Almost the only way.
“Are you dressed yet?” she asked, closing the door. “They’re coming.”
“You really mean to flee.”
“I do.”
“Won’t that look bad? Worse than the sword, I mean.”
“I don’t intend to prove my innocence while in irons,” she said.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, heading for the door.
“Not that way.”
Magly eyed the window.
“Aren’t we a little too far from the ground?”
“Not that way either,” she said, fetching her sword from under the bed. “Take the half-sword to the bath and get the blood off it. We’ll take it with us. I’ll find us another exit.”
She found the entrance to the servants’ passageway next to the hearth. It was a wood half-door that was designed to look like a part of the trim around the fireplace. After collecting her pouch of platinum dorins and—reluctantly—deciding to leave behind her crossbow (the passage looked too narrow) she led the way out of the room.
The castle had limited steam-powered electricity, but that didn’t extend to the room in which she had been staying or to the servant passages leading up to it. Given that as soon as she closed the door behind the professor they were plunged into total darkness—save for the pinhole of light that came in through the hole in the door—Batt figured there had to be a torch along the wall somewhere.
“Find me a sconce,” she said. “Before we trip on something and break an ankle.”
She sniffed the air. Torches were pungent, especially after recent use. But it didn’t smell like anyone had used one in this passageway recently.
Suddenly, a bright light erupted in Damid’s hand.
“How’s this?” he asked. “Want me to use it to locate a torch, or should we just keep going?”
“Forbidden technology has its uses,” she grumbled. “Head that way, but stay in sight. I’m going to see who shows up for us.”
Damid and his light bounced down the narrow corridor before stopping at a distant point, while Battine put her eye up to the peephole.
Once she learned of the servants’ passageways, she got as much information as she could about them. Her most pointed questions had to do with precisely how much of what she was doing in her chambers could be seen by someone about whose presence she was unaware.
The answer was, a great deal. A good maid didn’t enter a room without knowing the circumstances of that room: who was awake, how many people were there, if an argument was taking place and so on. To avoid entering with, say, a meal while the occupants were in mid-copulation, the staff had peepholes to look through. Everything but the bath was visible.
There was a loud banging at the door to the bedchamber. Absent a response from an occupant, the guards in the hallway didn’t try a second knock. Five of them, none whom Battine recognized, barreled in, hands on their swords and clearly expecting a fight.
It was not the way one entered a room when wanting to have a polite chat.
Searching the whole bedchamber took very little time. It was large, certainly, but it didn’t come with a lot of hiding places.
“He’s not here,” one of them shouted from the bathroom. “Neither of them is.”
“We should check the stables,” a second one said. He had a unit commander’s insignia. “But they’re no doubt long past the walls by now.”
“There’s water in the tub,” the one searching the bathroom said, “It’s pink.”
“Pink?” the commander asked.
“I think there’s blood in the water. And it’s still warm. This has just been drawn.”
“Then I’m wrong,” the commander said. He seemed mystified that they had not fled the castle overnight. “They’re still here. Check every room in this wing. Go, go.”
Battine stepped away from the door then, before one of them thought to check the servant’s passage, and felt her way to Magly and his prohibited light.
He’d stopped at a right angle in the passage.
“How are we looking?” he asked.
“Not good,” she said. “They appeared convinced of our guilt already.”
“Onward then,” he said. “Only I don’t know where this goes.”
“I don’t either but away from here is a good direction.”
After the right angle, they passed two doors leading to other rooms on the floor, and then they found themselves at a stairway leading down to another hallway with three more doors.
A light flickered to life ahead of them; somebody with a torch was coming their way.
Magly covered the light on his device with his hand.
“Now what?” he whispered.
Batt pulled him back to the door they’d just passed. She listened for anything on the other side, and then peeked through the hole.
It looked like a study. There was nobody inside. She pushed the door open and dragged Magly through, closed the door again, and put a finger up to her lips.
Damid pressed himself up against the wall next to the door they’d just come through. Should anyone check the hole in the door, they’d find an empty-looking room.
Whoever owned the torch walked up to the door, hesitated, and then continued.
“We’re okay,” Battine said, after another thirty seconds passed.
“Good,” he said. “Where are we? In a different castle, I hope.”
“No such luck.”
The room had a fireplace with overstuffed chairs, a number of tables with ashtrays, and a liquor closet. Doors leading to the hallway were closed and the window curtains were drawn. It smelled of tobacco smoke and dust.
Battine went to one of the windows and pulled aside the curtain. The room they came from overlooked the edge of the promenade; now she was looking at the northern fortifications.
“We were heading in the direction of the servants’ quarters,” she said, “near the kitchens. This part of the castle gets almost no use. We should be all right here for now, but I heard the guards say they mean to search the whole wing.”
“But we have a few minutes?” he said.
“I think so.”
“Good. What in the Depths is going on? Are they actually out to arrest us?”
“My questions first,” she said. She drew her sword, and pointed it at his neck. “Let’s start with who you really are and what you’re really doing here.”
He was so startled he dropped his voicer. Notably, he didn’t drop the half-sword.
“I…I’m exactly who I said I was, Battine,” he said. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“I’ve heard you call him Ken twice now. It’s the name he used when he left for his Haremisva. I know because I’m the only one who got to call him that.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “You’re not the only one. Not even close. Just the only one in the Middle Kingdoms. But we all knew him as Ken. You’re the one who told him to go by that, aren’t you? He said…Well. He said someone he cared a lot about told him he should use that name instead of Kenson. Thought it would make him sound less provincial, except nobody in Inimata calls themselves Ken. It was funny.”
“You met when he went to Inimata?”
“We knew one another in school. He was my friend.”
She lowered her sword. Not that Damid looked capable of using it, but he responded in kind by putting the half sword on one of the tables and picking his voicer up off the floor.
“Was he expecting you?” she asked. “Or was this a surprise?”
“He knew I was in the nine kingdoms, and asked me to come to Totus while I was in Extum, so I arranged it through Honus-Elisant. We didn’t get a chance to talk before…we were supposed to meet up this afternoon. I guess we won’t be doing that now.”
“Did the queen know about you?”
“She might have,” he said. “I don’t know. Kenson may have told her. Why don’t you just talk to her? It’s obvious you don’t get along, but she’s still your sister.”
“I can actually think of another way. Do you trust me?”
“Not entirely, no.”
“We could direct her.”
“We could…I’m sorry, that sentence makes no sense.”
He held up his voicer. “I may be able to speak to her remotely through this. Direct voice-to-voice.”
“I’m not that naïve, Damid. For that to work, she would need to have her own. Unless the technology has advanced significantly since I was introduced to it.”
“Kenson had one. I know because I arranged it for him. In fact, I arranged two; I’m assuming the second was for her. I don’t know the exchange number for her device, but I have his.”
“What makes you think she has it now?”
“I don’t know that she does,” he said. “But whoever answers the direct is bound to be near her, right?”
Porra had been bathed, fed and dressed almost entirely in silence. The girls had the sense not to indulge in gossip, and their baseline nattering had been toned down to almost nothing. They all looked solemn, and tired, and sad. A couple of times, a sob escaped from one of them, and the girl who let it out would have to leave the chamber to compose herself.
Porra both did and did not appreciate the silence. It was appropriately respectful, but it also forced her to be alone with her thoughts, none of which she much cared for.
I’ll still be queen, she reminded herself. But a queen in title only.
Widow Queen Porra. That was who she would be for the rest of her days. Replacing her—in the throne room and in these very chambers—would be Tannik’s wife Pha, a Patroch from Choruscam. Porra never cared for Pha and was certain the feeling was mutual. Their relationship was something Porra probably could have worked to improve if she’d thought there would ever be a need to. But she couldn’t have foreseen losing her status to the woman.
“She dresses like a man half the time,” Porra muttered.
“What is it, my queen?” Vexy asked, from her knees on the floor. She was helping Porra with her shoes.
“I was just contemplating the fashion sense of your next queen, Vexy,” she said. “Courtly fashion is going to be changing drastically.”
This was intended as a bit of levity, but wasn’t taken that way. It led to more surreptitious sobbing. A cold thought came to Porra. These girls may well have been mourning Kenson’s death as deeply as Porra herself was, but they were also contending with a status change. They would follow her; Queen Pha had her own staff
The notion that they would care so much about this—when Porra had in truth been mulling over precisely the same thing—made her unaccountably furious.
“My queen,” one of the girls said, breaking her reverie, “your bureau, it’s…playing music.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s playing…something inside is playing music.”
The girl—Porra thought her name might be Fig or something like that—started to open the drawers.
“Stop that this instant,” Porra said. The girl stopped and jumped back. “Leave me. All of you. Go have yourselves a cry; I’ll tell you when you’re needed again.”
They filed out silently.
Porra opened the drawer in which the forbidden devices were hidden and pulled out both hers and Kenson’s. His was the one making the sound; a three-note musical composition with which she was unfamiliar. The front window read Direct from Damid above a red circle.
She put her finger on the red circle.
The audio output on Magly’s voicer stopped emitting the buzzing noise.
“Did it work?” Battine asked.
“Hello?” Magly said into the voicer. “Is someone there?”
Silence, and then, “You are Damid?”
It sounded like Porra. The device altered her voice somewhat, but the intonation was right.
“Yes. Damid Magly, your majesty.”
A long pause.
“How do you know about Kenson’s voicer, Damid Magly?”
“I got it for him. Listen, I’m here with…”
“Is that why you killed him?” Porra asked. “A dispute? Or was it spite? Is she there with you?”
“Porra, I’m here,” Battine said. “We didn’t…”
“I knew you hated me, Battine,” Porra said. “I never dreamed you’d go this far.”
Battine couldn’t quite believe that even when her husband was murdered, Porra managed to find a way to make it about herself.
“Gods, Porra, we didn’t do this!” Batt said. “You must realize that. I loved Kenson as much as anyone.”
Porra laughed. It was an awful sound.
“You didn’t love him. You’re incapable of it. You coveted him. He did love you. I wonder, when he went back to the library, who was he expecting to meet? Was it you or Mr. Magly? I found your note, Damid Magly.”
“My note?” Damid asked. “I don’t understand.”
“The one telling Kenson to meet with you immediately. Were you hoping he’d destroy it?”
“I never sent him any note.”
“’Your friend, Damid’. That’s how it was signed. Until now I was unaware you knew my husband. Who else do you imagine could have written this?”
“I would have just messaged him on his voicer,” he said. “I did message him on it. We were supposed to meet today; it was arranged over these devices.”
“Convenient,” Porra said. “I can’t unlock this voicer of his and you know it.”
“He was with me all night,” Battine said. “I swear, he didn’t do this and neither did I.”
“Sister, I will reduce this castle to rubble looking for you,” Porra said. “Whether you plunged the blade into Kenson’s heart or he did, I’ll have you both for it.”
“Put it in his hand,” Damid said. “Porra, put the voicer in Kenson’s hand. It’s…”
“We’ll talk in person soon enough,” she said. “Goodbye.”
The voicer blinked, and indicated the direct was over; Porra had severed it from her side.
They stood there and stared at it for a while.
“Well that was awful,” Damid said. “Is there alcohol in that cabinet? It may be time to start drinking.”
“I can’t believe how angry she is,” Battine said. “At me.”
“She’ll calm down.”
“You don’t know her at all, Damid. Grudges are one of the things she’s really good at.”
Damid walked over to have a look at the liquor closet. Battine went back to something Porra said in the middle of all that vitriol.
“A note,” she said.
“Yeah,” Damid said. “That was interesting. I really didn’t write him a note.”
“I know you didn’t. But who did? It had to be someone who knew you were friends.”
“Oh,” he said. “Lord Aginot.”
“He knew?”
“I mentioned it to him over drinks on our way here. But why would he want to kill Kenson?”
“Why would anyone want to kill him? Let’s find Fergo and ask.”
Chapter Eight
As soon as Battine poked her head out of the room to listen to what was going on in the halls of the castle’s west wing, it was obvious that locating Fergo wasn’t going to end up being a simple matter.
There weren’t an overwhelming number of guards in Castle Totus. Barracks attached to the outer wall of the eastern side of the castle—beneath the bell tower—had been built to house a contingent of as many as 1,000 of them. In times of war their responsibility would be to protect the grounds between the outer wall and the royal family. (In this now largely hypothetical wartime scenario, Totus’s standing army would be responsible for the outer wall and everything beyond it.) Battine didn’t know what the current totals for the guard were, but it was significantly lower than 1,000.
Even with the increase in numbers thanks to the Feast of Nita fes
tivities—which mandated pulling soldiers like Nistor, who manned the gate on the day she arrived, out of retirement—there weren’t the kind of overwhelming numbers available to conduct a rapid room-by-room search. The castle was just too large.
But they didn’t have to search the whole castle; not yet. It had been less than an hour since the guard showed up at the door of her bedchambers. They were no doubt assuming she and Damid had not managed to make it out of the west wing, and had cut off the halls leading to the rest of the castle.
The room-to-room search hadn’t come close to them, but it would soon enough. So far, the guard hadn’t even made it to the right floor; she could hear at least a half-dozen of them running in the halls, but she didn’t see anyone. She closed the door again, and returned to the main part of the room.
“We have a little time,” she decided.
Damid was at the liquor closet. She was on the verge of an all-out panic; he looked remarkably relaxed in contrast.
“When was the last time this room was used, do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s been dusted sometime in the past year. Is it important?”
“This bottle of Murskan brandy is over a hundred years old. And there’s Lladnic bourbon that’s older. I haven’t even checked the wines yet.”
“It’s probably been that long since they restocked the cabinet,” she said. “But we’re not here to drink.”
Damid, she realized, wasn’t at all grasping the danger they were in. Even after that voicer conversation, he couldn’t conceive of them being at actual bodily risk.
You may not think of yourself as a tourist, she thought, but you’re behaving like one.
“These are valuable is all I’m saying,” Damid said. “And they’re just sitting here in a forgotten room. You could feed a lot of people with the credits made from the sale of these. Also I do really want to know what hundred-year Murskan brandy tastes like. Don’t you?”
“There have to be a dozen rooms like this in the castle,” she said. “Maybe when I’m not worried about saving our lives, I can give you a tour. Do you know what part of the castle Fergo is staying in?”
He smiled, and poured a glass. With a gesture he offered her a glass as well, which she ignored.
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