# Chapter 14
Reyes's investigation, quiet as it was, eventually produced a name.
He brought it to Angelo rather than the King — a decision Angelo understood without needing it explained. Whatever this was, Reyes intended to keep it contained until he knew how far it reached.
"Constantin Duval," Reyes said, sliding a folder across the small table in the unused sitting room he'd chosen for their meeting. "Deputy director of the Ministry of the Interior. Also, as it turns out, the man who approved the reduced security detail for the King and Queen's private holiday."
Angelo opened the folder. A photograph. A career summary. Bank records with several entries circled in red ink.
"You think he sold the route."
"I think three payments totaling more than his annual salary appeared in an account under his wife's name in the two months before the King's trip." Reyes tapped the page. "I think that is either an extraordinary coincidence, or it is not."
"What does he gain from it?"
"That's what troubles me." Reyes leaned back. "If this was simply a robbery — thieves paying for information about a wealthy target — Duval gains money and nothing else. But three attackers, armed, confronting an elderly couple in broad daylight, is a clumsy way to rob anyone. It's a very effective way to create chaos."
"Chaos for who?"
"For whoever benefits from a kingdom questioning its own security," Reyes said. "For whoever benefits from a King feeling less safe, less certain, more inclined to lean on people offering solutions."
Angelo looked up. "You think someone wanted the King frightened. Not hurt."
"I think," Reyes said carefully, "that if I were planning to eventually push an aging monarch toward decisions he wouldn't otherwise make — decisions about succession, about advisors, about who he trusts — I might begin by making him feel that the world outside his walls was no longer safe."
The word succession settled uneasily in Angelo's chest.
"You know about the Prince," he said.
Reyes's expression didn't change, which was, in itself, an answer.
"I know a great deal I'm not yet certain what to do with," he said. "I know the Crown Prince returned early from his convalescence. I know he has told no one, including his own doctors here, the full truth of his condition. And I know that a kingdom with an ailing King and an uncertain heir is a kingdom certain people would very much like to see destabilized."
"Who?"
"That," Reyes said, "is where the trail currently ends. Duval is a name, not an answer. Men like him rarely act alone, and they even more rarely know who they're truly working for."
Angelo closed the folder.
"What do you want from me?"
"Patience," Reyes said. "And your eyes. You're inside that family in a way I am not, and likely never will be. If Duval or whoever stands behind him decides to reach further into the palace, you may see it before I do."
"You want me to spy on the people who trust me."
"I want you to protect the people who trust you," Reyes said, "which occasionally requires seeing clearly, even when it's uncomfortable."
Angelo said nothing for a long moment.
"Elena can't know," he said finally. "Not yet. Not until we understand who we're dealing with."
"Agreed." Reyes stood. "For what it's worth, Lieutenant, I did not expect to find myself trusting a foreign soldier with something this delicate."
"For what it's worth," Angelo said, "I didn't expect to be trusted with it."
Reyes almost smiled. "Then we're both further from home than we intended to be."
He left without another word, and Angelo sat alone with the folder, the photograph of a stranger named Duval staring up at him, and the growing, uncomfortable certainty that Friday afternoon in Sanjara had never been an accident at all.