“Kosandion is Caldenia’s nephew, so he’s devious enough to manufacture this energy reading and use it to manipulate us. But why bother? He could’ve simply asked me to hand the ratings off to Caldenia. I would do it because he is a guest. Instead, he felt that there was a value attached to me running this errand, and he compensated me for my effort.”

Sean’s frown deepened.

I had taken the data to Caldenia right after my conversation with Kosandion. I found Her Grace enjoying a lovely breakfast on our back patio. I’d placed the cube on the table and told her Kosandion wanted her to have it. She raised her eyebrows and said, “He did, did he?” She scanned the cube with her reader, and then she smiled with all her teeth, and I’d been low-key haunted by that smile ever since.

We stopped before a dark wall blocking our way. Sean’s eyes were still grim. I reached over and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He blinked.

“We don’t know anything and it’s eating at you.” It was eating at me. “I know that you really want to go and look for him, and instead we have to do this.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t like surprises. And I don’t like being lied to. This was supposed to be straight forward: keep the candidates from killing each other. We were told that Kosandion would ignore Caldenia’s presence. Instead, the candidates are trying to kill him, and Kosandion and Caldenia are scheming, either together or against each other.”

“Nothing really changed,” I said. “When we took this job, we knew we had to keep Kosandion safe. This assassination plot doesn’t alter that. We also knew that Caldenia and Kosandion have a complicated history. Predictably, their present relationship is complicated.”

He made a low growling noise in his throat. Gorvar’s ears twitched.

“And that’s exactly what I find surprising. What is the nature of their relationship? Is she plotting to kill him?”

“I don’t think so?” I didn’t sound very convincing.

“Of all the places in the universe, Kosandion picked our inn. Is he planning to punish Caldenia for the murder of his father? If I were him, I would provoke her until she snaps and does something unwise. It doesn’t matter if she succeeds. As soon as she acts against him, you and I will have to expel her from the inn. She would be done. The bounties on her head are still sky-high. I checked.”

I knew how he felt. One small mistake, and everything we’ve built could come crushing down. We couldn’t lose Gertrude Hunt. We just couldn’t.

“This could be made much simpler if we just locked Caldenia up until it’s over,” Sean said.

“Sometimes you say things that make me wonder about you.”