Flamecaster (Shattered Realms, #1)(106)

“Does Lyss—does my sister know?”

“I don’t know,” Lila said. “She was pretty young, wasn’t she, when you ran off?”

When he ran off. That’s exactly what he did. “Yes,” he said. “She was.”

“By then Captain Byrne was beginning to realize that I could actually be useful. Maybe my name will never be up on the brag board in Wien House, but Oden’s Ford is a great place to chat up *s like Tourant. Being a smuggler is great cover for traveling around the Realms.”

“You were a spy?”

“Among other things,” Lila said vaguely. “My da asked me to keep an eye on you—from a distance, since following you around would just draw attention to you. I wasn’t hot for the job—the last thing I wanted to do was nanny a runaway princeling. If King Gerard found out where you were, it wouldn’t do any good anyway, and I’d get the blame.” Her gaze was frank and unblinking. “I finally agreed, but I negotiated summers off to do my own thing. It turns out I worried for nothing. Watching over you was an easy job until, you know, this year. After the death crows came, I decided I’d better take you home, but you didn’t cooperate.”

Good thing you didn’t know what I did with my summers, Ash thought. “What are you doing here? Still nannying?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been working on a long-term project with a friend of mine. We’re becoming major suppliers for the Ardenine army.”

“That seems to be going well,” Ash said drily. He rose and paced back and forth. “So you sold them a boatload of flashcraft. You don’t think that was going a little overboard when it comes to winning their trust?”

“It would be,” Lila said, “if the flashcraft worked as intended.”

Ash swiveled to face her. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“Let’s just say that it was custom work.”

“But . . . I thought you said it was old flash.”

“My friend Rogan is a rum clan flashcrafter. He is very good at reproductions.”

“All along, then, you’ve been working for the Fells.”

Lila nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before? I would have been at least marginally more polite.”

“To be honest, I thought of you as an amateur—a spoiled, entitled, runaway princeling bent on revenge who would get caught and then complicate and compromise my elegant scheme. I figured the less you knew, the better.”

“I hate it when you sugarcoat things,” Ash said. “If you had access to the court, why cook up an elegant scheme? Why not just assassinate Montaigne?”

“Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?” Lila slapped her forehead.

“I’m serious.”

“What makes you think I haven’t tried?”

“That wasn’t you with the gedden weed and the—?”

“No.” Lila rolled her eyes. “The thing is, I never inherited the Byrne gene for martyrdom. I enjoy life too much to want to spend it on gutter-swiving Montaigne. How do I know Prince Jarat will be an improvement? From what I’ve seen and heard, he probably won’t be.”

“At least maybe he won’t be hell-bent on murdering my family,” Ash growled. “So. Why did you suddenly decide it was time to have a heart-to-heart with me?”

“Because an alliance between the Northern Islands and Arden will dilute the effect of the project Rogan and I have been working on for three years. And because the loss of your father as High Wizard makes us more vulnerable to magical attack than before. Lord Bayar has stepped in, but—”

“Bayar is High Wizard? Really?” Micah Bayar and his father had been rivals, if not outright enemies, for years. Whether intended or not, the grudge had been passed along to Ash.

“You really need to get out more, sul’Han,” Lila said, looking amused.

Ash had been in a bad mood since the meeting with Montaigne, and being blindsided like this didn’t improve things.

“So stop it. Kill the king. Kill the emissary. Launch an invasion of the Northern Islands. There are so many options.”

“The thing is, I need your help.”

What could a spoiled, entitled, runaway princeling possibly do for you? Ash thought it, but he didn’t say it out loud, because then he would sound like one.

“What kind of help?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Lila said, shifting her eyes away.

“That doesn’t surprise me. Go on.”

“The simplest way to prevent the deal from going forward is to eliminate the girl.”

“As in kill the girl.”

“Yes.” Lila had the grace to look sheepish.

“And you want me to do it.”

“You still have access to her, right? You’re likely the only person who could do it and get away with it.” She leaned forward, speaking fast and persuasively. “Look at it this way, healer. If not for you, she’d be dead. So, in a way, you’re just undoing what you did.”

“Breaking what I fixed.”

“Exactly,” Lila said, looking proud that she’d come up with that.

“You can find a way to justify anything, can’t you?”