“Does anyone have Baruke’s status as of this morning?” Hal asked.
“I do.” Eazi must have decided to speak to the whole group, because the other Grih at the table all reacted with surprise. Hal was obviously getting used to it because he barely flinched.
“The leader is being discharged this morning and his daughter is going to take him home and stay with him for another day while he recovers fully.”
“Is his security with him?” Trayla asked.
“They’ve been stood down, just in case they were involved in the poisoning. I don’t think Baruke trusts his own people at the moment,” Eazi said.
“So who’s watching him?” Natta paused in the process of loading up his plate.
“He’s asked General Olna for four Grih soldiers, which she’s given him, while they look for new Balcoan guards for him that are not part of the current team.” Eazi’s tone was neutral.
“While he’s got Grihan guards, he’s probably not going to do anything too interesting in case we spy on him,” Hal said, and he sounded genuinely disappointed about it.
“Like what?” Crin asked.
“Like speak to the group that was whispering in his ear not to deal with Fiona.” Hal explained the conversation they’d had with Baruke the night before.
“So this Bost person was keeping him away from Fiona, and telling him the delivery issues for Paxe’s ship were a result of a demand and supply problem.” Natta bit into a piece of fruit thoughtfully. “We need to find this person.”
“First, we need to find Trayla’s handler,” Fiona said. She’d forgotten about Lieutenant Grogan, but looking at Crin, she suddenly remembered they were one short. “Is he all right?”
“We can’t locate him.” Crin lifted her shoulders. “I’ve been told the matter has been handed over to General Olna, that there’s a team looking for him.”
“He could be in serious trouble.” Fiona thought of how they’d found Natta, and her breakfast suddenly sat like lead in her stomach.
“Or, he could be working for the other side.” Eazi’s comment threw a rock into the relatively calm pool that had been their conversation so far.
Crin and Natta looked shocked, Trayla looked sick, and Hal looked interested.
“How likely is that?” Fiona asked. “Did you catch any hint of which way we should lean?”
“I have looked over all the visual comms I could find from the streets and inside the shops he followed you into. There seems to be no hint of him signaling or communicating with anyone else,” Eazi admitted. “Then he goes into a large building, and to me it looked as if he was using it to cut through so he could get in front of you. And he never came out the other side.”
“You’ve given this information to the general?” Crin asked.
“I have. They’ve found nothing in the building, so either he changed his appearance before he came out, or he left in a hover from the building’s underground parking area.”
“I’m worried about him,” Fiona said. “Just thinking of what happened to Natta . . .”
Trayla nodded, obviously thinking the same.
“Or he’s compromised,” Crin said. “Because his insistence on being the one to follow you two yesterday seemed too strident to me at the time. I thought it was strange.”
Fiona recalled the tension in the kitchen yesterday, but she had missed most of the conversation, only coming in at the end.
“What did Grogan know about Fiona’s plans in Distani?” Hal asked.
“I’m not sure.” Crin leaned back in her chair. “I was only told that our people had been assigned to keep Fiona safe while she was here. Grogan seemed to know more than I did, but he wasn’t willing to share.”
Hal glanced over at her, and Fiona gave a nod. That meant Grogan was either in danger, or able to cause a lot of trouble.
“It’s good to keep in mind he could be working against us,” she said. “But it sounds as if the general has that end of things covered. What we would have been doing today, before the poisoning incident happened, is try to get back into that warehouse to see what we could find, including more parts for Paxe.”
“How did the poisoning change things?” Natta asked.
“We told Baruke most of what happened in the warehouse and what we found.” Fiona still wondered if that had been a good idea, but it had felt like the quickest way to find out where the Balcoan leader stood.
