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The Siabra certainly had their own way of doing things.
Beks nodded seriously. “After ten years passed, then fifteen, then twenty, well, no one thought he was coming back. But then he did. And he brought you.” Beks beamed and suddenly I wondered if he saw the whole thing as somewhat romantic. The lost prince returning with me on his arm.
“Ah, yes,” I said weakly. “He did. His mother must be... very happy?”
“I’m not sure,” Beks said, tilting his head consideringly. “She’s the queen. I suppose so. But anyhow, Prince Kairos can’t just have the throne. If it had been left vacant for twenty-five years, the next in line would have had the right to take it. The prince’s cousin, Avriel.”
“But now the prince is back, so...?”
“So Prince Kairos can claim it, but he’ll have to win it.” Beks beamed. “It’s like a game.”
I was skeptical. “A game? How is it played?”
“I’ll show you,” Beks said. “Just follow me. We can see the menagerie another day.”
I followed obediently behind him as we wove our way through the narrow passageway. The lights followed us as we walked, sconces lighting up one by one a few meters ahead, then darkening behind us after a few moments. It was a very useful trick. I wondered if I could learn it or if it was the sort of magic you had to have been born with. After all, Crescent had said he couldn’t create wards but he could do other things.
I might have been able to burn people to death with my bare hands but that didn’t seem particularly useful in day-to-day situations. Nor something I planned to brag about to little Beks.
The walls around us were a damp brick. The floor was dusty stone, with trickling pools of water in some places. I was reminded of the passageway out of the castle in Camelot that I had taken to join the hunters and to go for clandestine nighttime walks.
I might have been an entire continent away, but the nature of secret passageways in castles had not fundamentally changed. They were not luxurious. They had been built for stealth and practicality.
Now my eyes caught sight of discreet, strategically placed peepholes along the walls. Some were relatively close together. These must have looked into living apartments like my own. Others were few and far between. I surmised that meant they looked into larger public areas like ballrooms or the menagerie Beks had mentioned. Some were small, hardly larger than an eye. Small footstools had been placed at some of them. I guessed Beks had done so, being too short to reach the holes otherwise. Still other peepholes were more like tiny windows.
As we passed one of these, I paused to flick aside the hanging brass cover and peered out at a bustling courtyard with a beautiful garden covered by a glass dome.
We walked further along and came to an alcove, furnished with hanging tapestries and a long low leather bench. Whoever had used these tunnels–whoever still did, I reminded myself, for surely Beks could not be the only one who knew of them—had apparently had the thoughtfulness to build in sitting areas where spies might come for a time of respite.
“What were these passages used for?” I asked Beks.
“Spying mostly, I suppose. The last emperor would keep spies who would watch his enemies through some of these. But I've heard the royal family used them to get around the palace, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“So that they could travel without having their movements watched all of the time. Emperor Lucius used them to visit one of his mistresses in secret.” Beks glanced back at me, as if seeing the connection. “Or so I've heard. She was the wife of one of his enemies.”
Oneof his mistresses? I assumed this was Draven’s father. Lovely.
“I suspect you hear a very great deal,” I muttered. “If you spend much of your time playing in these passages.”
I caught a guilty look on Beks’ face. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. Come on, we’re almost there.”
“Where is there?” I asked, but Beks just moved faster ahead of me.
I jogged along behind him until finally he came to a halt.
“This one has two holes. So we both can look. Go further down and you can look from the other one.” He pointed a little way ahead to where I caught a gleam of brass.
Wherever we were about to spy on, the room must have been large indeed to warrant multiple peepholes.
I walked ahead to the little window, then carefully moved aside the brass plate.
We were looking down over a training room.
The room was colossal. Easily the size of two of the Great Halls of the castle in Camelot, or more. The ceiling was the highest I had ever seen within a building.
