In one corner of the secret room, behind a huge square pillar, the Old Dark Man had lined a stone cubby with narrow shelves on which his “very important books” had been ranged. The cubby was too small for him to enter, but his huge hands at the ends of his long, ropy arms could pluck out whatever book he needed. When Alicia had come to the Old Dark House as its owner, she had found the book alcove empty. It made a perfect repository for her most precious things, however, and the cubby was not too small for her slender body. She went there often to admire and caress her memorabilia: her father’s gold ring with the sapphire seal lying upon a tiny satin pillow; a lock of his hair; a tiny ivory easel with a miniature of the duke Falyrion in gilded armor on his favorite horse. She had taken the ring from his finger while he lay in his coffin, his initial carved into the seal inside a ring of laurel. The lock of his hair was tied with a bit of the ribbon that had trimmed his shirts. He had given it to her when she asked for it. The miniature was a copy of a large portrait that had hung in the hall at Kamfelsgard. Mirami had been away at court when Alicia had hired a traveling artist to paint the miniature, paying for it with a ring she had stolen from Mirami’s jewel chest, a ring Mirami had never worn and had never missed once it was gone. Beside these things, she kept a book she had made when she was only six or seven, several stiff pages of pressed flowers and leaves from the hidden place above the pool where her father swam and a linen undershift he had worn against his skin. She had taken it from his room long before he died. She believed it still smelled of him. He had given her the little gifts on the same shelf: a brooch, a lace shawl folded into a neat packet.
On the shelves below were other things, necessary but ordinary things: a bottle of ink and a few writing brushes; the written instructions for using the slaughterer, the seeker, the mirror maker, and the sender; a card with the key-code for the doors written on it, in case she forgot; a shallow tray that until recently had held a dozen copies of the cloud she had made to kill the princess. Once she knew the princess was dead, she had thrown them away. Now she labeled Jenger’s capsule with a J, dipping a brush into ink to do so, and placed it in the tray. If she ever made any capsules for other people, it wouldn’t do to get them confused.
When the Old Dark Man had brought her there as a child, not only these shelves had been packed with books, but there had been hundreds more in the rooms upstairs. When she returned there from Ghastain after becoming the Duchess of Altamont, she had been able to get into the room without trouble. She had remembered the key-code that let her open the door. She could swear no one else had been in that room, but all the books had been gone. The devices had still been there: the slaughterer, the seeker, the mirror maker, the sender—though that disappointing device was useless now. There were other devices here, of course: the big machine in the corner that watched her through its red eyes, the one that showed her where her servants were, their lights shining in the dark, their innards making small, satisfied noises: click, whiz, purr. All of them had been there. The doors had still been tightly locked, no one had disturbed the place, but she had found no books in the Old Dark House at all.
Mirami didn’t have them. Mirami hated the Old Dark House; she had never come there after the Old Dark Man had died. Besides, Mirami did not care for books, and Falyrion’s books, her father’s books, were of a different kind. He had collected books about battles and hunting and the keeping of game and dogs and horses. He had some about swordplay, too. Fencing. He had been an excellent swordsman. Alicia had wanted to learn the skill, but he had told her no, it was only for boys. Girls needed their beauty, he said. Men were only made more interesting by a few scars, but it would never do to have her pretty face scratched and ruined.
Her father had no scars, but he was wonderfully interesting even without them. He was beautiful. His hair was sun gold, his eyes were sea blue, his skin was copper, all over, face, body, legs, arms. Those were his colors, the ones he wore, gold-and-copper-plated armor and a blue and gold tabard and blue trappings on his horse. He was tall, and strong, and wore wonderful clothing with lace and jewels on it. He rode like a . . . like a centaur. There had been instructions for making a centaur in one of the Old Dark Man’s books. Half-man, half-horse. She was glad her father was only man. When he and his men went swimming, they stripped from their clothes and Alicia, hiding in the glen above the pool,
