Kylac felt a boiling frustration, as only Brie could spawn in him. “You sound as though you want him to be guilty. Would you confuse him with your grandfather, I wonder?”
He regretted the words as soon as they had escaped his lips. Too late. Brie’s ears turned flaming red, and the gaze she leveled at him scalded him where he stood. “My grandfather makes no pretense at what he is, while your father…” She caught herself, seeming embarrassed by the outburst, as if it in some way bespoke weakness. She turned her shears back upon the hedge, her movements as terse as her words. “I only wondered if you had considered the possibility.”
How could he not? Truth be told, he’d never been able to read his father as he could others. Where most men’s thoughts and aims seemed easily discernible, his father had long ago erected walls too high and thick to penetrate. Soulless, Brie had called him before. Kylac wouldn’t know. His studies here had not encompassed souls.
“I’ve considered it odd my father could be so clumsy, if he is all that Traeger claims. I’ve considered how easy it would be, as a captain of the city watch, to speak of secret witnesses and to happen upon evidence where it would be most convenient to find it. I’ve considered the reputation of Magistrate Aarhus, and the impunity with which his forces operate.” Brie shook her head. Kylac lowered his voice. “Yet content I knew I’d be, even as my father was being arrested, to await the ruling of a tribunal, to learn if there might be any truth to these claims.”
Brie’s reckless pruning slowed. For a moment, Kylac ceased his stretching.
“But, Brie, it’s been nearly three days. They’ll let none see him. There’s more to this than what we know. I can smell it.”
Brie lowered her head, then turned it to face him. “The night before the arrest, I spied Xarius leaving Master Rohn’s chambers. Odd, it struck me, that he should visit them at a time when he knew your father to be absent.”
She might as well have doused him with a bucket of water. The piercing chill settled quickly into his bones. Xarius. “You’re certain?” The evidence against his father…Could it have been…? “Why did you not tell me straightaway?”
“I feared you might seek to confront him. I…”
Kylac snapped to his feet. “Of course I’ll seek to confront him.”
“It’s a suspicion, Kylac. I’ve no proof of anything.”
“So I’ll be sure to inquire courteously.”
There were no windows in Xarius’s bedchamber, and he’d lit no taper upon retiring to his slumber. Thus, there was no glint upon the blade that Kylac set to his throat, nor gleam in his eye as it flicked open in the darkness. There were only the stiffening of cords in his neck, and that small hiss of furious realization.
“Touch that bedside blade,” Kylac whispered, “and your dreams this night will continue without end.”
“Bold threat from a boy who wept when he butchered his first pig.”
He felt Xarius reaching furtively, almost imperceptibly, in the blackness, and so opened a warning scratch along the man’s neck. “The pig had done nothing to warrant it. I’m not convinced you can say the same.”
Xarius seethed. “If you were not your father’s son…”
“Fear my father, do you? With fair cause, I should think, when he learns of your part in his betrayal.”
The momentary silence seemed a screeching admission. “You would accuse me, boy? I am his personal shield.”
“All the more reason to hold you responsible. What did they promise you, I wonder. Wealth? Position? I thought you beyond such petty attachments.”
“You waste your time, boy.”
Kylac did not disagree. He’d waited until the Nightingale’s Hour before breaching Xarius’s private quarters. He had looked to enter on the Swallow’s, earlier that afternoon, but had found a trap laid there that could only be reset from the outside. Had he attempted to set ambush within, Xarius would have known it.
So he’d come again two full hours after Xarius had retired, with the moon cresting its midnight arc, hoping to find the man sleeping. Three traps had he discovered this time, but Kylac had known what to look for, and how to disarm them without alerting his prey. Even so, the process had been slow…painstaking.
Successful as he’d been, he had no more hours to waste.
“Mayhap you’re right. Mayhap I should kill you now and be on my way.” He angled his blade higher, and pressed deeper, cutting into the soft crease between neck and chin.
It proved just enough to loosen Xarius’s tongue. “Kill me, and you’ll see him again only in pieces.”
“The medallion found in his chambers…that was your work, was it not?”
“Yes.”
“And the murdered nobleman?”
“I know not.”
“You know not?”