Chapter 172: Treason

Chapter 172: Chapter 172: Treason

Xanther took the long way back.

He wanted to enjoy it.

The purse at his hip swung with every step, and each time it knocked against him, he felt the solid, comforting weight of the gold inside.

Tonight, he would walk into the Velvet Lantern and drop it on the table in front of those men. He would watch their faces when they counted it.

And afterwards, perhaps, he would buy himself a new coat. Something fine. Something his mother could not complain about.

He turned off the main road and into the narrow lane that ran behind the cloth market. It was quieter here, the walls close on either side, washing strung between the upper windows.

Halfway down, he noticed the footsteps behind him.

Two sets. Unhurried. Keeping pace.

Xanther frowned and glanced over his shoulder.

Two men in plain coats were walking a short distance behind him. He did not recognise them. They did not look at him.

He walked a little faster.

So did they.

When he looked ahead again, the end of the lane was no longer empty.

Four men stood there, blocking the way. Three wore the dark blue of the city watch. The fourth was older, grey at the temples, in the sober black coat of an officer of the magistrate’s court.

Xanther stopped.

"Xanther Asheford?" the officer asked.

Xanther lifted his chin. "Who’s asking?"

"You are to come with us, by order of the magistrate."

For a moment, Xanther simply stared at him. Then he laughed.

"You must be mistaken."

"I don’t believe I am."

The two men behind him had stopped as well. Close. Too close.

Something cold slid down Xanther’s spine, but he forced it away. These were commoners. Watchmen. Men who bowed when a carriage bearing a noble crest went by.

"Do you know who I am?" he demanded, his voice rising. "I am the son of General Benedict Asheford. The Duke of Draevenor is my cousin. Lay a single finger on me, and I’ll—"

He did not get to finish.

One of the watchmen caught his arm. Another took the other. Before he understood what was happening, his hands had been wrenched behind his back and bound with rough cord.

"How dare you!" Xanther twisted against their grip. "Let go of me! Do you have any idea what my cousin will do to you?"

Nobody answered him.

The officer’s gaze dropped to the heavy purse at his belt. He said nothing, but something in his expression shifted, as though a question had just been answered.

Faces had begun to appear in the windows above. A woman holding a basket of laundry stopped at the mouth of the lane and stared.

Xanther’s face burned.

"This is a mistake," he said again, more loudly, so that the onlookers would hear. "A mistake!"

They marched him out of the lane and threw him into the back of a closed cart.

The door slammed shut, and darkness swallowed him.

---

The gaol beneath the magistrate’s court was colder than Xanther had imagined a place could be.

The stone walls sweated. The air smelled of damp straw and old rust, and somewhere further down the corridor, water dripped steadily into a puddle he could not see.

They did not take him to a cell.

They took him to a small room with a single table, two chairs and a lamp, and they chained him to one of the chairs by the ankle as though he were a common thief.

Then they left him there.

He did not know how long he waited. Long enough for the anger to burn out and something worse to creep in to take its place.

When the door finally opened, the grey-haired officer came in, followed by a clerk carrying a ledger and a watchman carrying a wooden box.

The officer sat down across from him.

The watchman set the box on the table and opened it.

Inside lay a bundle of papers, rolled and tied with cord. The officer untied it and spread the first sheet across the table, weighing down the corners with the lamp and his own hands.

It was a map.

Xanther knew enough about maps to recognise what he was looking at.

The northern border.

The garrison towns.

The roads between them, the river crossings, the narrow passes through the hills, each one marked in a careful, practised hand.

He did not understand.

"For some days now," the officer said, "the magistrate has had word of a foreign agent in Caelvyr. This afternoon, we finally traced him to a room at an inn by the river gate."

He unrolled a second map on top of the first. Then a third.

"Unfortunately, he must have caught wind of us. By the time my men closed in, he had abandoned whatever business he had in the city and fled. Fortunately, he never made it back to his room." The officer tapped the maps. "He had no time to retrieve these."

Xanther’s mouth had gone dry.

"What does this have to do with me?"

The officer reached into the box once more and set something down in the middle of the maps.

It caught the lamplight.

Silver, darkened with age. The Asheford crest etched into its face.

All the blood drained from Xanther’s face.

"This was found with the maps," the officer said. "I believe you recognise it. Two servants of Draevenor Manor have sworn that they saw the Marchioness of Gildemont place it into your hand herself."

Xanther stared at the pendant.

The river gate. An inn by the river gate.

But the old woman had been on Cloudmere Lane. He had sat across from her. He had watched her drop the pendant into her lacquered box with her own ringed fingers.

How had it ended up all the way across the city?

How had it ended up with these?

"Master Asheford," the officer said. "I asked you a question."

"It’s mine," Xanther said hoarsely. "That is, it was. I didn’t... I don’t know how it got there."

"Then how did it leave your possession?"

Xanther opened his mouth.

And closed it again.

He could not tell them he had sold it.

That pendant was an heirloom of the Asheford house. The house of the Dowager Queen.

Selling it to a stranger, a foreigner, for a purse of gold to pay his gambling debts... If that came out, he would be disgraced before the entire court.

His aunt would disown him.

His cousin...

He did not let himself finish the thought.

But even disgrace was better than treason.

"I gave it to someone," he said. "For safekeeping."

The clerk’s pen scratched across the page.

"To whom?" the officer asked.

"A... a friend."

"Name?"

Xanther’s mind went blank.

"I... I don’t know her full name."

"Her." The officer’s tone did not change. "And where does this friend live?"

"She was staying in the city. Only for a few days." Xanther could hear how it sounded even as he said it.

"She must have lost it. Or someone stole it from her. I don’t know."

"You gave an heirloom of the Dowager Queen’s family for safekeeping to a woman whose name you don’t know, who was only in the city for a few days."

Xanther said nothing.

The officer looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded to the watchman.

The watchman lifted the purse that had been taken from Xanther’s belt and upended it onto the table.

Gold spilled across the maps in a bright, glittering heap. A few coins rolled to the edge and fell to the floor, ringing against the stone.

The clerk began to count.

"The men of the Velvet Lantern have called at the side gate of Draevenor Manor twice this month," the officer said quietly.

"It is no secret that you owe them a considerable sum. And today, within an hour of a foreign agent fleeing the city, we find you walking through the cloth market with enough gold to pay that debt twice over."

He leaned forward.

"So let me tell you what I think happened, Master Asheford. I think you sold the kingdom’s secrets to clear your debts."

"No!" Xanther lurched forward against the chain. "No, that’s not... I would never... I don’t even know where those maps came from!"

"Then where did the gold come from?"

Xanther froze.

He could not answer that either.

The silence stretched until the only sounds in the room were the clerk’s pen and the steady drip of water somewhere beyond the wall.

At last, the officer stood.

"The gold will be held as evidence," he said. "The magistrate will hear your case once the investigation is complete. Until then, you will remain here."

"You can’t do this!" Xanther’s voice cracked. "Send word to my cousin. Send word to the Duke of Draevenor! He’ll tell you—"

"Word has already been sent."

The officer said it without any particular expression.

Somehow, that was worse than anything else.

They unchained him from the chair and dragged him down the corridor to a cell no wider than a wardrobe.

The door clanged shut behind him.

The key turned in the lock.

Xanther sank down onto the damp straw.

His hands were shaking.

Give my regards to your mother.

The old woman’s dry voice drifted back to him, and for the first time, he heard the amusement in it for what it was.

Someone had done this to him.

But who? Who would go to so much trouble over him?

He did not have an answer.

Outside the bars, the watchman who had locked the door had not yet left. He stood in the dim corridor for a moment, looking down at Xanther with an odd, measuring expression.

Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps fading into the dark.