The Courtesy of Kings | ☑ Queenkiller, Kingmaker #2

43.1

It was absolutely ridiculous.

How long had it taken—the things she had to do—just to convince him to betray his nephew ... drug the Rama ... and now she was expected to believe Kiet had done something so dishonourable, so repugnant as to murder his own father? It was outrageous that anyone could believe it of him.

But everyone at the tournament heard the Rama rebuke him. Call him to the throne room. Perhaps some had even seen him draw an inch of his blade. And now the Rama's dead.

The sun was sinking fast, her grandmother's gazebo looked little more than a shadow across the budding plots of rosella and jungle geranium. All the garden lights were left unlit, and all Isla had was the wooden lantern, swinging in her hand as she rushed down the pebbled path.

Finally she came to the gazebo and for the first time stood back to study its foundation. It was not so high—perhaps a little over two feet of stone—and the entrance to the tunnels were there somewhere.

Isla rounded the construction until she stood thigh-deep in the rajini's lavender bushes. She crouched low and brushed their stems away from the stone until she found it: a slab of stone unlike the others. It was perfectly hexagonal where the others were irregular and cut rough. She peered over the top of the bushes before giving it a push.

The ground beneath her rumbled, but it was the foundation that moved, pulling itself inwards until it revealed a hole in the ground, a ladder fixed into its side. Isla gripped the lantern between her teeth by the braids of its handle and descended.

It must have been an entire floor down. Isla had reached the bottom and lit the first basin on the wall before the foundation sealed itself back up, scattering dust and debris over her head. Her coughs travelled through the tunnel along with the strip of flame that spread across the wall.

She blinked in the orange light. She was standing in a recess right in the middle of the tunnel with two directions to go. One would take her toward the curtain wall—toward the anterior ring. The other would lead her to the remaining consortial estates.

Her grandmother had instructed her to leave the palace, all the while refusing to do the same. Her absence would be missed, she argued, and only raise questions where none existed before. But Isla ... she was tied to Kiet. Rajini Dhvani's trial had made that all out for the palatial ring to hear. It was not unlikely that Maharaj Khaisan would have her questioned, too, and who knew then what other secrets would unravel.

No. The realisation seeped into her as she took the passage right. It's Maha Rama Khaisan, now. It was only a matter of ceremony—but for all intents and purposes, it was he who now held the crown, and he who held the Maha Garda.

And he's sending them for Kiet. The best of the Garda were marching for his residence—her grandmother had seen it through Huu—and that told Isla that at least Kiet had managed to elude capture yet.

But what happened? She cycled through every possibility as she ran. Did the Rama discover the drug in his drink? Even then, nothing would have pointed it toward Kiet. Even then, he would sooner flee than murder his own father. He stood to gain nothing from the Rama's death. Khaisan, on the other hand ...

Her blood chilled. Had he grown tired of waiting for his grandfather's natural death? Had he started to fear his position as first-in-line? Killing the Rama and framing Kiet in the process would have made him two wicks with one flame.

Ah—I shouldn't be jumping ahead of myself. There was no point in speculations. Whatever the case—whether Kiet killed the Rama or Khaisan did and framed him, it only ended one way, and that was with Kiet hanging from the weeping fig.