The Pattern Revealed
The thought hit like a fist to the chest.
I'd seen my wife sit that exact way hundreds of times—across council tables, during negotiations, in rooms where words mattered more than swords. That precise arrangement of hands. That angle of the shoulders. Eleanor's composure. Not practiced. Lived.
Seeing it on my daughter felt wrong.
When did she learn this?
The question lodged in my throat and refused to move.
Eledy noticed my stare and shifted slightly. "Father?"
"Nothing," I said, too quickly.
Her cheeks flushed, but the posture remained. If anything, her spine straightened further.
Lloyd cleared his throat beside my desk, a gentle sound meant to pull me back.
I forced myself to focus. To push past the ghost sitting in my daughter's borrowed posture and return to the impossible problems at hand.
Lloyd stood beside my desk, his scarred face impassive as he delivered his report. The afternoon light caught the old wound along his jaw—a reminder of battles long past.
"The recruitment efforts continue, my lord," Lloyd said. "I've dispatched forty-six of our knights—nearly all of them—to cover the eastern and southern villages. But progress is slow."
"How slow?" I set down my pen.
"We've gathered another thirty prospects since last report. Maybe forty if we lower standards." He paused. "We still need two hundred seventy to meet quota."
Two hundred seventy. The number sat heavy in the air between us.
"The King's decree gives us four months," I said quietly. "We're already halfway through the timeline, but not even half of the requirement."
Lloyd's jaw tightened. "Our knights are doing everything they can, sir. But word travels. Potential recruits hear about financial difficulties. They're asking about wages, benefits, whether House Rovaan can afford to equip them properly."
"Can we?" The question came out more bitter than I intended.
"Not at current treasury levels." Lloyd gestured at the ledgers spread across my desk. "We have two hundred in training now. The seven female knights and I are rotating instruction—formations, basic sword work, discipline. But feeding, housing, and equipping them is already straining resources. Adding three hundred more..."
He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
I pulled one of the ledgers closer, flipping it open to a marked page.
"Look at this. Bandit suppression expenses—July. Three thousand gold pieces for a single operation." I tapped the entry. "I authorized that operation myself. The calculated costs were maybe five hundred. Where did the other twenty-five hundred go?"
Lloyd frowned, leaning in to study the page. "I remember that operation. Small force, two-day deployment. Five hundred sounds right. But this entry..."
"Says three thousand," I finished bitterly. "And it's written in what looks like my hand. Perfect forgery. If I didn't remember the actual operation, I'd never question it."
"There are others?"
"Dozens." I gestured at the spread of ledgers. "Trade route protection costs—inflated. Border patrol expenses—tripled. Supply purchases—marked up beyond reason. All of it just believable enough that I might have authorized it in a moment of distraction. All of it bleeding us dry."
Lloyd's expression darkened. "Someone with access to your study. Your personal records. Your handwriting samples."
"Yes." The word tasted like ash. "And they've been doing it for... I don't know. Months? A year? Two years?"
"Since the Countess passed," Lloyd said quietly. "That's when things started feeling wrong. When the numbers stopped making sense."
From the corner of my eye, Eledy shifted—not fidgeting, but sharpening. Her head tilted a fraction. Attention narrowing.
A tiny sound—throat clearing.
Soft. Hesitant.
I turned.
Eledy's eyes were fixed on the ledgers spread across my desk. Not on Lloyd. Not on me. On the books themselves.
Her expression was thoughtful. Focused in a way that reminded me uncomfortably of Eleanor when she'd spotted something important.
"Can I..." she began, then paused. Started again, her voice carefully controlled. "...read those? While you talk?"
I blinked. "The ledgers?"
"You said you would teach me politics," she said, meeting my eyes directly for just a moment before her gaze dropped again. "And this is... real. This is what controls everything, isn't it? More than swords or strategy. The numbers."
My breath hitched.
Eleanor said that. Almost word for word.
Pride rose in my chest, mingled with something that felt dangerously like hope.
"...Very well," I said slowly. I selected several of the most clearly falsified ledgers and slid them toward her. "These are the accounts for this year. The falsified entries are marked where I've identified them."
She accepted the heavy books with steady hands and returned to her chair. She opened the first ledger with careful precision, her fingers tracing the edge of the page as if it were something precious.
Lloyd cleared his throat gently, pulling me back.
"The border patrol costs," Lloyd said, pointing to another ledger on my desk. "March through June. The expenses are triple what they should be. But again—"
"Perfect forgeries," I finished. "Written in my hand. Authorized with my seal. If I didn't personally remember the actual deployments..."
"You'd never question them."
"Yes." The word tasted bitter in my mouth.
Lloyd let out a deep sigh.
I rubbed my eyes, feeling every one of my years. "The trade route losses. Reported attacks on merchant caravans. Documented damages. Compensation paid out." I gestured at yet another ledger. "March 3rd—substantial losses reported on the eastern trade route. We paid out two thousand in compensation."
"Did the attacks actually happen?" Lloyd asked.
"Some of them, yes. But the amounts..." I shook my head. "I can't be certain anymore. What's real and what's inflated? What actually happened and what's completely fabricated?"
A soft rustle drew my attention. Eledy had shifted in her seat, pulling a second ledger closer. She held both books open now, her eyes moving between them with growing intensity.
"The timing is what bothers me," Lloyd said. "These incidents, these expenses—they seem to cluster. Like they're coordinated somehow."
"Or manufactured," I said quietly.
Eledy's breath caught. The sound was small, barely audible, but sharp enough that I noticed.
Her fingers pressed against the page she was reading, then reached for a third ledger with sudden urgency. The movements were no longer careful—they were hungry. Searching.
Lloyd kept talking, his voice steady. "The bandit suppression in July. The trade route incident in March. The border expenses in December—all of them resulted in significant documented costs that—"
"Father."
The single word cut through Lloyd's report like a blade.
I turned.
Eledy sat frozen, staring down at the open ledgers before her. Her face had gone pale. Her hands gripped the edges of the books so tightly her knuckles showed white against her skin.
"Eledy?"
The chair shrieked against the floor as she pushed to her feet. Too sudden. Too fast. She nearly knocked the books off her lap in her haste.
She gathered all three ledgers against her chest, cradling them like they might shatter. Her steps across the study were quick but measured, each one placed with visible effort at control despite the tremor running through her frame.
One ledger. Then another. Then the third. She set them down on my desk in sequence, each opened to a specific page, each positioned with deliberate care.
Her hand hovered above the first entry. Shaking.
"Father, I..." The words caught. She swallowed hard, tried again. Her voice came out barely louder than a whisper. "I think I found something."
Not excited. Not proud.
Terrified.
Like someone who'd just uncovered a grave and seen what lay inside.
I leaned forward, my pulse beginning to race. Lloyd moved closer, his entire body going still with focus.
Eledy's finger touched the first page. "This falsified bandit suppression cost. July 12th." She looked up at me, and her eyes were too wide, too bright. "When did Duke Castor offer border security help?"
My heart kicked hard against my ribs. "Late July. Two weeks later."
Her hand moved to the second ledger with trembling precision. "Trade route losses—March 3rd. When did he propose merchant stabilization?"
"Late March." Lloyd's voice dropped to barely a murmur. "Three weeks after the incident."
The third ledger. Her finger pressed down so hard against the entry I thought the page might tear beneath it.
"Border expenses—December 15th. When did he suggest military assistance?"
"Early January," I breathed. "Two weeks after."
The words left me hollow.
Eledy lifted her gaze to meet mine. Her blue eyes—Eleanor's eyes—burned with something caught between fury and vindication.
"Every one of these falsified entries appears right before Duke Castor offers to fix that exact problem." Each word came out precise. Controlled. Devastating. "Every. Single. One."
The silence that followed felt like falling.
I stared at the ledgers laid out before me. At the pattern my twelve-year-old daughter had uncovered in a single afternoon. The pattern I'd been living inside for three years without ever seeing the walls.
Three years.
While I'd buried myself in grief and self-pity, Duke Castor had been systematically destroying everything Eleanor and I had built together. Writing my downfall in my own handwriting. Sealing my destruction with my own seal.
And I'd never noticed.
I'd never even looked.
My daughter—the one I'd pushed away after Eleanor died, the one who'd stood alone and faced the mockery of nobles while I hid in my study—had solved it simply by paying attention.
She'd reached out to me. Asked to learn. To help.
And in one afternoon, she'd found what I'd been too blind to see for years.
"Father?" Eledy's voice had gone small. Uncertain.
I looked at her. Eleanor's eyes stared back at me. Eleanor's brilliant mind that could cut through lies and deception to find the truth beneath.
I'd lost my wife.
But I'd abandoned my daughter.
And she'd still tried to save me.
The weight of that realization crushed the breath from my lungs.
"Duke Castor," Lloyd said quietly, breaking through the moment. "He's manufacturing justification. Creating evidence of our incompetence. Building a narrative that makes his takeover look like rescue instead of theft."
"We can't prove it's him," I managed. The words felt hollow in my mouth. "The forgeries are perfect. The timing is suspicious but not definitive. He could claim coincidence. That he was simply responding to publicly known crises."
"But we know the truth," Lloyd said.
"Yes."
I turned back to my daughter. She stood there pale but composed, hands still trembling slightly where they rested on the ledger's edge. Waiting for me to tell her what to do. How to fix this.
The same way I used to wait for Eleanor.
What should I do, Eleanor?
The question rose unbidden. Automatic.
Then stopped.
Because Eleanor wasn't here.
But Eledy was.
And she'd just proven she had her mother's mind. Her mother's courage. Her mother's ability to see clearly when everyone else was blind.
Everything I'd been too lost in grief to see.
***