“Blackwolf?” Richard grimaced.
“Not really an imaginative guy.” Kaldar tapped the picture. “You were right, by the way. Height, weight, skin and eye color. Everything is consistent. If it wasn’t for the nose and the chin, he could be part of the family.”
“What family?” Charlotte asked.
“Our family,” Richard said. “I’ll explain in a minute.”
“Then we have Earl Maedoc.”
Kaldar tapped the second picture. On it, an older man glowered, his features harsh, his stare direct. His gray hair was shorn close to his scalp, and his hooded eyes looked unfriendly.
“Veteran of the Adrianglian Army, decorated, praised, respected. He oversees recruiting efforts. He also supplies new muscle to the slavers.”
“Being in charge of the recruiting allows him to weed out those unsuitable to military service,” George said. “Those with a penchant for sadism, for example. He steers them toward the slavers.”
“Lady Ermine.”
Kaldar touched the next image. A woman in her late twenties. Delicate bone structure, coils of caramel hair, narrow eyes but a rare, highly prized color: a translucent light green.
“Another investor. Lady Ermine also takes a special interest in female slaves. She selects several each season and trains them to increase their value.”
“How do you know this?” Richard asked.
“The Mirror has a list in her file, which she had forgotten in her room at one of the state functions. It details purchases of personal items, including slinky garments and various inappropriate but entertaining things for seven women with different garment sizes and detailed prescriptions for Midwife’s Bane . . .”
Those bastards.
“. . . which is apparently . . .”
“Used as a means of birth control.” Charlotte ground out, furious. “If the dose is large enough, it can cause damage to the lining of the uterus, rendering a woman infertile.” They were robbing the slave women of their fertility to prevent inconvenient offspring. She was infertile, and she understood the full enormity of their loss. She would crush that Ermine woman like a maggot under her shoe.
“What she said,” Kaldar said. “The names on the list had the flair of the Broken. There was a Britney, which doesn’t occur here that often, but there was also a Christina, which is a completely Broken name.”
Good point.
“Why?” George asked.
“Because it’s derived from the word ‘Christian,’” Charlotte said. “In the Broken, Jesus Christ was viewed as the son of God, and his followers are Christians. In the Weird, it was John the Nazarite, whose followers are called the Nazaratians. In the Weird, a Christina would be named Johanna.”
Kaldar shrugged. “It’s clear that at least some women on that list came from the Edge, if not from the Broken itself. There’s no logical reason for Angelia to have made that list, and when a covert Mirror operative posing as a servant attempted to return it, Lady Ermine claimed she had never seen it before. The Mirror put it into her file as an oddity. Now that we know she’s connected to the slave trade, it makes much more sense.”
Richard was staring at an image of an urbane, groomed blond man with sharp features and an overly elaborate haircut. There was a focused, predatory edge to his glare. “What about him?”
“Baron Oleg Rene.” Kaldar crossed his arms. His face had gained an unexpected vicious edge. “You wouldn’t believe who he’s related to. You see the family resemblance?”
“Spider.” Richard spat the word like it was poison.
“A distant cousin. How about that?”
The two men glared at that picture, the hate on their faces so similar, they looked like twins.
“The same Spider who killed Sophie’s mother?” Charlotte asked.
Kaldar nodded. “Rene is Spider’s younger half sister’s son, the Adrianglian branch of the family. Because of this inconvenient connection, he’s been blacklisted from military service, the Department of the Interior, and the Diplomatic Corps.”
“What does he do?” George asked.
“Arts, sports, and entertainment,” Kaldar said. “He travels around the country working as a glorified event planner. Organizes festivals, tourneys, and so on. The Department of the Interior has no issue with it as long as somebody else provides his security. He’s very good at it, apparently.”
“So he can move around the country pretty much at random,” Richard said.
Kaldar nodded. “I’m thinking they use him as a buyer scout trouble fixer.”
He turned to the last photograph. On it a man in his middle forties looked at the world with hazel eyes. He was handsome, with a masculine beauty that was just a shade too rugged to be perfect, and that slight roughness only added to his appeal. His expression was dignified but free of pretense. An engaging smile played on his lips and in his eyes, proclaiming loudly that this man was worthy of loyalty because he was good and would do the right thing. Its power was so pronounced, Charlotte felt compelled to smile back.
“Viscount Robert Brennan,” Kaldar said. “The main head of this twisted hydra.”
He sat down. “How do you want to go about it?”
“We need a confession,” Richard said. “Or at the very least, an admission of guilt.”
“Brennan is a tough nut to crack.” Kaldar’s face turned grim. “It’s not just that he’s a cousin of the king. He’s also popular. Blueblood ladies think he’s darling, and men think he’s a man’s man. He’s athletic, charming, funny, and they all love him. You’ll be fighting against the tide of public opinion.”
“Then we’ll need to turn it against him,” Richard said.
“How the hell are you going to do that?”
“Why can’t we simply remove him from the equation?” George asked.
“Because if we kill him, the organization wouldn’t die,” Richard told him. “Think of a monarchy. One king dies, another takes his place, but the institution survives.”
“Richard is right.” Charlotte rose.