Crown of Blood

3.2.|| Difficult Diplomacy

Jazz stood from his seat and started pacing around the room. "As the Governor's son, I had a lot of leeway and potential. I already mentioned that I was a bit of a prodigy. I was also easily bored, which is why I started entertaining in the wrong circles. One of these circles was the Crimsonhawks. They're all nobles, but not as high ranking as I was. I was definitely not supposed to train with them. My rank forbade it. My father, however, loved me very much, so when he found out, I was merely chastised and asked to no longer entertain their presence.

"You can guess by now that I did not care. I took the love and leniency as weakness and continued to do what I wanted. The training, the wrong sort of people, sinking my hands in every design I considered faulty..."

Cage remembered that. "You did mention you tinkered with something you shouldn't have."

"True. There is something else you need to know about the Crimsonhawks. They're true assassins, which means they deal in poisons as well as weaponry. They have an ingenious device which stores this poison. It resides oftentimes on the hilt of their weapons and it could be activated during fights to imbed the blade with it. In this case, you die even if they merely scrape you.

"The trigger to this mechanism was however inefficient. I found it ridiculous. I stole the designs from Napoletta's libraries and found the flaw in it with ease. I thought I was a genius fixing something which men far below me couldn't see.

"I was wrong. It was not a design flaw. I wasn't smarter. I was just naive. Crimsonhawks were not meant to have the power to kill like that. The poison was meant to be used on themselves in case they were captured. With my ill-time tinkering, I gave them too much power and some of them decided to test it during training and killed each other. As I mentioned, they were the sons of nobility."

Cage sucked air through his teeth. All the information was troublesome and the ingenuity of Napoletta could not be ignored, but it paled in the face of the anguish radiating from Jazz.

"Didn't they know it was poison?'

"Of course they did," Jazz said, his tone bitter. "But just like me, they thought they were beyond silly mistakes. Around that time, while I was at my proudest, I also slipped under the sheets with Terrani's daughter. She thought I was going to marry her..."

"And it all came crashing down..." Cage massaged his forehead. "So the chances that Terrani will understand that I still need you and leave you here are minimal."

"Look, Napoletta doesn't have an army. All the Free Cities don't have enough resources to wage war on Iride--"

"Jazz, I'm not a moron," Cage said between his teeth. "I know they're not going to declare war on Iride. They're not morons either. But that doesn't mean they won't Crimsonhawk you or me."

Jazz fell silent for a moment. "Assassinate. You mean assassinate."

It didn't sound any better. "Do the Crimsonhawks still use your design?"

"I don't know what they did with it after I left. They'd be morons not to, though. And they're anything but."

Cage agreed with that which made having two of them inside his place even more worrying. "We need a reason to throw Terrani out."

"You can't throw Terrani out! That would be diplomatic suicide. We need Napoletta if we're going to war."

"I need you, too, and since I can't have both..."

Jazz hummed and increased the speed of his pacing. Cage let out a groan and shut his eyes. He wanted out of that gods-forsaken palace. He wanted to go back to Darkwood and to his own castle and just live there until Kat came for him. But the thought of his old prison posed another issue. He had been too aware ever since taking the throne that he had Joshua as leverage. The Kat he knew loved her father dearly. Of course, the Kat he knew might be gone forever, her mind corrupted by Lucille, but that wasn't certain.