“I really do have to go now. I have to go to a funeral,” Willem said, looking at the clock ticking in the corner of his office. He stood up from his chair. “On that front, maybe we can hold one for your brother. Probably sounds weird, but these things help with closure.”

  Suzanne looked at Willem Jansen closely. “You need… I need you to consent to some tests and procedures,” she insisted.

  Willem looked at her like she’d a second head. “What, turn my head and cough? That kind of thing?”

  “I’m willing to help you understand this matter, but I need your absolute cooperation,” Suzanne said. “I have some theories for what might’ve happened. I want to test them.” Suzanne waited for his answer. If he didn’t agree, she was prepared to do something a little drastic.

  “I’m not really interested, but…” Willem briefly looked at himself in the mirror, fixing up his hair quickly. “Sure, why not?”

  “You act like Willem in some ways. I don’t think he’d care either.” Suzanne crossed his arms. “Why are you agreeing?”

  “I’m not big on squatter’s rights,” Willem said, then tapped his chest. “And this isn’t my home, I’ll admit it. I’ve got to pay my rent one way or another. If these tests help close things up, so be it.”

  “Alright,” Suzanne nodded in acceptance. “I’ll prepare a battery of tests once I’ve done further research.”

  “I hope you won’t publish these findings widely,” Willem said. “Not yet, at least. I’d like to be suitably rich, and therefore suitably entrenched in the corrupt power structure, before things heat up in that fashion.”

  “Do you expect me to keep this from the others?” Suzanne asked. “They have the right to know.”

  Willem put on a suitably somber black cloak. “And they will know. Maybe we can tell the brothers on their birthday, since they seemed to loathe the other Willem so much. The others… they’re part of my plans, you know?”

  “I can see why the others couldn’t notice the change for so long,” Suzanne said. “You’re as manic and pathologically incurious as he was, just… you have a different obsession driving you.”

  “Look, I am somewhat sorry. But you know this wasn’t something that I engineered.” He shot out his cuffs. “I’ll be leaving, now. We can continue this discussion on another date.”

  Willem departed, leaving her alone in his Society of Assured Prosperity. She walked over to the chair that she’d left and sat down, ruminating over what had happened. She would need to do deep research. Surely something like this wasn’t unprecedented. Even if it was… there had to be some literature that could help her.

  Whatever the case, she wouldn’t rest until she found it.

  ***

  Willem had attended his fair share of funerals. Hundreds, maybe thousands. His army fellows, colleagues, and family. As he stood there watching over the ceremony, he wondered what his service had been like.

  Bunch of commies probably pissed on my grave. If there even was a grave. Didn’t have anyone, anybody. He tried to think about who might bury him. That doctor? Sad thought. Maybe my broker—I’ll bet he cried like a baby when he learned there’d be no more commissions for him. I think I donated my body to science, but I made that damn will so long ago I can’t even remember.

  Generally, people were supposed to be sad when they had no one surrounding them. But if Willem had cared, he’d have done something about that long ago. It was easy enough to find a family, especially when you had nothing but money. Something real, though? Finding something real wasn’t easy for someone like him. All of the things that made him right for the game of business made him wrong for others.

  But who cares? He was having fun.

  “Now… a word from Willem, the treasurer of the Society of Assured Prosperity.”

  When his name was called, Willem came to attention. He moved to stand over the open grave, where he looked out across the crowd gathered around it. Nothing like a funeral to tug at the purse strings.

  “It isn’t my place to ramble about a man I didn’t know for long,” Willem said, making his voice suitably somber. “I knew Drell for only a short period of time. But in that time, there are indelible facts that he left behind. He joined the Society of Assured Prosperity fearing that a day such as this would come. And while it’s tragic that the day did indeed come for him… I believe he will be resting peacefully, knowing that each and every member of the society is looking after those that he left behind.”

  There were some tears shed, some heartache expressed, and Willem waited for it to pass to continue.

  “Drell should stand as an example to each and all of us. Let us all honor his memory, now and forevermore, toward our goal of a prosperous future. All of us must do our part, so that we are one day thusly remembered.”

  Willem saw a young girl looking down into the grave and then up at her grief-ridden mother in confusion. She wasn’t sad, she was just… puzzled. It was like she couldn’t even comprehend what was happening. Maybe she didn’t know what death was, or maybe no one had taken the time to tell her. For a moment, the girl he saw overlapped with the daughter that he’d once had… and that was him in that grave down there.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Willem felt something salty on his lips, and touched his face.

  Damn. A tear? Didn’t know I still had those.

  He wiped it away as quickly as he could in embarrassment, then walked away from his position at the head of the grave. Soon enough, others went up there to speak, but Willem’s mind was somewhat in turmoil. He hadn’t meant to seem soft-hearted in front of all of those people. Thankfully, no one seemed to be looking down on him.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. Well… let’s hope the speech did what it could to prevent people from leaving the society. Something about this funeral in particular… it was bothering him. Maybe it had just been Viviene awakening decades-closed scars, but he felt somewhat like trash. Or maybe it had been the conversation with Suzanne.

  Or maybe it was because he was trash. That might actually explain a lot more than his present feeling.

  It’d been easy to ignore the fact that he’d displaced Willem van Brugh when everyone and everything had been saying negative things about the man. But that girl—his sister—had liked Willem. She’d grieved for him. His mother, too, Viviene… she’d be devastated. She’d cried and hugged an eighty-seven-year-old doppelganger who told her a sob story about his family.

  Didn’t I resolve not to think about this? Willem pondered. Why am I getting caught up in a rut?

  Willem had been planning to delay Suzanne’s tests for as long as possible—keep the plates spinning while he attended to the things that actually interested him. Now, though, he was feeling some strange obligation. It was like there was something within him, pulling and yanking his chain.

  The funeral came to a close, and the gravediggers began to shovel dirt over the wooden casket that Drell had been interred within. There were more tears from the attendees as the man was finally put in the earth, but soon enough the earth was level again. Just after, a priestess of the local church approached, carrying a sapling.

  The priestess buried the sapling in the earth. Thereafter, she held her hand out. Magic flowed from her to the tree, and the sapling seemed to shift slightly, its roots finding purchase in the fresh earth. She stood up and backed away, then bowed without another word. Willem looked around the graveyard, taking a moment to examine the place.

  There were hundreds of trees sprouting all around. Each took the shape of the dead buried beneath them. Soon enough, that sapling that had been buried here today would grow the same way, coming into form as the man named Drell who had died an unfortunate death. There was a certain somber beauty to this grove of the dead.

  Being buried like this, surrounded by loving family… it wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. But I’d need something real for that. And real… it’s not something that someone like me can just find.

  Perhaps he was wrong not to at least try. He had a competent partner in Gustav, now. Maybe he could afford to take things a little easier.

  ***

  Godfried stared at Galahad, his mind blank. The man’s lips moved, but the words coming out of his mouth didn’t register in his mind. All he heard was a low, constant ringing. His mind was occupied by one thought alone. It wasn’t even a word. It was almost a question, but not quite.

  Godfried felt nothing but pure, unadulterated disbelief.

  “Hey,” Galahad finally said, grasping Godfried’s hair. “Are you listening to me?”

  “How long?” Godfried asked. “How long?!”

  “This happened a week ago,” Galahad said. “Arend is being held in the capital, but we’ve already determined that, like you, he was unrelated to this incident. Nevertheless, his act of rage resulted in the death of more than a few people, all of whom will have their cases brought to trial. It’s not likely he’ll be going home.”

  “No… how long was Dorothea working for Avaria?” Godfried said, his arms pushing away Galahad’s hand.

  “Tough to say,” Galahad continued. “She still had her heart, meaning that she wasn’t a slave. This was something that she pursued on her own, likely for selfish reasons. Promises of land, wealth, et cetera. Given that fact, and that she was given a task as important as orchestrating an invasion, I have to suspect that she’d been working with them a fairly long time.”

  Godfried could barely stand on his feet after hearing that. He felt nauseous. His whole world was crumbling down around him.

  “And Willem?” he asked. “Willem, he…?”

  “He was the initial reporter,” Galahad said. “Like a good subject of the king, he immediately sent a letter detailing what he knew about Dorothea’s activities as soon as he learned about them. While he was a collaborator with Avaria briefly, it was an unwitting move on his part. This was all confirmed under the supervision of a lie-detecting spell. He’s facing no charges for now, but he’s under light surveillance while we investigate this matter deeper.”

  Godfried hung his head, unable to muster any willpower after what had happened.

  “Now, I’d like you to answer a few questions about the pair,” Galahad continued. “Anything that you can tell me might help.”

  ***

  “Baron Tielman.”

  Tielman lifted his head when his voice was called, looking toward the source. One of the king’s officials stood there in stately clothes. The man was probably higher ranked than Tielman himself, but there was a certain measure of respect in his tone of voice and posture.

  “Right this way, sir. The king will speak to you now,” he gestured to the hallway beyond.

  Tielman felt a roiling storm in his stomach. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but apparently the king had gotten word of the poisoning. Tielman had come to the capital seeking out Suzanne, but it had proven the perfect pretext for the king to snatch him up for an audience regarding this matter of pivotal concern.

  He wasn’t looking forward to the attention of the king. That man… once his eye fell upon something, it would tear apart anything that stood near it. And soon enough, the king’s eye would be on House Brugh.

  Only the goddess knew if it would weather the storm.

  “You should rest easy, sir,” the official said. “The king is in a particularly good mood. I suspect your visit will go well.”

  Baron Tielman swallowed. The last time that he’d been told the king was in a good mood… he and Viviene had been engaged.