As Matron Darniss and Mandeville exited the opera house, their tail followed them at a discrete distance. The two Carrow agents paused in the street for a few moments, exchanging pleasantries, playing the role of a courting couple for the benefit of the intelligence officer and anyone else who might be paying attention to them Then they leaned close for a chaste kiss before waving down a cab.
“Thank you for another truly wonderful evening,” said Mandeville as the horse drawn carriage came to a halt beside them and the footman opened the door. “Same again, next week?”
“I look forward to it,” replied Darniss, smiling demurely. “Until then.”
She got into the cab and the footman closed the door before taking his place on the tailboard. The driver then slapped the reins and the cab clattered off down the road.
Darniss couldn't resist looking back at the intelligence officer who'd followed her from the palace. It amused her to think that the man had been paid by the state to spend an evening at the opera, and then there were all the other agents being paid to follow all the other members of the palace staff, all of whom, she knew, were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. This hunt for her must be costing Helberion a tidy sum of money. Money that could have been spent on a few more palace guards, or a few more pieces of artillery for the army. It warmed her heart to think that she was damaging Helberion just by going to the opera, never mind the valuable intelligence she'd passed on over the years.
It took her a few moments to find him. He should have been waving down another cab to follow her, but instead he was walking along Greentemple Street, away from her. Why would he be going that way? she thought in confusion. That was the way Mandeville had gone...
She sat up in alarm. The man was following Mandeville! No, no, no! This was wrong! “Stop the cab!” she cried, rapping on the wall with her knuckles. “Driver! Stop at once!”
The cab did stop, but only so the footman could jump in. He grabbed her by the shoulder as she tried to jump out of the other door and pushed her back into her seat. The cab then moved on, turning into Greymantle street. The wrong way to the main palace entrance, the entrance she was accustomed to using, but the right way if you wanted to use the Beggars entrance; the entrance used by junior staff and the guardsmen. It was also the entrance closest to the damp, stone stairs that led down to the cells.
“Settle down please, miss,” said the footman. “No sense making a scene, is there?”
“What is going on? I demand that you release me!”
The footman reached into a pocket and produced a tin badge. “Sergeant Jugg, miss, of the intelligence services. My associate at the reins is Constable Booth. I'm afraid we know about the letter you left at the orphan house two days ago. You were followed there.” He fixed her with a hard stare. “We know everything.”
“I've been giving donations to the orphanage for years now, you stupid man. And I leave notes for the orphans if I don't have time to speak to them in person. If you've read them you know there’s nothing treasonous in them.”
“Code words, miss. The letters contain code words that have meaning for the person that reads them. We picked up the young man who opened the letter, brought him in for questioning. He's told us everything, and the gentleman you just spent the evening with will tell us a good deal more, I'm sure. You'd be wise to be completely honest with us, miss. It'll be easier for you in the long run.”
They know nothing, she told herself, trying to calm her hammering heart. Her story was plausible. She had indeed been spending time at the orphanage, making donations. Talking to the half formed wretches whose parents had died before they'd become fully human. Leaving encouraging letters for the orphans. These men were fishing. Picking senior members of the palace staff up at random, accusing them. Trying to scare them into a confession. They were lying about the man in the orphanage having confessed. Lying to suspects was a common practice, and she refused to believe it. All she had to do was remain calm.
“I am not the traitor,” she said, therefore, looking him straight in the eye. “I understand you have a job to do and I bear you no Ill will. You might want to give some thought to the wording of the apology you'll be giving me in a day or two.”
“You just tried to run,” he reminded her. “You tried to jump out of the cab...”
“Because I thought you were kidnapping me! I am matron of the Queens staff. I’m sure she would pay quite a sum to get me back from a gang of ruffians. Use your head, man!”
The sergeant looked at her, his eyes firm and hard, but was there also just a trace of doubt in them? It was enough to give her hope, which in turn gave her the strength to sit calmly in her seat, radiating confidence, as they took her to an interrogation room in the palace holding area.
☆☆☆
The smile on Ambassador Lon-Fidell's face did nothing to improve his appearance. To look at him, the King thought, you might think that the armies of Carrow had already won and that it was he, rather than the King, who held the power in this room. Leothan smiled internally. He'd been waiting for years to wipe the smirk from that face. His life had been an endless succession of heartbreak and worry for so long now, he had to make the most of moments like this, and so he said nothing for a few moments while the ambassador’s smile slowly wavered.
“Majesty?” the Ambassador said at last. “You summoned me, Majesty.”
“Yes, I did. I summoned you here to inform you that the Kingdom of Helberion is declaring war upon the Kingdom of Carrow. Effective immediately. We are now at war, Lon-Fidell.”
It took the man a moment or two to process the information. “You?” he said, staring in astonishment. “Are declaring war? On us?” He stared at the King, and the King stared back. “Your Majesty is famous for possessing a certain, shall we say, light hearted attitude to international affairs...”
“Your country put a blessing on my daughter which is slowly robbing her of her humanity,” said the King, his eyes cold and hard. He took half a pace forward and the ambassador took half a step back, his eyes widening in sudden fear. “You have blackened the reputation of this country. You have sabotaged our friendship with the Kelvon Empire and you have done harm to my daughter. Did you think you could do these things with impunity? Did you think we wouldn't know that it was you?”
“Your Majesty, I assure you...”
“If you thought you could get away with it, you were sadly mistaken. We are going to teach you what it means to cross Helberion, and in particular it is going to give me a great deal of pleasure to teach you what it means to harm my daughter! Our armies are even now poised to strike. They will race across your country like a wildfire. They will destroy anyone who tries to oppose them and when they reach the palace where your King is hiding like a toad in a hole they will drag him out and throw him into his own dungeon, where he will be left to rot while he contemplates the virtues of civilised behaviour.”
The King had been steadily advancing on the ambassador, who had been backing away, and now he felt the wall at his back. His hand reached to his belt, where he normally wore his pistol, but weapons weren't permitted in the presence of the King. What was more, Leothan was a large, physically imposing man who, like most heads of state, had been trained in several forms of combat by the best teachers in the human world. He could probably batter the ambassador to death with his bare hands if his rage got the better of him, and if he didn't want to dirty his own hands there were two palace guards standing right behind him who would probably have been all too happy to do it for him.
“Majesty, this is madness! First to think that we are responsible for the current state of affairs between you and the Empire...”
“Do not insult our intelligence services with pointless denials.”
“And secondly to think that you can win a war with us. Our armed forces exist only to defend our homeland, but they are many times the size of yours. If you declare war with us, it is you that will be crushed.”
“War has already been declared. Our ambassador to your country is even now informing your King. A state of war now exists between us. Your status as ambassador is hereby revoked. You and your staff have twenty four hours to leave the country. If you are still on Helberion soil one second after that you will be arrested as spies and executed.”
Lon-Fidell stared, but then a smile crept over his face. “Very well, Majesty,” he said. “War it is, but it is a war we will win, and when it is over it is you who will be imprisoned in your own dungeon. I go now, but I will return at the head of an army. This is Carrow land, and this is a Carrow palace, illegally seized by your grandfather. You should have given it back to us when we first asked for it. If you had, you could probably have held onto your throne, in the name of peace, as governor of this region, subservient to King Nilon. Now, though, the most you can hope for is that your neck snaps cleanly when you are hung.”
“I imagine it feels good to finally be able to say those things openly,” said Leothan.
“You have no idea, Majesty."
Leothan nodded. “And you have no idea how good it feels to do this!”
His fist swung, slamming solidly into the former ambassador’s face, throwing him back against the wall. Blood flew from his nose and lip, but he managed to remain standing as the guards ran forward. Leothan waved them back. “Now get the hell out of my palace!”
Lon-Fidell glared his hatred back at him, then opened the door and left, trying to maintain his dignity as he held a handkerchief to his face.
The King massaged his knuckles as Darnell came forward. “Well, that's that,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed the King. “The die is well and truly cast. What happens next is in the lap of Those Above. All we can do is wait for news from the Carrow garrison cities.”
“Do you really think we have a chance, Majesty?”
‘I know we'd have stood no chance at all if we hadn't done this. We're upsetting all of King Nilon’s carefully drawn up plans, but that may be all we end up doing.” He followed after the former ambassador, and was amused to see tiny drops of blood on the varnished wooden floor. He thought briefly about having an extra layer of varnish added to the floor when the blood had dried, to preserve them, but was distracted by the sight of Balhern hurrying along the corridor towards them.
“Your pardon, Majesty,” he said, bowing low. “We may have caught the spy. The spy in the palace.”
“Who?” demanded the King.
“Matron Darniss, Sire. Some men from the intelligence service went to pick her up for a shakedown. We had no reason to suspect her, we were getting nowhere with the investigation. We'd reached the point where we decided to just pull people in for questioning. Scare them, tell them we knew everything, that sort of thing. Try to scare them into making a mistake. Well, Darniss made no mistake. She stayed cool as a cucumber no matter what we did, but the man she was with..."
“What man?”
“She's been going to the opera with a man, we don't know who he is. We decided it was time we did, so we had a man follow him. See where he lived, who he associates with, that sort of thing. Our man missed his check in, so we went out looking for him. We found his clothes in an alley. All his clothes, and nearby we found a large dog howling in misery. Our man, Tomsk his name was. He was raised from a dog, Sire.”
The King stared. “The man was a wizard!”
“So it seems, Sire. A wizard with something to hide. It has to be her, Majesty. It has to be Darniss.”
“The wizard must have known that his background wouldn’t bear scrutiny,” said Leothan. “There's no other reason for him to have betrayed himself like that. Darniss is in the cells?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Let's go talk to her, then.”
The King strode off down the corridor, leading the way to the palace dungeon.