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Sorasa’s footsteps slowed, hesitating at a crossing of passages. The great hall was ahead, but the servants’ wing was to the left, its hallways narrow and winding, a warren of storerooms, sleeping quarters, kitchens, cellars, a brewery, a buttery, a laundry, and a bakehouse. Not to mention its own gate, dock, and bridge to the rest of the city.
The decision took only a moment.
The residence, great hall, and east wing were newborn, a riot of vaulted archways, soaring stonework, and stained glass completed only in the last decade. They were magnificent, beautiful, and woefully vulnerable, built for style rather than safety. A dozen alcoves and balconies made Sorasa’s path even easier. She moved on, chin high before servants and eyes low before guards, her manner shifting from lady to maid and back again in fluid rhythm. As always, she was surprised by how easy it was to pass through a palace unaccosted, without question or even a curious glance.
No wonder so many women served the Guild.The Amhara has great need for those who can pass unseen, and who is more unseen to men than a woman?
A long passage ran the southern length of the great hall, connecting the east wing to the keep with a row of lion-faced columns, some stoic, some snarling, each regal as a king. The doorways between the columns to her right were open, flung wide to show the great hall in all its splendor. A knight stood in each, facing outward, eyes dull as Sorasa walked past. Queen Erida’s late father had spared no expense in his palace, crowning his high table with a curved wall of windows brilliant as jewels. Green silk and velvet dominated the crowd of courtiers, each in competition to be more verdant than the last. One idiot appeared to be wearing a lion’s mane as a collar. By Sorasa’s glancing count, more than two hundred nobleborn men and women feasted, shouting toasts to the Queen and her betrothed. He was not on the raised dais yet, if the empty chair by the Queen was any indication. Erida was impossible to ignore at the center of her high table, her gown red as a polished ruby, her face moon white. A marvelously simple target for any inclined to send Galland into a succession crisis.
Not my job, not my problem,Sorasa thought, eyeing the knights again.
She turned a corner, edging along the banquet, half listening to chattering voices. She set to climbing, ascending steps to a gallery above.
It ringed the great hall in a wide balcony, open to below, and was blissfully empty of roving courtiers. The chandeliers, great hoops of iron, hung level with the gallery, on heavy chains strung along the double-vaulted ceiling, the links bolted at each end of the hall.
The feast unfurled below her in all its glory. Pale faces passed from table to table, bending together to whisper or shout, some dancing, some eating, all drinking their fill. Sorasa had seen many royal courts in her years, from Rhashir to Calidon, and though the languages and customs varied, the people were the same, easy to predict. Most would be wondering about the Queen’s betrothed too.
Does Mercury know?Sorasa thought, settling into the shadows of the gallery.
He would be back at the citadel, gray hair falling around him, sitting in his old chair, at the center of a thousand threads pulled from every corner of the Ward. Letters and birds and spies, whispers and codes.
The master of the Amhara sees every piece of the great puzzle, while the rest of us blindly feel for edges.
Her lip curled with distaste. Mercury’s leash always chafed, even when she enjoyed his favor, hating and loving his attention at the same time.
The minutes flowed like water. She had learned patience in the cells of the citadel, as a child all but vibrating out of her skin with nervous energy. That energy was trained from her quickly, after a night in darkness with nothing but a Rhashiran armory lizard for company. More than ten feet long, with jaws to rival a wolf, the armory was deadly but near blind. Standing still was a child’s only defense against being eaten alive. It was nothing to stand still now, with only knights and drunken courtiers to mind.
Indeed, she counted no less than six spilled goblets of wine, three platters smashed, and one old man snoring into his plate of summer greens. The rest chattered and drank, even at the high table. Sorasa recognized the man at the Queen’s side as her elder cousin Lord Konegin.How much would the Queen pay to know that he offered the Amhara a king’s ransom to kill her?she wondered, smirking.Or that the old woman on her council bought off the contract with enough gold to sink a war galley?
The hall grew more raucous with every passing course and passed flagon of wine.Soon her court will be too drunk to remember who she picked.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, not below, but across, on the other side of the gallery, on the balcony opposite her own. It was shadowed as well, seemingly empty but for two faces at the edge of the light. She squinted and raised a hand, covering the chandeliers, allowing her eyes to adjust for the darkness the figures stood in.
One had the bearing of a soldier, straight-backed and trim, a hand resting on his hip where Sorasa could just see the hilt of a fine sword. His cloak was black, left open to show a doublet of purple velvet patterned like scales. His face was bowed, his focus on the high table, showing only the glint of dark red hair. The other was a priest, hooded in crimson. Judging by his colors, he was a dedicant of Syrek. The god of destruction and creation, conquest and peace. A patron of the kingdom of Galland, whose rulers supposed themselves conquerors and creators.
Neither man took any notice of her, distracted as the rest of the palace by the mystery about to unfold. They filled her with an icy touch of dread and gut instinct. They didn’t speak, though the soldier shifted, and his fingers clenched and unclenched on his sword hilt.Impatient.Not like the priest, who was a statue in scarlet, his face bone-white beneath his hood.
The dedicant orders serve their gods and their high priests, not kings or queens. He listens for another, gathering word to be passed on,Sorasa surmised, looking over the priest again.But the soldier? Who does he serve?
He did not have the bearing of a noble. He was not a knight or a great lord, and no diplomat would spend a feast hidden away. But he wasn’t a palace guard either, not in those clothes, without armor or the lion emblazoned on his chest.
She kept her eyes on him as she moved, careful in the shadows, her steps muffled by the rich carpet along the gallery floor.Perhaps he is a spy,she thought.An assassin from the Amhara, or from another guild.Her eyes dragged over him again. He was tall and lean, with wiry muscles standing out at his neck, the kind earned hard, through necessity.He could be a simple cutthroat, hired in some gutter. A mad dog set loose.
Her concentration snapped away at a commotion below, three figures striding between the long banquet tables, set shoulder to shoulder. Two she recognized.
So they found their squire.
The Queen waved her knights off, allowing the three to approach her table. Sorasa wished she could hear their plea, absurd as it would be.Dom the walking storm cloud, Corayne and her flickering courage. “Your Majesty, we need your help to defeat an army of demons led by my mad uncle. Yes, I’m the only one who can stop him. Yes, I’m a seventeen-year-old girl. Yes, I’m perfectly serious.”
But Erida did not turn them away. Instead the Queen beckoned, her face gentle and open, so they could speak privately of the Ward’s fate.Tell her of the corpses on the hill,Sorasa thought, remembering her blade as it passed through them.Tell her of the slaughter.Tell her of your scars, Domacridhan.
“Domacridhan.”
The soldier hissed, the sound carrying down the gallery. His voice was venom.
Sorasa pressed back against a column, folding herself into the shadows.
The soldier was glaring down at the Elder, and then at Corayne, before raising his face to the light. His eyes, black and familiar, seemed to glint red, a trick of the chandeliers.
