Allies & Assassins Read online

  Axel lifted his hand. “We’ll get to that, presently,” he said. “There’s no need for us to further detain you or your apprentice. I’m sure you both have other important work to pursue.” He gestured toward the door.

  In spite of Axel’s very clear dismissal, Elias remained sitting in the chair, hands folded across his lap, reminding Koel of one of the statues in the village chapel.

  “I wonder,” the Physician began hesitantly, “if I might have just a moment of your time… in private.”

  Behind the carved oak screen, Koel couldn’t help but smile. This was getting even more intriguing.

  “Just us?” Axel appeared thoughtful. It was evident that the Physician’s request had successfully hooked his interest. “Yes, yes of course.” His eyes signaled to Nash, who made for the door and opened it to allow Asta out first.

  Axel leaned back in his chair, waiting for the door to close, then leaned forward again once it had done so, his forearms resting on the desk. “Well, now we are quite alone, Elias.” Koel held her breath as her brother continued. “Talk to me.”

  Elias shifted uneasily on the chair. “It’s a matter of some delicacy,” he said. “It is with reference to the poisons I mentioned before.”

  “Go on,” Axel encouraged him.

  “As I’m sure you know, ergot is a form of mold that grows on cereal grains, whereas savin is a plant. A blue-green shrub, reminiscent of the trees in the forest. Indeed, you could say that it has the appearance of a forest in miniature…”

  Koel could see her brother’s interest already waning. She could imagine what he was thinking. I’ve got an assassination to solve and you’re wasting my time with a lesson in botany.

  “To the best of my knowledge,” the Physician continued, “savin grows in only one place in Archenfield.” He coughed, then continued hoarsely, “In the Physic Garden.”

  Axel drew himself upright. “Your garden!”

  Elias nodded. “I used to employ it as a remedy. A rather specific remedy.” He paused. “I haven’t done so for some time, but still it continues to grow there.”

  “I see.” Axel’s expression was grave. He was clean-shaven but Koel noticed he stroked his chin in the same manner his father was given to.

  “I felt I should be direct with you on this matter,” the Physician said. He leaned forward. “Axel, I had nothing to do with Prince Anders’s poisoning. You must believe me.”

  For a moment there was silence within the chamber. Koel tried not to breathe.

  “Of course I believe you!” Axel exclaimed at last. His eyes were wide. “Elias, did you think I was going to arrest you?”

  “I… I didn’t know what to think.” Relief had flooded into the Physician’s voice and it occurred to Koel that he might be about to cry. She really hoped not.

  “Elias,” Axel said, rising from his chair and walking around his desk to stand right at the Physician’s side. “I could never think ill of you.” He reached out and took Elias’s trembling hands in his own. “Was it not these hands here, which delivered Prince Anders into this world and gave him life? And Prince Jared and Edvin too? And myself of course…”

  And me, Koel thought, not at all surprised to be omitted from her brother’s list.

  “You are a bringer of life and health and remedies.” Axel bestowed a bountiful smile upon his companion. “You don’t have a destructive bone in your body or an evil thought in your brain.”

  “Thank you,” Elias said, his voice cracking with emotion. His body trembled with evident relief. “Well, I must say that is a great weight off my mind.”

  Axel placed his hands on Elias’s shoulders, massaging them gently. “Thank you for everything you have done,” he said. “Your work in this matter is, for the time being, concluded. Mine, I fear, is just beginning.”

  Elias rose from his chair and Axel escorted the Physician to the door, intoning further words of warm reassurance as he propelled him through it. He then addressed Nash over Elias’s head. “Wait there for me. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Koel watched as her brother closed the door and walked back into the chamber, alive with a new purpose. He came to stand by the mullioned window, turning his back to her, as he gazed out into the palace grounds.

  Koel rose from the chair and walked out from behind the screen. In her stockinged feet, she was virtually soundless. She had almost made it to his side before he turned around.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, eyes wide. “Where did you come from?”

  “I’ve been here a little while,” she said.

  There was a plate of fruits—untouched of course—on Axel’s desk. She hadn’t seen that before. Reaching out, she lifted an ebony grape to her lips.

  Axel frowned and shook his head. “You can’t just sneak into my quarters, like a cat, whenever the fancy takes you,” he said. “There is such a thing as privacy.”

  The sweet grape juices exploded inside her mouth. She reached forward for another. “Privacy or secrets?”

  He shrugged. “It amounts to the same thing.” His frown had subsided. She knew, though he might growl like a bear, he could never stay angry with her for long.

  “Well, now you have had your fun,” he said. “it’s time for you to go and commence work on a new tapestry or some such.”

  “While you stride out to make safe the Princedom? What’s your next move?”

  He smiled indulgently at her. “Much as I would love to satisfy your insatiable curiosity, sister dearest, I have a job to do. What you and my father fail to understand—you with your spying and questions, he with his rallying speeches—is that I’m the one in the family who shoulders all the responsibility.” His tone grew mocking. “And I’m the only one in a position of true power and influence. Need I remind you that while I sit at the table of state, the rest of you aren’t even permitted to observe meetings of the Twelve?”

  Koel bit down her annoyance and stepped closer. “I could help you,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me your grand plan?”

  “I don’t think so,” Axel said. His eyes were directed toward the door, his message was abundantly clear.

  Koel shook her head. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you’re rather enjoying yourself.”

  Axel looked aghast. “Enjoying investigating our cousin’s cold-blooded murder? How could you say such a thing? How could you think that? It’s simply that I am Captain of the Guard and…”

  “You have a duty to make safe the Princedom.” She nodded. “Of course you do,” she finished softly. She could have said more but one of her many talents was knowing when it was best to curb her tongue.

  “I’m going now,” Axel said. “Fetch your shoes from behind the screen and, please Koel, don’t be here when I get back.” Sighing, head down, he strode toward the door.

  Hearing Axel’s footsteps receding along the corridor, Koel Blaxland smiled. Her brother could talk big but sometimes he was such an amateur. She closed the door behind him, then considered her options. Her shoes were indeed safely stashed behind the oak screen. They could wait there. She sauntered over to her brother’s desk and sat down in his chair. It was a little too low for her so she got up again and found a plump cushion—one she’d embroidered for him when she was considerably younger and less easily bored. It made her brother’s chair far more comfortable. Reaching forward, she took Elias’s folder in her hands. Then she leaned back in the chair, lifted her stockinged feet onto the surface of the desk and began eagerly to read the Physician’s confidential report. Well, she told herself, after the effort he had gone to, somebody ought to do him that courtesy.

  ELEVEN

  The Kitchens, the Palace

  AXEL STOOD, FOR THE MOMENT UNNOTICED, ON the threshold of the palace kitchens, observing the scene with unusual interest. There must have been fifty people or more at work there—men and women of all ages, engaged in a variety of tasks—chopping, draining, and stirring the various components of the
lunch dishes.

  Axel glanced from one face to another. Any one of them could have been guilty of poisoning Prince Anders’s supper the night before.

  Was it that one over there, chopping carrots? With the ruthless efficiency with which he used his knife, he’d have been handy in the army. Could he be the Prince’s poisoner? It might just as easily be that harmless looking older woman, cracking eggs into a bowl. You didn’t need to be young or strong to sprinkle a few grains of poison into a stew. Or that greasy looking lad, there, sticking his finger into the mixing bowl, could equally well be the culprit. And what about that ugly brute lifting a heavy pot from the stove? Axel’s eyes darted from face to face to face. It could be any of them.

  But no, he told himself, that wasn’t quite right. Because Prince Anders’s food and his food alone had been tainted. So the savin or ergot, whichever it was, could not have been sprinkled into a pot or whisked into a sauce here in the kitchens. If it had been, they wouldn’t be dealing with just one death but with a full-blown massacre at the palace. No, the assassin had to have gotten to the food on its journey between the kitchen and the dining hall. The assassin had to have had specific access to Prince Anders’s plate.

  The Huntsman’s Bell chimed eight times as Jared arrived in the dining hall, accompanied by his mother and brother. There was the usual sound of chairs scraping back over the stone floor and the susurrus of low skirts swishing on the flagstones as the other royals and members of the Twelve—as well as the teams of subordinate staff who populated the outer tables—all rose to their feet. Then the vast cathedral-like chamber was uncommonly silent and Jared was aware of his own footsteps, along with those of his mother and brother—echoing, magnified, around the hall.

  The central table for lunch—which accommodated the Twelve (with the exception, for obvious reasons, of the Cook) as well as the key members of the royal family, was in the shape of a horseshoe. Everyone’s position at the table was carefully preordained. Jared would sit, for the first time, at the very center of the room.

  The seat was not far from the chair he was accustomed to—currently empty, pending his decision of Edling—and yet it felt a million miles away. It was as if the stars in the heavens had reconfigured themselves and he now found himself at the heart of a strange new constellation.

  The new Prince once again sensed that he was the focus of everyone’s attention, as two hundred or so pairs of eyes followed his every step. He knew they were all looking for telltale signs. How had he taken the news of his brother’s death? How was he handling his own accession? Was the palace and the Princedom in safe hands?

  He could feel a flush of warmth rise up from inside himself and threaten to spread into his face. This often happened when he felt self-conscious—and he had never before felt so self-conscious as now. Determined to fight back, he sought out familiar faces in the crowd. Aunt Stella and Cousin Koel both bowed their heads graciously toward him. Kai Jagger, his first companion of the day, gave a brisk nod—no discernible emotion in his hard eyes. In contrast, Father Simeon’s benevolent face was etched with pain, while Logan Wilde smiled encouragingly from his seat at the horseshoe as Jared took his place. He noticed that two people were missing from the main table—Cousin Axel and Silva.

  Cousin Axel’s absence was easily explained—Jared knew that he was immersed in the investigation into Anders’s assassination. Noticing now that Axel’s deputy, Elliot Nash, also wasn’t anywhere to be seen, Jared wondered if some important new information had come to light.

  “You look distant,” Elin said to him, as the others sat back down in their seats. “What are you thinking about?”

  He turned to his mother. “I was thinking about the investigation and whether, instead of being here, I should be wherever Cousin Axel is, helping him.”

  Elin shook her head sharply and laid her hand over his wrist. “My son, you are Prince of all Archenfield now so it will not be you who helps Axel Blaxland, but he who helps you.” Her eyes met his, knowingly. “And, frankly, whatever is happening with regard to the investigation, it will wait until after lunch. It has been a long morning and we all need to put something into our stomachs.”

  Jared nodded, smiling to himself. His mother had an unswerving belief in the importance of three square meals each day. Still, she never seemed to put on any weight. She had retained the same lean figure for as long as he could remember. She was an expert rider and huntswoman and her predilection for such activities perhaps accounted both for her healthy appetite and her ability to stay trim.

  “I can smell food, but I see no sign of it,” Elin resumed. “Where is our lunch?” Her eyes slid past him to the empty seat on Jared’s other side. “And, while we’re at it, where is Silva?”

  It was hard to remain calm and cool-headed in the furnacelike heat of the kitchen. Spirals of steam rose up from the ranks of heavy pots that sat atop the iron stoves, while fresh blasts of heat emanated from the opening of the vast oven doors, as loaves of bread—sprinkled with aromatic fennel seed—were removed and crisp joints of pork were swiftly basted. The precise movements of each individual, and the frenetic interplay between them, brought to mind a night of country dancing. And there were few things Axel detested more than when the palace was given over to a night of dancing and its ghastly enforced merriment.

  Axel’s keen eyes darted through the crowd until they pinpointed, at its epicenter, the unappetizing form of Vera Webb, the Cook. Her doughlike face, poised over a steaming cauldron, was beetroot-juice pink from heat and exertion. She was shaking her head and giving a young lad at her side short shrift about something. Axel took a breath, then began weaving his way through the melee into the very heart of the kitchens.

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!” Vera was berating the lanky kitchen lad. “Yes, you do taste the foods for seasoning. But then you put the spoon in for washing—you don’t just dip it back into the pot! I don’t seem to recall your spittle being on the list of ingredients, do you?”

  Axel reached out a hand to Vera’s shoulder. At close range, her upper arms reminded him of plump hams. At his touch, Vera’s head immediately jerked around. Seeing who it was, she made no effort to disguise her displeasure.

  “Axel!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Can’t you see how busy we are?”

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. “A matter of the utmost importance.”

  Vera frowned, lifting her hand to address the slick of perspiration across her forehead—but making decidedly little impact on it. “You’ll have to wait,” she said. “As you can see, we’re in the middle of the final preparations for luncheon.” She began turning back to the pot.

  Did she really think he’d be so easily dismissed?

  “This can’t wait,” Axel resumed calmly. “And I’m working on the assumption that you won’t want me to say what I have to say to you in front of your many staff. So, Vera, I’d suggest you step out into the gardens with me for a moment.”

  Something in his tone of voice must have persuaded her. When she turned around, he knew he had her attention.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll come with you. But this had better not take more than a minute or two. At this point in the proceedings, time is of the essence.”

  It would take as long as necessary, but he felt no need to share that thought with her. Head aloft, Axel maneuvered his way through the hectic kitchen, aware of Vera waddling in his wake, throwing out haphazard instructions left and right: “Smaller slices, Jutta! I said add some pepper, not salt! For God’s sake, Fritha, get the rest of those loaves out of the oven and onto serving platters now! And, you two, start decanting the soup into tureens. It must have been ten minutes already since the Huntsman’s Bell. We’re late!”

  Axel tuned her niggling voice down until it was just a dim babble in his ear. When the babble momentarily ceased, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “It’s a good thing I don’t run my army the way you do your kitchens,” he observed p
ointedly.

  “The kitchens are my domain and I have run them for many a year, without cause for complaint,” Vera said firmly. “You’d do well to stick to your job and leave mine to me.”

  “Oh, Vera,” Axel said, unable to stop a hint of pleasure creeping into his voice. “I only wish that were possible.”

  “There she is, at last!” Elin pinched Jared’s arm as Silva appeared in the dining hall. She lingered near the doorway, in a jet-black dress, unadorned by embroidery. Jared was used to seeing Silva in light colors—pale blues and corals, with gold and silver threads. In her traditional mourning garb, with no trace of makeup, she seemed more fragile than ever and, perplexing though it was to think it, even more beautiful.

  She looked unsure of her surroundings, as if she were entering the room for the very first time. Or, Jared thought, as if she had only just surfaced from a deep sleep and was not yet fully engaged in the physical world. As Silva stood there, he found himself unable to draw his eyes away from her. Had her skin always been so pale, her eyes so wide and blue as summer cornflowers, or were these the physical effects of Anders’s death?

  Elin nudged him. “Go and escort her over to her seat. She barely looks capable of making it on her own.”

  “Mother!” Jared exclaimed, reluctant to make himself the center of attention again.

  “Jared, people are starting to stare at her. For goodness sake, go over and bring her to the table—even if you have to throw her over your shoulder and carry her.”

  He realized he had no choice in the matter. He rose from his seat and strode over to his brother’s widow. As he came to stand before her—almost as if asking her for a dance, he suddenly thought—she scrutinized him curiously. He felt a fresh wave of panic pass through him. She wasn’t about to mistake him for Anders again, was she? Please not here, in front of the whole court.

  “Silva,” he said softly. “We were concerned that you might miss luncheon.”