“That information is way too accurate.” Briareth says frowning. “You’re right, we definitely have a leak. The question is, who is it?”
“No, the question is, what do we do?” Istere says, still frowning. “I can’t see any way around this. We have no clue where she’s being held, the deadline is tomorrow morning at the six a.m. daily meeting of Head Officials. There’s simply not enough time to save her, and I can’t let my mom die.” Her face twists in pain, but then she suppresses it, and, taking a deep breath continues grimly. “We may not see eye to eye, after all she unconditionally believes pretty much everything the church doctrines say. If the church supports dropping the conscription age to thirteen, she’d support it without a second thought. Despite this though, she was always there for me when I was little. The main reason she got so deeply involved in the church after I ‘died’ was because she wanted to make sure my soul was well off in the afterlife.”
“She never knew you survived?” I ask, dumbly.
Istere looks at me, her golden eyes pained. “Of course not. Nobody could know anything. As far as she knew her beloved daughter was corrupted by her step-son’s treasonous ideas, and died a victim of her husband and step-son’s feud, while her step-son survived. As I told you a while back, we don’t have a good relationship.”
“Just because you feel guilty, doesn’t mean you can turn yourself in.” Blix says.
“I know that!” Istere snaps, and then sighs. “Sorry Blix, I’m a bit stressed right now. I can’t turn myself in. But I can’t rescue her either. Of course, I can’t just let her die, I’m not that cold. And I certainly can’t sit around waiting for a solution to pop up, we don’t have time for that.”
I watch Istere sadly. This must be a hugely difficult scenario for her to be in. If it were me, I’d feel trapped. I want to comfort her, but…
I shake my head. No. I just had this conversation with Faladel. There is no reason why I shouldn’t try to comfort h–
“You can think about it while we’re in the council chamber, Your Highness.” Blix breaks through my thoughts, “We really have to be going, we can’t afford to delay our departure any longer. We’re late enough as it is.”
“You’re right.” Istere says, laying the message on the breakfast table. Then, to us, she adds “As soon as I’m done there, I’ll come back here. No matter what choice we make, this will impact all of us, so I want you to be involved in the final decision.”
“We’ll try to find a way around it!” I shout out my promise as she turns to leave the room. She glances back at me, at first her eyes are wide with shock, but then they crinkle into a grateful smile.
“I look forward to seeing what you come up with.” She says, and then turns and leaves the room, Blix swooping out behind her.
----------------------------------------
As soon as she leaves the room Briareth pounces on the letter and scans it immediately. “Yep, Istere didn’t leave anything out. Just normal kidnapper jargon, ‘We have your Mother, yada yada… Come here and do this and that by tomorrow morning or she will die.’ Damn it! I was hoping they’d accidentally included something we could use!”
“Obviously we can’t leave her to die, and we can’t fulfill any requests.” I say. “So, rescue plan?”
“Rescue Plan.” Briareth confirms, handing the letter off to Faladel, who stares at it, deep in thought.
“First we need to think about where they could be holding her.” He continues. “Faladel, can you find a map of the city?” Faladel nods, and strides off, still holding the letter. Briareth turns to me, “I’m assuming the church wouldn’t be brazen enough to keep her in the castle. They have very limited space here, and too many people come and go who could hear cries for help. So, do you know any buildings the church owns outside of the city?”
“I mean, publicly?” I ask. “Just the main cathedral. But privately they could own any number of houses.”
Briareth frowns. “That makes things difficult.”
“Wait!” I exclaim, “The records! The ones Ludgera brought us! Even private buildings have to be listed there if they belong to the church as a whole. As long as the church paid for them as residential areas for priests, they can wipe them off their taxes!”
“And if they were trying to avoid taxes as much as possible..!” Briareth trails off, an excited gleam in his eyes.
“There’s no way they wouldn’t have listed them all!” I smile.
Faladel arrives back with a scroll and a ton of paperwork. He unrolls the scroll, revealing a map of the city almost half my height. Placing the paperwork down on the corners to keep it open he says. “I overheard you needed some blackmail.” And gestures to the papers. “If we’re looking for specific houses, we’ve got a lot to sort through.”
“Excellent!” Briareth cheers, more than a little excited.
Surprisingly, his enthusiasm keeps up for hours of sorting through paperwork. At some point we stop for supper, and only then do I realize that I completely missed lunch. The last thing I ate were the muffins this morning, and I’m starving. Briareth however keeps pouring over the paperwork as he munches on his food, spewing crumbs all over the place when he suddenly shouts “AHA!”
He lifts up a singular piece of paper, and, after swallowing excliams. “I found it! The list of estates belonging to the church, how much they’re worth, and how much was spent on them in the past year!”
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“Excellent work Briareth!” I cheer. Faladel stays silent, pushing the food around on his plate.
“Faladel?” I ask, surprised he isn’t celebrating as well.
He startles, then glances up at us, and says “Oh, you finally found it Briareth? Well done!”
“Yep!” Briareth says, seemingly not noticing Faladel’s distraction, “It even has all the addresses. And guess what? They’re all in the same area.”
“Really?” Faladel and I both ask at the same time.
“Yep, give me a sec–” Briareth says, grabbing a quill and inkpot from the table. Dipping the quill in the ink, he begins to scribble on the map, drawing something. “Here’s the church, well, I suppose Balderk would call it a cathedral. And here’s where all the houses belonging to the priests are.”
“Of course they’d be right next to the cathedral.” I say, staring at the map. “Why didn’t I think of this before? Instead of building priest dorms in the cathedral space, ruining the view and not saving them anything on taxes, they just bought all the houses behind it and renovated them. Keep the view, save money, and keep the short commute for the priests!”
“There’s no way they convinced all those people to sell easily.” Briareth says, frowning. “I smell suspicious activity. But that’s not important right now.”
“Does that list say which houses are lived in by which priests?” I ask.
“Yep.” Briareth confirms. “Shall I read them off to you?”
“Please do, I want to see if I recognise any names.” I reply.
“Well… Let’s see. Kildaht Dared, Tetra Kilip, Nortrud Bing, Frokard Wogen– wait, what do you think the ‘summer’ here means?” Briareth asks.
Faladel leans in and peers over his shoulder at the paper. “Probably means he owns a second house somewhere else that he winters in. Are priests normally from the upper class, Balderk?”
“Yep.” I confirm. “If they were former nobility, and still have good ties with their families or unexpectedly became the sole heir, it’s not uncommon for them to have a second or third house somewhere.”
“Huh…” Briareth considers this for a few seconds before shrugging and continuing down the list. “Xink Canvard, Heinrik Hyk, Diemut Kajat–”
“Wait!” I stop him.
“Do you recognise that name?” Briareth asks,
“Maybe?” I say, “I’m trying to think, give me a second.” I consider the name carefully. Where had I heard it before? It takes much longer than a second– probably a couple of minutes, before I finally remember. I had to go all the way back to my pre-army days. It was a name tossed around by my mother and father, something about politics, I wasn’t paying much attention to pretty much anything back then. But a headline slowly came back to me.
“High Priest Kajat.” I mutter. Then louder to the group, “Diemut Kajat is the High Priest.”
“Wait, really?” Briareth says, and then looks at the paper again. “Well no wonder his house has the most spent on ‘renovations and repairs’. Why does nobody call him by his name around here? It’s all ‘High Priest this, High Priest that.’”
I shrug. “Formalities?” I offer. “You’d have to ask someone else if you want a better answer. But he’s always at the castle, he has far better lodgings here than any redecorated city house. So, where better to hold a captive than his city house that he keeps quiet about and almost never visits?”
“Where better indeed?” Briareth smiles at me. “I doubt he even accepts visitors there. I think we’ve struck gold, team!”
We quickly clear up supper and begin to start creating a plan. Blix and Istere return at some point, and they help flesh out the details. Throughout all this though, Faladel gives little input except when prompted, and seems very lost in thought. Eventually, worried, I bring the matter up.
“What’s on your mind, Faladel? You’re not nearly as enthusiastic about this as Briareth.”
“Oh, I am,” Faladel hurries to reassure me as almost all eyes in the room surreptitiously flick in his direction. “I’m just more worried about who exactly delivered all of this information to the High Priest. I’ve been running it over and over again through my head. The group that benefits the most from this would obviously be the Yamats. After all, having the Prince out of the way because of treason means their path to the throne is clear. The church isn’t actually getting much out of this besides a boost to their pride, yes, the evidence will look all faked if someone else brings it up again, but who would? Yaluda was their main opponent and only because Briareth, Balderk, and I demanded that the war stop as part of our participation. Yaluda wouldn’t have fought for peace if we didn’t press the issue.
“Meanwhile, I keep going over the list of potential suspects. Technically, it really isn’t that many people. I’m assuming although you revealed your identity to all of us,” Faladel nods at Istere “You wouldn’t reveal it to your private guard because you know they have traitors.”
“Yes.” Istere confirms. “Although the traitors there almost all certainly belong to my dad, not to the church or Yamat.”
“That’s what you believe.” Faladel says, “But, the important point is, Blix is the only one of them who knows enough to tell. And, as I see it, even if I didn’t know about your close relationship, there’s no reason why if he somehow turned traitor, he wouldn’t tell everything, including our new hideout. Likewise, you would have no reason to betray yourself and us. I can vouch for Balderk, Briareth, and myself; so this really only leaves four people who could betray us.”
Istere catches on quickly. “Lutti, Beni, Ludgera and Agnark. And of course, Lutti and Beni were the only reason you guys escaped from the church’s first attempt.”
“Exactly.” Faladel nods. “I hate to point fingers, but…”
I’m almost surprised that Istere’s glare doesn’t set the map on the table on fire. “I hate it when I’m right about these things.” She hisses between gritted teeth. “They were so quick to leave after I told them my identity. Blix, make sure they don’t get any more information that could hurt us. Tell the guards to tell them nothing. We may have to move ourselves again, since they’ve visited us here once already. Set any guards we have here on high alert.”
“Your Highness, are you sure it’s a good idea to let them know that we know they're traitors?” Blix cautioned. “Perhaps it would be better to feed them a steady stream of false information.”
“Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you.” Istere says frowning. “However, things are moving too fast, and Ludgera is fiendishly clever. I don’t have time to plot out detailed false moves to feed her, and she’d catch on too quickly to anything less than excellent lies with at least a little evidence to back them up. Better to let her know that we know it’s one of them, and let her stew in fear of what will happen when we succeed.”
Blix nods, and goes to relay that information to the guard outside the door. Meanwhile, Istere doubles down on the planning, and as soon as we’ve worked out all the major problems, gone through it three times looking for more, and can’t think of any more complications that could throw it off track, we finally head to bed. Istere says she’ll wake us at three a.m so we can head out.
I don’t think I’ll get any rest at all, but somehow, once my eyes close, I immediately fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.