Gael tugged at my sleeve. “The captain had the look of a man who wanted to kill you.”
“Nothing unusual about that, yah?” Rory said.
“He had reason,” I said. “That letter wasn’t permission from Bishop Gehata, it was a threat to expose his affair with Duchess Leogan.”
Rory shook his head. “Marriage here is a sport. Why would anyone care?”
“The nobles here don’t like it when people secretly change teams,” Gael said.
I pointed into the darkness. “We’ll need more light—as much as possible.” I moved around the entrance hall, lighting each of the lamps that hung from silver sconces until argent illumination filled the space. And what a space it was. We stood in a greeting room big enough to serve as a throne room in a lesser kingdom. Toward the east a wide set of stairs swept upward, spiraling toward the next level.
“The royal quarters are upstairs, but this is where Queen Chora died,” Bolt said, pointing to the staircase. The stairs, naked of any adornment except the natural veins of the stone and a mirror polish ascended away from me. They were steeper than I expected.
“How many steps are there?”
“Thirty-six,” Bolt said.
I wasn’t from Moorclaire, where they lived the mathematicum, but I’d had enough education to recognize the numbers from the Exordium, either the four by nine sides of the rectangle or the six square. I stopped to wonder what mysteries the Exordium held and whether Ealdor and his Fayit brethren had anything to do with it.
I walked toward the steps with my eyes on the floor. A lighter spot at the foot of the staircase indicated an area that had been cleaned, a whiter shade than the surrounding stone. I pulled my gloves and lifted a prayer to Aer that months with the gift could give me a portion of what had taken long years for Bronwyn to learn. I bent to the spot and closed my eyes, hardly daring to breathe for fear of missing what I might see.
Ghosts of images flickered across my awareness, and I reached for them, trying to pull them to me. One of those images, the owner of the blood on the floor, would have to be stronger than the others, but it defied me. Unbidden, Bronwyn’s admonition came to me. Relax. You can’t force it.
I exhaled and let my breathing slow. There, hovering at the edge of perception I caught the hint of a woman, gifted. “She died here.”
With a glance to Bolt, I grabbed one of the lamps and moved up the stairs, searching for spots where the stone had been cleansed of Chora’s blood. I found another, smaller, spot about a third of the way up, but I searched for something more telling. At the top near the heavy marble rail, I found a bleached circle a pair of hands wide. I stooped, and laid my hands on the mark, pressing my skin against cool marble.
I rose after a moment and surveyed the floor in both directions, walking and counting my paces until I hit thirty, but I found no more. Retreating back to the top of the stairs, I called to Bolt. “I found Queen Chora’s blood in three places. At the bottom, a third of the way up”—I caught Bolt’s gaze—“and here at the top.”
He blinked. “You’re sure—absolutely sure?”
“It’s hers.”
His chest rose and fell. “And it’s recent?”
I nodded. “They all are.”
Bolt knelt and ran his sword hand along the bleached spot on the stone. “It’s smaller than I expected.”
Gareth, my partner reeve in Bunard, knew more about how a man could bleed out than anyone living, and he’d managed to teach me a few things in our time together. “There are too many things we still don’t know.”
He looked at me, his face as cold as the mountains in winter. “But there are some we do.”
Gael and Rory ascended the stairs, their expressions questioning. “What did you find?” Gael asked.
I scuffed the bleached spot on the floor with my foot. “A mystery.”
She looked from me to Bolt and back again. “She didn’t die from the fall?”
“It’s possible,” I said, “but I think she had help. I found evidence of a pool of her blood here . . . at the top of the stairs.”
“So the dwimor got to her after all,” Rory said.
I pulled a breath. “I’m not sure.”
Bolt looked as if he could chew rocks and ask for seconds. “The Archbishop lied to us. That’s the sort of thing that puts me in a bad mood.”
“He might not have lied,” I said. “The knife stroke at the top of the stairs might not have killed her.”
“I don’t bother trying to distinguish between lying and deceiving by omission,” Bolt said. “Vyne left out a few details.” He looked at me. “I think we’ve been played, Willet. You were able to pull the memory of Chora’s presence from a trio of bleached smudges on the floor. You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
With their experience, Pellin and Toria would have little difficulty doing what I had done. “Would Vyne have known that?”
“Probably,” Bolt said. “He may have waited for Pellin and Toria Deel to slip away.”
I sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do here. Where’s the body? I need to see it.”
Gael reached out to touch my arm. “Why? We know she was killed by a dwimor.”
“Too many things are out of place,” I said. “We need to be sure.” A familiar tickle in my mind put me on my guard. Something important nagged at me.
Bolt shook his head at me. “She’s lying in state in the cathedral, Willet. Archbishop Vyne has already denied us permission to view the body.”
I nodded. “I wasn’t actually thinking of asking again. Do they leave the body in the sanctuary around the clock?”
He’d already opened his mouth in denial, but my last question stopped him. “No. It’s removed each night so the gravesmen can tend to her.”
Rory frowned. “And do what?”
Gael put a hand on his shoulder
