The game continued and tensions were high for a variety of very stupid reasons. Otto had gotten an idea in his head that I was part of the conspiracy seeking to infiltrate the palace, yet he was still participating in the competition because he was more interested in winning the prize than making a moral stand on the matter.
Conrad was the one winning the game for the time being, but the others were in hot pursuit. It took all of my restraint not to remind them that victory in croquet would not automatically qualify them to take my hand in marriage. That would be like throwing a hand grenade into a fireworks warehouse.
This game meant everything to them. It was almost inspirational to watch their blood, sweat and tears. Each and every stroke of the mallet was life or death, triumph or humiliation. The original intent of demonstrating some good sportsmanship was long forgotten, replaced with the overwhelming urge to rub the other boys’ faces in it when they made a good play.
A thought came to mind and I chastised myself for not thinking of it earlier – but it was possible that the women noted by the postmaster were all related to the boys I was stringing along. With that in mind, I decided to change tactics and see if I could figure out who they were. When a gap in the jeering opened up, I stepped in and struck up a conversation.
“I was wondering how your parents felt about the possibility of marrying me. It’s normal that they would have reservations about a matrilineal arrangement.”
Otto shook his head, “Not at all. My mother was all too eager to see me out of the door. My eldest brother is due to inherit whatever scraps we possess.”
“...Scraps?”
“They’ve never been interested in building our wealth or prosperity. While being a member of the Van Walser family is enough to enjoy a comfortable life that would make most commoners furious with mad envy – it also means that we are completely dependent on the generosity of the King and the head of house. To be frank, there is little to be inherited in the first place.”
“Still, it would be helpful to meet with them and make a good impression before sealing the deal, as they say. I like to be prepared for every eventuality. Would it be much to ask for their names?”
Amazingly none of them found my request all that strange, or they were so intent on winning the contest that they were willing to do whatever I wanted to suck up to me. Remembering twelve names was a waste of my precious mental resources – so I only kept an ear out for the names from the list I found.
And what were the chances? Felix’s mother was named Mila, and Otto’s Matilda. That left Greta and Beatrice unaccounted for. Fifty percent wasn’t a bad hit rate considering that it was a total shot in the dark.
The problem was that they were the least likely suspects by virtue of their current position. Anyone marrying away their eligible sons in a matrilineal scramble was simply nowhere near the throne. They stood to gain next to nothing unless they held a personal or ideological grudge against Thersyn for whatever reason.
Felix leaned into my ear, “I wouldn’t recommend seeing my mother at the moment. For whatever reason she seems to be in a short-tempered kind of mood.”
“How short-tempered?”
“She has been snapping at everyone, and it doesn’t matter if you’re here to marry one of us – she has no patience or care for her manners.”
“It will take a great deal more than poor manners to offend me. Besides, the behaviour of another will not affect my final choice in a significant way. I merely wish to extend my greetings to my potential in-laws.”
It also sounded somewhat suspect that she was having such a dramatic change in behaviour. It could have been due to the unwelcome news that Farnham had gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He was threatening the success of their operation even if he didn’t know a single piece of useful information about it. Security was going to be a lot tighter because of his capture.
Otto didn’t have a similar observation about his mother, and I couldn’t poke him for more details without arousing unwanted hostility from the others. Every tiny move I made was being closely scrutinized by them for signs of my wavering affection. Picking one of them over the others would cause a lengthy and boisterous argument to break out.
Felix leant against the shaft of the mallet, “How are your parents, Lady Maria?”
“Hm. My father is always very busy doing this and that, as you might imagine, but he’s a very friendly man, even if he can be stuck in his ways from time to time. My mother isn’t at the estate.”
The impression that Felix and the others took away from that was that she was separated from my father. ‘Divorce’ wasn’t a religiously-charged sin in this world, but there were cultural and social barriers designed to keep couples together even if the partnership was an unhappy one. The truth was more bizarre than that.
My answer also left just enough ambiguity that I could walk it back at a later date. Maybe I was avoiding the reality that she was dead, or perhaps I meant it literally in that she was too busy to live at the manor with us. Nobody would drill into my statement any further, writing it off as a misunderstanding or some other mundanity.
“And she’s...” Felix intoned, purposefully avoiding putting a clear tense to his question.
“She’s the mirror image of me with shorter hair and extra wrinkles. A brusque personality, stern, intimidating, need I go on?”
They got the picture loud and clear. Again, I danced around confirming whether she was alive or dead or merely separated from the family. I didn’t know what she was planning on doing once all of his chaos ended. Adjusting to a quiet life of noble comfort sounded like the last thing she’d do. I wondered if she would even survive to see the end of this story that Durandia silently wrote in the background. She would value my survival above all else, even knowing what she did about my origins.
The discussion came to an abrupt end when Anton hit an incredible shot, carefully driving the ball a long distance between an angled wicket.
“What a load of rubbish, there’s no way you hit that!” Otto complained.
All thoughts about getting a leg up on the competition through parental permission were dashed in an instant, with the boys descending back into a winding spat about who was really in the lead, with all of them having their personal interpretation of the rules in what was normally a simple lawn game. Fleur leaving had rendered the whole exercise pointless.
At least it let me sneak into the post office. I counted my blessings when they came.
The only other conclusion I could reach from the croquet competition was that Fleur was less competent than I pegged him for. No reasonable man trying to sell these bachelors to a potential partner would permit them to have such a petulant argument over who was winning at croquet. He didn’t even consider the possibility that I would find this entire process tedious to the extreme.
Either he didn’t think this through before planning it, or he didn’t care. He was too busy dealing with all of the security problems around the palace to worry about a marriage interview that he viewed as doomed to fail. These were the bottom of the proverbial barrel. A collection of egotists and ingrates whose parents couldn’t wait to be rid of them.
Otto claimed victory in the end – even if it was hotly contested by the others for a variety of reasons. I was still trying to come up with a good way to meet their parents on short notice without coming off as a weirdo. Otto was going to be a problem if he kept up with his conspiracy theory about me working with the assassin.
I tried to put the screws on him while they cleaned up the mess.
“Are you fully devoted to this competition, Otto?” I inquired.
“Why? What does that mean?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“You seemed rather perturbed when I returned from my brief absence. It may be invasive of me to say, but the tone of your speech and the manner of your behaviour changed substantially. I was wondering if the others were trying to dissuade you from proceeding.”
Otto was relieved that my choice of topic was not his bold declaration about my involvement in the murder plot. I could see his shoulders slacken as the tension drained out of him, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He needed to delicately navigate the situation without giving anything away.
“I won’t be discouraged so easily by my rivals.”
It sounded less convincing than he would have liked. In his eyes, even a momentary display of wavering confidence could doom his attempts to win the competition. If not me, then the others would descend on him like a pack of buzzards and rip him to shreds.
I was far worse than them.
Otto didn’t know that. He laboured blissfully unaware of what was happening behind the curtain. I had to nudge him away from the cliff-edge of suspicion and into a headspace where I could arrange a meeting with his mother, or at least get some details about where I could find her within the palace. That demanded an excuse. I could potentially ask Fleur about where to meet them under the pretence of making introductions to future in-laws...
“Do you consider yourself a perceptive person?”
I nodded, “Yes. I spend a lot of time studying people’s faces – as odd as that sounds.”
“Hm. If there’s one skill that the nobility has mastered, it’s the art of lying. I can’t imagine it being useful.”
“You would be surprised. There are very few who can hide their emotions during a trying time. It’s the twitch of their upper lip, the crease of their brow, and the focus of their gaze. How we act can speak more vividly and clearly than words could ever hope to.”
“Can you tell what I’m thinking?”
I stared at Otto, allowing the silence to stretch on and discomfort him before delivering my verdict.
“You have the look of a boy who regrets something. It’s like when my father sneaks into the kitchen and steals from the larder under the head chef’s nose...”
The delivery of my assessment was blunted by a humorous anecdote about my own circumstances, and no direct accusations about what that guilt was caused by. Otto tried to keep a lid on it – but it was clearly stressing him out that I was flying so close to the sun.
“...It’s not unique to you. Frankly, I disagree with your assessment. It’s easy to understand what motivates people. They can’t hide it on their faces, and I’m not one to fall for false statements regardless.”
“You think they’re all bad liars?”
“Yes. I do.”
Otto wasn’t sure what else to say in the face of such a firm statement. I wasn’t going to argue with him about it. It was all down to our personal experiences and interpretations. It was easier for a young man to be misled than someone like me. I’d lived a life of deception for decades.
The other boys were done putting away the gear and clearing the lawn. At that moment Theodore emerged from the romantic pathway and approached the group with a frown.
“Good morning, everyone.”
“Hello, Theodore. Is something wrong?” Otto asked.
Theodore toyed with the book held in his hands, “Have any of you noticed a strange smell lately?”
“A smell? What kind of smell?”
“I was trying to read my book at the bottom of the gardens – but there was an utterly foul odour emanating from somewhere nearby. I tried to find where it was coming from but had no success.”
Otto shook his head; “I haven’t noticed any bad smells.”
“Neither have I,” I added. None of the others spoke up in agreement.
“Are you sure it wasn’t the gardeners laying out some compost or fertilizer?” Otto suggested.
Theodore dismissed the idea, “It isn’t the right time for that sort of garden work. It was a much more pungent smell than simple excrement or fertilizer. Let me think. I suppose the word I would use is ‘animalistic.’ Like I was burying my nose into the coat of a stinking beast. It’s certainly hard to miss once it catches your nose...”
My first thought was of a rotting corpse – but that felt too out of left field to be a good answer. Bodies left in the open were easy to find, and Theodore was confident that he explored the area in search of the source with a good level of coverage.
Felix shrugged it off, “Perhaps one of the sewers is getting clogged.”
“I don’t believe they run under this side of the garden, but there’s nothing I can do but inform the groundskeeper about the issue.”
Theodore bowed his head respectfully and walked back towards the palace.
“I don’t know why he asked us. I never go that far into the garden,” Felix pondered.
Fleur arrived back on the scene with a flustered shade of red on his cheeks, disappointed to find that he was too late to officiate the rest of the contest.
“Apologies. My presence was demanded at a staff meeting. Theodore looked rather disconcerted. Is something wrong?”
“He was complaining about a strange smell at the bottom of the gardens,” I revealed, “It must have spoiled his reading.”
“Hm. A strange smell? I’ll have to inform the gardeners and see that it’s sorted.”
With the suitors wrangled up and the game over – we headed back towards the palace ourselves to enjoy a midday meal and prepare for the afternoon session. I’d been here for two days but it felt like so much longer. I couldn’t wait to solve this problem and be out of the palace, free from the meddling grip of the royal family and their desperate bushel of bachelors.
Franklin’s presence by my side warded away the boys when I was trying to eat and contemplate my choice. Their eagerness was curtailed by an undercurrent of anxiety that the bravado could not mask. They stared at me – minds racing while they imagined the potential paths to victory that were open to them.
If I eliminated everyone but Otto and Felix, I could more realistically ask to meet their parents to discuss a potential arrangement. It was a risky manoeuvre. That would shorten the shelf-life of the competition significantly. I’d have to put all of my cards on the table and hope that I was close enough to the assassin to stop them before we left.
This was what working my old job was always like, and to some extent, it was true of all the incidents I became involved in thanks to Durandia. It was all about taking calculated risks. If I failed – it would be up to the Royal Guard to finish the job and keep the killers from getting to Thersyn. Sloan might have sent his juiced mages to do the hit, and it was doubtful in my opinion that they could stop them.
“Washroom.”
With that simple command, Franklin remained at the table while I left to go and relieve myself. The nearest bathroom was on the next floor up. I ascended the stairs and took a left, walking past an open window that was being used to air out the corridor by the maids.
At least that was the intention.
I stopped in my tracks and sniffed the air. There was a foul, foul smell wafting through the window and into the building. It was like a mixture of dog piss and a rotting dead body. I pinched my nose and followed the source, looking through the bottom of the pane and staring at the ledge below.
There were shards of a glass bottle down there. I opened it wider and leaned in for a closer inspection, but I couldn’t reach it from where I was. It must have been dropped through the window and onto the top of the stonework. Who the hell was throwing stink bombs around the palace?
It was the very same smell that Theodore was complaining about earlier. It wasn’t only at the bottom end of the garden. The person responsible had deployed them in several places around the property for seemingly no good reason. I closed the window and quickly headed to the bathroom so I could escape the raw stench of whatever it was supposed to be.
Normally I would have ignored this and moved on – but it didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t ignore a lead because it felt juvenile or far-fetched. Far-fetched was the best way to describe most of everything that had happened to me since my death. I used the toilet and washed my hands whilst staring at my reflection in the gilded mirror.
I held my nose both physically and figuratively. The smell was so powerful that it crept through my defences and tickled the back of my nostrils regardless. I checked the shattered bottle again, but there were no markings on the outside to help me with my investigation. There was a cork top and some moisture where the bottle had shattered.
It was a cool day. The fluid, which I assumed was the source of the smell, wouldn’t dry for some time yet. They could have thrown it down there at any time within the past few hours rather easily. They also threw one of them into the gardens. The question of the hour was ‘how does this help kill Thersyn?’
They weren’t going to stink them out of the secure wing in the palace. This was not enough to justify evacuating the damn place and sending in a decontamination team to clean up the mess. It could be a distraction, but it was a bad one if that was the case. They could have smuggled the glass bottles through the post office. It would look extremely suspect to bring a vial of unknown fluids onto the palace grounds when there’s an active threat to the King’s safety. That would demand using a waiver.
But they could have smuggled something helpful! A little concealable gun, poison, explosives – all of them seemed more useful than a stink bomb. I was missing a key fact. I wasn’t going to find it by leaning through the open window and trying to spot the indiscernible fingerprints on the broken glass using my naked eye.
“Lady Maria?”
Fleur was cresting the steps.
“Is something wrong, Fleur?”
He smiled and approached with an affable demeanour, “Ah. No, I was worried that you had fled the dining hall for a...”
His face fell.
“What in the good name of the Goddess is that awful smell?”
I motioned to the window. He followed my guidance and looked over the edge, spotting the same glass bottle that I had found during my search.
“It appears that someone has been smashing these around the palace grounds. I would bet good money that this is the same problem that Theodore complained about in the garden.”
“It’s disgusting! Goodness gracious me! We’ll have to remove it post-haste!”
Fleur’s eyes watered from the intensity of it. I wasn’t far behind him.
“Honestly! It’s an affront to good taste that anyone would think this is an acceptable prank to pull.”
I heard a loud shriek echoing across the tree-covered hills that surrounded the palace. I glanced outside for a moment, distracted by the animalistic noise. Fleur pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held his nose even tighter.
“Indeed. Allow me to step away. This is more than enough for my liking.”
Fleur stuck by my side as we moved back to the ground floor and towards the dining room. There was a feeling of dread starting to roll up and down my spine. The wheels were in motion – and I was still firmly out of my depth. I needed to speak with the ladies as soon as possible, which meant narrowing the field to Otto and Felix.
Today would be the decisive round of our game, and I intended to win.