Emperor's Edge Republic (52 page)

“I’m sorry about your father.” Amaranthe decided not to mention she had been twenty feet away from him when he had been killed. “I know you and he weren’t close exactly...”

Deret snorted.

“But I’m sure he didn’t deserve to be killed.”

“He died the way he would have wanted—in a woman’s bed. Albeit I had always imagined him dying in a much younger woman’s bed, but I suppose screwing the president’s wife was a conquest worthy of his penis.”

“Er.” Amaranthe didn’t know what to say to his bitterness. Lord Mancrest had locked his son in the basement over a difference of opinion, so she hadn’t expected tears over his death, but more... tact, perhaps.

“I apologize,” Deret sighed. “That was crude. Please, come the rest of the way in and sit down.” He waved toward a chair. “May I get you something to drink? There’s... water from the tap—if that’s still working—and water collecting in a bucket that’s coming in through a leak in the roof.”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Amaranthe sat at one of the desks with a lantern on it. She wanted to ask him about the robe and this meeting he had gone to, but he looked like a man who needed a friend rather than an interrogation.

“Wait, I’m not sure if Needlecrest cleared out his entire collection. I may be able to offer you...” Deret fished around in the drawer of an adjacent desk, then held a dark bottle aloft. “Ah ha.” He examined the label. “Starcrest Cellars. Now there’s irony.” He dragged a chair over to sit at the desk with Amaranthe, then tugged the cork out of the half-empty bottle of apple brandy. “Is it true he killed my father?”

Amaranthe had been in the process of holding up a hand to decline the drink, but she froze. “What? Who?”

“I hear you’re staying in the president’s hotel, so I figured you would know. Starcrest, my father. Because of the adulterous wife.”

“No,” Amaranthe said, “of course not. The president didn’t even know he was still legally married to that woman until recently. Haven’t you seen his Kyattese wife?” If Deret thought Starcrest’s first wife still meant something to him, then he might not be the source of information she had hoped for. Perhaps coming hadn’t been the best use of her time, though she had wanted to offer her condolences on his father’s death anyway—for what little it seemed to mean to Deret.

He grunted. “Yes, though the old one is prettier. One thought that, now that he’s back in the empire, er, the nation, and he could have anyone... Oh, I guess I haven’t got the entire story. Starcrest has declined interviews, and there’s been a lot of other stuff to cover.”

“Such as why people are running around the city in green robes?” Amaranthe asked lightly, though she dearly wanted to know what his connection to the priests was.

Deret tilted his head curiously, then lifted his sleeve. “Oh, right. Sexy, aren’t they? I had been trying to get someone into the organization for weeks—they didn’t want to accept interviews, either—but they utterly ignored me until my father was killed. All of the sudden, I was an interesting commodity, probably because I’m now in charge of the newspaper. Weird, isn’t it? After all the arguments we had—and the way he locked me up in the basement—he left the paper to me instead of my brothers. Maybe he knew I was the only one who cared enough to keep it running and who had the experience to make it work. Or maybe he simply filled out his will before we had our big tiff.” Deret shrugged and took a swig from the brandy bottle. “Either way, the New Kriskrusians came knocking on my door, wanting to have a newspaper in their pocket. I wanted to know more about them, so I acted as if I might be open to the idea. Tonight was my first night being invited to a meeting.”

Amaranthe relaxed back into the chair. “So you’re not a recruit? You’re simply... learning more about them?”

“More or less. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with the information yet. Like I was saying, I’m thinking of selling the paper, what’s left of it. I’m tired of Stumps.”

Since he didn’t seem upset by his father’s death, Amaranthe wondered if his malaise was a result of some
other
interpersonal relationship. “You might take a vacation. Go off somewhere with a pretty girl.”

Deret grunted. “I would ask if you were offering your own company, but I understand you returned to the city with your dark shadow still attached.”

“Yes, I was thinking more of Suan. Are you and she still on... good terms?”

Deret grimaced and took another drink. “I haven’t seen her much since the funeral. At the time, I thought... well, let’s just say that I think she was only looking for someone to stand between her and your friends in that factory last winter. She knew she was a prisoner and that she needed someone to protect her. She decided I could be that someone. For a time.”

“Ah. And the girl you spoke of when we were blowing our way out of this basement?” Amaranthe pointed toward the floor.

“You mean the girlfriend I made up so you wouldn’t think I was a castrated bull without any prospects?”

“Er, possibly?”

Deret set the bottle on the desk, propped his elbow next to it, and leaned his head into his hand. “It hasn’t been a good winter for me.”

Indeed, he appeared as weary as Colonel Starcrest. “Perhaps you can come to the dinner party Maldynado is planning. It’s designed to get... a couple of young people together, but I imagine he could talk some extra women into coming along. You might have fun.”

“There’s a man-eating plant devouring the city, and Maldynado is planning a dinner party?”

“Yes,” Amaranthe said. “Does this surprise you?”

“Not really.”

“You’ll think about coming?”

“Assuming we’re all alive at the end of the week, maybe.” Deret clinked a fingernail against the side of the brandy bottle. “Amaranthe, you haven’t met my mother, but she’s a strong, proud warrior-caste lady and doesn’t know my father was... friendly with so many other women. She’s been harping on my brothers and me—mostly me, because I live in the city—to avenge my father’s death. I don’t know that I’d go that far, but I would like to know what happened, so I can tell her that much at least. Do you know, if it wasn’t Starcrest, who did kill him?”

Amaranthe realized she might once again be in a position to trade information with him. She had intended to ask about the priests, simply as a friend, but perhaps a trade would be more effective. If he didn’t know what she needed to know, specifically who was in charge over there, he might feel obligated to find out, and it sounded like he was in a better position to do so than she...

“I’ll tell you what I know on that front if you agree to help me find out who the lead priest is in that organization.”

With his head still in his palm, Deret gazed thoughtfully at her. “Do you truly know what happened there?”

“Largely by unforeseen circumstance, I was downstairs in Sauda Starcrest’s house when it all happened. Sicarius chased the assassin back to her lair.”

“
Her
lair? Interesting.”

“Yes.” Amaranthe smiled and held out her palm, inviting him to take a turn at sharing information.

“I should have known you didn’t come here because you missed my company.”

“I
did
wish to offer my condolences on your father’s death, though... it’s true I might not have made it by quite so soon if I hadn’t been hoping you knew more than the military intelligence office in regard to this organization. You journalists seem particularly fine at ferreting out information.”

“I’ll accept that as a compliment, because I haven’t been getting many from women lately, but I think the intel fellows have things covered fairly well. They’ve got an informant working at the
Gazette
, so I don’t know much they don’t.”

“They do?” Amaranthe asked. “How did you find out?”

“I wouldn’t have except that he felt guilty about my father’s death and told me he had been keeping the soldiers apprised of my father’s goings on. Apparently his dalliance with that Forge woman left people suspicious of him. I read between the lines that I’m not entirely free of suspicion, either.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “I need to get out of this city.”

“If you sold the newspaper, you could hand these burdens to someone else, it’s true. But you’re not that much older than I am, still young enough to appreciate a challenge and want to do something important with your life, I should think. Running a solid, reliable newspaper that refuses to be influenced by outside parties... that would be a noble calling.”

“Hm. Isn’t settling down and starting a family a noble calling too? I’ve been thinking about that of late, which is odd, since I have no one to settle down
with
, but... if I did, I would hate to be spending sixteen hours a day at work. This isn’t an easy job, even for the owner. Especially for the owner.”

“You need to hire a good manager and delegate some of the work to underlings. Such as that fine fellow who’s getting paid by Colonel Starcrest as well as by your coffers. A man getting paid twice really should be doing twice the work, don’t you think?”

Deret smirked at this idea, though he shook his head in the end. “I’m not the type to delegate everything and ask someone to work harder than I do.”

“You wouldn’t delegate everything, just enough so that you could have time to do that which you love. Such as pursuing a fine woman at Maldynado’s dinner party.”

“Dear ancestors, I can only imagine who he would set me up with.” Deret chuckled and took a drink—a smaller sip this time—from the bottle. He shook his head wryly—or maybe ruefully—at the label, then paused, his brow crinkled. “Did you say
Colonel
Starcrest? Not
President
Starcrest?”

“Yes, you didn’t know he was running the intelligence department now?” Amaranthe was surprised how much Deret
didn’t
know about what was going on with the president. She should have read some of the papers before coming by, assuming he would have useful information. Though, to be fair, she was living inside the hotel and sitting in on meetings with the Starcrests, a privilege nobody at the newspaper would have.

“No. I thought it was still Colonel Alpinecrest, though it makes sense that a new ruler—new
president
—would bring in new staff. Besides, I heard Alpinecrest was getting his pockets padded by Forge at one point.” Deret rubbed his chin. “Colonel Starcrest. Huh. He’s definitely kept quiet about that. I wonder how many of his informants even know who they’re dealing with.”

“Are you familiar with him? I had never heard of him before my return to the city.”

“I don’t know him well, but I covered the story of the border infiltrations ten, no that was almost fifteen years ago. It was before I went off to the military academy; I used to help my father at the paper after school.” Deret grimaced, yet managed to look nostalgic at the same moment. Remembering better times for the family?

“Border infiltrations?”

“Yes, the major in charge of patrolling the southern border between us and Kendor was shot by a sniper.
Captain
Daksaron Starcrest ended up in charge because he was the ranking officer until Command sent out someone new, but they were dealing with more than the expected few smugglers and technology thieves that week. Kendorian shamans had concocted a virus that they were trying out down there, figuring there would be few witnesses. Well, they managed to kill a few of our patrollers, but they also had an accident and infected everyone in one of their own towns near the border. Damon Mokk. Do you remember hearing about that?”

Amaranthe shook her head. Deret was a few years older than she, so she would have only been a kid at the time. Following the newspapers hadn’t been a big concern for her then. Of course, she had been too busy vacationing to keep up with them lately too...

“It was one of those ugly no-win military situations you hope you never get stuck in.” Deret massaged his leg, perhaps remembering his own no-win military situation. “Dak Starcrest chose to go in and try to help the people of Damon Mokk. What exactly happened, I don’t know. The minutes of the military trial were never shared publicly, and you would need a high security clearance to get a look at those records. What we at the
Gazette
were able to piece together was that he helped save the town, but he lost a number of his men in the process, men who wouldn’t have been at risk if he hadn’t chosen to cross the border and leave his post. Hundreds of lives were saved, but...” Deret shrugged. “If it had been a
Turgonian
town, it would have been a different story, but Emperor Raumesys wasn’t the type to order soldiers across borders on humanitarian missions.”

“No, he probably would have cheered, knowing the Kendorians had killed their own people in their attempt to harm us.”

“Just so,” Deret said. “Dak was demoted to lieutenant, and he switched from infantry to intelligence. I don’t know whether that was his own choice, or if someone wanted to make him disappear. Either way, the average person didn’t hear about him again. I crossed paths with him once shortly before I was discharged and again here in Stumps a couple of years ago. The first time, he was coming back from a mission in Nuria. The second, Kendor. He’s been a field agent, I believe, spying and performing whatever missions the throne needed accomplished covertly. I got the impression he was good at his job and had refused promotions that would have meant desk duty. Sitting in an office in the bowels of that hotel must be driving him crazy. I doubt he would have accepted that assignment from anyone else but his famous uncle.”

A spy. If Amaranthe had passed Colonel Starcrest on the street, she would not have guessed that, maybe because he looked more like an infantry thug with that missing eye. Still, that might make him an ideal person to gather information. Those who didn’t know his last name might underestimate him, based on appearance alone.

“I had wondered...” Amaranthe stopped herself before mentioning the snitch; that wasn’t information that should be shared openly. “I guess I was wondering how loyal he was to his uncle. He seems... bitter and resentful.”

“Oh, he probably is. He’s been in Rias Starcrest’s shadow his whole life, even when Rias was out of the empire—and supposedly dead—for twenty years. That incident at Damon Mokk was one of a handful of commands that didn’t go that well for him. He was—
is
—smart, but you got the impression he was trying too hard to be the hero his uncle had been, and he didn’t quite have the same tactical savvy to pull off the impossible the way Rias so often did.”