"Start by replacing your maids," Lex told her, "because the ones you have are probably watching. Find good reasons to fire them, frame them if you must, but they are the ones watching you for your husband. Once you have your own maids, we will see to the rest." With that, he departed from the chambers, back the way he came -- the back passage.

While she was dealing with her maids, Lex had other plans for himself -- he knew who was drinking and who had women on the side and who was in debt. A simple thing, really, to subvert such from the inside. The castle may have seemed a happy place, at least to the lords who lived in it, but the servants tended to go unnoticed, and their woes unseen. Their problems were ignored. And that was Lex's opening. 

It was all a question of where to start. The groom pondered this as he headed back into the stables, even as the rest of the castle was still reacting in shock and dismay over the Captain's death. Away from Alaera, he was able to sit down and plot out his first approaches, who he would speak to first. Once he started making a list of people and their vulnerabilities, it turned out that there were quite a few -- a slack palace like this didn't lack for philanderers, drunkards and debtors, after all...