The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(84)

“How do you know?”

“It would have been someone he knew. He was killed in his own bed. If not his daughter, then perhaps a lover.” Lehrer tapped his fingers on the edge of the table where he’d put his coffee, one-two-three. “We arrested Carter this morning. I spent some time interrogating her personally, but I’m convinced of her innocence. Her alibi is solid, and she told me she wasn’t involved in the murder. She couldn’t have lied to me.”

Lehrer sounded far more confident about that than Noam thought was warranted, but then again, Noam didn’t want to imagine what was involved in Ministry of Defense interrogations.

There was no warning Dara. He was gone when Noam got back to the barracks. Noam waited around, sitting at the common room table, shuffling and reshuffling the same deck of cards as if setting up a poker game might somehow summon Dara. But then it was past three, Dara wasn’t back, and Noam had to go meet Lehrer for the funeral.

Lehrer had another coffee as he slid into the car, this one in a thermos, but he looked like he’d pulled himself together sometime between their lesson that morning and now. The circles under his eyes were gone, hair combed in its usual neat style. Only the tension between his shoulders betrayed the truth.

“Are you all right, sir?” Noam asked eventually, when they were stuck in traffic.

“I know about as much as I did this morning.”

Noam tugged at the cuff of his sleeve, pressing it against the side of his thumb hard enough it blanched the skin. “So it could be half the people in Carolinian high society.”

Lehrer shook his head. “I have my ideas,” he said, “but I can’t prove them. Not yet.”

He reached over with one hand and grasped the corner of Noam’s collar between thumb and forefinger, adjusting its angle. Noam stayed still, let him, and wished desperately that he could peer inside Lehrer’s mind in this moment and see—what was he thinking? He’d been talking about lovers, but he hadn’t said anything about the obvious alternative: a surrogate son, who would easily have been allowed anywhere in the home secretary’s mansion.

Was Lehrer so blinded by his affection for Dara that he couldn’t guess?

Noam swallowed against the sudden queasiness in his stomach and turned his face toward the window as the car drew up in front of the house. Attendees had spilled onto the back lawn, their cell phones and wristwatches a low hum to Noam’s magic.

He followed Lehrer out of the car and up the drive. In the foyer, the mahogany display tables lining the walls bore antique vases overflowing with anemones and lilies. The smell was sickly sweet.

“Sign the guest book,” Lehrer instructed, gesturing to one of the tables. Noam added his name below those of major generals and ministers, and Lehrer signed beneath that, bracketing him in.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out where they were meant to go; they followed the sound of voices. Even with their chatter muted, out of respect for the dead, there were enough people present that Noam could hear them all the way out at the entrance. Noam spotted Ames, almost immediately, in the sitting room. Mourners clustered around her like iron filings to a magnet.

Lehrer conveyed his condolences. Noam waited just behind him, not quite able to see Ames’s face given Lehrer’s height but able to hear her voice responding, soft and low. And, if Noam wasn’t mistaken, with the faintest edge; Ames probably still smarted from her arrest by Lehrer’s department. It was only after Lehrer moved away, drawn into conversation by one of the other well-wishers, that Ames saw him.

“Oh,” Ames said. “Hi.” She sounded tired. Looked it too.

“I was sorry to hear about your father.”

Ames snorted. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Noam.”

“Okay, I won’t. But I didn’t think you wanted me saying, ‘Oh, what a relief your dad’s dead now’ when you just got done being accused of his murder.”

“Thanks,” Ames said and actually laughed a little. “Hey. Do me a favor and stay here and pretend you’re talking to me for a while? I can’t stand playing polite with these obsequious old fucks anymore.”

“Sure,” he said, following when Ames gestured for him to sit in one of the empty armchairs.

Ames took the seat next to it, stretching her legs out along the floor and resting her head back. For a moment she was silent, long enough that Noam wondered if she was actually going to say anything or if his presence here was enough. Then: “I didn’t do it, for the record.”

“Do what?”

“I didn’t kill my father.” She glanced over at Noam. “God knows he deserved it, though,” Ames went on, earning a carefully blank stare from Noam. “Can’t say I’m surprised someone finally did him in.”

“Who?” Noam said, widening his eyes just a little. Innocent. “Do you think it was political?”

Ames’s lips twisted. “It was probably someone sympathetic to the refugees, considering all the legislation my dad helped enact against Atlantian citizenship. Anyone who might want to undermine Lehrer’s government.”

The undermining Lehrer part sounded about right. Where was Dara, anyway? Noam was afraid to look around too obviously; Lehrer had a way of seeing everything that happened in his vicinity.

Ames sat upright, her mouth white around the edges. “It wasn’t me. You believe me, right?”