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Legs stiff underneath me, I stepped toward the doors. Each grunt rattling from behind shook my heart. Each shuffle of feet trembled those fingers I had reached toward the lever handle. How fast did corpses run, anyway?
I pressed the handle down.
A gap creaked open.
“Dinnea even think about running, lass,” Orlaigh said with a swat of her hand where she stood at the door, surrounded by two corpses, three, five—
She squeezed in and shut the door.
Curse my poor timing! “Are you going to tattle on me?”
“Nay,” she said like the friend I’d thought I might find in her, but what I needed was an ally. “Did ye get enough sleep?”
Enough? Too much?
I sighed, not bothering to ask just how long I’d slept—an hour or a day. “I heard your master say something about another gate. How many are there?”
“Four.”
“And they lead where?”
“To the four realms of man, from the snow-tipped mountains behind the Nocten Gate, where I was born, to the rocky steppes behind the Solten Gate, and everything between.” From where it hung draped over her arm, Orlaigh clasped a dress between her black-tipped fingers and let it fan out in all its shimmering beauty. “Look what me Master made for ye.”
Again this word…Made.
I let my hand run over the dress’s soft train, its hundreds of leaf-shaped pieces gently tingling against my palm. Almost like an intricate filigree of gold, the finest threads of silk veined together in a hundred shades of brown, forming a layer so thin it looked like paper.
When Orlaigh held it out before me with an encouraging nod, I climbed into the dress. “I’ve never seen something like this before. It’s almost as though someone gathered leaves, rolled them, pressed them, and once dry, sewed them together.”
She pursed her lips. “Master wants to see ye.”
My breath caught on the boned bodice she strapped tight around my ribs, ends poking into my lungs until they burned with the foreboding flicker of dread.
Dread and determination.
Even if I had to face the King, this was my chance to stake out the Pale Court. Which way lay the Æfen Gate? When did the King take his meals? Where was his chamber, and when did he retreat there?
“Your skin is turning darker.” I pointed at the smudges of black running along her nail bed. “What’s the discoloration on your fingers?”
“It’s rot, lass. The Pale Court wants to rest me body, but me Master makes it go away before we corpses crumble.”
Up close, rot was… disgusting.
Even so, voicing it would be rude, so I nodded. “It’s how you can go to nearby villages undetected for my food. Helfa knows no villager would trust a corpse who suddenly talks and requests stew.”
“Nay, lass. I learned that when they found me out once, chopping me head off. What we fear most is what we don’t understand.”
Now I felt sorry for her. “The King said no age shall befall my warm body while in his service. What did he mean by that?”
“King of Flesh and Bone,” she scoffed, and a soft smile lined her lips as she pulled a pair of silk slippers from the pockets of her dress, letting them fall to the ground with athud-thud.“Aye, he had a good laugh when he came from yer room. See, lass, me Master commands all flesh and bone. Time wrinkles yer skin, and he straightens it.”
That took me aback. “So, he controls the deadandthe living?”
She nodded.
And it had to be true.
Why else had I kneeled at his command?
