Chapter 158: Enough

Elizabeth and Sophie were waiting in her room. Elizabeth stood up as soon as we came in. Sophie didn’t. She looked at me, then at Daphne, then at my hands, checking for blood. There wasn’t any. James closed the door behind us.

I didn’t sit on the rug. I didn’t sit anywhere.

"What did you find?" said Elizabeth.

I told them all of it: the room, the collars, the injuries, the children, the tiger mark, and what the guards had said. When I reached "the ones going to the western road," nobody interrupted. When I reached "collars off before transport," James stopped leaning on the wall, and Sophie put a hand over her mouth. Elizabeth’s expression went completely still. Daphne filled in the count.

"Thirteen," she said. "Eleven adults. Two children."

I had counted badly. She hadn’t. The rest was mine to give.

"The girl holding her side probably has a rib injury," I said. "One man has an open wound under his collar, and there could be more under the metal where I couldn’t see. A cut on one man’s forearm, bandaged badly. A child with a nosebleed. Bruises on most of them. Nobody looked like they were dying tonight."

Elizabeth looked at the desk. "Thirteen," she repeated. "The kitchens are feeding fifteen to twenty."

Nobody had an answer for the difference.

Sophie looked at me. "Can you treat them?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn’t you?"

It hurt because it was a fair question. "Because if anyone found them healed, the guards would know someone had been inside. And the prisoners would be the ones who paid for it."

She looked away. She wasn’t angry at me; she was simply angry, and that was different.

I was angry too. I had made the right decision in that cellar, with a child four steps away and dried blood under her nose, and I knew I would remember making it for a long time.

Elizabeth walked to the desk and set both palms flat on it, and thought.

"We go back," said James.

"No," said Elizabeth.

He stared at her. "There are children."

"I know."

"They’re moving people tonight."

"I know."

"Then..."

"We tell Renn."

The room went quiet. That landed differently from anything else she could have said. James looked at the door.

Elizabeth straightened. "We have proof now." Daphne nodded once, and Elizabeth looked at me. "Is it enough?"

I thought of the older woman. Humans say many things.

"Yes," I said.

***

Renn wasn’t asleep. I should have expected that. Neither was Sorel. They were both in a small room off the western courtyard with a map spread between them when Elizabeth knocked. The Academy guard outside looked confused to see all five of us, and more confused when Renn opened the door himself.

His eyes went across us and stopped on me, then on Daphne, then on James. "I doubled the watch tonight."

"We noticed," said James. "We didn’t leave the grounds."

Renn looked at him.

"Technically," said James.

Renn closed his eyes, once, and stepped aside. "Get in."

Sorel shut the door behind us. Renn looked at Elizabeth.

"What happened?"

Elizabeth didn’t soften it. "We found prisoners in Lord Merrow’s north wing."

Renn’s face didn’t change. Sorel’s did, barely.

"Prisoners?"

"Cat beastkin. Thirteen. Two children. Mana-suppression collars, and injuries."

Renn’s eyes came back to me. "You saw them?"

"Yes."

"Daphne?"

"Yes."

He looked at the other three. "You?"

"No," said James. "We covered them."

Renn was quiet for a long moment. Too long.

"You went into the north wing after I doubled the watch."

Nobody answered. That seemed safest.

Renn looked at Elizabeth. "You knew."

"Yes."

"And you allowed it."

"Yes."

Sorel had gone very still. Renn looked down at the map, then up again.

"Why didn’t you tell me before?"

Elizabeth answered at once. "Because before tonight we had frightened servants, odd food counts, badly placed guards, and a smell."

"A smell," Renn repeated.

"Yes."

He looked at me. I nodded.

"It was a good smell," I said. That came out wrong. "An accurate one."

Sorel rubbed her forehead. Renn didn’t smile, which was right. This wasn’t the time.

"We didn’t have enough to accuse a territorial lord inside his own house," said Elizabeth. "Now we do."

Renn studied her, then the rest of us. "Tell me everything."

So we did, again. He interrupted far more than Elizabeth had. The exact door, the exact number, the exact injuries, the exact guard positions, the exact words we had overheard. When I mentioned the road, his hand stopped above the map.

"Which road?"

"The western road. That’s how he said it."

"When?"

"Tonight."

"The collars?"

"Taken off before transport."

His jaw tightened. "And the tiger mark?"

Daphne described it. Renn looked at Sorel, and Sorel looked back, and neither of them said what they were thinking. I liked that less now than I usually did.

Finally Renn leaned both hands on the table. "You should have come to me before you went into that wing."

Elizabeth opened her mouth, and he raised one finger.

"You should have."

She stopped, and nodded. "Yes."

That surprised him, slightly.

"But," she said, "if we had come to you before, what would you have done?"

Renn didn’t answer at once, which was an answer in itself. He looked down at the map.

"We are guests on the estate of a Crown-approved territorial lord. My authority here covers you, the Academy escort, and immediate threats to your safety."

James frowned. "Thirteen people locked in a cellar aren’t an emergency?"

"They are. But not one my escort authority covers."

James looked disgusted. Renn wasn’t finished.

"If I send my armed escort into Merrow’s private wing without Crown authority and I’m wrong, I create a political incident less than a week before a treaty signing."

"You aren’t wrong," said Sophie.

"I know." He looked at her. "I believe you."

It didn’t solve anything, but it changed the room.

James turned to Elizabeth. "You’re the princess. Order it."

"I’m a princess, not a magistrate," said Elizabeth. "I can’t issue a warrant. If I send an armed escort into a Crown-approved lord’s house in the middle of the night, on evidence we gathered by trespassing, Merrow gets to tell everyone how the princess raided a loyal house a week before the signing. He wouldn’t even have to lie."

James had no answer to that.

Sorel folded her arms. "Then we contact the Crown."

Renn looked at the door. "Through whose relay?"

Nobody answered. The estate relay belonged to Merrow, and an Academy rider leaving through his gates after midnight would be noticed before the horse reached the road. Elizabeth understood it first.

"Any request for authorization tells him we’re suspicious."

"Yes."

"And some of them move tonight."

"Yes."

James looked at the map. "So what do we do?"

Renn was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at the five of us in a way he hadn’t before, as if he were weighing what we were rather than what we were supposed to be.

"First," he said, "you’re going to show me exactly where they are."

James straightened.

Renn pointed at him. "On the map."

James sat back down. I nearly smiled.

Renn pulled a blank sheet into the middle of the table. "Then we’re going to work out how many exits that wing has, how many men Merrow can put between us and the outer wall, and what happens if the transport starts before daylight." He looked at Elizabeth. "No one acts alone." Then he looked at me. "That includes you."

"I wasn’t planning to."

Everyone in the room looked at me. I sighed.

"I’m becoming very tired of being misunderstood."

[Host.]

’Not now.’

Renn made the first mark on the paper. "Start from your rooms."

So we did.