He cast his eyes around the room. “Damn. I thought I had some tea—wait here. I’ll be right back.” Jarith walked out of the office, leaving me alone.
“Where would I go?” I said to the empty air. I fought the urge to run, the paranoid, itchy feeling that Jarith had invented himself a flimsy excuse so he could go fetch the soldiers with halberds and spears. Focus, I told myself. Jarith was not in league with Darzin, and Jarith’s father was in Khorvesh. Jarith was happy to see me.
To distract myself from my anxiety, I examined the walls. The map focused predominately on the dominion of Jorat, on the other side of the Dragonspire Mountains. Small pins marked various towns, although I couldn’t tell what the pattern behind them might be. More pins held up pieces of vellum and paper, all sketches of the same subject.
It was a dragon.
Not the Old Man, I saw with no small relief, but a dragon all the same. I realized the towns had to be rampage sites and felt a shiver run through me. Those poor people.
There was one last piece of paper nestled in the middle of all the dragon sketches: a wanted poster written in curiously precise, neat lettering. The Duke of Yor, Azhen Kaen, was offering a truly obscene amount of metal for the death of someone from Jorat called “the Black Knight,” who evidently needed no further qualifier. The sketch of the knight in question looked like something out of nightmares, although I knew a group of assassins who would’ve approved of his fashion sensibilities.
What this Black Knight had to do with the dragon eluded me, but I knew one thing: anyone who Relos Var’s puppet Kaen wanted dead that badly instantly marched to the top of my interesting-people list.
I pulled the wanted poster off the wall and tucked it into my coat.
“Sorry about that,” Jarith said as he returned with a pot of tea and two cups on a tray. He poured the tea, which, true to his word, looked like some variation of maridon.
“Well it’s not like I gave you any warning,” I said as I took my cup and returned to the chair. “This is more hospitality than I deserve.”
For himself, Jarith nudged aside a mound of paperwork and leaned a hip on the edge of his desk. “By Khored. What happened to you?”
“Oh, the usual. Kidnapped, sold into slavery, kept prisoner by a dragon. Same old stuff.”
Jarith laughed, shaking his head in wonder (and assuming I was joking). “You have no idea how good it is to have you back. We’ve almost started wars because of our insistence on searching ships for gold-haired prisoners. I’ve had my agents following up on every lead, no matter how preposterous.”
“You have agents now? You really have moved up in rank.”
“Ah well, Stonegate Pass is a shit assignment, but it’s a fantastic career builder.” He picked up his tea and gulped down some as he studied me. “Does your family know you’re back?”
“Not yet,” I admitted. “Talking to you was the higher priority.”
Jarith frowned and set down his teacup. “Than your own family? What’s going on?”
I cleared my throat and pulled a set of letters out of my coat. “I thought you would want to be involved in this. It concerns Thurvishar D’Lorus.”
The frown didn’t leave his face, but only deepened some. “He’s not my favorite person, but we’ve stayed out of each other’s way. I don’t hold a grudge.”
“I do,” I admitted. “He was involved with my kidnapping.” Which was technically true, even if I was certain Thurvishar hadn’t actually been responsible for it. Before Jarith had a chance to respond, I tossed one of the folded pieces of vellum in front of him. “That is a letter from Raverí D’Lorus testifying that she never bore any children. Not to Gadrith D’Lorus, not to anyone. Thurvishar D’Lorus is not her son.”
He picked up the letter and opened it. The frown had graduated to a scowl. “I’m sure that was true at one point, but I can’t imagine that House D’Lorus let her write letters during her sentence of Continuance…”
“Except Continuance never happened.”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“She’s not dead.” I leaned forward. “Between escaping slavers and navigating my way back here, I tracked her down, Jarith. High Lord Cedric D’Lorus lied about having her in custody, and he lied about Continuance, and he lied about executing her after Continuance was finished. Raverí had an inside man over at the Council, and he gave her enough warning to skip town ahead of the witchhunters.”
Jarith looked incredulous. “What idiot would have been foolish enough to jeopardize their entire career by helping a convicted traitor escape justice?”
I coughed. “That would be your father. Why do you think I came here first?”
It was rather remarkable, watching all the color drain from his face. Of course, I’d just suggested that Qoran Milligreest was guilty of the sort of crime that got one sentenced to lifetime enslavement at best. “Why would my father have—”
“Because your father is a good man and he knew perfectly well she didn’t deserve what the Council and House D’Lorus were going to do to her.” I gestured toward the back side of the letter. “Also, they were lovers. It’s all in there.”
He stared at me. What Jarith didn’t do was tell me that was impossible or that his father would never do that. He probably knew better. The affair part wasn’t even necessarily a great scandal, given how Khorveshans often played fast and loose with polygamy, much to the reproachful delight of the rest of the Empire. Helping a witch escape the witchhunters, though …
Jarith sat down. Then he reached over and finished the rest of his tea while he read the entire letter, start to finish. “Okay.” He paused. “Okay,” he said again.
I snatched the letter out of his hands and magically set the whole thing on fire.
“Wait, what—” He stood up again.
“I’m not trying to blackmail you, Jarith. I figure there’s two ways that you can react to this. The royal way would be to kill me, try to figure out where I’ve hidden Raverí, and do whatever you can to cover this up. But I’m betting you’re going to go for option number two.”
Jarith paused and cocked his head. “What’s option number two?”
“If I’m right, there’s a much bigger problem brewing, and once we uncover that? Nobody is going to have any time to waste thinking about who helped a girl leave town without anyone noticing twenty years ago.”
“Okay, I’m listening.” Jarith didn’t sound panicked, which was good. I needed him rational.