“They said they were commissioned by an unknown broker to the steal the rubies, and that Gilda subsequently stole hers from them.”

I frowned. “That makes no sense whatsoever. Gilda was a servant class fae with some ability to manipulate wood—why would she be involved in such a high-risk theft?”

“She wouldn’t, but then, neither would those men. They gathered information using women as honeypots and then sold that information on to the highest bidder. My father believes their memories were manipulated.”

“That still doesn’t explain how Gilda got the ruby.”

“Or why they’d even bother setting Gilda and her employers up,” Lugh said. “That’s a whole lot of effort for little gain.”

“Not when you consider how much time the council has spent on first the singing bowl’s appearance and now the ruby’s,” Cynwrig commented.

“It could also be a simple matter of greed,” Lugh said. “Maybe there’s a faction that simply wants to sell the lesser items for their own gain.”

“I’d hardly call the Shield of Hephaestus a lesser item,” Cynwrig said in a dry sort of tone. “It does give the wielder control over fire and volcanoes.”

“Yes, but neither the shield nor the other two rubies have been found,” Lugh said. “And while a ruby would no doubt have fetched a pretty price on the black market, would Gilda have had the knowledge or the contacts to sell it?”

“No,” Mathi said. “The employment search she underwent would have picked up those types of links.”

“Shame they didn’t pick up the honeypot ones,” Cynwrig said in a very bland tone.

An almost visible wave of anger rolled in from Mathi’s direction, but before he could counter the barb, I quickly said, “If Gilda’s acquisition of the ruby was a diversion, how did her partners know about it or the other two?”

“Perhaps by the same means that they knew about the council’s decisions,” Cynwrig said.

I gave him a warning look. He raised an eyebrow, but bedevilment danced in his eyes, and it obvious it had no intention of backing off.

But then, neither did Mathi.

“Even if other councilors had been placed in the same position,” Mathi said, in a surprisingly even tone given that wave, “neither the shield nor the rubies were mentioned in any meeting after the theft of the hoard. I checked.”

“Yes, but a list of hoard contents was tabled in the days following the theft,” Cynwrig said. “All councilors have access to it.”

“This is all useless conjecture and certainly a situation we can do nothing about right now,” Lugh commented. “How about we concentrate on what we can do something about? Because we’re about twenty minutes away from the coast and we need to have a plan of attack.”

“We won’t be able to park in the main parking area for that section of beach,” Mathi said. “They’re likely to be watching it.”

“It won’t matter where we park,” Cynwrig said. “I checked Google Maps; the beach between the mainland and the island is wide and sandy. They’ll spot us the minute we cross, no matter where our starting point is.”