Alfons had given Mardans and Dinae first-floor guest suites reserved for visiting dignitaries and performers. While showing Mardans his room, Lirens also revealed a secret panel that opened to a hidden staircase descending to the secret lower level. From there, he could make an unseen exit through the Palace Pens & Parchment shop or one of several other egress points. The three brothers had agreed that no one should see the jester and the new palace guard lieutenant using the same room.
They had talked during the Harvest Festival, and Mardans had reported on his inspection of Lirens’ suite. Agreeing that the prince was a prime target of the unknown schemer, they had discussed his rationale for doing so and concluded that it was either to shift blame to Lirens, as Mardans had first suspected, or to undermine the present ruling family—and probably both. The royal brothers were more convinced than ever that someone was engineering a “creeping coup,” as Lirens called it. This was just the beginning of someone’s plans to take over the throne of Margonne, and among his first moves were casting doubt about Alfons and arousing suspicion about Lirens.
Yet Mardans could not help feeling that his investigation was grinding to a halt almost before it had gotten underway. Since the theft, no new clues had surfaced about the dagger’s location, the thief, or the shadowy person pulling the strings. He had guesses built upon assumptions but nothing solid except the taunting note. Unless Lirens’ men could get more out of the Leitani ambushers, even that lead would go cold. Mardans sighed heavily before finishing his morning toilette.
Twenty minutes later, dressed in his palace guard uniform, he rapped on his mother’s door and entered. The house seemed empty, but he knew she was home. He passed through the kitchen into the back garden. Despite the warmth of the morning sun and the promise of a sultry afternoon, a slight breeze blew steadily out of the west, resulting in a comfortable day.
Tiena joined him a little while later, looking fresh and beautiful as always. Mardans rose and gave her a hug and kiss. She fetched them lemonade, and they briefly talked of inconsequential things. She had attended his performance at the palace and had enjoyed it immensely. “All those kittens!” she exclaimed, shaking her head and giggling. Her pride in him radiated from her face.
Finally, Tiena put her glass on the table and turned serious eyes on him. “Tell me what you came to talk to me about.”
He took a deep breath, not wanting to admit that he needed help. But he knew he needed to talk it out, and she would be the best sounding board for him. He decided to plunge into it. “My investigation is going nowhere. I have no clues, no leads. I don’t even know where to look. I feel lost, over my head.”
“Tell me everything,” she said in a calm but commanding voice. “I will try to help.”
Mardans laid out all the essential information about the theft and his activities since Alfons requested his services. He left out all of his assumptions and conclusions, knowing she would not want them to lead her to think along the same lines. By the end of his narration of events, he was beginning to doubt his thinking and his ability to solve the puzzle—or even to identify its critical pieces.
After hearing his report, his mother frowned and said nothing for a long while. Picking up the empty glasses, she took them inside and refilled them. Returning, she took a tour around the garden, pulling a few weeds and dead-heading some flowers, which might bloom again before the weather turned. Mardans knew better than to interrupt her. Finally, she returned to her seat, tucking her feet under her as she routinely did.
“I think you are too close, Dance,” she said with a small smile at using his jester name. “We need to take a broader view. I know you have a distaste for politics, but you will have to pay attention to it now because you’ve become embroiled in it. I think Alfons is right to believe someone is setting the board for a takeover. So, we have to consider who gains the most. Usually, you follow the money, but in this case, we must follow the power.
“We can eliminate some of the major players right away, I think. First, all the Taurani nations are at peace with each other. My informants in the capitals all tell me the same thing about relations with Margonne: But for minor trade issues, they are in accord. It has become almost boring!
“Second, while the Osegran nations hate Margonne as much as ever, they are too weak militarily and unstable politically to undertake any kind of takeover. Even if they all banded together, they would not have the manpower to strike at Margonne. It would be a disaster for them, and they know it.
“Third, many of Satele’s crime families, and cartels and gangs elsewhere, detest Margonne as much or more than the Osegrans do. Like his father, Alfons takes a hard line against them and moves against them when he can. But none of them would think about a takeover. If they could, they would definitely plan an assassination or create chaos, but they avoid political intrigue unless the stakes are high. It is just too risky. Nations are just too powerful. The most capable and savvy of them actually like Alfons because he favors a free market and fair trade. He even lowered tariffs. Profits are high.”
She stopped to drink her lemonade. Mardans did the same, shifting in his seat and feeling as if he were back in school. “So,” he said, returning his glass to the table, “your analysis is that the enemy is internal, a Margonni faction.”
“Exactly,” she answered. “It is the only thing that makes sense. So, we need to consider the Leitani, the dukes and nobles, and members of the extended royal family. No one else would seriously think of toppling the king, and my informants would know if there was some sort of popular uprising in the works. But Alfons is well-beloved in Margonne.”
“Lirens told me that the Leitani are disheartened and disunited,” Mardans said. “I can’t imagine them being a threat. Few have the old Red Hawk fighting spirit.”
“Yes, and the ones who want to restore Leitan to its glory are fewer than most think,” she agreed. “They have gone into exile and chew on their grievances like a tough piece of meat. Most Leitani in Margonne admit they live far better under the Ankaran kings than their fathers did under the Great Chiefs. Most of them have no reason to want to overthrow Alfons.”
“Well, that leaves Margonne’s aristocracy and the extended royal family,” Mardans concluded.
“You say it like it is two things,” his mother corrected, “but it is essentially only one. Since the beginning, Margonne’s line has intermarried with the major aristocratic families. And those ducal families have intermarried among themselves over the same one hundred and fifty years. It would take a scholar and a long roll of paper to chart all the links among them. Many of them have a claim to the throne, even if most are tenuous, to say the least.”
Mardans’ frown deepened. “That doesn’t narrow the field much.”
“No, I’m afraid it doesn’t,” Tiena agreed. “But I think we can narrow it down to a handful of families. Of course, the first family one thinks of is Tilanta, the Royal Stewards, Dukes of Palisade, descended from Margonne’s second son, Marcuse. The relationships, though, aren’t as close as others. The Tilantas have never intermarried with the royal line, which is a good thing.”
“I agree!” Mardans agreed, perhaps with more feeling than he intended. When his mother looked at him sharply, eyebrow raised, he shrugged and said, “When we were younger, I had a few unpleasant encounters with Formosis. He liked to point out my illegitimacy.”
After lowering her eyebrow, Tiena continued. “As for the ducal families, the Dowager Queen is a Norden, and she has brothers and nephews who might desire the throne. Lorens II’s mother was a Thorne, and his grandmother was a Mortimor. Luckily, Lorens I and Carlonne did not have more than one male heir each, which would have complicated matters considerably.”
“Which is why I thought the person behind the theft would try to make Lirens look guilty,” Mardans said. “There are not enough close male relatives with legitimate claims to the throne. A problem for the architect of this scheme is that Lirens is loyal to his brother and doesn’t want to become king. From what I heard, he was visibly relieved when Alfons’ boys, Aldons and Enric, were born.”
“Then why did this mystery person have Lirens’ company attacked on the road?” Tiena asked, lines forming between her eyebrows. “That doesn’t make much sense to me.”
“For a couple of reasons,” Mardans replied. “First, it could deflect blame to the Leitani for the attack and make them the prime suspects in the theft. The king’s officers would have to chase and question insurrectionists all over Margonne, exhausting resources and frustrating investigators while getting them nowhere. Second, attacking Lirens, successfully or not, could not be a losing gambit. From his point of view, if the Leitani bowmen killed him, great! But if they didn’t, no matter. They would still take the blame, leaving the puppet master hidden and his hands clean.”
“If we are right,” Tiena said, “your search has eliminated all but just a dozen people. It wasn’t very smart of your architect to taunt Alfons as he did. It made it much easier to narrow down who he is.”
“My guess is that it’s someone who thinks he’s rather clever,” Mardans said, leaning back in his seat. “He’s a genius in his own mind, but he has probably never been tested. He’s in over his head. I’d also say he’s likely rash, and we know he’s prone to violence—or at least he doesn’t care about people or the consequences of his actions.”
“How do you figure he’s rash?” his mother asked.
“Simply because his actions so far are impatient: the taunt, using the Leitani loyalists, hiding the duplicate of the taunt in Lirens’ room—it’s all too clever, amateurish. It’s like, ‘Hey! Why don’t I do this? How about that?’ It’s something I learned from acting. The amateur tries to make a splash, to be clever, to be noticed. It makes them uneven, jerky. The experienced actor is more subtle. He plays it true to the end—the complete performance is most important to him. The amateur says the lines and acts as he thinks the character would act. The professional inhabits the character, and everything runs true.” He took a drink of his lemonade. “All that is to say, the ‘mastermind’—if we go so far as to call him that—has a goal: He wants the throne, but he seems to be using trial and error as he goes along because he’s inexperienced and probably immature.”
“In the business,” Tiena said skeptically, “we call that a leap. Too much conclusion from too little evidence.”
Mardans grimaced. “You’re probably right. Let’s call it a possibility based on intuition. A thesis, a theory, that needs more proof. But I just have a feeling that whoever is behind all this doesn’t care who gets hurt, and he won’t hesitate to use or destroy anything and anyone to get his way. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but he’s already shown he is willing to kill a prince and use extreme measures to get what he wants.”
“This is going to get ugly, isn’t it?” his mother asked, anguish written on her beautiful face.
“Sadly,” Mardans sighed. “I think it is.”
A note:
That day, Tiena inquired about a scholar at Palisade’s Royal Academy who had extensive knowledge of the bloodlines of Margonne’s aristocracy. Ultimately, with his help, she amassed a collection of charts of every aristocratic family in the Kingdom, which her clerks amended every time a birth, wedding, or death occurred. Additionally, she arranged for a book to be written about each family, with detailed biographical information for every person listed on the charts. In later years, the information she accumulated proved invaluable to her enterprise. Later, she expanded it to her own nation, Satele, and after that, to Aertella and Angeva. Despite her efforts, her records on the Osegran nations were not nearly as exhaustive.