Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(14)
I reached up and grabbed his hand. “I’m fine, and so is Paloma. It was a trap, but we turned the tables on them. I’m sorry I ran off. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
He nodded, accepting my explanation, then dropped his hand and stared at the dead magiers. “Who were they? More members of the Bastard Brigade?”
Serilda bent down and picked up one of Ricardo’s knives from the weapons pile. She twirled the blade around, then held it out where Cho could see it. Worry creased his face.
Serilda tossed the knife down onto the pile with the others. “No. These are geldjager blades.”
“I think you’re right.” I showed my friends the coined-woman pendant that Lena had been wearing.
“The DiLucris sent geldjagers to Svalin?” Sullivan shook his head. “That’s bold, even for them. Usually they only dispatch their pet vipers when there is serious money to be made.”
“But who hired the geldjagers to come to Svalin and start that rumor about another Blair being alive?” I asked. “Was it Maeven? The Mortan king? Or did the DiLucris do this on their own? Who was Ricardo hoping to deliver me to? And for what purpose?”
“Ransom?” Cho suggested. “Maybe the DiLucris were going to sell you to the highest bidder, whether it was Bellona or Morta or someone else. That would be a good way to create even more tension between the two kingdoms, as well as make the DiLucris a hefty profit. The Mint trades in money, power, and favors, and auctioning off a queen would have netted them all three.”
“Or this whole thing could be about payback,” Serilda said. “Maybe Vasilia or Cordelia made some deal with the Mint. Maybe the DiLucris want to get their money back one way or another, now that the other Blair queens are dead.”
“Maybe,” I murmured. “It could be any one of those things or something else we haven’t even thought of yet.”
I studied the gold pendant again. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the three tiny coins in the woman’s face winked at me like evil eyes, as if they were warning me that this was only the beginning of this latest plot against me—and that things were only going to get worse.
Every sly glimmer of gold made another match of anger flare to life in my chest. I was used to the Mortans trying to kill me, but the DiLucris had sent their operatives to my city, my capital, to torture and kill whomever had been unlucky enough to fall into the geldjagers’ trap.
No one threatened my people like that—not without suffering the harshest of consequences.
I thought you were just a mutt who could smell things. Ricardo’s sneering voice filled my mind. He’d thought I was weak, and no doubt so did his employers, which was why they’d launched such a sly, vicious scheme.
Well, I could be sly and vicious too. Paloma and I had already killed the geldjagers, but their masters needed to be reminded that they fucked with Bellona—and underestimated me—at their own peril.
“Well, whoever they were working for, geldjagers roaming the streets of Svalin is troublesome, Evie,” Cho said. “Very troublesome.”
“You’re right,” I snarled. “This does mean trouble—for my enemies.”
“What are you thinking, highness?” Sullivan asked.
I stabbed my finger at Lena’s body. “The girl said the geldjagers had been ordered to send me a message. Well, I’m going to use the geldjagers to send a message of my own right back to the DiLucris and the Mortan king.”
*
An hour later, I once again found myself in a plaza surrounded by dead bodies. But instead of the rotten, trash-strewn city slums, I was now standing in a fresh, clean, open space along the Summanus River. Seven bridges led from the city of Svalin across the river and over to Seven Spire palace. Each bridge had a name, and I was standing at the end of the one called Retribution.
Very appropriate for what I had in mind.
Unlike many of the city plazas, the one at the end of the Retribution Bridge didn’t feature a bubbling fountain, pretty statue, or grassy park. No, this plaza boasted a large stone platform with several trapdoors set into the bottom and sturdy scaffolding rising up and running along the back of it.
This was where people were executed.
Criminals, mostly, who had committed atrocious acts that demanded severe, permanent punishment. Once judgment was handed down, the condemned were brought from the palace dungeon to this platform, where they were hanged until dead for all the people of Svalin to see.
Tonight, I’d decided to use the platform for a slightly different purpose—to display the dead geldjagers.
Several palace guards wearing short-sleeve blue tunics topped with silver breastplates were standing on the platform, wrestling with the bodies and stringing them up with ropes. Even though the geldjagers were already dead, their remains would hang here until I said otherwise.
“Snap to it, men!” a loud voice barked out. “Queen’s orders!”
The shouts came from a fifty-something man standing on one side of the platform. He was a tall, stern, imposing figure with short gray hair, brown eyes, dark bronze skin, and a lumpy nose that had obviously been broken multiple times. He was wearing a short-sleeve blue tunic, just like the other guards, but the feathered texture of his silver breastplate marked his importance, as did my crown-of-shards crest emblazoned in the metal over his heart.
Auster, the captain of the palace guards, hopped off the platform, walked over, and bowed low to me in the traditional Bellonan style. I had repeatedly told Auster that he didn’t have to bow every single time he saw me, but the captain was a stickler for tradition, at least in front of his men.