Page 80 of The Castle & the Cloister

“I don’t know!” Beneson answered in agony. “No one’s said anything about him.”

Snatching up his cane, the Priest put a hand on the page’s shoulder. “Take me to the queen’s rooms. Now.”

But when they reached the tunnel at the top of the cavern stair, a crowd of guards waited.

“Can’t let you through,” one of them said, half apologetically. “Magistrate’s orders.”

That would be Lucian. Court magistrate was, for the most part, a ceremonial title, which only mattered when it came to issues of succession. For obvious reasons, the magistrate was generally chosen from among those the king believed to be wholly on his side. Lucian had been given the role before the Priest returned, newly blinded, from Vesper. The Priest had tried, over the years, to convince Orden to remove Lucian from the office, but his brother hadn’t wanted the bother.

“And I have equal standing to the magistrate, if not greater, given that I am Priest. So move,” he ground out.

The guards did not budge. “It’s also our captain’s orders, and he specified that we weren’t to let you pass.”

Surely something terriblehadhappened in the mountain above, and this was no design of Orden’s. Surely his brother would not subject him to such indignity, nor the queen.

Without waiting or offering an argument, the Priest turned. He swept back down the stairs with Beneson, this time leading the way himself. They traveled along the cavern wall for a good long while, and the page did not speak, his breath ragged and choking in the silence. The boy was in tears and near panic, the Priest realized, but he couldn’t spare a thought for that yet. He was counting his steps and could not afford distraction.

At last, they’d traveled the necessary distance. The Priest groped along the cavern wall in the dark and felt heavy crescentcloth rather than stone.

“This way,” he murmured to Beneson, pulling the boy past the drapery and into a second tunnel.

Though the Priest had found and charted a number of such passageways, this one he’d never used after the initial discovery, wishing to keep its existence secret. He was forced to travel with a hand at face height, to ward off the cobwebs that thickly curtained the rising tunnel.Layers of rock dust shifted soft and gritty beneath his feet as they carried on. Finally, a faint murmur of voices grew audible ahead, and the Priest slowed, indicating to Beneson with a hand on the arm that they must move in silence.

Another barrier of crescentcloth, and they were out, into the masculine smell and forceful atmosphere of the king’s bedchamber. From the adjoining study, Lucian’s and Gaius’s voices emanated.

“… stupid to let it happen, regardless,” the spymaster was saying. “Doesn’t even matter who it was, or who takes over now. I’ll always feel a fool for backing the younger brother. Should’ve listened to Darias and taken the eldest’s part, but when Orden beat his father till the corpse was barely recognizable, well. I thought the writing was on the wall.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Gaius said in his rumbling, bulldog’s mutter. “I always liked the way he was with the guard. Easy with the rank and file, made people want to follow him. The older one was a witchsmoke vial waiting to shatter and consume us all.”

Lucian made a small sound of dissent. “I think he’d have evened out, in time, and done great things. Suppose it doesn’t matter now. You followed my orders for those conniving bitches, yes?”

“Hm. Dungeon for the queen, confinement to a storeroom for the nurse. You really think Dolenza’s handmaiden had nothing to do with it?”

This time, the noise Lucian made was disdainful. “Her Majesty’s swearing it up and down. On her son, on Orden’s corpse, on the stars themselves. If she had a goddess mark any longer, she’d swear by that too. But I don’t know. She’s the type to play the martyr to keep Raea’s cloister in one piece. Still, I don’t relish the idea of picking a fight with the Solis Plains.”

“Do you believe her story?” Gaius asked. “That she killed Orden herself because she was tired of moving him when she could just as well hold the reins of power?”

“Hardly!” Lucian sounded as if he’d like to spit in disgust. “She couldn’t kill a spider, much less the man she spread her legs for. What Orden saw in that spineless, sniveling little woman I’ll never know. We’ll keep her as a prize, for whoever claims the vacant throne. They can have Orden’s son, too—he’s in the queen’s rooms for now, though I suppose I’llhave to find him a decent nurse to keep him suckled until our next sovereign rises. Gods, never thought I’d see the day when I had to supervise an infant, even if he will end up on an altar before long.”

The Priest gestured to Beneson, and the boy’s hand was on his shoulder in a moment.

“Fetch the prince. Take him to my cell,” the Priest breathed. “Use the servants’ corridors and go unseen. Tuck Justus away while you move through the castle, like I did with his sister.”

Immediately, Beneson was off, moving with no more noise than a cat. Once he was certain the boy had gone, the Priest strode forward through Orden’s bedchamber and spoke.

“I hear I’m needed for final rites. I don’t appreciate being locked up like a common secretary when the gods’ business must be done.”

The moment of silence and sudden charge in the air spoke volumes as to Lucian’s and Gaius’s discomfort with his appearance. Were it not for the fact that he needed, desperately, to find out what the hell was going on, the Priest would have enjoyed their shock.

“Well?” he prompted. “Where is he? Mortis won’t wait long, or do youwantto raise the ire of the god of death?”

Of course they didn’t. Though the Invers were more than comfortable with other people dying, preferably in ways that conferred some advantage upon them, they were singularly uncomfortable with the idea of their own deaths. The Priest had made sure that Mortis was seen as a hungry and constant specter, looming over every soul equally and waiting to drag them into his realm. Any serious displeasure on the god’s part (and by extension, the Priest’s) could drastically shorten the duration of one’s life.

“By the window,” Gaius said hastily. “Behind the desk.”

The Priest crossed the room, careful to keep half his attention on the spymaster and captain of the guard. He did not think either would move on him, little though he was liked by them. Bad enough to have the void left by a dead king to worry over—the role of Priest was traditionally far more trouble to fill.

His cane tapped against the leg of Orden’s desk, and then struck something softer and more yielding. Lowering himself to his knees, the Priest reached out.