Free The Sword-Edged blonde by Alex Bledsoe

“Well . . . I assume so. He wasn’t crying or anything.”
    I nodded. “Now I need you to think real hard on this one. Did you actually
see
the baby in the queen’s arms?”
    She thought so hard I was afraid her eyes would pop from her face. “She had a bundle in her arms that I thought was her son, but . . . I can’t swear to actually seeing him. Is that important?”
    “I don’t know,” I said honestly. But inside I felt another click as more things aligned.
     
    I KEPT MY gaze as even as I could. What I’d asked was horrendous even to me, but I couldn’t let Phil know that, or I knew he’d talk me out of it. He stared at me over his desk, speechless.
    Wentrobe finally spoke. “Baron LaCrosse, are you sure that’s needed?”
    The use of the title made me grit my teeth. “Pretty sure,” I said, although I kept my eyes on Phil.
    “Well, I don’t know if I can condone this,” Wentrobe said. “It’s . . . it’s
sacrilegious
.”
    “It’s necessary,” I said. “I just need one workman to help me. No one else has to know.”
    Phil looked down for a minute. “Okay,” he said at last. “I did ask for your help, so I have to let you do your job.” Then he looked up and added, “But no workman. You and I’ll do it.”
    Wentrobe looked stricken. “Your Majesty, I don’t think—”
    “No one is going to desecrate my son’s tomb,” he snapped. “If I do it, then I know it’ll be done with respect.” He stood up and took a deep breath. “Exactly what do you think you’ll find?”
    “The last piece of the frame,” I said. I didn’t want to give him my entire theory just yet. “Then maybe I can see the whole picture.”

 
     

EIGHT

     
     
    T he tombs for Arentia’s royal family were in a crypt deep beneath the castle. We waited until night to make our descent, when theoretically no one would notice that the king was up to anything so screwy. The air grew cooler and damper as we wound our way down the spiral stone steps, and my nascent discomfort at closed spaces began to flare. Despite the chill air, I was sweating like a pig.
    Phil noticed and grinned at me. “Not scared of the dark, are you?” he teased, using any excuse to avoid expressing the feelings I knew churned within him.
    “No, scared this half-assed castle might fall on my head,” I said. “Some kings build brand new ones, you know.”
    “Hey, remember when you snuck down here thinking Tasha Ghent was waiting for you?”
    “Oh, yeah, I remember. I still owe you for that one.” Phil had told me Tasha, a buxom young brunette who worked in the kingdom’s taxation office, had developed a crush on me even though I was six years younger. I received a note telling me she’d wait for me in the catacombs, along with a map showing me exactlywhere. At the time, my little head exerted more influence than my big one, so I followed the map and ended up in a disused, dead-end corridor; when I tried to backtrack my way out, I discovered that Phil had blocked me in with a fake wall. I didn’t know it was fake, of course, and to this day I swear I got my first gray hair screaming like a girl until he let me out.
    We reached the final door. It was a huge iron-barred affair, ten feet high and locked at the center. Beyond it, our torches illuminated the first of many rows of sealed royal crypts.
    Phil slipped the key into the lock, but paused a minute before he turned it. “You have any kids, Eddie?” he asked softly.
    “No.”
    “It changes the way you look at things. You completely stop living for yourself; you live for them.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t tell this to anybody else. I don’t know
how
to be a father who’s outlived his son. Not like this.”
    “I wish I could help,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to let on what I suspected; even though it might have eased his mind a bit for the moment, it would be even worse if I turned out to be wrong.
    “I completely trusted my wife,” he continued. “With