The King's Guard

Chapter 83

The archives were near silent at dawn. Dust hung in the air like faint fog, each particle lit by the soft flame of a single lamp on Kael’s desk. He’d been awake since before the bell, bent over Darius’s coded notebook, a half-empty mug of bitter draught cooling beside him.

The door creaked once. Footsteps.

Kyna slipped in, hood still drawn from the morning mist.

“You’re early,” Kael said without looking up.

“So are you.” She pulled a folded parchment from inside her coat and laid it on the table. “This came through the lower couriers an hour ago. From one of my mother’s contacts.”

Kael raised a brow. “The same network that flagged House Varion’s shipments?”

“Not exactly.” She slid the parchment closer. “This contact’s higher. Embedded somewhere near the Council ledgers.”

“Risky.”

Kyna gave a small shrug. “Everything worth knowing usually is.”

He unfolded the parchment. The handwriting was neat, deliberate, and coded in alternating lines.

> “Movement along the Varion accounts. Transfers routed through Stormhaven trade houses.

Someone is buying silence.

The name redacted but connected to the Queen’s old retinue.”

Kael traced the last line with his thumb. “The Queen again.”

Kyna nodded. “It keeps circling back.”

“The question is why,” Kael muttered. “She vanished years ago. No burial. No public statement. Just gone.”

“Maybe she didn’t vanish,” Kyna said. “Maybe someone made her vanish.”

Before he could reply, the door opened again.

Reyna entered, arms folded, hair still damp from the training yard. “If this is another early-morning conspiracy meeting, I’m starting to think I missed the invitation.”

Kael leaned back. “We’re working.”

“Right,” Reyna said dryly. “You two in the dark with coded letters. Looks like work.”

Kyna smiled faintly. “We have leads.”

Reyna approached the desk, eyes scanning the parchment. “House Varion again. You think Jared knows?”

Kael’s voice stayed even. “I think Jared knows more than he says.”

Reyna tapped the line about Stormhaven transfers. “These routes, how far back do they go?”

“Years,” Kyna said. “Old enough that they overlap with Darius’s earliest missions. Before Kael joined.”

Kael reached for the notebook. “Look at this,” he said, flipping to a page of sigils and dates. “Darius noted three symbols recurring in border reports: spiral, crescent, eye.”

Reyna frowned. “I remember those. They marked the courier well during the neutral-village mission.”

“Exactly,” Kael said. “Now look here.” He pointed to the parchment’s margin, where faint ink bled through. “Same spiral. Whoever wrote this either knows Darius’s code or worked under him.”

Reyna’s tone shifted. “Meaning this ally of your mother’s could be one of Darius’s old contacts.”

“Or one of Archon’s,” Kael added quietly.

That drew silence.

Reyna finally said, “We need to take this to Darius.”

Kyna shook her head. “Not yet. If Archon’s watching the communication lines, sending anything traced to my family could compromise them.”

“So we sit on it?” Reyna asked.

Kael looked up. “We verify first. Then tell him.”

Reyna exhaled. “You sound just like him.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Kael said.

An hour later, the three sat around the table covered in half-opened ledgers and scraps of coded parchment. Candlelight flickered against the stone walls, turning their shadows into thin, restless things.

Reyna leaned over Kael’s shoulder. “How many routes does that make?”

“Six confirmed, two suspected,” he said. “All looping through shell accounts in the merchant quarter.”

Kyna added, “The same merchant quarter Archon ‘restructured’ last year.”

Reyna’s jaw tightened. “He cleaned house.”

Kael looked between them. “Or buried evidence.”

Kyna dropped her quill. “Either way, someone paid heavily to keep those routes quiet. Enough to buy a regiment’s worth of loyalty.”

Reyna folded her arms. “And enough to make the Corps look blind.”

Kael’s tone darkened. “We’re not blind. We’re just pointed in the wrong direction.”

The door creaked again, distant footsteps echoing through the hallway. They froze.

Then a voice, Darius’s aide passed outside, calling for patrol reports. The steps faded.

Kyna let out a breath. “We need to move before someone starts asking questions.”

Reyna straightened. “You mean hide the evidence?”

“Preserve it,” Kyna corrected. “If this ties Stormhaven to Varion and the old retinue, Archon can’t know we’ve seen it.”

Kael nodded. “I’ll copy the relevant lines and lock them in the secondary vault. You send your message back through the channel.”

Kyna gathered the parchments, wrapping them tight. “It’ll take a day. Maybe two.”

Reyna eyed her. “You trust this contact?”

“I trust my mother’s vetting,” Kyna said simply.

Kael’s gaze softened a fraction. “Then that’s enough.”

Later, when Reyna left for drills, Kael and Kyna stayed behind.

The light had shifted to gold, slanting through the high windows.

“You think Darius knew?” she asked quietly.

Kael turned a page in the notebook. “He suspected. He always did. But suspicion isn’t proof.”

“And proof gets people killed.”

He didn’t answer right away. “You ever wonder why he kept us close?”

“Because we listen.”

“Or because we still have something he lost: time.”

Kyna’s expression flickered. “You sound tired.”

“I am,” Kael admitted. “But tired doesn’t mean done.”

She hesitated, then asked, “You trust me, right?”

He looked at her properly then. “If I didn’t, I’d be dead by now.”

That earned the faintest smile. “Good answer.”

Evening came slow.

Kyna left through the side corridor, clutching her satchel of coded pages. Kael remained, copying Darius’s symbols into his own notes.

He spoke softly to himself, matching lines. “Spiral. Crescent. Eye. All roads lead upward.”

He didn’t notice the flicker at first. Then the candle nearest him wavered, flame bending unnaturally.

Kael froze.

A faint ring etched itself in the air: a glyph for surveillance, faint but active. He stepped closer, eyes narrowing at the shimmer.

Someone had been watching. Listening.

Not from the hall, but remotely through mage-mark observation.

He exhaled slowly, forcing calm. Then, without a word, he blew out the candle.

The darkness swallowed everything except the dull glow of the dying glyph. It faded, leaving only the echo of its hum in the air.

Kael whispered to the silence, “If you’re listening, tell your master he’s already too late.”

He gathered his things and stepped into the corridor.

Down the hall, faint voices carried: an instructor briefing patrol units for the next day’s exercises.

None noticed him pass.

Outside, the rain had started again, thin and cold. Kael lifted his hood and kept walking, the words from the parchment circling in his mind.

> “The name redacted but connected to the Queen’s old retinue.”

He couldn’t tell if the chill that ran through him came from the rain or from the thought that maybe, just maybe, the Queen hadn’t vanished at all.