“Why have you never told anyone? Claimed your place in your family? At least sought their help?” Mrs. Honeycutt asked.
That was a difficult question to answer. He’d certainly thought about it. When he’d reached his majority, he’d left his uncle and the sea and had gone to St. Edys in search of answers. Or at least some meaning. He didn’t have a plan for anything other than catching a glimpse of his real family and the father he never knew, of the half sisters who had come after Marek’s mother had died, it was said, with a broken heart. After a few years his father had remarried, a woman from the Mediterranean who was younger than the king and capable of giving him the heir he needed after his son had been lost.
Marek would see the royal family during formal parades or when his father gave the occasional speech. But it wasn’t until he came here, to London, and had sat across the room from His Majesty as the ministers discussed the various planks of a peace plan, that Marek had actually seen him up close. It had been jarring to see the white forelock of hair and the amber eyes so eerily similar to his own.
“I didn’t see a way to do it that wouldn’t be terribly disruptive to the family,” Marek said simply. And that was the truth of it. He’d come to St. Edys to see them, with fantasies of appearing before his father.I am your lost son.But the more he’d seen the royal family, the more he understood it would not be a joyous reconciliation. His claim would be suspected and challenged. He could even be jailed for pretending to be the long-lost heir to the throne. And then there was the question of Princess Justine and Princess Amelia, trained from the cradle to take their place in this world. The Weslorian parliament had amended the succession documents so that Princess Justine would become queen by virtue of being the oldest living child born to the monarch. Would Marek take that from her? Would he plunge the country into deeper turmoil when they were working hard to bring peace and stability to the region?
After a time in St. Edys, Marek had sought employment and found it in the Office of Trade and Commerce. His job was to take reports from various industries and compile written summaries for the minister of trade. It wasn’t long before he began to offer recommendations for remediation of trade issues. He wrote reports on what the figures meant below the surface. After a few years, he’d become the right-hand man of the minister of trade.
Two years ago, Lord Dromio had been named the minister. He’d confessed to Marek that he’d never been entirely comfortable with the notion of economics, which he proved every day. He’d come to rely on Marek’s opinion quite a lot and had insisted he come to London with him.
“All this time, you’ve been watching the king from afar?” Mrs. Honeycutt asked.
“I have. My work is in the study of economics. It is the closest I come to him.”
“But what of you, Mr. Brendan? What sort of life do you have there?”
“A simple one.” He told her a little about the work he did on his small farm, with his two milk cows, a few sheep, two dogs, and some chickens. He hired a lad from the closest village to tend things while he rode into St. Edys every day, without fail, no matter the weather. At the end of his day, Marek would stop by an inn that sat at the crossroads of two main arteries for a pint. The proprietor, Mr. Karetzo, was friendly with Marek. The man had heard everything there was to hear in and around St. Edys and liked to tell it. Once he had the news from Mr. Karetzo, he went home to tend his animals and sit before the hearth.
Marek’s life was solitary, with one foot in the world he’d grown up in, and one foot in the knowledge that he belonged to a world that had been stolen from him. It was a simple existence. He remained a loner, fearing discovery, fearing accusations and reprisals. He had no real proof of what he thought to be true, and the only person who could vouch for what he said was his uncle. But Uncle Dondan had been nowhere near St. Edys the night he was abducted. Moreover, to mention his uncle’s name would be to turn the jackals that surrounded the royal family on a poor lamb.
So Marek had kept his secret buried deep within him, and there he thought the secret would remain all his life.
Until tonight.
“But you haven’t kept your distance entirely,” Mrs. Honeycutt said. “Something has led you to suspect a coup or trouble afoot.”
“Je,”he said. Over the last several months, he’d begun to notice some anomalies in the work that came across his desk, disturbing patterns that went against the stated policy of the Weslorian trade. “In the course of my work, I’ve seen things that don’t make sense. Exports that are never exported. Grain left to rot. Imports that never arrived or were waylaid en route. The Weslorian economy has always been weaker than our neighbors, but we’ve made some strides in recent years. We’ve begun coal production, and we are importing technologies that will help the effort to industrialize. So these...events,” he said, trying to think of the right word, “have made some powerful capitalists unhappy. They say the king and his parliament are making poor trade decisions that are flittering away the gains we’ve made.”
Mrs. Honeycutt smiled wryly. “Is not the same said of every government by every capitalist?”
He was mildly surprised that she would know of things like that. It didn’t keep with what he thought he knew about privileged British women. “In this case, it feels true.”
“Do you believe your father is ruining the economy of your country?”
“No,” Marek said instantly. He’d read everything King Maksim had ever said about trade and prosperity. The king wanted change. He wanted a modern society. “But I think it is being made to look like he has. He’s given speeches stating the goals he has for the country. But some of his ministers are doing the opposite and makes it appear as if the king and his prime minister are making bad decisions.”
“Really?” she asked skeptically. “But how?”
Marek thought about how to frame this vague feeling he had. “Today,” he said, finding his example, “Lord Dromio, our minister of trade, gave away a majority share of the coal mines in the Astasian region. He said the king had specifically told him to offer the coal mines for a bigger share in the grain trade. None of that makes sense. Weslorian grain is superior to Alucian grain and we’ve always had a bigger share of the export market. Furthermore, I was in the room in St. Edys when our country’s trade postures were decided before coming here. Nothing of the sort was said. That coal is critical to our nation’s wealth, as I expressed to his lordship today. I’ve made several recommendations grounded in fact, which he has ignored in the course of these negotiations. He says he follows the desires of the king, as if His Majesty has changed his mind since arriving in London. The Alucians take advantage of our weak position, and the British are caught in the middle and try to appease everyone.” He glanced away, mulling it over again. This was more than he’d said to anyone in weeks. “And the king looks ill to me. His pallor is...unhealthy.”
She frowned. “Is he ill?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t but help suspect the worst.”
“What do you think is the cause of his illness? A cancer?”
“Poison.”
Mrs. Honeycutt gasped. “No!Here?In London? But he’s a guest at St. James Palace! How is it possible?”
It probably wasn’t possible, and now that Marek had voiced his fears, it sounded quite wild. “You must think I’m mad. Only a madman would suspect such things. I hardly know the king and I’ve seen him only in crowded rooms. How could I possibly know?”
She didn’t try and convince him that he did.
A silence stretched between them for several moments. “May I ask...what was it like?” Mrs. Honeycutt asked.
“What?”
