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“Well, I can start with what worked at Solorum and see if the pendant will let me walk through the walls into a hidden passage.” She said the Changing Queen’s first name, the one given to her by her own people, the Lustri. “Ebah.”
She put a hand to the wall in front of her. Her palm met solid stone.
“Very well,” she dared the wall, “I will try something not so simple.”
Lio came to stand behind her. When he rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, his soft touch sent another thrill of energy through her body. It seemed her lustful aura was not above taking another sip from him so soon after their banquet.
“We really must stop spontaneously feasting like this,” he murmured in her ear, in a tone that told her he had no interest in stopping. “If you’re not satisfied with our revenge against Flavian on the parapet, his desk is right there.”
At the mental image of Lio bending her over that desk, she bit her lip hard. “I am trying to concentrate on my spell. You are a terrible magic tutor.”
With a low laugh, Lio kissed the sensitive skin under her ear, then stood quietly behind her.
She focused on the magic she sensed in the pendant, and on the kindred power within her. She Willed the wall open.
The stone endured, silent and unyielding.
She dropped the pendant, and it clacked against her medallion. “Whatever secrets this fortress’s walls hold, they don’t seem as willing to reveal them.”
“Yet,” Lio said.
Lio wished he had more ideas, but his knowledge of Lustra magic was full of gaps. It didn’t help that his thoughts seemed unwilling to make connections at their usual speed. The effect of constant twilight.
And they had only six more hours of that almost-night, such as it was. “We can experiment more later. We need to save time to start searching for the letting site tonight.”
Cassia winced. “You’re right. We must make the most of the shortest night of the year.”
“The others are meeting us in the courtyard after the Council ends.”
She muttered, “I’m glad one of us had the presence of mind to make such arrangements while I was losing my mind from Craving.”
“It’s safe to lose your mind with this thelemancer.” Lio tucked his notes into his pocket again. “Now then, where else might Flavian have hidden your papers?”
“His bedchamber, perhaps.”
“By all means, let us ransack the scene of his conquests.” Lio pointed at a door adjoining the solar. “I smell him that way.”
Cassia made a face and sent Knight through the door ahead of them once again.
He bounded toward one corner of the room and began circling a portion of empty air, sniffing with great excitement. At the presence Lio sensed within the invisibility spell, he relaxed. Knight never failed to sniff out members of their own pack.
“Fancy meeting you here,” came Hoyefe’s disembodied voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Lonesome.” Cassia called off Knight.
Hoyefe popped into sight, waving a reassuring hand. “I’m only glad it was Shadow’s shadow who discovered me. Now I’ll know to watch out for liegehounds when sneaking about. Their senses truly are impressive.”
Lio gestured around the room. “It looks as if we all had the same idea about spying on Flavian.”
Hoyefe wrinkled his nose at a half-finished slice of bread on a side table. “I couldn’t resist prying into the intimate affairs of Tenebra’s famous lover. I cannot say I am impressed.”
The antiquated room did sport a four-poster bed of impressive proportions with rumpled bedclothes, but it stank of the sweat of sleeplessness, not copulation. Travel trunks were scattered about, half unpacked. A shaving kit and bathing oils lay abandoned by the wash stand. It was the private space of an exhausted, overworked, unmarried man. Lio took far too much pleasure in this evidence that Flavian was not thriving in the plot Cassia had designed for him.
“Have you found anything?” he asked Hoyefe.
“Only this, so far.” The illusionist held out a small square of tapestry depicting a fox with a sprig of blue flowers in its mouth. “He keeps it under his pillow.”
Cassia’s bubbling laughter filled the room.
