THE EXILED PRINCE SON-IN-LAW STRIKES BACK

Chapter 10: A Name on the Guest List

The frame of Winter Over Kestrograd came apart in my hands at two in the morning.

After the auction, the fake painting had been put back in its crate in the loading bay of the auction house, waiting for Rask Energy's van to collect it in the morning. Nobody guarded it. Who guards a fake? The only person in the building was the night porter, and the night porter had keys to everything.

I knelt beside the crate with Sasha on the phone in my ear and a small screwdriver in my hand. Carefully, I loosened the four corners of the golden frame. The bottom piece was heavier than the others. When I tapped it, it sounded hollow.

"There," Sasha breathed in my ear. "That's it. Open it."

Inside a narrow hollow, sealed with old wax, was a single sheet of thin paper, folded small. I slipped it into my pocket, closed the hollow, tightened the corners and laid the padding back over the painting exactly as it had been.

An hour later, in the room beneath the bookbindery, I unfolded the paper under the lamp.

"Anton's people used the frames to smuggle papers," Sasha said, leaning over my shoulder. "Bank records, mostly. It's an old trick. Customs officers check the paintings, not the frames."

It was a payment record, printed on plain paper. At the top, very small, was a stamp I knew from my childhood: a black iron fist inside a circle. The seal of the Iron Bureau, my uncle's secret police.

Below it were a date, a bank account number and a very large sum of money.

And beside the money, written by hand in black ink, was a single word.

Nightingale.

"What does it mean?" Nikolai asked, leaning over my shoulder.

"A code name," Dorov said quietly from his stool. "The Iron Bureau gives code names to its agents. Usually birds."

"An agent paid this much?" Sasha shook her head. "That's not a spy's salary. That's enough to buy a small building."

I stared at the word for a long time. Nightingale. It meant nothing to me. But the Iron Bureau didn't spend that kind of money on nothing.

"Keep it safe," I said, folding it back up and handing it to Sasha. "Somewhere nobody else can find it."

"And the rest?" Dorov asked.

The rest was simple. That night, Raven Holdings had quietly become the owner of the Ashworth family's thirty-million-dollar debt. Victoria held the power to decide its future, and through Raven Holdings, I held the power to protect her. Anton couldn't buy the debt now. Nobody could. Nobody could use it to force her into anything ever again.

And there was one more thing.

Anton's company had sent one more item to the Spring Auction, listed quietly at the back of the catalog: a small silver icon of a saint, very old, the kind that used to hang in Kestrovian homes before the coup. It was real. Anton's company had sent it to the auction to be sold with the painting, as if it were just another piece of decoration.

"Raven Holdings bought it tonight, after the auction," Sasha told me. "Through the auction house's back office, at a fair price. Victoria signed the sale herself."

"Good." I lifted the old icon from its box. The saint's face was worn smooth by a hundred years of hands. "On Sunday, take it to the Kestrovian Refugee Church on Mill Street, here in Riverside. Give it to the priest."

Nikolai raised an eyebrow. "A gift? We could sell that for a lot of money, brother."

"The people in that church left everything behind when they ran," I said. "Their homes, their families, their saints. Let them have one back."

Nikolai shrugged and smiled his crooked smile. "You're too soft, Leon."

"Maybe."

Dorov didn't say anything, but when I looked at him, the old man gave me a small nod.

"Twenty-three days until the vote," Dorov said. "What next, boy?"

"Next we find out who my uncle is paying," I said. "Every member of Parliament who's going to vote yes has a price. If we can find the money, Irina Volkova can show it to the whole country."

"Volkova won't trust you," Nikolai said. "She doesn't trust anyone with royal blood. She called your father a nice man with too much power, on television, the year before he died."

"She doesn't need to trust me," I said. "She doesn't even need to know who I am. She only needs the truth."

Nikolai shook his head slowly, smiling. "The careful one. Always the careful one."

It was almost four in the morning when I stood up to leave. Outside, the river would soon turn grey with the first light. My neck still ached from the golden frame. The shed would be cold. And in three hours, Beatrice would want her car washed.

"Wait." Sasha was staring at her screen. "Leon, wait. There's something else."

She turned the screen toward me.

"While I was digging through Anton's emails, I found this. It's the private guest list for the Circle of Crowns' Spring Ball. It's in five days, at the Crown Club." She scrolled down. "The Ashworths are on it, of course. They have to go; every member family does. You'll be going too, as Victoria's husband."

"Wonderful," I said dryly.

For twelve years, I had avoided every room where a Kestrovian official might look at my face. I'd skipped every embassy party, every charity dinner with eastern guests, every photograph. A ball full of old royal families from around the world was the most dangerous room in Rosegate for a man like me.

"That's not the bad part." She scrolled further down the list, past dukes and counts and bankers, and stopped on one line. "Look at this name."

Mr. Emil Vance. Private guest. Business: shipping.

"Never heard of him," Nikolai said.

"Neither had I. So I checked the hotel booking that goes with the name." Sasha clicked, and a photo filled the screen. It was a security camera image from the lobby of the Grand Imperial Hotel, taken two hours ago: a slim, elegant man in a perfect evening suit, black hair going grey at the temples, a gentle smile, a black onyx ring on his hand, signing his name at the front desk.

I stopped breathing.

Behind me, Dorov stood up so fast his stool crashed to the floor.

I knew that face. Twelve years had put grey in his hair and a few lines around his eyes, but nothing else had changed. I had seen it at my father's table a hundred times. I had seen it smiling at my mother at the palace Christmas dinner, the last Christmas we ever had. I had seen it in my nightmares for twelve years.

His name wasn't Emil Vance.

It was Count Emil Zoric, the head of the Iron Bureau. My uncle's spymaster.

And in five days, he would be standing in the same ballroom as me.

Behind me, Nikolai let out a long, low whistle. Sasha had gone pale. Dorov was gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles were white.

"You can't go," Dorov said hoarsely. "Boy, you can't walk into a room with that man."

I looked at the photo for a long moment, at the gentle smile that had once wished me a happy Christmas.

"I have to," I said. "Because a man like Zoric doesn't fly to Rosegate to dance."