Kethry dusted something over the glass and the two bottles. As they watched, the residue in the glass and the fraction of potion in Kethry's bottle began to glow with an odd, greenish light.
'Is this a true casting, priest?' Tarma heard one of the nobles ask in an undertone.
He nodded. 'As true as ever I've seen.'
'Huh,' the man replied, frowning with thoughts he kept to himself.
'Now -- Lord Corbie has just come in; he is working on the ledgers. I give him a glass of wine,' Kethry handed the glass to Katran. 'He is grateful; he thinks nothing of the courtesy, I am an old and trusted friend. He drinks it, I leave the room, presently he is asleep.'
Katran allowed her head to sag down on her arms.
'I take the key from beneath his hand, and quietly lock the door to the hall. I replace the key. I know he will not stir, not even cry out, because of the strength of the potion. I take Lady Myria's dagger, which I obtained earlier. I stab him.' Kethry mimed the murder; Katran did not move, though Tarma could see she was smiling sardonically. 'I take the dagger and plant it beneath Lady Myria's bed -- and I know that because of the potion she has been taking -- and which I recommended, since we have no Healer -- she will not wake either.'
Kethry went into Myria's chamber, and returned empty-handed.
'I've been careless -- got some blood on my tunic, I've never killed a man before and I didn't know that the wound would spurt. No matter, I will hide it where I plan to hide the bottle. By the way, the priest has that bloody tunic, and he knows that his hands alone removed it from its hiding place, just like the bottle. Now comes the important part -- '
She took an enormous fishhook on a double length of twine out of her beltpouch.
'The priest knows where I found this -- rest assured that it was not in Myria's possession. Now, on the top of this door, caught on a rough place in the wood, is another scrap of hemp. I am going to get it now. Then I shall cast another spell -- and if that bit of hemp came from this twine, it shall return to the place it came from.'
She went to the door and jerked loose a bit of fiber, taking it back to the desk. Once again she dusted something over the twine on the hook and the scrap, this time she also chanted as well. A golden glow drifted down from her hands to touch first the twine, then the scrap.
And the bit of fiber shot across to the twine like an arrow loosed from a bow.
'Now you will see the key to entering a locked room, now that I have proved that this was the mechanism by which the trick was accomplished.'
She went over to the door to the seneschal's chamber. She wedged the hook under the bar on the door, and lowered the bar so that it was only held in place by the hook; the hook was kept where it was by the length of twine going over the door itself. The other length of twine Kethry threaded under the door. Then she closed the door.
The second piece of twine jerked; the hook came free, and the bar thudded into place. And the whole contrivance was pulled up over the door and through the upper crack by the first piece.
All eyes turned toward the seneschal--whose white face was confession enough.
* * *
'Lady Myria was certainly grateful enough.'
'If we'd let her, she'd have stripped the treasury bare,' Kethry replied, waving at the distant figures on the keep wall. 'I'm glad you talked her out of it.'
'Greeneyes, they don't have it to spare, and we both know it. As it is, she'll have to spend most of the seneschal's hoard in making up for the shortfalls among the hirelings that his skimmings caused in the first place.'
'Will she be all right, do you think?'
'Now that her brother's here I don't think she has a thing to worry about. She's gotten back all the loyalty of her lord's people and more besides. All she needed was a strong right arm to beat off unwelcome suitors, and she's got that now! Warrior's Oath, I'm glad that young monster wasn't one of the challengers. I'd never have lasted past the first round!'
'Tarma -- '
The swordswoman raised an eyebrow at Kethry's unwontedly serious tone.
