THE LAST SWORD MONARCH

Chapter 7: The King's Real Order

The throne room had emptied by the time Cedren crossed back toward the dais, the last of the nobles filing out through the great doors, their voices fading into the corridors beyond. Only a pair of guards remained, stationed and silent along the far wall, too distant to hear anything spoken low.

"You wanted me to stay, Your Majesty."

King Evandor waited until the doors had fully closed before he spoke again. "What did you find in the tunnels, Captain? And I don't mean what Lord Zephar told the court I found."

Cedren chose his words carefully. "Both guards were killed by a single strike each. Precise. The kind of wound a trained soldier leaves, not a boy who's spent his life scrubbing floors."

"Go on."

"The chains binding the prisoner were unlocked, not broken. Whoever did this took the time to free him before running, or before he ran himself. That's not the act of a boy overpowering his guards in a panic. That's the act of someone with a plan."

Evandor leaned forward slightly, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. "You believe someone else was in that tunnel."

"I believe it's the only explanation that fits what I saw." Cedren hesitated, then pressed further, because the king had asked and there was no version of loyalty that involved lying to him. "I believe someone wanted Garrick Arundel dead before he ever reached a cell, and I believe whoever it was didn't expect to fail."

The silence that followed stretched long enough that Cedren began to wonder if he'd said too much.

"I saw that boy stand before this court in chains," Evandor said finally, "and I did not see a murderer. I've sat this throne long enough to know what guilt looks like on a man's face, Captain. Real guilt. Not fear of a room full of people who've already decided his fate before he opens his mouth." He rose from the throne and descended the steps slowly, his robes trailing across the marble. "Lord Zephar is very eager for this to be simple."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Too eager, I think." Evandor stopped in front of Cedren, close enough now that his voice barely needed to carry at all. "I am giving you an order, and I want it understood that only you and I will know of it. You will find Garrick Arundel."

"And if I do?"

"You will not drag him back in chains to satisfy a court that has already convicted him." The king's eyes were steady, unwavering. "You will find the truth. Whatever it costs you to find it. If he is guilty of what Zephar claims, then justice will be served properly, not through a mob's appetite for a story that flatters their fears. And if he is innocent, Captain, then I want to know who in my own court wanted two of my guards dead badly enough to make a frightened servant boy the reason for it."

Cedren felt the full weight of what he was being asked settle onto his shoulders. "That's a dangerous thing to ask, Your Majesty. If Lord Zephar has any part in this."

"I know precisely how dangerous it is," Evandor said. "That is why I am asking you, and not announcing it before the court. Zephar has ears everywhere in this palace. He will not have ears where you're going."

"Where am I going?"

"Wherever the boy has gone. You'll need to move quickly and quietly, and you'll need resources that don't draw attention to what you're actually doing." Evandor turned toward the tall windows at the side of the chamber, looking out over the estate grounds below, where servants already moved through their morning routines as though nothing at all had happened in the night. "Officially, you are leading the hunt for a dangerous fugitive. That much can be true. What you do once you find him is a different matter entirely."

"And if Lord Zephar asks why I haven't returned?"

"Tell him the search is difficult. It will not be a lie." Evandor turned back to face him. "I want your reports sent to me directly. No one else reads them first. Not my stewards, not my clerks, no one."

Cedren bowed his head. "It will be as you say, Your Majesty."

"One more thing, Captain." Evandor's voice softened, just slightly, into something closer to a request than a command. "If you find him, and if he is what I believe him to be, treat him with more decency than this palace has managed to show him so far. He's had precious little of it in his life, from what little I've gathered."

"I understand."

"I hope you do." The king held his gaze a moment longer, then gestured toward the doors. "Go, Captain. Quietly. And take no one you don't trust with your own life."

Cedren bowed once more and turned to leave, his mind already moving through the practical shape of the task ahead. A trail gone cold by a full day. A boy who could be anywhere within a hundred miles by now, moving through forest and farmland with no map and no guide beyond whatever instinct had carried him this far.

He paused at the doors and looked back once.

"Your Majesty. If I find proof that Lord Zephar was involved in what happened in that tunnel, what would you have me do with it?"

Evandor's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes went colder than Cedren had ever seen it. "Bring it to me directly, Captain. And let me decide what a man does who has spent years poisoning my court from the inside."

Cedren left the throne room with the doors closing softly behind him, carrying an order heavier than any he'd been given in twenty years of service.

He had a hundred miles of forest and farmland ahead of him, a trail already a full day cold, and no idea, yet, how much of the kingdom's future was riding on whether he found the boy first.