“Right.” Kasper gave her a look but kept his voice even. “We have confirmed that the meeting did exist and that Bayle was there with ten other guards who all vouch for him, along with the kitchen staff and footmen. Cyrano wasn’t supposed to attend because he wasn’t allowed to leave the Queen unguarded, which he did.”
“He told me I would be fine because I would be with Bryn,” Linnea said. “And as it turns out, I was much safer with Bryn than I would have been with him.”
“So Cyrano lied to get a moment alone with the King so he could kill him?” Lisbet shrugged. “That doesn’t tell us why he wanted to.”
“No, but it does suggest that Bayle wasn’t directly involved,” Kasper said.
“It’s also worth mentioning that Cyrano had a wife and a young child,” I said, and by the surprised looks Lisbet and Linnea gave each other, I guessed this was news to them. “His daughter has a rare disease that requires costly treatment, which makes money an excellent motivator. Both the wife and the child appear to have left in a hurry.”
“Clothes were scattered over the beds, but there were no signs of a struggle,” Kasper said. “They seem to have left very suddenly but of their own accord.”
“That’s not that surprising if they heard Cyrano was a traitor who’d been killed,” I continued, not letting the darkness of his death cloud my words. “We would expect them to run away lest they be punished for his crimes.”
“If they are innocent, they have nothing to fear,” Linnea piped up, and that was her naiveté showing.
Another time, I would have to explain to her how Viktor D?lig’s young children had been punished for his transgressions. The world was not a fair place, and a Queen needed to know that if she wanted to help rule a kingdom.
“We did find something odd, however,” Kasper went on. “Under the stove were two sapphires, a little smaller than a marble. We suspect that in the commotion of leaving, they fell out and rolled under the stove, and Cyrano’s wife either didn’t notice or was in too much of a hurry to be bothered with them.”
“Sapphires nearly as large as a marble?” Lisbet shook her head. “Are you certain they were real?”
Kasper nodded. “Based on the color and size, Bayle estimated they were worth at least twenty thousand dollars apiece.”
Linnea gasped. “How could a guard have sapphires worth that much? And how could his family be so careless as to leave them behind?”
“That is an excellent question,” I said. It was one that Kasper and I had been quick to answer last night. “The only way Cyrano’s wife wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have cared about leaving behind nearly fifty thousand dollars was if she had a lot more.”
Queen Linnea shook her head with her forehead scrunched up, clearly still baffled by what I was saying. “We pay them a decent wage, but it’s nowhere near enough to have that kind of money. Was Cyrano stealing them?”
“That is one consideration,” Kasper allowed. “The other is that Cyrano was paid off.”
Lisbet rested her chin on her hand, staring off at nothing, but her eyes darted back and forth as she thought. The Marksinna had most likely come to that conclusion long before her granddaughter had and was trying to make sense of it.
“With his daughter’s illness and the rising cost of medical bills, Cyrano was very vulnerable to bribery,” I said. “He probably believed that it was worth risking his life to take care of his family.”
That would explain the intent mania I saw in Cyrano’s eyes. He’d had no reason not to drop his sword yesterday, but after talking with Kasper, we’d both begun to suspect that Cyrano planned on going after me until I killed him. In fact, the payment to his family might have been contingent on his death. It would be the only way that whoever had paid him off could be certain that Cyrano would never talk.
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel any better about what had happened. Killing a desperate man intent on dying to save his family didn’t exactly sound like justice.
“Who here has that kind of money?” Kasper asked.
“Well … nobody.” Linnea shrugged her shoulders. “I mean, the women have jewels.” She motioned to her grandmother’s table, covered in gaudy necklaces and rings. “One of my necklaces might cost ten thousand dollars, but it would have to be filled with sapphires and diamonds. We don’t have massive gems like that floating around.”
“They came from the vault,” Lisbet said, looking at Linnea in the mirror. “That’s the only place where we have stones of that caliber.”
“Those belong to the kingdom,” Linnea said, trying to dissuade her grandmother. “They belong to everybody. Why would Cyrano steal from himself?”
“He didn’t steal it—he was paid off,” Lisbet corrected her, and Linnea sank down in the chaise. “And it may ‘belong’ to the kingdom, but only the royal family has access to it. Only the King is allowed to spend it.”
“But Mikko’s saving it,” Linnea argued weakly. “He’s trying to do what’s best for the people.”
Lisbet closed her eyes and sighed. “You can’t have a room full of precious stones and expect no one to get greedy.”