The Emperor’s Daughter – Chapter 12, Karis

Karis listened to the gossip. He heard several disappointed comments that Sayana was still alive. It seemed a few of the power brokers had been lining up female relatives to present to Karis once he officially announced her death and they now felt cheated out of their chance to move in closer to the throne. Karis was amused. Did they really think he’d want to remarry someone of their choice when Sayana had been the one he wanted from the start?

“Your court seems divided tonight, Karis.” Sayana was amused though she took care not to show it. “Some are pleased to see me. Others are bemoaning the fact that I’m still alive because it ruins their chances.”

“They had no chance, my heart. If something were to happen to you, I would never remarry.” Karis looked at her and though his expression was neutral he knew she could see the echo of pain in his eyes.

“Would you follow through with sending Marin and the rest back to their academies?” Sayana asked.

“Renate and Ji-Hye are already gone.” Karis returned his gaze to the circulating mass of humanity in front of him. “They were the closest and Tremere already took them. Zarina left this morning. Marin is the last and she should be safely home and Tremere back by the second high feast of the winter festival.”

“My goodness.” Sayana was startled. “That’s faster than I was expecting.”

“He is not using the usual ship. I gave him access to one of the diplomatic vessels instead. It is faster, more streamlined, and less conspicuous. I do not want anyone to think I am bringing in more courtesans and starting a rumor that I am treating you like I did Lynet.” Karis knew what would happen to Sayana if anyone even suspected that he was bringing in more courtesans. She would become as hated as Lynet. She was already disliked as it was. He was not adding to that.

“That makes a lot of sense to me.” Sayana glanced at him. “Will it be comfortable for the ladies though?”

“Very comfortable. Do you really think my diplomats do not want to travel in style?” Karis was amused. His diplomats were some of the most spoiled members of his court when he wanted something done.

“Fair point,” Sayana conceded.

“Your Imperial Majesty, it is good to see that the rumors of your death were just stories told by feeble minded fools,” a lord said, coming up to the table.

“Lord Tero,” Karis whispered softly in Sayana’s ear.

“Thank you, Lord Tero.” Sayana inclined her head to the man.

“Are you feeling better? I know we have missed seeing you at court these past several days,” Tero said.

“I’m quite well, Lord Tero.” Sayana let her mask slip enough to offer a faint smile.

“That is good to hear.” Tero bowed and walked away.

“Minor lord, not a power player.” Karis knew the man very well. “Genuinely cares about people which makes him an oddity in my court. I think he was being sincere.”

“I didn’t get the sense he was playing word games with me like I do with so many of the other nobles. I think he was just inquiring about my health and was interested in what I had to say.” Sayana was right. Tero at least was one of the good lords.

A lord came up that set Karis’ hackles on edge as soon as he approached. “Your Imperial Majesties, may I be the first to offer my condolences?” he asked, bowing.

“Condolences, Lord Yunus?” Karis asked. “What for? No one in our family has died, unless you know something we do not.”

“I mean the infant Her Imperial Majesty was carrying when she – fell ill.” Yunus hesitated over the last two words. “Certainly, the child could not have survived such a lengthy illness.”

“You listen to the rumors too much, Lord Yunus.” Karis let his mask slide a little and favored the man with a cold stare. “My wife is in perfect health, and we have lost no family members. I will thank you not to spread such horrendous tales around the court.”

“Of course not, Your Imperial Majesty.” Yunus recovered smoothly. “It was merely an idle supposition. I meant no harm by it.” He bowed and walked away.

“I know him, but I have never met him before.” Sayana seemed puzzled by her recognition of the lord.

“That is Lord Vasco’s younger brother, my heart.” Karis knew the man resembled Vasco, and that was probably why she recognized him. “He was tolerable before Vasco died. After he died, however, Yunus became a less polished version of his older brother. He tries to fill Vasco’s shoes, though no one takes him as seriously as they did his brother. He does not have the wealth or the political connections.”

“That is why he seems so familiar. He reminds me of Lord Vasco.” Sayana shuddered. “I do not think we should turn our backs on him, Karis.”

“I am not. I have watchers on him right now. I do not trust anyone in the Maestri family. Vasco has a sister as well. I am watching her too, but so far, she seems content spoiling her children and grandchildren and making her husband’s life as comfortable as possible. She has not done anything duplicitous that Demetrios has been able to discover. She is very different from her two brothers.” Karis continued watching the crowd.

A few other lords and ladies approached the table and spoke with them, one barely concealing his dismay at Sayana’s recovery. Karis noted this and decided to have Demetrios look into his affairs as well. He was rather glad he’d invested heavily in his investigation bureau, growing what had been an extremely small organization in his father’s day and in the early days of his reign into something much larger and more useful. It had been far easier to do so once he got a council that didn’t argue with him over the expenditure.

Vilemina approached the table. Sayana stiffened. She didn’t like the woman any more than Karis did. “Your Imperial Majesties.” She bowed. “Did your prolonged absence have anything to do with a loss of the infant you were carrying? That is certainly one of the rumors that is floating around now.”

Karis made a motion, and three members of the Imperial guard surrounded the woman. “Lady Vilemina, you were told that if you persisted, I would do something more permanent about you.” Karis looked at the guards. “Take her to Demetrios.”

“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty,” one of the guards said.

Vilemina protested all the way out of the door. Several courtiers watched in silence. Others immediately fell to chattering about what the woman could have done to anger Karis. “I knew she was going to do something to irritate him.” The speaker was positively gleeful over her fall. “She could not leave well enough alone.”

“Do you think he will execute her?” someone else asked.

“Not unless he finds her guilty of treason, and even the emperor will not manufacture charges where there is no evidence,” someone else commented.

“He has not done so before, but if she threatened the empress he might,” someone pointed out. “Look what he did to those five he named traitor.”

“He presented the evidence for all to see. He is going to have to do it again with Vilemina if he executes her,” one of the other female power brokers told the gossipers scornfully. Karis couldn’t get a good enough look to see if it was Beril or Nimet. “He would not dare do anything without showing us what she is guilty of.”

“He is not his father, thank the stars.” An older lord heaved a sigh of relief. “I remember that man’s rule well. If you looked at him cross eyed, he would torture you for a confession and then execute you. Our current emperor is not like that at all.”

“Then why did he have Vilemina taken out by the Imperial guard?” the female power broker asked.

“Presumably because she crossed a line and he intends to find out if she meant it to harm him and the empress or if she was just doing the usual court posturing,” the older lord remarked. “He will send her to the psychics. He is not as big on torture as the previous emperor was.”

“Vilemina is many things.” Someone else laughed derisively. “Mentally gifted is not one of them. They will not have any trouble picking her brain.”

The group moved further away in the swirl of the court and Karis lost track of their conversation. Sayana glanced at him. “They don’t think too highly of her, do they?” she asked.

“She is a power broker, my heart. Only other power brokers have any respect for her.” Karis shook his head. “And even they squabble amongst each other to try to move up in the ranks. Lady Vilemina is of middle rank. I could not see which of the other female power brokers was talking. Beril and Nimet look and sound very similar, and I have to actually see their faces to know which one it is.”

“I think you mentioned their names to me before, when Lady Vilemina first approached us.” Sayana watched the group move along.

“Beril is among the wealthiest women in court outside of the high lords.” Karis watched and realized as the woman turned that it was Lady Beril who’d been talking. “She does not talk about how she got her wealth, though Demetrios assures me it was all obtained through legal means. She is tough, but she tends to speak before she thinks, which has earned her many enemies.”

“I am surprised Lady Vilemina is a power broker. Especially with how freely she speaks.” Sayana’s tracked another source of movement and Karis turned his attention to see what she was looking at.

“Her late husband was the original holder of the position. When he died, instead of letting an outsider take his place, she forced her way in. The other power brokers respected her for it and let her stay. She is rather formidable when she is not being insufferable.” Karis watched to see if the lord Sayana was watching was going to approach the table.

They stayed for another hour before Karis led Sayana back to their chambers. They changed clothes and Sayana left to go spar with Reynard for a couple hours. She returned and they finished off their paperwork. Demetrios arrived just before they were considering going to bed. “Your Imperial Majesties.”

“I take it your latest victim succumbed to the psychics easily?” Karis wasn’t surprised. As the lords had suggested, it seemed Vilemina was psychically weak.

“She was one of the easier reads, but it took a little bit to get past the psychic shielding she had on her mind.” Demetrios shrugged. “Most of your power brokers and high-ranking nobles have it. It’s simply a precaution they take to avoid any psychics that might be in the employ of an adversary at court.”

“What did you find out?” Karis wanted to know if she was responsible for anything going on in court.

“She was the one who sent the servants to the princes to tell them the empress was dead.” Demetrios saw the next question before Karis could ask it and shook his head. “She was not behind the attack itself. We still don’t know who it was. But she was paid a large sum of money to hire three servants, use a psychic to steal the code from one of the princes’ servants, and send her newly hired servants in to tell the princes the empress was dead on the night of the attack. She waited until it was quiet in the corridors before she sent them in, thinking to wake the boys up and startle them. She was not expecting them to be held at blade point by the princes.”

“Did the men not know who hired them?” Karis asked.

Demetrios shook his head. “She hired them through a third party, and that third party – presumably one of her own servants – wasn’t wearing a livery we could identify when we scanned them.”

“What did we do with those men?” Sayana asked.

“They are in the prison below the palace.” Karis shook his head. “They literally knew nothing about the plot against you. They were paid to wake the boys and tell them you were dead. That is all. I was not going to execute them for doing a job they were paid very well for, even if it was underhanded and deceitful. They can spend some time in prison. I will release them in five years, once they have learned their lesson.” Sayana nodded.

“The assassins who tried to kill you that survived the attack did not long survive the interrogation.” Demetrios grimaced. “Where those three men weren’t psychically shielded, the assassins were. We had to resort to torture. We healed them before we put them on the machines so they wouldn’t immediately die, but it took a lot to pry information from them. They were thoroughly professional. We finally cracked one of them and he told us they’d been hired by a man using a jammer on the comm call to conceal his identity. He’d wired the credits and given them a way into the palace. That was all they needed. They were not prepared for you to be a fighter.”

“I executed them as soon as we confirmed that was all we were going to get from them.” Karis’ expression was grim. “I was not going to keep them lingering in the prison hoping they would tell us more.”

“What do you want to do with Lady Vilemina, Your Imperial Majesty?” Demetrios asked.

“Do you know who paid Vilemina to spread the story about Sayana’s death?” Karis looked at Demetrios.

“I do, Your Imperial Majesty. He called her instead of coming in person, but you should recognize the face.” Demetrios held out a sketch.

“Damn the man.” Karis continued swearing for a little longer.

“Who is it?” Sayana looked at the image.

“Vasco’s secretary. I want to know who his primary contact on the Throne World is and how he is still manipulating things so easily after all this time.” Karis glared at Demetrios.

“You’re not the only one who wants to know that, Your Imperial Majesty. I have people scouring her comm records now to see if we can trace his whereabouts when he made the call.” Demetrios didn’t flinch at Karis’ hard look.

“Do you think it could be Lord Yunus? The comment he made this evening.” Sayana had gone pale as she recalled what he’d said.

“Demetrios, you do still have people watching Lord Yunus, do you not?” Karis was reminded of the comment as well and turned back to his investigation minister.

“I do, Your Imperial Majesty.” Demetrios checked his pad. “I’ll add a few more watchers on him just to be safe. It’s quite possible he could be the primary contact.” He paused. “What comment was it he made that has you so concerned?” Karis repeated Yunus’ statement. “I see. I think I need to rethink my strategy on watching Lord Yunus then, because that is exactly the sort of conversation my watchers are supposed to report to me that he’s having, and no one said a word.”

“Could your watchers have been subverted?” Sayana asked.

Demetrios frowned. “It’s possible. I have a lot of agents that haven’t worked for me long. They may not be fully trustworthy, though I did my best to choose ones who would remain loyal to the emperor and to me when I selected them for their jobs.” He sighed. “Now I have to investigate my own investigators. This job never gets any easier.”

“I’m sorry I brought up the idea.” Sayana looked apologetic.

“It’s a good one though, Your Imperial Majesty. One worth checking into. I appreciate the concern.” He turned and walked out.

“Poor Demetrios. We keep giving him more and more work.” Sayana watched him go with sad eyes.

“Do not feel sorry for him, my heart. He loves being busy. He told me once if he is bored, he gets paranoid.” Karis shook his head. “And a paranoid investigator is a dangerous thing to have. I am very glad we are keeping him busy.”

“With the way our court functions, he’ll always have something to do.” Sayana made a face.

“Unfortunately, yes he will.” Karis grimaced. “There will always be some new intrigue we need him to investigate, some new plot we need him to uncover the source of. It is not just the court either. Requests for help from every law enforcement office in the galaxy make it across his desk at some point or another.”

“He answers those too?” Sayana was startled at that.

“Demetrios, for all I call him my spymaster, has an official title. He is the intelligence minister, though he never sits on the council meetings.” Karis tapped one finger against his lips. “He oversees all the intelligence operations in the galaxy. Father never paid much attention to that bureau, and it was chronically short-staffed in his day. I have expanded it to a massive extent, given Demetrios a huge budget to work from, and added nearly eight times the number of clerks to his pool to help address the mountain of paperwork that he gets. He says his ability to function has been drastically increased and it is only getting better as they systematically clear all the backlog from years of neglect.”

“That has to have made some difference to the law enforcement agencies scattered throughout the galaxy.” Sayana was obviously thinking about some things she must have read.

“Demetrios says his team has helped solve over five thousand cases that were deemed unsolvable because of lack of resources or insufficient manpower.” Karis saw her eyes go wide. “Some cases going back decades into my grandfather’s reign have been resolved and these law enforcement agencies are grateful they can now close the cases and get them off their books. Demetrios says many of them have the attitude of better late than never and understand that until I began changing things he was too shorthanded to help.”

“That’s an impressive number of cases to resolve in such a short span of time.” Sayana stared at him. “He’s been spymaster for how long, four years? Five?”

“Three now.” Karis tried to remember when exactly he put Demetrios in his position. “I put him in place when Tamas refused to follow up on the leads he was given about you. It took him a year to clean up Tamas’ mess, and then I have spent the last two building him up. He is still ramping up and I expect my intelligence bureau to double in size again in the next two years. I have gone from having two psychics to twenty, and Demetrios is actively pushing Harish to let him recruit another ten he has his eyes on. I have already approved it. Harish just has to release the funds to allow him to pay for the recruitment.”

“He is an incredibly gifted man if he has done so much in such a short period of time.” Sayana was clearly as impressed by the young man as Karis was.

“He was one of Tamas’ most promising agents when I promoted him to intelligence minister.” Karis smiled. “In fact, he was the one who found you and Ethian three years before I came for you. His report was incredibly detailed, right down to your eye color and a very good description of the fact that Ethian looked like a miniature copy of me, barring hair and eye color. He even gave a very vivid description of the house you lived in and what Reynard looked like.”

“How in the name of all the stars did he get close enough to the house to see it? We had sensors up all around the place to warn us if someone came near.” Sayana looked puzzled. “We were never even alerted to his presence.”

“I do not know, my heart. As I said, he was very good.” Karis sighed. “We should go to bed. Imre is giving me that look.”

“It’s almost midnight, Your Imperial Majesty. Yes, I’m giving you that look.” Imre watched as Karis set his pad down and stood up.

“Ardatha is giving me a similar look.” Sayana was watching her servant as well. “I think you’re right. We should go to bed.” The two headed into the bedroom. Imre followed them a little while later with Adem and Lucan. Sayana was already in bed by the time Karis took one of his pills and crawled in beside her. He pulled her close and the two fell asleep together.