The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 50: The Spymaster

I'm not 100% confident in the writing of this chapter but I've done a lot of editing, so at this point I think it just needs a new pair of eyes (and maybe some opinions so I can see if I got the important points across right...)

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It hurt. It hurt even before anyone had said anything. Just seeing him there, in the dust and dark of the cell -- the boy who lugged piles of books around the castle and lectured me about history and swearing and made up schemes to get me and the princess in the same room. The boy who had followed me to Maenar.

Dell pushed far enough into the room that I could see her at the edge of my vision, scrutinizing him. I felt my fingers curl into fists.

Don't say it.

My chest felt tight. I worried about my breathing and worried more about the way Caer was looking at me. Like he'd set the room on fire if it meant I'd burn too.

Dell tilted her head curtly and my stomach dropped in horrible anticipation. "That is Caer Solentude."

She didn't say he was the spymaster. She didn't say he was the right person.

"And?" Ysmay probed.

"He is not, technically, the spymaster." But she continued to watch him closely, and her words didn't relieve me. Technically.

Why were we talking over his head like this? This wasn't right. Someone should apologize, I thought, but I couldn't seem to actually grasp any words.

Some part of my mind commented snidely that they called this being speechless. Possibly I had never experienced it before.

Roman merely smiled over Caer's head. He stood the closest to him, as though to contrast his own straight-backed posture to Caer's defeated slump. "But he is the spymaster's son, yes?"

Caer's father. Beris Solentude. In one moment so many pieces fell together that I could have hit myself. The man who was important enough to be Magali's tutor when Caer wasn't around but too often absent to pass for anything other than a grouchy old historian, the man Caer had even told me was touchy about information and who had access to it, the man Lord Iso had hinted at being far more important than I was aware of. The man who I knew had even been a part of meetings between Iso and Tobias, but whom I had always written off as an old, bad-tempered tutor.

I wrapped my cloak tighter around myself, feeling the chill of the cell in my bones. At some point I had broken eye contact with Caer, and I was grateful for that. His stare was unnerving and furious, like a confession of exactly what they accused him of. It was a confession I didn't want to hear.

God, had I missed everything important right under my nose?

"Explain," Ysmay said coldly. It was hard to remember there was an important exchange going on over and around me when I appeared to be going through an existential crisis.

"I admit," Roman sighed as though Ysmay was being too picky, "I exaggerated slightly when I said I had the spymaster. But surely your own source can fill you in."

"Beris Solentude hasn't been able to maintain his spy network alone in years," Dell said dutifully. "Caer has been helping him for a long time as much more than an assistant. Beris may hold the official title, but it's Caer's ideas that matter more at this point. A few more years and he will -- he would become spymaster in name as well. Beris is becoming more of a figurehead with each passing day. If you have this one here, you cut off his most important resource."