Firkin felt some grim satisfaction as he led the woman beside him into the King's private court. Her dark curly hair seemed to drink in the light, and she was dressed in a simple blue tunic and leggings. Her face was open and friendly. The only detractor, if it could be called that, was her obvious blindness. Where eyes should be, old scars radiated out from white orbs. Whispers, gasps, and some shrieks followed in his wake.

“Is that...?”

“He finally found her?”

“Looks like she got her comeuppance.”

“Really, they'll let anything into court. She should be in the cells.”

“Careful, he might hear you. He's part of the Golden Guard. They can bend the rules as they like.”

“Time to warm up the ax man, finally.”

“Always wanted to see a Traitor die.”

Firkin nodded briefly to the two men guarding the inner court where the King and his privy counsel held sway. They looked at him, then over at the woman next to him, and parted to let him through. There was shock and dead silence as he led her to stand before King Novan. He restrained the urge to look over at the Captain and ask for his promotion. He bowed to the King, and a whisper in the woman's ear had her doing the same.

“Your Majesty. As promised, I bring you the woman known as Sylvie Goldenbough, declared Traitor to the throne.” Firkin let pardonable pride leak out in his voice. He just wished that his nerves weren't nearly shot. Even if he'd been the one to come up with this idea, he wanted a better one.

The King started at the duo before him, and Firkin could see almost see the thoughts racing through the King's head. Firkin was banking on what the King knew of him and the Golden Guard. Firkin had always presented a stolid and unimaginative front, so for him to do something this radical meant that Firkin had found out something of interest pertaining to Sylvie that could change things. Firkin just hoped that Sylvie's death order didn't come before the King's interest.

He kept his eyes forward and didn't look around, but he'd seen the expression in the one pair of eyes he never would have expected. It made his chest tight, and his gut clench. There was the real Traitor. The man that had manipulated the King, Sylvie, Gods everybody and for what? Nonsensical power?

He knew by the way Sylvie tensed beside him that she'd figured it out too, in her own way. How much did she actually See with her mage-senses so open like that? He'd heard rumors that mystics that kept their mage-senses open ended up seeing more than a person with regular vision could after just a few months. Sylvie had kept her mages senses open on an almost constant basis for over ten years. He swore he felt his soul shudder as he wrenched his attention to the task on hand.

Long beats of silence passed, waiting for the King. No one moved or said a thing until his piercing gray eyes closed briefly and he shook his head. “Well, you've brought me something interesting, haven't you Lieutenant?”

Considering Firkin hadn't enacted a certain kill-on-sight order, it had damn well better be interesting. “Yes, your Majesty. Interesting might just begin to encompass it.”

“Did you have to leave the girl alive, though? You were supposed to kill her if you found her.” Lord Healer Durand pointed out. He was a slightly rotund man with white hair sticking out of his ears, and a scraggly fringe of hair the same shade wrapped around his mostly bald pate.

“Should we kill her now, Your Majesty?” Harken's voice had a slight smirk to it. Luckily for him, the Golden Guard were also counselors and often spoke on Court topics.

“Really, the blood would upset the court. Better Traitor hill for that one.” Quinton chimed in.

Beside him, Sylvie twitched. Firkin could tell that her temper was starting to rise. She would not appreciate Harken's and Quinton's teasing right now. Firkin rapidly changed the subject.  “Wouldn't it be better if we could also get who the Traitor was working with? The Traitor couldn't have done everything alone.”

The King sighed. “Very true, and we need her alive to give us her accomplice.”

There was a very soft snort from Sylvie, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew that she was in a very precarious position, and the littlest thing would cause her death.

“How many people will she point her fingers at, do you think?” Lord Hillyard's voice was drawling. He stepped forward, and it was obvious that Sylvie was a more feminine copy of him.

“Since she knows it won't save her life, she may point her fingers at no-one. She may feel...loyalty.” The sneering tone was the ex-Captain's.

There was another person that deserved the ax. Ex-Captain Willems De Forency and Captian Guialt were two peas in a pod, and he wondered if they would even care if Sylvie had been framed. He restrained a snort. Of course, they'd care, Sylvie had been one of the best resources like Harken and Quinton before she'd been cast out of the Golden Guard.

“Well, girl, what do you say? Do you feel loyalty, or would you be willing to spend life in prison instead of dying today?” The King's voice was curiously bland, as if the outcome mattered not at all to him. However, Firkin knew enough about the King to know that he was a scheming jackass. The King knew something was up. Now, if only Sylvie would stick to the script.

“My loyalty, Majesty? Should I try and put myself in favor by saying that the crown has always had my loyalty? Should I say, now that I'm here, that I was framed, and that the real Traitor and their accomplices are still here at court? What do you want to hear, your Majesty? You should know by now that I'd say anything.” Her tone was wry, and Firkin felt a small fist in his gut release.

The King gave a small chuckle. “As provocative as ever, Lady Hillyard.”

Sylvie twitched. “Goldenbough, if you please, your Majesty. I haven't been Lady Hillyard since I was ten.”

The King's eyes narrowed. “As you wish. Why don't you tell me what's really going on, Lady Goldenbough?”

Sylvie grimaced and Firkin felt his muscles clench slightly. Their plans hinged on Sylvie, and she knew it, but her temper made things difficult. Hell, from what he knew about her life, he'd have a temper like hers if he'd gone through half of what she had. With his arm so close to her chest, he felt her take a deep breath and release it.

“Long story short, your Majesty, you've had some people at court working to undermine you since before I was born. A researcher amid my friends found a pattern of Dark magic going back to when my father was a child. It started off with simple spells that merely caused shortages in a certain crop or animal deaths. It wasn't long before it progressed much nastier and more elaborate spells, and it became rather obvious that it was somebody at court that had to be the mastermind. He had to have access everywhere, know everybody's secrets, and be able to convince you to name me a Traitor based on a few suspicious absences and letters. Unfortunately, that person could have been anybody in the Golden Guard or your entire privy court. That's not even mentioning your habit of picking up someone smart from a street corner and dumping them in as a Counselor.”

“You're starting to intrigue me, Sylvie. Continue.”

At that command, Harken, Quinton, and Firkin all relaxed minutely. Sylvie would most likely survive this after all. Firkin watched his Traitor tense slightly, and cut his eyes towards one other person. He felt his gut clench all over again. If they managed to manipulate these two into revealing themselves, there was going to be a storm of epic proportions throughout the land.

“Well, your Majesty, it starts with that pattern of Dark magic. Why was it necessary? Who did it profit? How do we get them?” Her tone turned fierce and predatory as she continued. “When I first arrived here, I was a young, sheltered woman. Yes, I passed the tests to get into the Golden Guard, but I didn't know much about the real world. I learned the hard way when I had to ground a Dragon's mage-blast in myself to keep it from killing the entire contingent of the Golden Guard with me. I got to examine the corpse along with the other mages. Maybe it was the way I was using mage-sensing, maybe it was just dumb luck, but I saw that the Dragon had been cursed by a Dark spell. I couldn't help but see the connections.”

“Kill off the Golden Guard and it makes it easier to get to me. It also makes it easier to destroy the country from within.”

She nodded. “Precisely, Majesty. My researcher friend and I started looking back at what we could. From my grandfather's time up until I caught the taint of Dark magic on the Dragon, we lost 4 out of 5 people in the Golden Guard on almost every single mission. It took some digging, but in many of those cases, there was a Dark magic taint left behind. Once we figured it out, we took it to our Captain at the time, Lord Willems De Forency.”

“Yes, and I passed it on to Lord Hillyard at the time.”

“He did, but while the taint was there, and it was the same person, we couldn't figure out who it was. I gave my non-results to the Captain.”

Firkin nearly ground his teeth at how Hillyard sounded almost bored. This was literally a matter of life and death.

Sylvie continued. “Yes, well, in the midst of all of you passing the hot potato you didn't want to deal with back and forth, the real Traitor took the reins and made sure that I and my friends wouldn't last. In my year-group of the Golden Guard, we've lost only five people up to this day. Only one of those was to stupidity. The other four were my friends who had helped me discover the pattern. Each one of their deaths was marked with Dark magic one way or another. However, the Dark mage couldn't manage to kill me. All of his attempts got almost funny after a bit. That is, until he managed to get your Majesty to declare me a Traitor.  Not even my own Captain stepped forward to defend me when I'd been the one to alert him to the Dark mage."

Firkin watched Willems tense out of the corner of his eye.  What was the man thinking?  How could he even bear to get rid of Sylvie's raw power, let alone the rest of the skills Sylvie had cultivated. 

"That would be disturbing to anybody, Lady Goldenbough."  The King's voice was as unruffled as if Sylvie had observed that the day was sunny. "I do hope you're not accusing your ex-Captain of the Dark magic."

"No, your Majesty.  That would be one thing he's actually not a part of."

"Good.  Now, Lady Goldenbough?"

"Yes, your majesty?"

"Why don't you tell me what you think is going on?"