We both turned towards the desk as Hellen tripped over some of the empty drink bottles.
“Daniel, do you think mother’s okay?”
“She will be fine. She’s in a locked complex with hundreds of people to talk to and scheme for and against. Do you really think she isn’t having the time of her life?”
“Good point,” she laughed.
“She’ll be fine, Alessandria. My concern is where is Ares? He should be here. He wouldn’t have known Lady Serpentine gave him up,”
“A matter of time perhaps until she did?”
“Killing her Grandchild was a poor move. The better idea would be to kidnap him and force her not to tell us,”
“You’ve given this some thought,”
“If my military history obsession has taught me anything. It’s you need to spend as much time thinking like the enemy than a loyal soldier,”
Alessandria simply nodded.
“If I was Ares, I would’ve... I don’t know. He has nowhere to go,”
“Exactly, dear sister. He has nothing left to lose,”
“Suicide?”
I smiled at the comment.
“As a person who almost did, this isn’t enough to drive him to it. And all his behaviour seems to be driven by the death of the Queen. And he still has the support of the Triad presumably, so suicide is too doubtful,”
“What ya make of these?” Hellen asked as she pointed to piles of parchment on the desk.
I rushed over and waved Alessandria over.
She flicked through the pages of parchment with thick layers of text and diagrams. The cold parchment felt strange in my hands, as did the ancient smell of the parchment. Almost as if it were mouldy.
“These are diagrams of the bridge near the main river a few kilometres away,” Alessandria explained.
“I have some schematics about carriages. The weak points are highlighted,” Hellen added.
I took those schematics and said: “I’ll show them to Harrison to see if they’re important,”
Alessandria asked: “Would you be okay in the engineering room? It’s loud and sweaty,”
“I’ll have to be for the Queen,”
Alessandria nodded.
Placing my pieces of parchment on the desk, I said: “And these drawings and recipes of gunpowder,”
“Wait, Alessandria didn’t ya say the Queen gonna to the Outer most military Base in Ordericous today?”
“She would have to cross that bridge,” I added.
“They’re going to blow up on the bridge when she crosses it,” Alessandria finished. Dashing out the room to avert disaster.
CHAPTER 17
As their horses thumped along the hard dirt road, Alessandria, Hellen and Nemesio braced themselves as their horses stomped their hooves into the road. Travelling as fast as they could.