"Why would someone try to bring down the Zhaos?" Henri asked Zhiyu, who didn't have an answer for him. Not surprising, did anyone who was part of a noble family think there was a legitimate reason to bring them down?
"Why would someone try to bring down the Zhaos?" He asked Harmoni, his sister and the acting head of the family while he was running the Camelia.
"Jealousy." She said. "The Zhaos have money, power, respect. Those are strong reasons for anyone to want to hurt them." But it felt off. There was something missing that neither she nor Henri could articulate.
"Why would someone try to bring down the Zhaos?" Henri asked the Colfaxes in the capital in the letter, but their response had only been, "Who are the Zhaos?"
So they hadn't been any help at al.
"Why would someone try to bring down the Zhaos?" Henri asked Marian when he joined her and Brendan for a meal again. Brendan was growing by leaps and bounds and the shy little boy Princess Soliel and Lord Ye had met in the capital was gone. Now he ran up to everyone, fearless in a way that Henri wasn't sure was actually good for him, but which Marian and Min seemed determined to indulge. But Marian's answer had been the same as Harmoni.
"To replace them," she'd said immediately. That was why most noble families fell. Someone wanted what they had. The second most common reason being revenge for something they did, normally while climbing to whatever position they were at when they fell.
Which was likely, but still felt like Henri was missing something incredibly obvious.
"Why would someone try to bring down the Zhaos?" Henri asked Finn, Emmy, and Patrick one day while they were briefing him on their plan to close up all the access points to the vault but one.
Finn, Emmy, and Patrick shared a contemplative look that made them seen even younger than usual.
"Revenge?" Patrick guessed.
"Greed." Emmy stated confidently, but still none of them looked totally convinced.
But it was Finn who finally got it. "I mean…they could be trying to hurt Eirian or Chenzhou, right? By hurting Lord Zhao?"
They'd all turned to him, surprised by the insight but also the wisdom.
And how obvious after it seemed after he'd said it.
They'd stared until Finn started to shift, nervous under three sets of eyes.
Henri was too elated to have found the missing piece to notice.
Just hearing it out loud made the pieces fall into place. The Zhao's were definitely in an enviable position, if you aspired to that kind of life and responsibility.
But there were easier ways to gain wealth and power, albeit they'd take more time, but they had to advantage if not making enemies with someone that had the resources to make your life incredibly difficult.
You'd have to be pretty confident to take on a family like that.
Maybe that was part of why whoever it was had chosen to target Mingzhe first. Coming at their target from an unexpected direction?
"Is this about the rumors going around?" Emmy was proving to be surprisingly sharp.
Henri didn't see much of a reason to keep it from them. They were removed enough from the Court that there was little chance they'd get dragged in. Plus they might overhear something that could be useful with all the time they spent with the guards and servents.
"I think so. The Zhao's are worried, it seems a bit too targeted. More than the usual mutterings."
"That usually happens once the fighting's over." Finn sounded worried, which wasn't surprising given how close he was to the people involved and his experience with his own family.
Plenty of aspiring nobles had targeted the Vermeers over the years.
None of them had ever succeeded and the Vermeers had developed a dark reputation for how they had dealt with a few of them.
"Which is why the Zhao's are so concerned." Henri admitted.
"Is there anything we can do?" Finn asked, like they didn't already spend every waking hour working in the Vault.
Henri gave them a smile for the offer, but shook his head. "Stay with the vault for now, but pass on anything you hear. Any luck identifying whose stealing from the Vault?"
Finn pulled out a scroll of notes and presented it to Henri, but a single glance told him he wasn't going to be able to read anything Finn had written.
How was he related to so many artists but had such terrible hand writting?
"Why don't you just tell me the highlights?" Henri suggested.
Finn straightened, "Oh, alright. We found two dozen unauthorized entrances into the Vault. Captain Li is personnaly overseeing sealing them now. Once that's complete we're going to lock and bar all the doors except the main doors."
"Smart." That would let them control access to the Vault the way it should have always been but also allowed them to set a trap in controlled conditions.
"We've gone through the Inventories to see who has, and had, access." Finn scratched his nose. "But, even just looking back at the last two hundred years, every family in the Court had access at some point. The previous Lord Ye did restrict many, most of them, and Chenzhou hasn't granted access to anyone new except Eirian but she's only been in the Vault a handful of times and never unaccompanied."
Henri nodded. "I agree, she is a very unlikely suspect."
Finn's relief was evident and Henri hoped he'd get to keep that idolization for a long time. A heroes fall was always life changing and rarely in a good way. "What about the current families in the court, do any of them stand?"
Finn nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, so the families that have accessed the Vault the most often are the Yangs, followed by the Yins, the Wens, the…Colfaxes." Henri smirked. "The Zhaos were actually one of the families who accessed the Vault the least."
"Interesting." Henri frowned. But how did that help the Zhaos? And why were the Yangs, the Yins, and the Wens in the Vault so much?
~ tbc