“Three weeks ago. A few hours after they got the news.”
That hurt more than he’d imagined. Val’s father, Morgan, had taken him in, treated him like a part of the family. He’d been the closest thing Tristan had to a father. And now he was gone.
Yet another death that could be laid at Val’s feet.
The woman shuffled back at the look on his face, and he forced himself to lower his shoulders. “And then what happened?”
A flash of genuine terror crossed her fleshy face, causing her chins to tremble. “And then the others came.”
Tristan had to force himself to speak patiently and softly. Gods knew that it wouldn’t help to shout at her. “What others?”
“The soldiers and the Lord High Chancellor.”
“Lord High Chancellor?” He couldn’t keep the note of disbelief from his voice. Grendel hated leaving the palace.
“Yes. And two Blues. Said the king sent them special. They wanted to take the master, but he was already in the ground. She showed them the grave, over yon, but it wasn’t enough. They were looking for treason. Traitors. She told us to run and hide, but we couldn’t just leave her. They made us stand outside while they ripped the house apart. Couldn’t find anything though, could they? Broke milady’s bottles. All her remedies. But it still wasn’t enough.”
Cold slithered up his spine. “What did they do then?” he asked softly.
“Said he’d prove that she had conspired with the traitor, didn’t he?” She pressed her hands against her chest as she spoke, as if to hold herself together. “Took her by her hair and dragged her. The mistress. Back into the house. We could hear her screaming, but we couldn’t follow, just me and Bertie, could we? Not with two soldiers standing over us, swords drawn. Bertie tried, but they walloped him so hard he fell. Took out a tooth. He’s only fourteen. But gods. We heard her screaming.” Her eyes closed as she whispered, “I’ll never forget that sound….”
The men at Tristan’s back stiffened into a rigid line. Not one of them would ever harm a helpless woman in that way, no matter what she’d done. To imagine the palace guards…. His brain rejected the thought. Surely it wasn’t possible. The cook was clearly overwrought.
The soldiers had come to arrest Nim, and she had resisted, that was all.
He shut down the shimmer of doubt that had crept through him. Val was a traitor. He knew that for a fact. Nim supporting her brother’s treachery wasn’t at all surprising. That was the whole point of taking her into custody—she would be tried by the assizes, the justice would hear the truth, and then she would be punished as she deserved. Just like Val.
He brought his concentration back to the cook’s weepy description. “And then there was the fireball,” she continued, “straight up through the roof. Flames running down the walls, sparks flying everywhere. The soldiers ran in, and the Lord Chancellor ran out, but Mistress Nim was gone. Couldn’t find her anywhere.”
Gods, his chest ached. He rubbed it roughly, wondering if he’d eaten something spoiled.
“And where is Mistress Nim now?”
For the first time, Tilda looked him square in the eye, and suddenly he could see how much she hated him. And not just him; her eyes flickered over the soldiers at his back, filled with revulsion.
It was a shock. He was, had been, a Blue Guard. The best of the best. No one looked at them like that.
Tilda kept her eyes locked on his. “Gone. No one knows where.”
Tristan glanced over at Jeremiel, needing his special talent. The red-haired man nodded once, “Truth.”
Tristan grunted. Surely Tilda would have at least noticed the direction Nim had gone in. “Did she go for the hills?”
The cook gave him a fierce look, fear and hatred mixing with her pleasure in delivering bad news. “She did not. Took the dogs out, didn’t they? Never found her.”
“Truth,” Jeremiel agreed quietly.
Tristan pulled out a coin and passed it to the woman, letting her go. Then watched her, grim-faced, as she fled as fast as if she had been granted an unexpected reprieve from the Abyss.
Had he simply never noticed how much the ordinary people hated the black uniform? Or was this something new? Was it the same for the Blues? What the fuck was going on?
He glanced at the loose line of soldiers behind him. They looked like he felt. Grim. Concerned. But resolute.
He would think about it all later. For now, they needed to reassess. They had ridden hard all morning, expecting to quickly find one small woman hiding comfortably somewhere near her home. They could hand her to the authorities who would easily determine her guilt and be done with the whole thing by dinner and back in the palace—wearing their Blues—within a day.
But this was nothing like he’d expected. And now they had to hunt down Val’s little sister. Morgan’s daughter.
He swallowed against the worsening burn in his chest, and clasped his hands behind his back. If there was one thing he knew, it was that no one could just disappear.
