“I have no proof, but it is the only deduction that makes sense. It is too convenient otherwise.” I shook my hands. “This is what I mean when I say everything is connected. We sicced the Justice Chamber on the Yolentas’ warehouse where they found the smuggled iron. Hreban could’ve reacted in a dozen different ways. The most logical one would be to leave Kair Toren. Then if Indora Yolenta implicated him in the iron scheme, the Justice Department would have to go to his domain and question him there on his terms.”
“It would take a direct order from Sauven to pry him free and drag him back to the capital,” Reynald said. “And Sauven wouldn’t issue an order against the head of a Great Family without indisputable proof.”
“Exactly. Instead of taking that safe and smart route, Hreban must have told the Butcher to start ahead of schedule. If Kair Toren is gripped by panic over the horrible murders, the Justice Chamber will shift their focus to finding the killer. It takes the attention off Hreban. He can remain in the capital, and once he kills the Butcher, nobody will care about the iron.”
I couldn’t tell if I was making sense to him or not.
“The killer started early,” Kaiden said.
I almost jumped. He was so quiet, I had forgotten he was there. “Yes.”
“So the Sun Margrave won’t get killed at the end of the Court thing,” Kaiden said.
“Matheo might not be there,” Will finished.
“That means the kid won’t die, doesn’t it?” Lute asked.
I shook my head. “I looked at the calendar. Do you know what happens in five weeks?”
“The opening of the High Court Session,” Reynald said.
I had no idea how he had pulled that out of his brain on demand. I’d had to look it up.
“Yes. The annual ceremony when the Sun Margrave walks up the King’s Way to the Eagle Roost castle and hand-delivers the docket to Sauven in front of the entire capital. Colart will be escorted by three squires. The same three squires that will escort him at the end of the session . . .”
Reynald swore.
“Do you remember how I said that messing with the future is like throwing rocks into a pond?” I asked. “That is still accurate but not in the way I thought. When you throw a rock into a pond, it makes ripples and then these ripples smooth out and it’s like the rock was never there. The future is resisting us. It’s trying to stick to the existing pattern. Instead of being murdered at the closing of the High Court, the Sun Margrave will die at the opening. Nothing changes, Matheo still dies, and Hreban still rises to his reign of terror.”
I dropped into the chair.
On my left, Clover turned paler. A hint of fear shivered in her eyes. Gort looked troubled. Shana wrinkled her brows, her mouth a thin line. Will frowned, thinking. Lute looked like he’d been sucker punched, and even Kaiden at the end of the table seemed lost, as if he had suddenly fallen into a deep hole and didn’t know how to climb out.
I felt so hollow. All this time I’d been so worried about doing too much and ending up with a future I couldn’t predict. I should’ve been worried about not doing enough. The timeline was fighting me, and it was winning.
I had given these people hope. They’d worked so hard, and in the end, it had been for nothing. The future continued to steamroll forward.
“I just can’t stop this train,” I murmured.
Will gave me a puzzled look. I must’ve said the English word for train. There was no Rellasian equivalent.
Would anything we did matter? Would the mercenaries we saved die somehow in other ways? Should I just send the kids out of the city? But where? Where could I put them that the war wouldn’t touch . . .
“It doesn’t matter,” Reynald said.
“What?”
His voice was calm and measured. “The timeline has moved up, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve given us a five-week lead. I’ve taken castles in five weeks.”
A change had come over Reynald. The way he sat with his back straight, the set of his jaw, the look in his green eyes, everything communicated assurance and power. The man from the basement was back, and he wasn’t just confident, he was unassailable, like a rock in the middle of a raging sea. This must’ve been why people followed him into the slaughter.
“As of now, nothing has happened,” Reynald said. “Yes, we’ve just lost several months, but Matheo still lives. The Sun Margrave still lives. All we have to do is find the Butcher and remove him from the picture, and we have a five-week head start.”
“We’ll find that fucker in five weeks,” Gort said.
“Someone knows him,” Will said.
“Yes, the city isn’t that big,” Lute added.
