“And you sound like a one-woman cheering squad for the Captain. Howimpartialare you right now?”
“Maybe not as much as I should be,” Emica admitted. “Which is why we should work together. We can both make the other see each other’s point of view, and we’re more likely to get to the truth that way.”
Kentario ground his teeth as his considered the idea. “Fine,” he said finally. “But not a word about Ryu. His safety is the only thing I give a shit about right now.”
“Agreed,” Emica said. “So, where are you up to?”
“Interviewing the kitchen staff. Saki doesn’t know anything; she was in the bar at the time of the attack, so let’s find out who was in charge in the kitchen at the time.”
“I might suggest a slightly different strategy,” Emica said, a crafty glint in her eye. “Two things we need to do. Firstly, anyone who’s already been interviewed shouldn’t be let back in with the others. If we keep giving them the chance to make sure their stories match, we’ll never get to the truth. And secondly, we should start by interviewing the junior staff; kitchen hands or dish washers. Some of them haven’t really got the hang of palace protocol yet, and they tend to talk amongst themselves. Any of the rumours that float around the palace usually start with the more junior members of staff. It’s entirely possible one of them will know something that’s been kept out of sight of the senior staff, for fear of someone getting into trouble.”
Just like he had when Oris had started putting the pieces of the puzzle together, Kentario felt a weight lift off his shoulders. Emica was going to make a damn fine Guard one day, providing insights that escaped the notice of the average trainee. “Good plan. Let’s get to it.”
Maro was waiting in the kitchen, and Kentario glanced around, seeking out one of the younger people in the room. He spotted a woman, sitting alone in a corner, who looked to be no more than nineteen or twenty years old.
“You, there. What’s your name?”
“Aki,” the woman said meekly.
“Come with us.”
She followed them to the anteroom, taking a seat, her legs shaking, her hands trembling as she buried them in her lap.
“Where were you when the-” Kentario began, but she interrupted him before he could finish the sentence.
“They came in through the kitchen,” she said abruptly. “Through the service door. I was in the pantry at the time. I heard a bang and then shouting. Then it got really quiet. I stuck my head out, but there were men in the kitchen with guns. And there were more of them coming in through the service door. So I hid in the pantry.” She burst into tears, fat drops rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to call Captain Landis, but then I thought maybe someone would hear me talking, so I hung up. And then the shooting started. And I just hid. I’m so sorry.”
Kentario didn’t know what to say. It was the breakthrough he’d been waiting for, but at the same time, the woman was almost hysterical. And in all fairness, a junior kitchen hand could not be held responsible for alerting the Guard, when they should have been doing their jobs in the first place.
But the look on Maro’s face was one of pure bafflement. “There is no service door into the kitchen,” he said flatly.
Aki wiped her eyes, taking a deep breath to steady herself. “Yes, there is. We get food deliveries through there every Tuesday and Friday.”
“Every delivery goes through the main guard station,” Maro argued. “It all gets checked by security before anything’s allowed into the palace.”
Impatiently, Kentario cut him off. “Show me,” he ordered Aki, not willing to waste any more time arguing about whether the door existed or not.
But Aki looked even more terrified now, if that was possible. “I can’t. Liandra’s in the kitchen. She said we shouldn’t tell you about the door. If she finds out I told you, she’ll sack me. Or worse…”
Suddenly, Kentario felt Emica’s hand on his arm, and he instantly made an effort to control himself. He’d been ready to rip into the woman, her job paling into insignificance in the face of an act of high treason.
Emica pulled him out of the room, lowering her voice while Maro stayed to watch the woman. “She has a point,” she said calmly. “To you, this is all about Ryu and the king and queen. But look at it from her perspective. She’s just a kitchen hand. This is her first job. She’s probably living from paycheque to paycheque. If she gets fired, she can’t pay her bills, she could lose her home, we don’t know if she’s supporting her family. A lot of the people who work here are simple commoners on a basic wage. If she’s going to help us, then we need to help her.”
It took an effort to see reason, the need to punish those responsible riding Kentario hard. But once again, Emica was right. “Go back to the kitchen,” he told her. “Get the guards to move the rest of the staff to one of the lounges. We’ll take her through the kitchen once the place is clear.”
With a reassuring smile, Emica scurried off, and Kentario headed back through the door to inform Aki of the plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“This is the door,” Aki said, five minutes later. She was right; tucked into the back of the kitchen, behind a wide fridge, was a narrow set of stairs that led down to a thick wooden door. “It leads out into a laneway on the east side of the palace.”
Kentario headed down the stairs, pulling out his phone and activating the torch function. Carefully, he examined the door. There was a heavy bolt screwed into the wood, but the wear marks suggested it had been in use recently. Cautiously, he slid the bolt back. The door opened, into the exact laneway that Aki had described. Access to the lane bypassed the main gate, and therefore the guards on security duty.
He closed the door and returned to the kitchen, a stony expression on his face.
But Maro was looking even more disturbed than he felt.
“How long have they been using this door?” Maro asked Aki, his face ashen.
