Page 148 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

But she was running out of time, and that was the one thing she could not bargain for more of. She pulled on a coat and her boots and tucked her papers into her pockets, and she was on her way.

Nore took her things and her cat to her office, accessing it through the back staircase and locking it securely, even though her clerks were gone for the night; then, she stopped by the harbor to purchase what she needed.

She had one more place to go before the prison. The execution wouldn’t take place until eight, so she had hours yet—and more than anything, Nore needed information.

She needed blackmail.

The carriage dropped her off just down the road from the duchess’s residence. Nore waited for a quarter of an hour, watching the windows. She had a suspicion that the duchess had just been in Nettlepool to receive her from Idistra—and she never stayed long. With any luck, Celestine was already back in Arlowe. She knew the duchess’s patterns, but the windows remained dark.

Nore thought of all the things that could go wrong. She let them roll off her like rainwater.

The lights were dimmed and there was no door guard when night fell—the duchess was not in residence. She gritted her teeth as she blurred her features, trying her best to obscure. The dress she wore was navy and sparse, the closest she could find in her own wardrobe to Celestine’s household uniform. Nore took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, coming out of the shadows. The best she could do was attempt to fit in. After all, that was why Celestine had picked her at fourteen, wasn’t it? She was just as much servant as noblewoman, and she’d been asked to play the part of maid dozens of times over the years in pursuit of information. Even in the duchess’s own house, she slid easily into anonymity.

She did not have a key to Celestine’s house, but she did have her lock-picking set. She went around the house to the servants’ entrance and picked the lock, slipping inside quietly. Once there, Nore hesitated for the barest moment, listening for anyone who could have uncovered her; she heard nothing.

She crept through the silent house, moving not like a thief, but like a maid of this house who’d crept out to meet with a lover and was only just returning. She stopped only when she reached Celestine’s office—and then Nore let herself in.

The office was probably warded, alarmed to alert the duchess of an intrusion, but she was hours away, either at court with the queen or in Arlowe.

She opened the door and slipped inside.

Celestine split her operations between here and the court. There was no guarantee she kept anything here that would prove that she had been meddling in Idistran politics, but she needed to find something. Anything that would protect her, that she could use as leverage.

Nore shut the door behind her, locked it, calculated two alarms to alert her if anyone came down the hallway, and set to work.

The desk, as expected, was locked and warded, so there was nothing she could glean from its drawers. Nore went to the cabinets where Celestine kept her letters next, rifling through all of them. She was searching, more specifically, for her own reports about Locke, signed off by Celestine, or other correspondence that revealed her associations.

But over an hour later, Nore had not found a single thing. Everything was filed, yes, but it was banal information, like invoices for the running of the house, addresses, invitations to dinner, letters from friends and solicitors and debtors, and dinner menus. None of it was in code, either, because Nore would’ve known. Perhaps Celestine had a secret office of some sort, but that was unlike her; most of what she did, she did in plain sight.

She sat back, on the floor, surrounded by useless files, and stared at the opposite wall. There, Celestine kept the rows and rows of wine, gifts from Nore. Nore stared at them, anger rising within her. She launched up at the wall, grabbed one of the bottles—and as she realized that it was too light, it was already slipping through her fingers.

The bottle hit the ground and shattered.

Nore stared at the small amount of wine that spread—not enough for a bottle, and in the middle of the mess was a rolled sheaf of papers.

She pulled out one of the other bottles, the realization dawning: they were the double-walled bottles they used to pass correspondence, with dark wine between the two walls, and a dry space for paper in the middle of the bottle, which could be easily removed by pressing a latch at the bottom.

Nore’s heart pounded in her chest as she knelt down. She carefully lifted the letter from the glass and shook the rest away. Her hands trembled as she unfolded it—and revealed her own handwriting. She barely had to think to decode it:

[771] Rasira–N

[773] Aluna (M)–L

[778] Isan (T)–S

[802] Carnelion–CS

[800] Harkan (W)–E

[804] Marget (M) - L

[815] Grakima–S

[853] Taran–N

[853] Ilona (M)–CS

She pulled the next bottle, which contained the rest of her reports from Locke, along with an annotated list of Lindle nobility in Celestine’s handwriting. None of them were in Gail’s writing, because Gail hadn’t put in the effort—but perhaps this, added to the letter with his seal imprinted on it, was enough?