She hesitated, then said, “You’re so sure Varian had your brother killed… Do you have proof?”
Instead of answering right away, he leaned back on one elbow as he regarded her. Scooting around, she turned to face him and leaned on her side too, propping her head on the heel of one hand.
The glow of the firelight gilded her skin with gold. At first he hadn’t noticed her in the group on the dock. All his attention had been on her pretty, fiery prime minister.
Then, gradually, Lily had captured more and more of his attention, until now he couldn’t look away from her.
He couldn’t believe how beautiful she was, and how sophisticated the subtle play of her expressions were. And he couldn’t stop touching her.
Capturing her hand, he played with her fingers. “Braugne has always been a cash-poor kingdom. Our country is mountainous, splendid, and unforgiving. We can feed and house our own, and our goats and sheep are some of the hardiest stock a farmer could ever hope to have, but to date, our biggest exports have been iron, a little copper, and salt from mining.”
She played with his fingers too. It was such a small intimacy, but her touch sent a trail of liquid fire running through his veins.
“That’s about the extent of what I know about Braugne,” she admitted.
“We also have no access to the advantages that crossover passageways can give to a kingdom. Neither do Karre or Mignez. Those advantages have been largely enjoyed by Guerlan, Calles, and Chivres. Not only are those passageways further out of reach for the rest of us, most of them levy taxes on the usage of them.”
A frown creased her forehead. “I never considered that inequity before. Sometime I would like to discuss ways we might change that.”
Bless her. He almost kissed her.
He intended to change that too, to level some of the inequities in the richer kingdoms while bringing more opportunities to the poorest. She had been right. He had the soul of a conqueror and the drive to see the conquest through.
But he was unwilling to steer things in that direction, and he didn’t want to rile her. He wanted more of this calm, private conversation.
So for now he compromised and pressed her fingers to his lips. “I would like that. But to get back to your question, last year Varian approached my brother. He offered a treaty to lease several thousand hectares of land to Guerlan for a hundred years. Varian’s envoy said it was for hunting purposes. His king was eager to explore the vast and magnificent challenge of hunting the wild boars, mountain lions, and firedrakes in Braugne.”
Her eyebrows rose as she considered that. “Are firedrakes difficult to kill?”
“Extremely. Their bodies are about the size of a large mastiff, not counting their tails, and they have teeth almost as long as the length of my hand.”
She eyed him curiously. “Do they really spit fire?”
“It burns like fire, but it’s more like an acid that will eat your flesh from the bone if you let them spray you. They’re also smart like feral cats, and very fast, so hunting them is not a safe pursuit, yet apparently Varian was eager to try it. Kris told him he would take the winter to consider the proposal. Signing a hundred-year lease wasn’t something to do lightly. Plus it bothered him. Why a hundred years? Varian’s in his midthirties. By the time forty or fifty more years have passed, he won’t be hunting anything. Still, the money was tempting. There was a lot we could do with it.”
She muttered, “I’m waiting for the story to turn bad.”
He squeezed her hand. “Events transpired over some time, but the story does turn pretty quickly. Kris thought about the treaty while Varian’s envoy wintered at our court. He was funny and charming and persuasive, and yet why the hundred years? Why that tract of land? The only thing it had ever been good for was a salt mine that everybody knew was almost played out. So Kris set me to the task of finding out why.”
“And did you?”
Wulf thought back over the long, painstaking investigation. Having the Guerlan envoy followed, intercepting messages, uncovering, bit by bit, a network of Guerlan spies that had insinuated itself into the kingdom, and the slow build of incredulous anger at what he discovered.
“It took me and my team of investigators several months, but I did,” he told her. “Over the past decade, Varian has quietly developed a presence in our mining towns, and he’s been spying on our explorations. It turns out the mine on the land he wanted to rent was almost played out for salt, which everyone had already known. But the real news was, the miners had struck gold instead.”
9
She straightened. “And you didn’t know.”
“Correct. Varian bribed the mine operator, who was reporting to him. The miner who made the actual discovery had died in a fall, his death ruled an accident, and the town was already half abandoned as people were leaving to seek out opportunities in other places. If Kris had signed that lease, all the proceeds from the mine would have been Guerlan’s for a hundred years.”
Outrage flashed across her face. “What happened next?”
“Kris lost his temper.” Wulf sat up too and crossed his arms over upraised knees. “I’d been in command of his army for several years, but he insisted on leading a force himself to confront the mine operator. My job was to finish rooting out all the other Guerlan spies in our mining operations. He headed out just before midsummer. That was the last time I saw him alive, or any of the troops that went with him. We’ve recovered most of the bodies, but we haven’t found Kris’s yet.”
She touched his hand. “I can hear how much you loved your brother by the way you talk about him. Do you know what caused the avalanche?”
“We found residues of oil, and my witches say there was some kind of magic compounded with it. And I have a heavy weight of evidence that proves Varian’s been spying on Braugne for years and conspiring to steal our resources.” Tightening his hands into fists, he added between clenched teeth, “So yes, I have more than enough to justify marching on Guerlan, and I plan on ramming the evidence down Varian’s throat when I get there.”
“I see.” She started to say something else but was interrupted by a knock on her door. She froze and stared at him.
The knock sounded again, and she jumped.
After tensing, Wulf relaxed again and spread his hands. He had taken the risk in coming, and now he had to go with it. He had to trust her.
“You need to answer that,” he told her. “If you don’t, they’ll panic and break down your door.”