Kael Frost's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

By morning Kael had a name for what he needed to do. Before anyone touched Elara with a healer's hands, he had to know the room around her was clean. The South had learned about the envoy's visit within a day. Someone at his table was selling him. Until he cut that thread, no pregnancy could be spoken of aloud, not even to a physician. He met Elara in the garden instead of the council hall. She wore a heavy cloak over her pale gown. They walked under the arch of red roses and frost-tipped hedge, where no wall could hide a listener. He told her plainly. There was a leak in his council. He would not bring a healer near her until he found it. "Then find it today," she said. She put her hand flat on her stomach under the cloak. "I won't guess at this alone for a month." "I know." "Who do you suspect." "Four men. I'll know by supper." He called his captain of the guard to the lit grove behind the palace, where the trees carried small lanterns and nothing else could be heard but wind. Elaric Saltz came in armor, blond and stiff and too young for the weight Kael kept putting on him. Kael trusted him because the boy had never once asked what the trust was worth. "I fed each councillor a different lie yesterday," Kael said. "Different numbers. Different roads. Different days. Ride south tonight. Buy a drink for the envoy's runner at the border inn. Listen for which lie he repeats." Elaric did not ask why. He bowed once and went. He returned before dawn with mud on his boots and one word. "Vessen." Kael's treasurer. The man who signed for the grain and knew every road a courier used. Kael took him in his own study, without guards, so the palace would not hear it yet. Vessen wept and named a Southern purse and a daughter held in the South as surety. Kael listened to all of it. He did not raise his voice. When Vessen finished, Kael had him walked to the cells by Elaric alone, and told the household the treasurer had been sent north on an audit. That afternoon he brought the healer up the servants' stair himself. Dr. Whitmore was small and dark-haired, dressed in red and gold, two vials already in her hands as if she'd been called to a birth and not a first visit. She had delivered his mother's stillborn brother thirty years ago and never spoken of it to anyone. That was why he had chosen her. She curtsied to Elara, then set the vials down and got to work without ceremony. "Six weeks," she said after a moment, hand light on Elara's belly. "Healthy so far. You'll want me every ten days." Elara looked at Kael over the healer's head. He nodded. The leak was closed. The secret had a keeper now. And somewhere in a cell below the palace, a man who knew Elara was pregnant was waiting to be asked what else he had already sent south.