rotted bags in the pantries, and jars of preserves encased in dust lined the shelves. Dishes still littered the kitchen counters, and drawers held crumbling receipts and recipes and lists of stores. The altar in the narrow chapel was spotted with wax, the candles toppled and chewed by rodents. A few tarnished silver sconces still clung to the walls, while others had fallen to reveal cleaner stone beneath. The icons of whatever saints or gods the Sarkens prayed to were darkened and unrecognizable. Moth-eaten clothes and linens filled chests in the servants’ quarters, and hints of lives littered the rooms: a shelf of moldering books; a carven box filled with needles and buttons and an ivory thimble; a pair of shoes heavy with once-bright embroidery, much too fine to be worn for daily chores. Paintings hung in flaking frames, long-faded portraits or hunting scenes.
The second story was much the same-no corpses, no waiting monsters, but memories thick as cobwebs everywhere. No one spoke as they searched the rooms, and Iancu’s face grew sadder and more strained with each vanished life they found.
On the next floor a painting watched them as they climbed the stairs. A woman sat in the foreground, white-skinned and sable-haired, with dark eyes and beautiful cheekbones still visible beneath the web of cracks that marred the oils. A man stood behind her chair, one hand on her shoulder. He was tall and lean and well-dressed, but his face was too chipped and shadowed to make out.
“Who are you?” Savedra murmured, raising a hand to the painting and pulling back before she touched the canvas. The frame was grey with dust, but her hands were worse. Her nose had long since closed off in self- defense.
“Who indeed?” Iancu asked softly, standing beside her. Savedra studied his face for any hint of recognition, but his frown only deepened.
“Here,” Cahal called. He kindled a lantern and held it aloft. Their own footprints showed stark against the pale drifting dust, but other, fainter prints were visible beneath it. Like tracks in trampled snow clear beneath a fresh fall. Short, narrow feet-a woman or a small man.
“How old are these?” Savedra asked.
Cahal shrugged, sending orange light swaying across the walls. “Hard to say.”
The tracks led down the corridor to a bedroom that must have belonged to the Margrave, and crisscrossed the floor there. Bed hangings pulled free of the great oaken frame, and the lantern cast their shadows like great tattered wings across the walls.
Savedra and Ashlin tugged back the curtains and pried the shutters open. The windows facing the cliffside were wider than those overlooking the path; anyone who could scale the cliff and the walls deserved to take the castle. The panes were glass-warped, leaded diamonds. A great extravagance, no doubt, whenever Carnavas had first been built.
Savedra studied the room and the footprints. They led to all the places one might expect in a bedroom: the bed; the wardrobe; the dresser, whose mirror was shattered and turned toward the wall. The dust blanketing the sagging mattress was disturbed as well, as if someone had curled against the pillow. She touched the dimpled cloth, almost expecting some ghost of warmth there. Her fingertips left shadows behind, and she rubbed the silk- soft grime onto her coat. She brushed against the velvet hangings as she turned, and a panel tore free of the bed frame with a snarl. The cloth fell with a muffled
Behind the carven doors of the wardrobe she found dresses, rotten as the bed curtains, fur and jeweled trim pulling free of fragile cloth. Dark, striking colors, garnet and crimson and deep forest green, the sort the woman in the portrait would have worn well. A tall woman, with a narrow waist and a bosom that Savedra could only envy. Mostly heavy, tight-laced gowns suitable for mountain weather, with a few looser high-waisted designs hung to one side.
“Vedra.”
Ashlin’s voice, unusually soft, distracted her from inspecting the dressing table. The princess stood in the doorway of one of the adjoining rooms. A bathroom, Savedra had assumed, or perhaps a connecting bedroom if the margrave and margravine hadn’t shared a bed.
Instead she peered around Ashlin’s shoulder into a nursery. The shutters stood open and daylight poured like weak tea over a table and rocking chair, a clothing chest, and a cradle. The faint draft of the door opening sent motes spiraling through the slanting light.
“They had a child,” Savedra said, soft as a whisper.
“No.” Again that queer hush in Ashlin’s voice. Her hand twitched toward the blanketless cradle, toward the table and the half-knitted cap there, stitches still on the needles. “They were expecting one.” Fingers clenched, and her fist fell hard against her thigh.
Savedra’s mouth opened, closed again on the princess’s name. “Sorcha-” Not very convincing, but it drew a humorless laugh from Ashlin.
“It’s nothing.”
Savedra caught the other woman’s arm as she strode toward the bedroom; her fingers smeared grey on Ashlin’s sleeve. “It isn’t-”
“It
Bootheels clacked on stone as she vanished into the hall, leaving Savedra to turn away before Iancu noticed her prickling eyes, or her filthy hands clenching helplessly in her coat pockets. But concern and anger wouldn’t let the matter lie. She blinked her eyes dry and followed, leaving Iancu and Cahal exchanging glances in her wake. Ashlin’s trail was easy to follow; booted footprints led up the stairs, past the fourth story and up again, to an open trapdoor.
The wind caught at Savedra’s clothes and hair as she stepped onto the tower, belled her coat-skirts and tugged at her loose trousers. Her eyes watered in earnest with the force of it, rinsing away lingering grains of dust. Ashlin stood by the crenellations, silhouetted against the pewter-bright sky. Her arms were crossed tight, cupping her elbows with opposite hands.
“I’m sorry,” Savedra said after a moment of staring at the princess’s back. She crossed the weathered floor to stand beside Ashlin, the span of a wide stone block between them, and peered over the edge. She regretted it before she truly realized the height, the length of the sheer plunge below. The Ardos? unwound like a grey ribbon, something delicate and ornamental, not the murderous icy rush she knew to be the truth. Not, she imagined, that the cold and current would matter by the time you reached them.
She put her back to the terrible view and sucked a calming breath through her nose. Clean air was a blessing after the stifling must below, even if it numbed her fingers and toes. She gathered her scattered thoughts and raised her voice against the wind. “It’s not my place-”
That drew Ashlin around like the jerk of a chain. Snowflakes landed on her face and hair, melting to leave cleaner spots in the grime. Her eyes glittered, the green of her irises all the fiercer against bloodshot whites. “Not your place?” She barked a laugh. “To tell me when I’m being a fool, and a termagant besides? If you won’t do that for me I don’t know who will.” Her arms snapped open. “You’re my friend, Vedra. You can say whatever you want to me.
“And don’t think,” she said, softer now, “that I don’t know your place, or that I’ve taken it from you.”
Savedra swallowed half a dozen responses, along with a lump in her throat. “If I can tell you not to be a fool, then I’ll do that now.” She closed the distance between them, till the hem of her coat whipped Ashlin’s legs. “I have always known how it had to be with me and Nikos. The only thing I didn’t expect was to care for the woman he married.”
Ashlin’s smile was wry and lopsided. “I’m glad you do, since we’re alone on a tower.” Her smile twisted and fell away, and she waved the bad joke aside. “I wish you could have had it, though. The throne, the prince. Children.” Her hand clenched on her belt buckle till her knuckles blanched. “My father could have married off my brother instead of me, if this is the best I can do at bearing heirs.”
Savedra caught the princess’s hand and eased it away before she could bruise her fingers on metal. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy, but there’s no sense in recriminations.”
Their fingers twined, cold and grimy, and Ashlin squeezed tight. “It’s not that I’m unhappy.” Her breath hitched, unraveling on the wind. “It’s that-”
Whatever she might have said was lost as black wings passed close enough to ruffle their hair and a raven
