Pax had investigated people who believed themselves too important to be investigated. Wealthy merchants, ambitious nobles, mercenary commanders, and corrupt officials generally shared one unfortunate habit: they assumed that employing enough intermediaries would make their activities impossible to trace.
Experience had taught Pax otherwise.
Money changed hands. Messengers remembered destinations. Servants overheard conversations, and merchants kept records even when their employers preferred discretion. Individually, such details rarely proved anything, but when arranged correctly, they could reveal relationships that powerful men had spent years concealing.
Which was why Pax currently stood before a large parchment-covered board inside a rented chamber in the Royal Capital, examining the connections between three familiar names.
Gideon Marholt.
Roderick Halbrecht.
Edmund Krail.
