wouldn’t make sense to leave him alive. Not when someone was going to such pains to set plans in motion.
Everyone will think that the king ordered his own son killed in a jealous rage, and that to get back at his unfaithful mistress he framed her.
With the right rumors, everyone’s bewilderment over why the Gyres had been murdered could be turned, too. People would connect all the murders, but how?
The Gyres were next in line for the throne after the Gunders, though the family had never challenged the king. The king, weak and jealous, could be portrayed as paranoid all too easily. And the Gyres were far more respected than the Gunders. Lord Gyre’s faithful service would be seen as being rewarded with treachery and murder.
Logan—the new Lord Gyre—had been seized by the king, and the king’s natural inclination would be to keep him in prison. But Logan was known to be absolutely moral, without ambitions. For the gods’ sakes, he