Page 109 of Thorn Season
Keil went silent. He couldn’t come up with an answer.
But I could.
Was Nelle the keeper after all? After months of brutality, was shenow using the compass to “help” Wielders and put her daughter on the throne?
I laughed in disbelief, lightheaded. “And your cronies thinkI’mfooling you.”
Keil remained stone-faced. “Carmen is not fooling me.”
“You’re so sure about that? You’ve known her for less time than it takes milk to turn rancid.”
“And in that time,” he said firmly, “she’s given me no reason to question her motives or her sources. Every connection she possesses, she’s used for our aid. She disclosed safe, secret naval routes for our Ansoran vessels, and now she’s helping Wielders find refuge—innocent people who would otherwise be slaughtered.”
“Yet she fed you false information. She sent your Wielders to those prison tunnels, didn’t she? And they were conveniently empty. Aren’t you curious as to how she knew about them?”
“I’m more curious as to howyouknew about them. You’re the one who rifled through Carmen’s belongings and followed her to Backplace. You’re the one who possesses a eurium knife bearing the same symbol as the one in those tunnels.”
“Yes, I suspected they would tell you as much.” I reached into my pocket for the parchment on which I’d drawn the symbol.
I’d overlooked it before. But to have been etched into their weapons and blood-painted in that Wielder prison, this symbol had to hold significance to the copycats—a name or location or something else entirely.
It could lead me straight to the keeper who’d ordered my father’s murder.
My specter throbbed in vicious anticipation. Because whether or not the symbol led to Nelle, I would be ready.
Keil’s face was unreadable as I tossed the parchment on the lounge table.
“They said the symbol is ancient Ansoran. Read it.”
“I can’t,” he said.
My voice darkened. “You owe me a favor, Ambassador.”
“And the terms were specific:Any favor that is within my power to grant.This is a dead language. Even if any living being could read this symbol, I wouldn’t know how to find them.” He shook his head and said carefully, “You can’t demand this of me.”
“As long as I know what I know, I can demand anything of you.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. He looked me over, aghast. “Where is your honor?”
“You would lecture me about honor? You came to Daradon on the pretext of friendship while planning to support a coup for Erik’s throne.”
“You’re defending him now? He is—”
“He iswhat, Ambassador?” I stepped up to him, holding his stare. “What do you have to say about the king who holds your life in his hands?”
Keil’s eyes sailed over me again, disbelief mingling with pain.
My conscience tugged at me. Whatever other cruelties the empress of Ansora had committed, Garret had misread her intentions in sending her ambassador to court. Keil had never wanted the compass; he’d only wanted to help the Wielders of Daradon—the people he considered his own. He wanted to save them from these Huntings, just as I did.
But he was working with Carmen to do it. He believed he was doing the right thing by trusting her—and that was precisely the problem. Keil gave his trust too freely, and to the wrong people. Even when he’d believed I was after his secret, he’d trustedme.
Carmen and her mother might very well be responsible for the rise in Huntings; Carmen might now be leading these Daradonian Wielders into atrap. But Keil wouldn’t believe it until their bodies lay scattered around him.
And he certainly wouldn’t believe that she had anything to do with my father’s murder.
Even if I did.
The irony was crushing: For the first time since we’d met, I was sure Keil wasn’t my enemy. But as long as he remained blind to Carmen’s manipulations, as long as she and her mother remained the most likely suspects in my search for the keeper... I would have to make him one.
