Chapter 8 - The Empty Cage
The heavy iron armored transport vehicle sat in the center of the courtyard, its engine idling with a low, throbbing hum, its back doors swinging wide open in the midnight wind.
Not a single soul was in sight. The two royal guards assigned to transport Richard had vanished completely, leaving behind only their polished brass helmets and a single trail of heavy, dark blood smears leading directly toward the dense, fog-choked hedge maze at the edge of the estate gardens.
“An ambush,” Vance muttered, his jaw tightening as he shouldered his rifle and stepped out onto the moonlit gravel driveway. “Stay behind me, Your Grace. Whatever took them is still out there in the mist.”
Clara stepped past the commander without a word, her grey maid’s dress fluttering in the cold autumn wind. She knelt beside one of the discarded brass helmets, running her fingers through the wet, dark crimson pooling on the gravel. She lifted her fingers to her nose, inhaling the faint, unmistakable scent of foreign gunpowder and burnt pine resin—the calling card of the Black Iron Syndicate, an elite mercenary group operating out of the eastern mountains.
“They didn’t rescue Richard,” Clara said softly, her voice carrying a chilling edge of certainty. “They came to silence him before he could talk.”
Julian stepped out onto the porch, hugging his shivering arms against the freezing night air. “You mean... Richard is dead?”
“Dead men don't leak secrets to the Prime Minister,” Clara replied, standing up and drawing a hidden hunting knife from her apron strap. “Which means his handlers decided he was a liability. But if they killed him here, they must have taken the red ledger from his coat.”
Vance checked the contents of his tactical vest, his face pale under the moonlight. “If the syndicate has that ledger, they hold the names of every corrupt official in the capital. We have to hunt them down before they cross the river.”
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Suddenly, a sharp whistle cut through the silence of the garden, followed by the terrifying, mechanical whir of a drone hovering just above the towering hedges.
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