Sophia entered Alexander's study with the small leather folder pressed to her chest like a talisman. The afternoon light had thinned to honey, and the study smelled of old books and wax. Alexander sat at his desk, fingers steepled, eyes on the ledger he pretended to be reading. Even when he did not speak, his presence filled the room; his posture betrayed an alertness that no amount of outward calm could hide.
She set the folder down between them and, without preamble, opened it. Inside were names, positions, little notes she had made in the margins of habits, shifts, who slept where, who preferred what, and the tiny, telling lies she had watched unravel through ledger entries, furtive glances, and the single, bright evidence of thought the owners of those glances could never hide from her.
"Thirteen," she said simply. "Thirteen servants placed across the household by different royal patrons. Two more, placed by the Valeharts." Her voice was flat, the way a surgeon's is when listing incisions. "I want them gone."
Alexander's gaze flicked to the first page and then to her face. He read the list twice, fingers tracing the neat ink like a man trying to prove that ink could not be treachery. The names were not noble; they were the servants who passed cups, swept corridors, mended hems, and moved unnoticed. The very invisibility that made them perfect for eavesdropping.
He made the practical observation first, the one shaped by the calculus of rule rather than the heat of righteous outrage. "If we remove them suddenly, those who placed them will be alerted," he said. "They will know a hand has moved. And they will move faster, deeper."
Sophia's jaw tightened. She had expected this. She had anticipated a dozen counters and could hear them already in her own mind ... Selene, the eldest concubine, the quiet earl of the Valeharts, even the steward's desperate chuckle if she named names too loudly. Removing spies was a neat, satisfying act but it was not always the wisest. A trail of missing people could be read like a confession. The palace feared quiet above all else.
"You would keep them, then?" she asked.
He shook his head minutely. "Not keep, no." He tapped a finger against the paper. "Use."
Use. The word landed and shifted the room.
Alexander folded the paper back into the leather folder and set it between them like a chess piece. "Let them think you are blind," he said. "Let them continue to speak to them freely. We can feed them carefully chosen falsities, false grievances, controlled slips. Use the mouths they've been given. Better: let them carry counsel that cements confidence in us where we want it, and sows confusion where we do not."
Sophia listened, and the first time she did not reflexively counter ... she let the idea settle. It was a long view tactic. It would be slower, more dangerous in that it required patience and restraint, but it would conceal intent and, perhaps more valuable to both of them, buy them leverage.
Her mind, always hungry for small human textures, flicked through the list again. The thirteen were placed conveniently: two laundry maids who answered to different ladies, a footman who lingered near the king's messengers, a pastry apprentice with quick hands and even quicker ears, a chambermaid who cleaned the East Wing corridors, a stable groom near the Prince's entrance, the steward's scribe, two kitchen lads, the laundress's foreman, a page in the royal school, a dresser in the great hall, and a young groom who tended to the King's favored horse. The two Valehart men were less integrated, an envoy-turned-attendant posted in the outer kitchens, and a courier who claimed to be losing letters for the palace but had another reason for the route he took.
She had numbered them on purpose in her report ... placement, chain of command, and the one line that mattered the most: who trusts them. Trust, she had learned, was currency in the palace as much as coin.
"What do you suggest we tell them?" she asked finally. Her voice was the poised tone of a commander ready to reassign soldiers; she had long ago learned that fury must be traded for plans.
Alexander's mouth softened into something like a feral smile. "Start small. Rumors of a small surplus of funds in the East Wing, a store meant for repairs but supposedly abused. A suggestion that the prince has lost interest in the East Wing's renovations and that the overseers are seeking outside contractors. Let those be whispered by the laundry maids. Let the pastry boy overhear a comment about a feast canceled, replaced by a smaller private dinner, enough to have suppliers thinking there's an opening to overcharge someone else. Let the groom hear suggestive words about the prince's health declining. Most of all," he looked straight at Sophia, "let them sense division."
Sophia's eyebrows rose. "Staging division?"
"Yes." He folded his hands. "If the households that have spies believe we are losing our grip, if they see the prince's consort as weakened, if they think you are losing favor, they will grow bold. They will move their interests closer, but not without speaking to their insiders first. We will feed through those insiders. We will be a well that is tapped from within."
She thought of the strategy as if it were a scale: keep one pan heavy with apparent weakness so the other pan, their hidden strength, could move unobserved. It required theater and discipline in equal measure. But a theater that would put them both at risk, for acting distant necessitated visible arguments, frosty rooms, a deliberate uncollected appearance, a quantified withdrawal of Sophia's public counsel. They would have to behave, to perform the unraveling.
"You're asking us to pretend to fall apart," Sophia said. Her mind flickered to the dangers: a real rift could be amplified, misread, turned into propaganda by those who wanted her marginalised. It would be a gamble on the palace's appetite for spectacle. It also required them to be ruthless with the image they presented: her authority must appear to dwindle, and the Prince's health to visibly wane.
"It must hurt," Alexander agreed. "It must look real to those who would benefit most from our weakness. But it must not be real. We will maintain the levers. Damien will be our anchor. The stewarding of false narratives will be channeled through the thirteen and the Valehart two, under the eyes of the butler you appointed and the head maid."
Sophia's mind moved to logistics. "We will need to choreograph the details: where each of them overhears what, who is seen in the corridor at the right moment, which letters become 'misplaced.' We'll need to plan exactly how our behavior appears, what words we say in public, the dinners we decline, the times I look distracted, the small errors that will convince them we are fraying."
Alexander nodded. "And a list of safe rumors. We must avoid anything that could result in violence or drastic policy shifts. This is subterfuge, not sabotage. Our falsehoods should lead to complacency in them, to the impression that we are harmless, wounded, and therefore unsuspecting. Then, when they lean in, their tongues will loosen. They will reveal plans among themselves, trusting the very people who will carry those lies."
She realized she had been thinking too narrowly before, only in terms of removing the cancer. He wanted to make that cancer talk, to open its mouth and let them see its interior. A surgeon who makes an illusion of sickness to draw out the parasite. The plan was elegant and dangerous.
"Damien will have to be trusted with details," Sophia said. "He will handle the physical movement of men we decide to keep in place and supervise any subtle surveillance. He already knows the Prince's moods, the schedules, the places men who mean mischief like to linger. He can be our shield in public."
"And the butler?" Alexander asked.
"You said you would let me appoint a new butler," Sophia reminded him. "He will be the one to channel information to the two Valehart agents under pretense of routine instructions. The head maid will stage minor complaints in the East Wing, pushing the maids toward overhearing certain gossip. We will need a code to confirm when a planted comment has taken root."
Alexander closed his eyes for a second, thinking not only as a ruler but also as a strategist who had spent too long holding his cards close to the chest. "We have to be very careful," he said. "If any of those placed servants have loyalties to someone who might expose them, a brother, a cousin, we must know their networks. Also, the Valeharts will be watching. Part of their placement aims to keep us cowed. We do this wrong, and they accelerate."