“The king has been amassing power for the last four years,” Peter said. Masterly and Masterly had run a comprehensive analysis. The king had gathered a lot of power to himself during the war, political and financial as well as military. No wonder he didn’t want to give it up. “I submit to you that it could get far worse if he reaches a position of unchallengeable power.”
“I understand your point,” Duchess Turin said. “How do you intend to proceed? Present the king with an ultimatum? Or simply rush into impeachment?”
“The former might be enough to get the king to back down,” Duke Tolliver said. “But it would also give him time to build a counter-coalition of his own.”
“And split us,” Duchess Zangaria added. “He has plenty of ways to convince struggling people to join him.”
“But pushing for an immediate vote could lead to disaster, if we lose,” Duke Tolliver said, coldly. “There is something to be said for giving him room to retreat.”
“He’s already had that chance,” Peter reminded him. “We were able to use the convoy disaster to give him a chance to back down, without losing too much face, but he turned that back against us. Our choice is between tolerating him, knowing that he may be planning to remove us as soon as possible, or removing him. Now. While we still can.”
Isabel Harley, MP for the North Dales, leaned forward. “Aren’t we being a little paranoid? We have no evidence the king intends to turn on us.”
“He’s amassing power,” Harrison reminded her. “And, sooner or later, he will need to make that power secure.”
“The balance of power has been smashed,” Peter added. “And we must either restore it or accept permanent subordination.”
“Or death,” Duke Rudbek muttered.
“Surely you can’t think he’d go that far,” Isabel protested.
“The king has vast resources,” Rudbek snapped. “He controls a significant chunk of the military, directly and indirectly. Countless men and women owe their careers and positions to him. And a lot of money was steered into black programs during the war. Where did that money go?” He took a long breath. “And then there’s the death of the former Duke Falcone,” he added, nodding to Peter. “The assassins who killed him were never caught.”
Peter sucked in his breath. “The official report concluded that they were Theocrats . . .”
“And yet, they were never caught,” Rudbek repeated, tapping the table. “Why didn’t they launch more attacks? Why didn’t they sell their lives dearly? Every infiltration cell fought to the death when it was discovered, but this one seems to have gone completely underground and vanished. That’s simply not possible in the long run.”
Perhaps, Peter thought. But Father and the king were working together.
He forced himself to think. It wasn’t possible to vanish on Tyre, not completely. Someone who lived deep in the countryside might be able to stay out of sight, but anyone who lived in one of the cities would leave an electronic trail for investigators to follow. The police and security services had gotten good at tracking people who might be enemy agents, simply by analyzing their progress through the system. And all the normal constitutional safeguards had been abolished during the war. The king could use the surveillance systems in ways their designers had never anticipated.
Rudbek was right, he conceded grimly. The assassins should not have been able to hide indefinitely. They’d have great difficulty even boarding a starship and fleeing the system before being caught. And even if they did have the skills to hide, Peter had to admit that it was atypical. The Theocrats had expected their infiltrators to do as much damage as possible before their inevitable deaths. There was no reason to expect them to remain in hiding now that the war was over.
“You can’t accuse the king of assassinating a duke,” Isabel protested. “Even if it was true, you’d need a lot of proof.”
Peter met Rudbek’s eyes. “Do you have any proof?”
“None,” Rudbek admitted. “But who actually benefits? The Theocracy? It was too late for the death of a single man to save them. Or the king, who used your father to rationalize our industries and, just incidentally, put a lot of his people in positions of power. Your father might well have known a great many things the king didn’t want to make public . . .”
“This is an absurd theory,” Peter spluttered. He didn’t want to think about the possibilities, even though he had no choice. “And we can’t even make it public without proof. We’d be laughed out of court.”
“I know,” Rudbek said. “But it’s a good example of why we need to act fast.”
“If, of course, the king actually ordered Duke Falcone killed,” Isabel pointed out. “We have nothing but a chain of inference. The onus would be on us to prove that the king gave the orders, and we couldn’t. Could we?”
“No,” Rudbek said. “We remove the king first, then we dissect everything. We work out where the money went, where it was spent, and what it bought; we open up the entire planetary security infrastructure and determine, if we can, if a black ops team was used to kill Duke Falcone. And then . . . we dismantle his infrastructure, return to the status quo ante bellum . . . and then, well, we find someone in line to the throne and give it to him or her.”
Isabel coughed. “And if the king is innocent?”
“He’s already abused his position,” Duke Rudbek said firmly. “We’ll pension him off, perhaps to a distant estate where he can spend the rest of his life.”
“We are putting the cart before
