I started counting, and at three I saw a man’s foot come into view. I ducked back into shadow and stood there, my mouth going dry as I waited for them to pass, but when the time came for me to run, I froze.
The next pair of guards went by. And the next. My heart raced, and the only thing I could hear was the rush of blood through my veins. I chided myself for a fool. If I could willingly lead men into the Darkwater, I could run twenty paces in the dark.
I tried not to listen to the voice in my head that recited a litany of all the stupid decisions I’d ever made, along with the consequences and scars I still bore. I tried, but I failed. That voice in my head—my fearful self—continued, but it went too far. The list lost its immediacy, its ability to incapacitate. Yes, I’d made some incredibly stupid decisions, but I didn’t bother trying to argue this wasn’t one of them. I chose a different approach.
What was one more?
A pair of guards went by, and I crouched. The moment they could no longer see me at the edge of their sight, I darted from my hiding place and ran on the balls of my feet across the light of the hallway to the shadows beyond. I never made a sound, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing the whole way.
The retreating guards stopped, one turning toward his right, to the place I’d been. He shrugged and they continued on their route.
A few minutes later Rory relieved my solitude, his grin matching mine. Then Gael and Bolt joined us, and we followed the scent of embalming fluid.
We stopped before a heavy door of polished wood, and Bolt whispered in the darkness. “We’re directly behind the sanctuary. Priests will be holding their vigil and some of them might be in this room.”
I looked at the bottom of the door, saw a soft glow of steady light from beneath.
“We should have brought Fess,” Rory whispered. “He makes a great priest.”
I nodded. And with his gift he could incapacitate anyone in the room before they had a chance to cry out.
“Well,” Bolt said, “there’s nothing for it but to attempt this insanity.” He opened the door and slipped through the barest crack, his dagger clutched so that he could strike with the pommel.
I waited for a pair of heartbeats for the expected commotion, but nothing came.
Then the door opened wider and Bolt beckoned us inside. After he closed it behind us, he pointed to a gilded coffin illuminated by a single large candle on a table behind it. “Whatever you mean to do, Willet, do it quickly. We’ve burned most of the night getting here, and there are going to be priests crawling all over the cathedral soon. “Rory, guard the door.”
I grabbed the candle, used it to light another one, and then handed both of them to Gael. “Hold them high so that I can see her.”
When I flipped open the casket, though death had begun its work, I saw a woman in her fifties whose face still held most of the beauty men would have ascribed to her youth. As quickly as I could, trying without success to stifle the feelings of sacrilege my actions roused in me, I removed Queen Chora’s burial dress.
“This alone could get you executed, Vigil or no,” Gael said.
I nodded, silently apologizing to the body within the coffin. “I know. All the more reason to hurry.” I felt along Chora’s neck, from the top of her back going upward. At the top, I no longer felt the expected jut of each vertebra. Instead, I heard and felt the grinding of splinters of bone. “Vyne told the truth about her broken neck at any rate.”
There were bruises on her face, and it appeared that the fall had broken her nose, but I couldn’t find any evidence of a wound that would have left the telltale pools of blood. I looked at Bolt. “I can’t find the wound.”
“Was Vyne telling the truth?”
I shook my head. “Why was her blood at the top of the stairs? Dwimor or not, I know it was hers. Help me turn her over.”
We put our hands beneath the queen’s body and rolled until she lay facedown in her own coffin. I tried to still the voice in my head that cited the old superstition—the one about burying people upside down to keep their souls trapped on earth. I looked down at the back of Queen Chora’s body, the back and legs still strong and muscled, the body of a dancer.
“Kreppa,” I breathed.
Chapter 21
“We’ve got to get out of here now!” Bolt said. Without pausing for decorum or respect, he flipped the queen’s body back over. As quickly as we could, we dressed Chora and closed the coffin.
Rory turned away from his position by the door. “Why?”
I blew out the extra candle we’d lit, praying that no one would notice the difference when they came to retrieve the queen’s body. “Because she wasn’t killed by a dwimor, and she didn’t accidentally fall down the stairs.”
“How—”
“Later,” Bolt growled.
We closed the door behind us and retraced our footsteps to the circuit where the cosp guards continued their patrol. “I have to go last,” I said.
Gael shook her head in the darkness, but Bolt nodded. “I’ll go first, then Gael, then Rory.”
“Why?” Gael’s angry whisper sounded like a sword stroke through the air.
“Because he’s the last Errant,” I said. “This is his responsibility. Whatever happens, he has to get free so that he can demand an examination of the queen’s body.”
“Why can’t I go after you?” she persisted. I could have kissed her.
“Because as soon as you get free, you’re going to keep going
