“Spider.” Richard spat the word like it was poison.

“A distant cousin. How about that?”

The two men glared at that picture, the hate on their faces so similar, they looked like twins.

“The same Spider who killed Sophie’s mother?” Charlotte asked.

Kaldar nodded. “Rene is Spider’s younger half sister’s son, the Adrianglian branch of the family. Because of this inconvenient connection, he’s been blacklisted from military service, the Department of the Interior, and the Diplomatic Corps.”

“What does he do?” George asked.

“Arts, sports, and entertainment,” Kaldar said. “He travels around the country working as a glorified event planner. Organizes festivals, tourneys, and so on. The Department of the Interior has no issue with it as long as somebody else provides his security. He’s very good at it, apparently.”

“So he can move around the country pretty much at random,” Richard said.

Kaldar nodded. “I’m thinking they use him as a buyer / scout / trouble fixer.”

He turned to the last photograph. On it a man in his middle forties looked at the world with hazel eyes. He was handsome, with a masculine beauty that was just a shade too rugged to be perfect, and that slight roughness only added to his appeal. His expression was dignified but free of pretense. An engaging smile played on his lips and in his eyes, proclaiming loudly that this man was worthy of loyalty because he was good and would do the right thing. Its power was so pronounced, Charlotte felt compelled to smile back.

“Viscount Robert Brennan,” Kaldar said. “The main head of this twisted hydra.”

He sat down. “How do you want to go about it?”

“We need a confession,” Richard said. “Or at the very least, an admission of guilt.”

“Brennan is a tough nut to crack.” Kaldar’s face turned grim. “It’s not just that he’s a cousin of the king. He’s also popular. Blueblood ladies think he’s darling, and men think he’s a man’s man. He’s athletic, charming, funny, and they all love him. You’ll be fighting against the tide of public opinion.”

“Then we’ll need to turn it against him,” Richard said.

“How the hell are you going to do that?”

“Why can’t we simply remove him from the equation?” George asked.

“Because if we kill him, the organization wouldn’t die,” Richard told him. “Think of a monarchy. One king dies, another takes his place, but the institution survives.”

“Richard is right.” Charlotte rose.

The two men and a boy immediately stood up.

“Why did you get up?” she asked George.

“You’re a woman,” George answered.

“Yes, but what is the reason?”

“I don’t know.”

“You rose because hundreds of years ago, when a woman entered a room full of men, she wasn’t exactly safe. Especially if she was beautiful or had holdings. Our magic is just as deadly, but physically, an average male is stronger than an average woman, so when a woman entered the room, men who knew her stood up to indicate that they would shield her from danger. The three of you just declared yourself my protectors.”

They looked at her.

“A modern woman is hardly in danger of a direct assault,” Charlotte said. “So why do men still get up?”

George frowned.

Charlotte smiled at Kaldar. “You know, don’t you?”

“We get up because women like it.” Kaldar clapped George on the shoulder. “You don’t want to look like an unmannered bumpkin in front of a girl. And if you get up and she notices you, she might sit by you.”

“Exactly. There is no law that says men should rise, but you still do because women enjoy this show of attention. It’s so ingrained in your nature that when we first met, Richard refused to sit down until I did, even though he was half-dead at the time.”

Richard cleared his throat. “That’s a wild exaggeration. I was a quarter-dead, at most.”

Kaldar swiveled toward him and peered at his brother’s face. “That’s two jokes in less than an hour. You feeling all right?” he asked quietly. “Feverish, eh?”

“I’m fine. Get out of my face.”

Kaldar looked at her, then back at Richard, then at her again.

Charlotte sat down. The three men sat.

“The monarchy survives because the bluebloods like it,” she said. “Most Adrianglians like it. It’s an idea that appeals to them on some level. The king has less power than the collective Assembly or the Council, for example, so he can be overthrown. But we like to pretend we’re still a warrior nation under a single strong leader, and we idealize the throne and those who sit on it.”

“Or stand close,” Richard added.

“The bluebloods don’t fear laws,” she continued. “Some of us still think they don’t apply to us. We fear only public judgment. The public has judged the royal family to be paragons of virtue. We can’t fight that, or we’d have to rub the blueblood noses in the fact that their long bloodlines don’t bestow them with nobility of spirit the moment they pop out of their mothers.”

Richard nodded. “The bookkeeper on the island is a prime example—she was so committed to Brennan, her eyes practically glistened at the thought of him. In her mind, he could never do anything base.”

Their minds ran on parallel tracks. “We can’t fight the system,” Charlotte agreed. “But we can tarnish one individual. To crush the slaver ring, we have to get Brennan to admit to an act so base, so at odds with the standard of blueblood behavior, that society will have no choice but to judge him as defective. He will be viewed as a freak, unworthy of his pedigree. Anything he engaged in would become unclean. The bluebloods will destroy him just to escape the taint.”

“I like the way you think,” Kaldar said.

Richard nodded. “I agree. The public disdain and disgust must be so severe that it would cause a cry of outrage. The slave owners must recognize that being discovered would make them instant social pariahs. That’s the only way the institution of slavery can be rooted out.”

Richard rose and walked to the board. “Brennan built this organization. He made it efficient, resilient, and profitable. We don’t know why. He doesn’t need the money, and if it ever became public, he’d lose everything. Something must’ve compelled him to create it. He cares a great deal about it. When we fought the Hand, we suffered setback after setback, but we didn’t break until the end.”

A muscle jerked in Kaldar’s face. “Erian.”

The half brother Richard had mentioned. “I don’t understand,” Charlotte said.

“Our youngest brother betrayed the family to the Hand,” Kaldar said.

“What happened to him?”

“He disappeared,” Richard said.

“Richard let him go,” Kaldar told her. “He saw Erian walking away, and he let him go. We’ll all regret this one day, mark my words.”

“Back to Brennan. We make him think he’s being betrayed,” Richard said. “Make him think there is a coup and one of the others is trying to take over. It will drive him over the edge.”

“You’ll need at least two people for that,” Kaldar said. “A single person stirring up trouble is too easy to trace. You need at least two people pretending to act independently. And you’re right out, my dear brother, because your mug has by now reached Brennan’s desk.”

“I can do it,” Charlotte said. “They don’t know me. I don’t even have to pretend to be anyone but myself.”

“Okay, that’s one,” Kaldar said. “But I can’t help you and neither can Audrey. The Mirror would have our asses, and, besides, we’re on call. The Grand Thane Callis is marrying Marchesa Imelle de Lon in a month. Why couldn’t that old geezer find himself an Adrianglian woman to marry, I’ll never know. There is a realm full of old ladies waiting for him, but no, that old goat had to go to Louisiana to get himself a wife.”

The Grand Thane never concerned himself with playing by the rules. Roughly eighty years ago, when Rogan Brennan sat on the throne, his sister Solina Brennan married Jarl Ulrich Hakonssen of Vinland in the north. After Rogan, the crown passed to his son Olred, which made Jarl Ulrich Grand Thane, a title traditionally held by the king’s oldest uncle. As Grand Thane, he had defended the realm, leading the Adrianglian Army and Fleet to victories in the Ten Year’s War. Olred managed to get himself killed before he produced an heir. Because of Jarl Ulrich’s foreign birth, Solina couldn’t assume the throne, and their daughter Gallena became the monarch of Adrianglia. Now Gallena’s son sat on the throne. The Grand Thane was father to the previous queen and grandfather to the current king and Brennan, but he had kept the title that made him famous. Charlotte had seen him twice from afar: he was a massive, battle-scarred bear of a man, famous for his magic, physical might in battle, and roaring voice. Lady Solina had died almost fifteen years ago, and now he finally chose to remarry. She imagined he didn’t want to spend the twilight of his life alone.

“Anyone who is anyone in both Louisiana and Adrianglia will be at that wedding,” Kaldar continued. “The entire Mirror is on full alert.”

“That would be an excellent place to expose Brennan,” Charlotte thought out loud.

“It is, but I can’t be the one to do it. I tried to hint at it to Erwin, who is in charge of operations for my unit, and he shut me down, fast. You’re still short a player,” Kaldar said. “You need that overlap of influence. That’s the way that con works. You must work completely independently from two different angles toward a common goal.”

“Perhaps I—” George said.

“No,” all three of them answered in unison.

“You have your future to think about,” Charlotte told him. “If we fail, Brennan will make it his mission to ruin you in the most gruesome way possible.”