13
Taking over this realm was laughably easy. A few zombies, some footprints in the sand. A fake messenger, and a couple of bodies inside the Keep. The Queen and all of her men, could not put the egg together again. Truth be told, it was a little embarrassing. Not a shot fired, and no resistance.
Here in front of the empty throne, it was all clear. Turning, I found a human looking around the edge of the double doors at me.
“You’re Mark, aren’t you?” I asked.
The slight man stepped into view. “Yes, sir.”
“And she left you in charge?” I asked.
“Of the Keep sir, not the realm. Only to ensure the day to day things are cared for until her return.” His eyes were filled with distrust, which he did little to disguise.
I looked back to the empty throne. “And if your Queen is sick, taken by the virus, who would you want to sit in this place?”
“Lady Iris,” he said, with no hesitation.
“Lady Iris is a shifter,” I pointed out.
“Yes sir, but Lady Iris also understands the realm better than anyone else,” he replied.
At the end of his reply there was hesitation, as if he wanted to add something, but caught himself, and didn’t. He bit it off. Did he know Iris was Myriana’s sister?
“And if Iris, because of her current injuries is unable?” I asked.
“Queen Kate, to the north, sir,” he said, again without hesitation.
I turned, and studied him. “You would want Kate to add this realm to her own?”
“Yes, sir.”
His answer was unexpected. “May I ask, why?”
“Lady Beth, to the south is a good leader, certainly, but she’s a harsh one as well, and uses force more often than instruction or trust. Being that she has a strong military, this may be required in ruling her realm, but not here. Our people would be unhappy, before understanding her ways; understanding would take a long time. Queen Madb is also a strong handed queen with both the wastes, and the Kind on her borders. While the Kind are allies at the moment, having them so close requires… Well, it requires readiness.”
“A politic statement if there ever was one,” I suggested.
“It is my station,” he responded. His reply was meant to be light humor, but he still had strong distrust behind his eyes. He reeked of the emotion.
Turning away I looked at a painting of Myriana to the right of the throne. “Why is Myriana a good queen?”
Again, his response came quickly. “I don’t believe I’ve ever said she was.”
“No? I thought you did.”
“No, I said I serve her. It’s not the same thing,” he explained.
“Why do you serve her then?” I asked.
“Because she has it in her to become a good queen. Likely the best the realms… the best we’ll see in a long time,” he answered.
Interested, I looked over my shoulder. “What gives you this impression?”
He met my gaze, unshaking. “My lady surrounds herself with experts, and she listens to them. When they discuss things out of her depth, she notes them and educates herself on the subject.”
“Does she? How do you know?” I asked, believing it would be Iris who tutored her.
“Because I get the lists, and I’m tasked with finding the information for her to study,” he replied. “In fact, even in quarantine, I have received a list from her. All on one subject, but still a full list.”
“Might I know which subject?” I asked, turning to face him.
“I don’t believe it’s a state secret,” he murmured, and pulled out a scrap of paper. “Bacteria as related to controlling minds. I suppose she is looking for some type of drug.”
That was fast. Didn’t take much to get her on the trail- “You’ll be wanting to find subjects related to cordyceps. Specifically, ophiocordyceps unilateralis.”
“Indeed,” he said, pulling out a pencil stub and making a note.
“Yes, it’s a type of fungus that takes control of ants, after it kills them. There are many other types, and various insects which do similar things. Wasps, for example.”
“Wasps can control minds?” he asked. Now there was no mistaking that he was interested.
“One type does brain surgery on cockroaches. They tap inside their brains at an exact point with their stinger. This helps to keep the body living but lobotomizes its will to move. Then it leads the cockroach by the antennae to a safe place to lay its eggs inside. Even odder, the larva hatching from the eggs know not to eat vital organs, so the roach continues to live and supply fresh food for them.”
“Sounds like a painful existence for the roach.”
“And still, the roach cannot summon up enough will to move while this is going on,” I agreed.
Mark looked disturbed as he made more notes.
I turned away and looked at the throne. “I believe Myriana is the best queen for this area, and no one else should be in that seat. I also believe that we have been surgically manipulated to put this realm into a vulnerable state, so that someone can waltz in at the opportune time and remove her from that chair. If they had two or three more pieces of information, I believe they would have succeeded.”
Turning back around, I found I had his attention, so I asked him. “Where would you hide if you wished to listen to what was being said in the radio room?”
“There is only one place, but getting there would be difficult,” he answered.
“Where?”
“There is a flower box made of stone in the wall outside. It runs the length of the window. The curtains are kept closed night and day, but the window is kept open during the day for air. If you laid down in that box, which is only half filled with dirt, you could not be seen from below, and you’d be able to hear everything said inside the room. But that is on the second floor. Coming down or going up wound be a difficult feat. Not to mention the fact that it is an extremely dangerous climb, whether you were spotted by the guard or not.”
Searching my memory, I asked, “Don’t most of the windows have those planters?”
“Only the rooms on the corners. So, eight in all for each floor. Oh, and the turret rooms on the north and south side,” he added.
“All three floors, above the first?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m sorry, but I need you to wait on finding her books for a moment,” I said and then gave him instructions on the HAZMAT team I required, and the number of guards, locations, and what to expect.
His expression became grave as he listened, but he didn’t falter or become nervous.
Giving me a curt nod, Mark stepped into action. In no time, I was moving to the first position with two guards on my heels. We didn’t run, but hell if you couldn’t say we were walking at running speed. We skipped the old radio room, since we knew where that phantom was already.
“Oh heaven on earth,” one of the guards gasped.
Mark nodded at the guards words, but didn’t speak. There was no mistaking, however, that he was shocked out of his mind. So shocked, in fact that had one of the guards not been at his back, a phantom would have had him for dinner.
We went from place to place, ridding Myriana’s Keep from one phantom after the next. Six in total. It was easy work, really. The phantoms weren’t there to attack, they were there for another reason. An even more troubling reason.
“I might have doubted you since you walked through the gate,” Mark said once I’d let them know we would call it a day.
I turned to face him, a small smile on my lips. “But…”
“But you’re good at whatever it is you do. Good at figuring things out,” he said, before turning to leave.
I took the compliment, though I wasn’t much a man for compliments. Still, the fact that Myriana’s people liked me mattered somehow.
*
The bodies were disposed of, the sites where they had been found rid of all contamination. As soon as Karal, Adian, and Iris were back, the four of us would hunt through the entire keep, searching every spot that could house a hidden human.
What bothered me was the first phantom, the one I found creeping through the greenbelt. He couldn’t hear. Right? Or perhaps, he couldn’t hear, while he was seeing.
Why the hell did that make sense, at all?