“We’re sisters,” Laurelle said.
Dart quickly hugged her friend… her sister. She wiped her eyes on the hem of a sleeve. In the distance, the final bells of the night chimed.
“We’d best hurry,” Laurelle said, crossing to the door.
Dart went with her, continuing to hold hands. Pupp left his hearthside roost and trotted after them. They made a strange company, two robed girls, one in silver, one in crimson, and a fiery companion with no substance.
Dart’s confidence in her decision persisted, but she sensed she had forgotten something significant. Something that tickled a warning across her skin. Before she could ponder it further, Laurelle opened the door and stepped out.
The bells echoed away.
But not her trepidation.
The pair stood in front of the golden doors. The High Wing was dark, painted in ruddy hues from the giant iron-and-bone brazier at their back. The few lamps hanging on the walls had been wicked low and half- shuttered.
Silence was complete. No voices rose from the common rooms at the end of the hall. Everyone had retired to their respective rooms.
Including Lord Chrism.
In the gloom, firelight flickered from beneath the jamb of his wide doors.
“Maybe we should wait until morning,” Laurelle said, sounding scared for the first time this night. “You could spend the night in my room.”
Dart could not count on her determination lasting until sunrise. “I’ll knock… announce us.” She took a deep breath and pictured Chrism’s warm green eyes, his easy, lazy smile. She regretted bringing bad tidings to his door in the night. She remembered the haunted words, lost and concerned. We must be watchful… all of us.
She had no choice.
She slipped her fingers from Laurelle’s and crossed to the doors. A silver knocker, carved into a flowering branch of a wyldrose, hung on the door. As she reached, she sensed movement beyond the door, a shift of shadows at her toes. Someone had moved across the hearth.
Lord Chrism.
Her fingers hesitated, trepidation flaring.
In the silence, the unhitching of a latch rang sharply.
Off to the left.
Dart flew back. A door opened.
Her door.
Laurelle stared, mouth open. Dart grabbed her arm and drew her down behind the brazier. Two figures stepped from her doorway. The first was a woman, her lithe figure decked in leather from boots to waist-length riding cape, the only dab of color, a blouse of ruby silk. The ruddy glow from the brazier lit her face as she glanced up the hall.
Dart recognized her.
Mistress Naff.
She served as the Hand of Chrism’s Seed.
Behind her came a taller figure, outfitted in shades of green, wearing brown boots. About his shoulders was a cape of tanned leather framed in black fur. His eyes glowed in the darkness, full of Grace.
It was Lord Chrism.
“She must be bedded down again with your Hand of Tears,” Mistress Naff said as Lord Chrism pulled closed the door.
Both glanced in their direction, not toward the brazier but toward Laurelle’s door. Dart ducked fully away, ears craned to hear every word.
“She should be safe enough for the moment,” Lord Chrism said.
“So how long do we dare wait?”
“Until all show their true colors,” Chrism said.
The scuff of boots sounded, moving away.
Dart risked a glance around a corner of the brazier. The pair headed down the length of the High Wing. She watched until they vanished through a door that opened to the lower stair, taking a lamp with them.
Dart turned to the side. Laurelle had also watched them depart, peeking through the legs of a fanciful animal sculpted from the iron of the brazier.
Dart stood up, drawing her friend’s eye.
“Why did we hide?” Laurelle whispered, her voice tremulous. “It was Lord Chrism… whom we had come to find.”
Dart had no cause for such caution, except simple habit. “Maybe we should leave our own accusations until the morning,” Dart said.
Laurelle nodded, her features pale even in the reddish glow.
Pupp sniffed at the brazier, slowly checking out each sculpted beast.
Dart stepped away when another bolt slid free of a lock. This time, Laurelle needed no encouragement to dive behind the far side of the brazier. The door to Chrism’s rooms pulled open as they ducked away.
Dart peered under the brazier and spotted a pair of black boots. Only now did she remember the movement beyond the door to Chrism’s chambers. If Lord Chrism had been in Dart’s room, who was this other?
She risked sliding to the side to spy around the edge of the brazier.
The interloper headed down the hall, aiming to follow Lord Chrism and Mistress Naff. His figure was indistinct, fading into and out of the gloom, appearing as ghostly as Pupp. It took a moment for Dart to recognize the reason why. She watched the shadows seem to swim around the retreating form. A shadowcloak. During Dart’s schooling, knights periodically visited the Conclave. She had witnessed their blessed ability to move through shadows unseen.
The figure pulled up the hood to the shadowcloak, vanishing completely for a breath, swallowed by the gloom, then reappeared briefly on the far side of the High Wing. He vanished down the same stair, following after the earlier two.
Despite the shadowplay, Dart had gotten a good look at the man’s face before it disappeared under the hood of the shadowcloak. She could not mistake the ebony hair split by a shock of white.
“Yaellin de Mar,” Laurelle mumbled at her side, aghast.
He had been in Chrism’s room while the god had been in Dart’s.
Why? What was the meaning of all this?
Dart stood up. All she knew for sure was that she had to follow after them all. She started down the High Wing. Pupp danced after her.
Laurelle hung back. “Dart, what are you doing?”
“I must warn Lord Chrism,” she said, her steps hurried.
“Wait,” Laurelle urged. “We don’t know what’s going on.”
Dart could not argue. All she knew was what she had spotted in Yaellin’s hand as he crept down the hall, before he vanished into the shadows.
A blade.
A black blade.
The same as had murdered the woman Jacinta.
“I must go,” Dart said.
Dart climbed down the stairs, moving as cautiously as a titmouse, staying close to the wall. She hiked up the edge of her robe to keep the hem from brushing the stone and alerting the others of her presence.
Laurelle followed after, moving in Dart’s footsteps, mimicking her careful progress.
Pupp continued ahead of them both, blazing a path onward. His fiery form illuminated their path, at least to Dart’s eyes. Laurelle kept one hand on Dart’s shoulder. Distantly the meager glow of the retreating lamp carried by Chrism and Naff flowed back to them.
Where were the guards posted to this doorway and stair? After the assassination of Master Willym, the High
