To Lane’s surprise and dismay, the office was brightly lit when she got there. Grooch was sitting at his desk, a huge stack of ledgers in front of him. She stopped in the door, watching as he flipped through the pages, muttering under his breath. It didn’t sound like he was finding what he was looking for, and it didn’t sound like he was just working on another issue with the paper vouchers.

“Mr. Grooch?” Lane asked.

He nearly jumped out of his chair at the address.

“Your Ladyship. Is there any news? Better news?” he added. “I heard about Duke Desmarais…”

He trailed off, sounding lost.

“I’m afraid not,” Lane said. “We’ve had no word from Port Neaf. May I ask what you’re working on?”

He closed the ledger he’d been brooding over with a thump. “I was hoping to do my part in solving this heinous crime,” he explained. “But I’m being stumped! I cannot find the right kind of information!”

“But you—have a lead to follow?”

“The mushrooms, Milady,” Grooch said. He looked gaunt, like he hadn’t slept last night, either.

“Can you elaborate on that?” Lane asked. “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day,” she added, when he looked up at her in surprise.

“Of course. Well, we know that the spy, Robert Vavre, he had an interest in wild mushrooms. It was in the dossier. And the only thing missing from his kitchen were jars full of preserve, weren’t they? Just as the preserved mushrooms that were added to the food? So it occurred to me that if I could find out where Vavre travelled to collect his mushrooms—perhaps he did it on his sponsor’s lands? But I cannot find the necessary information. He must not have turned in any travel expenses for this. I thought everybody skims something off the top every once in a while, but apparently, he was to smart to do it for this.”

Lane walked around the main desk to drop into the heavy armchair there. She was really tempted to put up her feet on the desktop, like David would, but then stopped herself.

“I’m glad somebody is still thinking clearly,” she said. How could she have forgotten about Vavre and the damn mushrooms? Jars of preserve, missing.

They wouldn’t have been labelled, would they?

But Vavre had kept them with his own food, not at a separate storage. And whoever had killed him had had no issue finding the right jars, had they?

So the question was, where were those jars now?

“Milady?” Grooch asked, when she didn’t say anything else.

She drummed her fingers onto the armrests. “Do you know what happened to Vavre’s house?”

“I’m afraid not, Milady. But I’m sure I can find out.”

Lane nodded. “Let’s draft up a letter, for Duke Stuard to sign. I need him to grant me authority over his guards and—specialists, just in case. We need to have everything his men collected on Vavre.”

“Will he be able to sign, though?”

George Louis better be. He was getting a doctor and a healer all to himself, after all.

Already, there was only a single bed visible in the infirmary. The two nuns on duty, plus the physician and the healer felt like a crowd, compared to the few doctors and mages downstairs at the Gallerie tending to dozens of patients. They all stared at Lane when she came in, but nobody attempted to stop her. When the duke waved at them, they retreated into a side room.

“Glad to see you haven’t forgotten me completely,” Duke Stuard grumbled when she sat down next to his bed. The linens looked clean, so they must have been changed recently, and he wore a clean nightdress, too.

“Any news from David?” George Louis asked when Lane took too long to take in the room.

His face fell when she shook her head. “There has been no news from Port Neaf at all, Your Highness. I fear we have to assume the same treachery that struck here struck them, too. I intend to find out who is behind that.”

She offered him the leather binder she had carried, with the powers of command she and Grooch had drawn up.

“You really think it still makes a difference who was behind this?” He looked so terribly tired then, tired and scared. “If David doesn’t make it back…”

“He will, Your Highness. I said treachery struck them. But I refuse to believe that he would be so easy to kill, especially given the force he was surrounded by.”

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“So we’re placing all our bets on him?” George Louis looked away. “I’ve been told not to get George’s hopes up, even if I do feel quite fine right now.”

Lane nodded. It was odd to talk to him now, to see him sitting in bed, after the earlier ordeal. She had spoken to unsettled werewolves before, so it wasn’t like she didn’t know how fast the tables could turn. But she had never spoken to someone she knew would die of sickness in just a few days.

What did you say in a situation like that?

“Do you want comfort or honesty, Your Highness?”

George Louis laughed at her when she folded her hands behind her back, and not in a nice way. “By any means, if you have comfort to give, I’d love to hear it.”

Lane pursed her lips. His derision made her wonder why she should even bother to try and comfort him. On the other hand… He did quite hate the werewolves. So maybe this would be more annoying than comforting to him.

“Morgulon is downstairs at the Grande Gallerie, a living source of magic. Perhaps it would be a good idea for the Royal Healer to seek her out, rest by her side for a bit. Bishop Larssen said it’s quite refreshing just to sit with her. Nathan is on his way to bring us a larger pack,” Lane added, before George Louis could ask.

“How much help can they render?”

Lane shrugged. “I don’t know, Your Highness. It’s strong enough that all the healers in the Grande Gallerie appear to be drawn to her even without knowing why. But it is subtle enough that they didn’t realise they were doing it.”

His Highness mulled that over. “And if I had asked for honesty. What would you have told me?”

“In that case, I’d have pointed out that while the werewolves can help some, it will be full moon just as the most patients will die and that your best hopes may lie in the coin toss at this point.”

He glared at her then. “No way am I going to try that.”

Lane glanced over her shoulder, shrugging. “It might make you more attractive to his Lordship,” she said, voice lowered even though everyone else had retreated to give them privacy.

“Over my dead body,” he growled at her.

“That does seem to be the most likely other option,” Lane said dryly. She stared down at the folder in her hands. “There is not just David, Your Highness. There is also your son to think of. Marques Picot is already attempting to make a pawn of him. I do not know to what end, but I do believe that Picot was behind this—or at the very least, involved. Bishop Larssen has confirmed that it was Picot who spoke to the spy Gregory Feleke followed. The spy from whose kitchen the poison most likely came in the first place.”

“And you are letting him get away with that?”

Lane held out the writ. “With your signature here, I believe I can stop him.”

“Sure you do. And I guess I should sign over Mannin, too, while I’m at it?”

“Do you want revenge or not?” Lane folded her arms across her chest. “I’m going to get him. But if you want me to do it in the next three days, while you’re still able to appreciate what’s going on, I’ll need some help.”

“Three days, is it now?”

Lane pressed her lips together, looking him up and down. “The poison is eating up your liver as we speak,” she said after a moment. “Dissolving it into goo, if I understood correctly. As the process progresses, patients first become confused, then sleepy, turning harder and harder to wake, until they fall asleep and never wake again. That’s what your own best physicians told me. So if you would like to be awake and lucid enough to see what Picot has coming, I believe we shouldn’t take more than three days.”

“You really have a way with the honesty,” George Louis said. “Not so much with the comfort.”

He paused for a moment, then held out a hand. “I’ll need ink. Wax, too.”

“Of course.”

Lane left him to read the text, and went to find the healer and physician in their little study bordering the main infirmary. Both of them were resting on couches along the walls. One of the attending nuns glared at the interruption. The woman did let her have some wax and ink, just to get her out of the room, Lane suspected. She had brought a quill, so that was good enough.

Quietly, she walked back. When she rounded the corner, Duke George Louis had put down the papers, staring into nothing, one hand pressed to his midriff as if he were searching for a sense of what was going on inside there. He wasn’t crying, but his lips formed a thin, bloodless line and the papers rustled from the way his knee was nervously bouncing up and down.

The movement stopped as soon as Lane rounded the corner, and the leery grin he flashed her dared her to say anything.

Without a word, Lane dragged over one of the little tables the doctor kept his tools on, and a candlestick from the night light to melt the wax on, so that the duke wouldn’t need to rise. She didn’t want the nurses more angry at her than necessary.

George Louis watched as she set everything up, then reached for the pen. Instead of just signing, he began writing.

“I expect you to do more with this than just find the killers,” he said. “I know Annebelle is by his side, but George will need human allies, too. Do not allow Picot to drag him into whatever mad scheme this is.”

He looked up from his writing, nailing her with his gaze. “Please. I know we have rarely seen eye to eye, but he’s a child. You know David wouldn’t have abandoned him.”

Funny, how it always came back to David for him.

“Neither will I,” Lane said aloud. “Nor will any of his brothers. Human or otherwise.”

She wasn’t sure if the duke had even heard her.

“If there is any news,” he said, “good or otherwise… I want to hear it. As long as I can… I want to know what’s going on.”

“Of course.”

He nodded, looking away. Then he abruptly changed the topic. “Has the Roi Solei set his terms yet? Sent us an ultimatum?”

“Do you think he will?”

“It would be the easiest way to quell this rebellion, would it not? Poison its leaders, secure the prince, then frighten the aristocracy until they accept whatever demands Rambouillet makes.”

Defeat the army, was the point he hadn’t raised.

“As far as I’m aware, no demands have been made,” Lane said. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”

The nobility was certainly frightened. If George Louis was right—if the Roi Solei offered them peace right now…

“I need to drop this off with Grooch, then go back to the Grande Gallerie,” she said. Make a final round. Be seen up and about. Offer what little hope she could.

Try to hold it all together, even if she had no clue how.