Chapter 147: Assassination Attempt
The dessert course was served at the fourteenth hour — honey cakes soaked in Shimmerfields wildflower syrup, a Festival tradition dating to Year 38 AF. The inner ring’s conversation had mellowed through the predictable stages of a political dinner: guarded courtesy (first hour), cautious exchange (second hour), wine-assisted candor (third hour). Grand Duke Sarvek was telling an old story about the Green Basin’s founding-era harvest festivals — a story that Callister listened to with the patient courtesy of a man who had heard it before and Brogath listened to with the genuine interest of a Minotaur who valued tradition.
Pope Elwyn was smiling. The smile was rare enough that people noticed — the attendants, the Cardinals at the secondary table, the Crown Guard stationed at the feast perimeter. Elwyn Asheld, whose daily expression ranged from weary to contemplative, was *smiling*. The Festival had reached the particular equilibrium where food, wine, proximity, and the simple pleasure of shared experience produced, briefly, something that resembled happiness.
The crossbow bolt entered the feast ground from the northeast — from the rooftop of the Merchant Guild’s administrative building, which overlooked Founding Square from a height of forty meters and an angle that provided a clear line of sight to the inner ring’s northern arc.
The bolt struck Cardinal Maren’s chair — the high-backed ceremonial seat occupied by the Cardinal of Ashenveil, who was seated three positions from the Pope. The bolt embedded in the chair’s wooden back, four inches from Maren’s left shoulder. Four inches from killing the second-highest-ranking churchman in the Crucible.
The feast erupted.
Not into chaos — the Crown Guard’s response was too fast, too practiced, too thoroughly drilled for chaos. Within three seconds: shields up around the inner ring, covering the nobles and church leaders. Within eight seconds: a perimeter cordon sealing Founding Square’s exits. Within fifteen seconds: a rapid-response team deploying toward the Merchant Guild building, moving through the crowd with the controlled urgency of soldiers who had trained for this specifically.
The thirty thousand civilians in the outer rings didn’t know what had happened — they saw the shields, heard shouted commands, felt the particular atmospheric shift that occurred when military discipline replaced festival celebration. The panic was localized: the inner ring’s attendees — who had seen the bolt, who had heard it impact, who had recognized, with the adrenaline-sharpened clarity of people in immediate danger, that someone had just tried to kill one of them — were being evacuated through the secured southern corridor before most of the feast ground understood that the celebration was over.
***
Cardinal Maren was uninjured — physically. His composure was another matter. The bolt had passed close enough to his face that he’d felt the air displacement against his cheek, and the experience had produced the particular kind of shock that came from confronting mortality in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
"Four inches," Maren said. He was in the Crown Guard’s emergency bunker — a secured room beneath the Royal Court, reinforced stone, no windows. The inner ring’s occupants had been evacuated here — thirteen nobles, six Cardinals, the Pope, the King, and the approximately forty attendants and guards who had been close enough to the impact zone. "If I had leaned left to speak to Tessyn — if I had shifted in my chair — the bolt would have been in my neck."
"The bolt was aimed at the chair, not the person," said Jareth Gorvaxis, who had assumed tactical command of the security response. "The trajectory analysis — which we’ll complete once we have the bolt — will confirm whether this was an assassination attempt or a calculated miss."
"A calculated miss?"
"A bolt that kills a Cardinal is an assassination. A bolt that misses a Cardinal by four inches is a message. The message is: we can reach you. We chose not to. This time."
The room absorbed this. The distinction between attempted murder and calculated intimidation was meaningful — one was an act of war, the other was an act of terror. Both were devastating. But they required different responses.
King Aldren’s face was stone. The Festival of Flame — his Festival, the kingdom’s annual expression of unity and stability — had been attacked. Not by an army, not by a rival god’s forces, not by any visible external threat. By a single bolt, fired from a civilian building, aimed at a churchman at the king’s own table.
"Who?" Aldren said.
Nobody answered. Because nobody knew.
***
The Merchant Guild building was secured by the rapid-response team within four minutes of the attack. The rooftop yielded evidence: the crossbow — military grade, standard issue, the type distributed to garrison units across the kingdom. A firing position — sandbags arranged on the rooftop’s eastern edge, providing a stable platform with a clear sightline to the inner ring. And absence: no shooter. Whoever had fired the bolt had abandoned the position before the response team arrived.
"Pre-positioned," Tess reported. She was at the rooftop, examining the evidence with the technical eye of a trained intelligence operative. The report went to Vrenn. "The sandbags were placed before the Festival — possibly the night before. The crossbow was left at the firing position. The shooter didn’t take it."
"Left deliberately?"
"Left as evidence. The crossbow’s serial markings are intact — they can be traced to the issuing garrison. The shooter wanted us to find the weapon. Wanted us to trace it."
Vrenn’s claws tapped. "The weapon leads somewhere. Either somewhere true or somewhere false. A professional assassin who pre-positions sandbags, fires a bolt designed to miss, and leaves a traceable weapon behind is not trying to kill. They’re trying to manipulate."
"Manipulate toward what?"
"Toward the investigation. The investigation will follow the evidence — the traceable crossbow, the sandbag materials, whatever forensic trail was left on the rooftop. The trail was designed. The destination was chosen. Someone wants the investigation to arrive at a specific conclusion — a conclusion that serves their purpose."
The crossbow’s serial number was logged. The trace began. And the kingdom — which had been celebrating its annual unity — went to bed knowing that someone with military-grade equipment, professional training, and strategic patience had sent a message from a rooftop that said:
Your feast is not safe. Your church is not safe. Your unity is performance. And we can end the performance whenever we choose.