Revelation

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

                Barton intentionally arrived to the meeting last and just a little late. Hopefully, it would serve as a reminder that he was still in charge, something that a few of the captains liked to forget. The meeting wouldn’t start until he arrived, but had any of them decided to come in late, they’d have started without them. It really wasn’t in Barton’s character to do such things, but Curtis Andolsek and Robert Feyler could use a slight reminder, and Barton was sure the two of them were smart enough to figure it out.

                As for the other captains, his tardiness would likely confuse Austin Galdikas and Fernando Swift. They wouldn’t likely understand his reasons, and if Barton knew them as well as he thought he did, they’d suspect that he was up to something. Lilla Seabright and Kimberella Lyken, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was doing and why. It had been Kimberella’s idea in the first place. If there were two people he could count on to be on his side, it was Kimberella and Lilla.

                When he walked into the meeting room, his fallow deer fylgja at his side, all the attention was on him, which went exactly as planned. Of course, Lopi drew attention as well, as fylgjas never attended the meetings with their humans without good reason, but in this instance, Barton saw attention for Lopi as attention for him.

                “I believe you had something you wanted to bring up, Fernando,” Barton said as he took his seat. Lopi stood behind him and Barton hoped she’d be okay during the meeting. He’d have to remember to check on her and hope he could make her behave for the duration of the meeting. It wouldn’t do to have to remove her halfway through.

                “I’ve been taking a look at the losses we’ve sustained in the past three years,” Fernando said. “I noticed they haven’t stopped in the past year, as we’d have expected if Laporte had been the cause of all the trouble. There was a drop in deaths starting last March, but it picked up again about a month later. I’ve been wondering if perhaps we have another threat besides Laporte.”

                “Assuming he was even the cause of anything,” Lilla spoke up. “Given that nothing changed after his death, I’m thinking he wasn’t.”

                “There’s another interesting statistic that I found when looking at Fernando’s report,” Feyler said, ignoring Lilla. “There’s been a significant drop in the amount of deaths that have occurred in the past four weeks. I looked into it further and found that starting at the same time, there have been some nonsensical personnel moves.”

                “What do you mean by that?” Fernando asked, frowning. “Nonsensical moves?”

                “People have been moved from wherever they were stationed to somewhere else for no apparent reason. Given that these have mostly been higher ranking personnel with more influence, I believe these were targets for whoever’s out there trying to kill Anitreh. Which begs the question, how does someone know who is about to be targeted?” Feyler turned his attention to Barton and the rest of the room followed his lead.

                “What makes you think I know anything?” Barton asked. He knew exactly what Feyler had discovered, but he would make him say it out loud anyway. And perhaps he’d have an answer he didn’t expect.

                “All of the suspicious orders were yours,” Feyler said. Just as Barton had expected. He hadn’t bothered hiding his name from the orders, as it would have been rather difficult, and it didn’t matter to him that he would be found out.