The Child Prince (The Artifactor) (40 page)

“Wanna bet?” As he laughed, she snorted, finally seeing a little humor in the situation. “Go wake up everyone and tell them breakfast is on the table. I have some work to catch up on.”

~ ~ ~

Sevana wandered down to her research room with the intention of doing nothing practical for the day. She’d been running around for so long that she couldn’t remember the last time that she’d relaxed. Hmmm. A nap in her favorite chair in front of the fire sounded good, actually. Those pesky boys were probably out doing other things.

She nodded firmly to herself. Yes, nap it would be.

Sevana took care to lock the door behind her (to prevent a certain cat from attempting to join her in the nap and thereby crushing her), curled up in the chair with her legs tucked in, a lap blanket around her. She let out a large yawn. The chair felt perfectly comfortable and familiar, the fire heated her with soothing waves, with pristine quiet bathing the room that induced her to sleep. Her eyes fell closed and she started breathing in deep, slow breaths.

“
Sevana? Are you there, sweetling?”

Her eyes popped open and she glared at the Caller on the table in front of her. “Old man, you have the most atrocious timing!”

The caller flowed and changed to reflect her Master’s features. “
Ah, it must be nap time.”

“It is, actually,” she agreed with false pleasantness. “Do go away.”

“I would, but I actually won’t be able to call you back for several days. I’d like to know what’s happening on your side of the world first. Also, I haven’t been able to contact Sarsen for the past two days. Do you know where he is?”

The stubborn old man apparently had it in his head to talk. Sighing, she pushed off the lap quilt and sat up, resigned to her nap-less afternoon. “He’s busy plotting on how to steal a kingdom.”

“Oh, is that all?”
Master laughed a husky, deep laugh. “
Give me the details, girl! You know I want the full story.”

Sevana started at the top and ran him through the basics, or tried to. He of course stopped her periodically for the specifics. He especially wanted to know how the bargaining with the dragon went, as he hadn’t realized she’d already left and come back. She wound down by saying, “Well, that’s about the size of it. Bel’s been training with Axelrad in his spare time, Sarsen has completely been sucked into Aren’s pace, and the king is having far too much fun infiltrating his own palace. Pierpoint is courting death by sneaking into my workroom periodically, but I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

“
So the prince is training with the former captain of the guards, eh. Good, good. I was a little worried about the boy. He doesn’t have the full training to become a king.”

“Not yet,” she agreed with a distinct lack of worry. “But everyone around him seems to be aware of the problem and are taking steps. Now, are you satisfied?”

Master chuckled softly. “
Not quite, sweetling. I do need to talk to Sarsen still. Go fetch him for me, will you?”

Grumbling, she climbed out of her chair, unlocked the door and stuck her head into the hallway. “SARSEN! MASTER’S CALLING!”

“
I said fetch, sweetling. Not call!”
Master corrected with a long suffering sigh.

“Fetch, call, same difference.”

Sarsen appeared in the next moment, gave her a sardonic look, and squeezed past her into the room. She decided she’d leave them to it and go find something else to do. As she shut the door behind her, Bel came from the inside training room, soaked in sweat and puffing for breath. “Did I hear someone call?”

“I was calling Sarsen,” she responded, not surprised the message had gotten garbled before reaching him. Sounds did that inside rocky caverns like these.

“Oh.” He lifted an arm and wiped at his forehead. “It was a little hard to hear over the swords clashing.”

Ah, training with Axelrad, was he? “You
have
taken time out of your busy schedule to warn your lady friend that she needs to stop researching, I hope.”

Bel looked briefly frustrated. “I
tried
. She’s not really listening to me. She claims that she has all the information she needs now anyway, so she might as well keep sifting through it.”

Sevana quirked a brow. “You don’t believe her.”

“Not really, no.” He ran a hand through sweaty hair, scowl etched into his face. “Because when you research things, you’re always looking for more information. You know that as well as I do. When you’re reading, you come across something that leads to something else. If she’s still sifting through the records, then how can she know that she has all the information she needs?”

A very solid point.

“For now, I’ve asked Morgan to keep an eye on the situation.” He faced her squarely, eyes looking for reassurance. “If she’s in danger, I want to bring her here.”

Here? To this mountain of men? (Excluding herself of course.) Where she would be constantly within arm’s reach of her boyfriend? Oh, now wouldn’t that be a priceless situation. Sevana’s mouth quirked into a slightly evil smile. “That’s fine by me.”

“Good.” Bel blew out a breath of relief. “Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that wouldn’t be a problem.”

Axelrad took a half step into the hallway. “Your Highness, is something wrong?”

Sevana translated this into ‘what in the devil is taking you so long?’ without a problem. Bel apparently did too, because he looked briefly panicked before giving her a nod and half-jogging back into the room.

Shaking her head, she turned away and headed for her gear room. Clearly, if she were to get any peace today, she’d need to be outside to get it. Perhaps a little hunting in the woods would do the trick. “Baby! Let’s go hunting.”

The palace at midnight was still and quiet, shadows the only thing moving as the clouds crisscrossed back and forth in front of the moon, giving the floor an erratic light show. Bellomi paused just outside of the grandfather clock, knees slightly bent in a habitual stance, face lifted as he looked, listened, and smelled his environment. He didn’t discern anything out of place.

Axelrad stepped out from the clock behind him, landing soundlessly on the tile floor and carefully closing the clock door with a quiet snick. Assured the older man was ready, Bellomi took off toward the main hallway, sticking to the shadows as much as he could.

Every Councilman kept a secure vault and a set of private rooms in the palace, just in case they chose to stay here after a meeting, or in case of an emergency. Most of them also had homes within the city itself, naturally, but the vaults here kept the majority of their wealth. Bellomi wanted inside of those vaults. Aside from listening in on the Council’s meetings, the vaults would tell him much more clearly about the inner workings and the backroom dealings these men were involved in.

Bellomi had gone all over Windamere with Morgan, talking to anyone willing to give him a moment of time, listening to the local gossip, and gathering information. Part of why he wanted into the vaults was to confirm some of what he heard. But he also needed confirmation of something else. During the last twelve days, ever since he returned from Vash Village, his father had been making several assumptions. Insistently, no less. Nothing that Bellomi reported hearing would sway the king, either.

He kept saying that Clasessens and Goethals were loyal to him and always had been. But if those two men truly were loyal, then why hadn’t they done anything the past ten years? Why leave both king and prince locked away in a dusty, forgotten room to languish? It didn’t make sense to Bellomi. He wanted physical proof in his hands of those men’s true allegiance.

Pausing at a crossway, Bellomi looked back for direction. Axelrad had come along just in case Bellomi ran into trouble but also because he knew exactly where all the vaults were.

The captain stepped forward, taking lead, and took a right turn that led them deeper into the palace interior. Instead of going up, they went down, descending to almost the basement level. The air became progressively damper and cooler as they went from one staircase to another. Neither man made any noise as he walked, but Bellomi imagined that if they had, the sound would echo endlessly in this oppressive silence.

Axelrad took one more turn before stopping in a round chamber that held three doors. Ah, one of the vault rooms at last. Bellomi couldn’t have navigated his way here, but he remembered vaguely what they looked like, as he’d been to his family’s vault several times as a child. A single sconce on the wall flickered with lamplight, casting a mellow glow throughout the crescent-shaped room. On each door, the crest of the family stood out in sharp relief in the wood, sparing Bellomi from asking the question of which vault they should check.

Out of the three doors, only one was of interest to him: Goethals. He went straight to it and sank to his knees, pulling out a simple machine that Sarsen had handed him earlier and placed it against the door. The metal in his hands warmed quickly under the force of the charm, becoming almost but not quite scorching hot, before abruptly cooling. The lock clicked and clanked as it opened. Rising, Bellomi tentatively put a hand against the wood and pushed the door open on soundless hinges.

Well. That worked easier than he’d expected. Goethals only had a single lock on his vault door? The man either had nothing to hide or nothing in here worth hiding. They’d soon see which.

He and Axelrad stepped inside, the captain shutting the door carefully behind them. No one had bothered to leave a light burning in here, to his lack of surprise, but they’d expected as much. Both men drew out an encased glass tube from their pocket and gave it a hard shake. The rock minerals inside of it, mixing, put off a blue-white glow bright enough to see by. Bellomi gave the slender glass tube in his hands a long look. “I know Sarsen said this wasn’t magic,” he whispered, “but it certainly looks like it.”

Axelrad grunted agreement. “Your Highness, if you’ll take the right side? I’ll start on the left.”

It didn’t matter to him who started where, so he shrugged and turned to the right, gaining a better impression of the room as he moved. A tidily kept place indeed. Tall bookshelves lined the far wall with stacks of scrolls and ledgers, no doubt family records of some sort or another. The rest of the walls had trunks and jewelry chests lined up. Bellomi started opening one chest after another, taking a good look inside before closing the lid and moving on. For a man of his position, nothing here surprised Bellomi. Oh, there were very rich and costly jewels stored here, and a great deal of money, but Bellomi didn’t expect the man to be poor. No, what he wanted to see was how
much
wealth had been stored here and how.

Neither man spoke to each other until they had gone the length of the room, which didn’t take much time, and they met in the middle of the back wall. Bellomi looked at the other man’s worn face and offered quietly, “Every bag of gold or money pouch I found had Goethals’ seal on it and no one else’s. I can’t find evidence of him taking any bribes. You?”

“The same, Your Highness.” Axelrad turned a thoughtful frown on the room, one hand propped up on his hip. “In fact, the only thing that seems odd to me is that there’s not quite enough wealth stored here.”

Bellomi blinked. “As if he’s been giving bribes instead of taking them?”

“He’s certainly been paying for something. But it could be something entirely benign. His daughters are both of marriageable age, after all.”

An excellent point. “Let’s go check Clasessens’ vault, shall we?”

They left the room as quietly as they’d entered it, re-locked the door, and left that alcove for the one across the hall. Clasessens, like Goethals, didn’t have anything more than a standard lock on his vault and Bellomi entered it just as easily. But also like Goethals, it didn’t contain anything incriminating. Bellomi couldn’t decide if he felt heartened by this or disheartened.

“Strange,” Axelrad commented thoughtfully as they moved back toward the door. “He didn’t have as much gold in here as I’d expect either.”

Bellomi paused with his hand on the handle. “Marriageable daughters?”

“No, he only had sons, and they’ve both been married for years now.” Axelrad turned again to look at the room, eyes narrowed. “I can’t think of a good reason off hand for this.”

Hmmm, how interesting. “We’ll need to do some more investigating. But I think we’re done for the night. I’d rather not be here during the next change of the guards.”

Axelrad nodded, conceding the point, and followed as they left the room. Once again, Bellomi locked the door behind them, erasing all traces of them ever being there. But once they got to the stairs, Axelrad again took the lead, which Bellomi felt silently thankful for. He could not absolutely swear that he remembered the way back to the clock from here.

They went from staircase to staircase, ascending, leaving the damp and cool air of the sublevels behind them. Bellomi breathed out a quiet sigh of relief when they reached the main level. Good, he knew exactly where to go now. Being turned around in his own palace was a little embarrassing—