The Scent of Death
I fixed Cho with an unblinking gaze. Heaving a deep sigh, he opened the jewel box he had set on the table and took out a ring.
"I'll take my retainer fee."
By now he helped himself without my having to say a word.
"Of course. I look forward to working with you."
"I can find out what it is, but don't get your hopes up. If it ends up going to auction, will you bid? It'll cost you a fair sum."
I wanted to buy it before the auction ever began — auctions came with far too many variables. But if it truly came to that, then I would simply have to take part.
"That much is pocket change to me."
With a bright smile, I saw Cho off. He shook his head at me, and in the blink of an eye he was gone.
I stared for a moment at the spot where he had vanished, then turned my attention back to the documents.
One word kept snagging my gaze.
"Phoenix Bank, is it."
The name of the bank that held the mortgage on Twilight Mansion was a familiar one.
Let's start from here.
Julia was resting in the sunlight.
The balcony of the Queen's Palace, wrapped around the most beautiful garden in all the royal grounds, was a spot Julia treasured.
"Your Majesty, Count Kolkos has come to call."
Her sweet repose interrupted, a crack ran across Julia's face.
Rena, her handmaid, bent low at the waist. A teacup sailed through the air just above her head.
"Forgive me, Your Majesty. I shall send him away at once."
Julia, high-strung by nature, could not stand having her rest disturbed — and knowing this full well, Rena had still been unable to keep silent.
Only days before, Julia had given strict orders that Count Kolkos was to be announced the moment he showed his face. And yet even armed with that excuse, Rena knew Julia's reaction would hardly have differed.
She would only have been scolded harder for talking back.
Bent so far that her forehead nearly touched her thigh, Rena could not seem to straighten her back.
"Tell him to wait in the reception room."
Julia stretched out long and languid, her face the very picture of serenity — as though she hadn't hurled a teacup only moments ago.
Rena withdrew, still bent double.
Julia rose slowly from her seat. At a flick of her hand, the maids who had been pressed flat against the walls like cicadas clinging to an old tree came swarming.
"Let us prepare to receive our guest."
Dozens of hands moved in flawless unison.
Even with such a retinue at work, Julia's toilette took an age. She would not suffer even the smallest ornament to be worn carelessly, and so she fastened and unfastened dozens of earrings in turn.
When at last she had finished her preparations and emerged from her chambers in resplendent array, a full two hours had passed since Rena's report.
"Your Majesty, you are as beautiful today as ever."
The moment Julia appeared in the reception room, Count Kolkos rubbed his hands together and showered her with flattery.
"Did you wait long?"
"Not at all, Your Majesty."
After a wait of two full hours, that was all he said — and he said it smiling.
Anderson, Julia's counselor and chief secretary, curled his lips in a smirk.
Arranging a false smile upon her face, Julia began.
"It has been a while, Count Kolkos. You cut off your visits to the Queen's Palace for so long, I thought you had forgotten me entirely."
The count, who had never once missed sending his respects, had been conspicuously absent these past several days. He bowed his head low, as though he would crack his skull against the table.
"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. Trouble has beset my household..."
The veiled evasion dripped with a plea for help. Julia's cheeks worked slowly. Kolkos swallowed hard, wound tight as a bowstring.
"Has some misfortune befallen House Ehrenberg? Oh dear... an ill wind against the very pillar of the kingdom. What seems to be the trouble, Count Kolkos?"
Relieved by her honeyed tone, Kolkos poured out everything that had happened.
"The appointment of a guardian keeps being pushed back, day after day."
Tsk. Julia clicked her tongue, her hand stopping halfway to her teacup. In an instant, the air around them froze solid.
However many years he had lived, Count Kolkos feared Julia, a woman a good ten years his junior. Whenever she fixed him with that frosty stare, he felt as though a blade were pricking his skin.
At the sight of him cowering, irritation welled up from the very depths of Julia's chest.
House Ehrenberg gnaws at my patience to the very last.
Julia had worked for years to make House Ehrenberg hers. But it had never come easily.
The previous head of the house had been as unbending as a stalk of bamboo; she had sent him gifts and threats alike, and still he never became her man.
Had it been some insignificant house, or had a substitute existed, Julia would have brushed it aside — but Ehrenberg was a house that even she, the Queen, could not possibly disregard.
If Ehrenberg alone took her side, her designs would come to fruition far more easily.
To claim House Ehrenberg was to hand Dayson a stable and unshakable throne.
Yet Ehrenberg would not budge an inch. Left with no alternative, Julia had kept the foolish, grasping Count Kolkos close at hand — Ehrenberg blood, after all.
And now the old head was dead, the house finally within her grasp — and Kolkos's handling of affairs was a sorry sight to behold.
How difficult could it be to manage one young niece?
The moment Julia's brow arched, Kolkos sucked in a breath.
Determined not to let his fear show, he rubbed his arm and laid out his circumstances.
"My young niece has taken a sudden fit of caprice. The matter is to be settled at a family council, to be sure, but as you know, appointing a guardian requires the consent of both guardian and ward, so..."
Weary of his tangle of excuses, Julia raised a hand and cut him short.
"Isn't your niece thirteen?"
"She is."
"You disturbed my time because you cannot handle one little girl?"
Struck dumb, Kolkos's eyes darted this way and that.
"Just how far do you expect me to carry you?"
"Your Majesty..."
"I summoned you to the capital, a man who had whiled away his years governing a pitiful little territory. When you promised great things for your house, I even lent you my strength."
The skin around Kolkos's eyes quivered. For an instant, something like guilt flitted across his face.
"And that was all? Why, I even cleared away everyone around you so that you might become the guardian."
Every word she spoke raised gooseflesh along the back of Kolkos's neck. He remembered exactly what means Julia had employed to tighten her grip on House Ehrenberg — and his body shuddered of its own accord at her vindictiveness, her cruelty, her meticulousness.
"I apologize, Your Majesty. I am — I am simply far too lacking..."
"Knowing it is enough. If you understand your shortcomings, go home and work. Though work alone will not save you. As you well know, my hands are full to overflowing with men who could take your place."
The color drained from Kolkos's face. To be "replaced" did not simply mean losing his position.
For Count Kolkos, who knew pieces of Julia's secrets, to be replaced meant—
Death.
Kolkos drew a long, shuddering breath.
The effort Julia had poured into claiming Ehrenberg had been truly staggering. Even her handling of Count Kolkos was part of that labor.
She had sown the effort; now the harvest was due — yet the very people meant to bring in that harvest were proving hopelessly useless.
Can they not think and act for themselves, even a little?
Very well, then. She would simply have to whip them into running.
"Did you come all this way just to cry?"
"No, Your Majesty."
In truth, Kolkos had come both to lament and to beg assistance, but Julia plainly had no intention of helping him.
To whine for aid would only plant another thorn in her regard. He needed to put forward some information worth something...
Kolkos squirmed in anguish, afraid that Julia would simply rise and leave.
I must say something. I cannot let the Queen walk out on me like this.
Perhaps desperation sharpened his wits — words he had heard not long ago from a spy planted in the Ehrenberg residence surfaced at precisely the right moment.
"It concerns my niece, Your Majesty."
"Yes. That clever niece whom a man past forty failed to win over."
Straining to let her barb slide past him, Kolkos leaned over the table.
"She has been coming and going from the royal palace."
"What?"
Julia's brows drew together into a mountain ridge. For the first time since exchanging greetings, she looked Kolkos full in the face.
"And I was not informed?"
Nothing less than knowledge of every move made within the palace walls could set her at ease. This was Julia, who knew even the number of times the King coughed in a day. If she took no interest in a place, then—
"The Third Prince's Palace?"
Julia looked to Kolkos as though asking whether that was the place.
"I could not say as far as that."
Fool. Julia spoke with clear displeasure.
"I see, Count Kolkos. You may go."
"But the matter of the guardianship..."
"I will inquire into it once more."
Only then did Kolkos rise, smiling, and take his leave of the reception room.
When he had vanished and quiet settled over the room, Anderson stepped close to Julia's side.
"Didn't you tell me that girl was nothing more than a naive noblewoman's daughter?"
He meant Diana.
"That is what I found. Nothing set her apart. An ordinary young lady who liked storybooks and dresses."
"And yet she stalls the appointment of her guardian and steals in and out of the palace?"
Anderson silently bore Julia's rebuke — did you even investigate properly?
"Look into it again. And I believe I shall pay a visit to the Third Prince's Palace myself."
"...This place reeks of death. It has since you were a child, Prince. You were a man who drew death after him wherever you went."
What on earth is this now?
I had come to Cassion's palace to tell him how things stood with Twilight Mansion, and a voice drifting out into the corridor caught my ear.
"On the day you were born, hundreds died of plague. Are you aware of that, Prince?"
How could he not be? The whole kingdom had clamored that the prince born of the deposed Queen had brought calamity down upon them.
"You know, too, that those who formed bonds with you met their deaths under strange circumstances?"
Had they? Even I never knew that.
"And yet here you are, the lone survivor, Prince, holding fast to your life in a luxurious palace."
Wrong on every count. No one with eyes placed straight in their head could look at where Cassion lived and call it luxurious.
Someone with a crooked gaze has come calling.
Who, though?
Who would seek out Cassion's palace just to torment him — and a grown woman, at that? Only one name came to mind: Julia.
But Julia, at this point in time, had no interest whatsoever in Cassion. To her, he was no more than a weed growing by the roadside.
A person not worth even a speck of her attention.
And yet that voice is Julia's.
Half disbelieving my own ears, I crept toward the door. Then I peered through the narrow gap it had been left ajar.
I could see the back of a woman attended by maids. Lavishly dressed, her hair swept up high!
It really is Julia! Why on earth is she here?
Cassion, standing before her, was shaking like a leaf. With the face of a man on the verge of fainting, he endured Julia's vicious words.
"I hear a darling young lady has been visiting you, Prince. Do you mean to kill off even the Ehrenberg girl, with her whole bright future ahead of her?"