The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Is this the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever done? That this was even a question made him suspect the idiocy of his past life choices.

  Using the stone claws on its feet, the gargoyle pinched into the slate, creating firm footholds as it walked up the steep slope. A gust of wind hit its wings, staggering and nearly toppling the beast, but the creature folded them away and continued its climb.

  This is what Villar had seen last night. An unstoppable predator. Irony, oh how I hate thee.

  Royce maintained his perch along the line of the peak. When the first attack came—a wide swipe from the remaining arm—he shuffled back along the length. All this did was grant the gargoyle room to take position on the ridgeline with him. With only one arm, the golem couldn’t both attack and hold on to the fins. Still, it had claws on its feet and, of course, fangs. Royce couldn’t forget the fangs. Mercator’s blood was already drying, aided by the brisk wind. An ever-present, sinisterly sculpted smile revealed zigzagging teeth as pointed as spear tips, the invention of an artist with a sick mind and no concern for realism. The gargoyle moved forward with the confidence Royce lacked.

  Facing the monster, guarding from attacks, Royce shuffled backward blindly, knowing he would eventually run out of roof, and do so without warning. He was a sailor walking a plank backward.

  Royce dodged a swipe from the golem’s foot. In the process, he backed up too far and found the end of the roof. He fell, catching himself by grabbing the decorative ironwork.

  The golem pressed the advantage, rushing forward. With Royce dangling and nearly helpless, the sensible thing for the golem to do would have been to crush his hand and let him fall. Instead, it grabbed his wrist and jerked him up. The golem’s grip on his wrist was exactly what Royce expected, vise-strong and cold. This was the end of the fight, but while the golem had but one arm, Royce had two. As the golem jerked Royce up, it had no defense—likely didn’t feel a need for it.

  How do you harm stone?

  The golem had no reason to fear a delicate dagger. Royce had slim hope himself, despite knowing the weapon was endowed with an extraordinary blade that cut wood like hot iron cut wax. Once, it’d even cut a link of iron chain. Alverstone was hope in the face of despair, and Royce hoped very hard as he jabbed at the gargoyle’s chest.

  Rather than turn, deflect, or snap as it should have, the dagger’s blade punctured the stone. Not deep; it didn’t have the opportunity. The golem screamed, recoiled, and in that instant of shock, the heavy stone creature was thrown off balance. Falling from its precarious perch, the golem let go of Royce in the hope of grabbing support.

  Released from bondage, Royce fell. He hit the roof’s surface, started his slide, and without thought used Alverstone the way he so often used his hand claws. Royce stabbed into the slate with the blade. It penetrated, caught, and held, leaving Royce hanging from the dagger, as beside him the golem tumbled.

  The gargoyle’s weight worked against it. It managed to grab an edge but tore it free. The onetime statue fell, rolled, and picked up the sort of speed one expects from a rock rolling down a steep roof. It bounced, jumped, and finally fell, this time on the plaza side. The gargoyle’s wings spread, but stone wings did nothing to slow its fall.

  Royce didn’t see the impact. The edge of the roof blocked the climax. He heard it: a loud crack. Screams and shouts followed. They were short-lived, the sort that came from the surprise of a falling stone, rather than the fear of a living golem.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Duke

  The bronze doors of the Imperial Gallery—one with a massive hole torn in it—were open by the time Royce reached the street. A skittish crowd remained in the plaza, and given the way they scuttled back at his approach, they had watched his upper-story jiggery-pokery. That was most certainly what Evelyn would have made of his chase across the rooftops if she’d been in the crowd. Royce considered for a moment whether she’d been one of those people the gargoyle had injured in its murderous march across the plaza. No one would have fared well before the golem’s onslaught, but an old woman would lack any ability to get out of the way. His teeth clenched in anger. He didn’t know why. He hated that old woman.

  He took a breath before entering the gallery, and then another. He’d just survived a race with a golem and felt he deserved to take a moment. His back was sore, and his wrist ached where the stone monster had held onto it, but at least it wasn’t broken. Not exactly Hadrian’s luck, but better than his normal lot.

  Few spectators had found the courage to venture inside. Those who did hugged the wall nearest the exit. A handful of men dressed in the uniform of the duke’s city guard made a semicircle around the bloody mess in the middle of the rotunda. Most stood awkwardly, shifting their weight, unsure where to look or what to do. Three others pulled back the broken remains of the fallen dragon, revealing the extent of the gore. Everything within twenty feet of Mercator’s body wept blood. The remains bore as little resemblance to a once living person as did a slab of bacon. A young man in a crisp new set of clothing clapped both hands over his mouth; when that didn’t work, he ran for the door, brushing past Royce in his dash to the street.

  As a general rule, Royce disliked everyone. Strangers began at a deficit that required they prove their worth just to be seen as neutral. Mercator had jumped that bar in record time.

  And a mir to boot, he thought. How remarkable is that?

  Royce couldn’t help feeling he’d blindly brushed past greatness. An opportunity had been lost, a treasure squandered. That was how he framed it in his head, as an abstract business failure. But looking at Mercator’s blood and the blue-stained lumps of meat that had once been the most remarkable mir he’d ever known, Royce clenched his fists.

  A shriveled-up biddy and now a mir. I’m becoming soft. This is all Hadrian’s fault.

  “You there!” one of the guards shouted. “Grab him!”

  Not twice in one night, Royce thought as he took a step back, dipping into a crouch.

  The guard wasn’t a fool. He recognized the body language, which must have looked like a badger raising its fur, teeth bared. The man didn’t rush him. Neither did anyone else. Instead, the guards fanned out.

  Royce heard movement behind him. Turning, he found himself face-to-face with Roland Wyberg, just coming in through the torn bronze door. “Well, it’s about time,” Royce said. “C’mon, we gotta go.”

  “Go? What are you talking about? Where’s Hadrian?” Roland asked, puzzled. He looked at the hole in the door then at the bloody mess in the center of the room. “What in Novron’s name happened here?”

  “I saw this man running across the rooftops chased by . . .” The guard faltered.

  “Chased by whom?” Roland asked. His stare extended to everyone in the room, finally settling on Royce.

  “Not a who, a what,” Royce replied. “One of the stone gargoyles from the walls of Grom Galimus.”

  “A gargoyle?” Roland asked, pronouncing the word with distinct incredulity.

  Royce nodded. “A stone statue, normally content to sit on a ledge outside the cathedral, decided to climb down. It took a particular dislike to myself and”—his eyes tracked to the blood pool—“a mir named Mercator Sikara.”

  Roland stared. He opened his mouth. It hung there for a moment, then he closed it again, his eyes shifting helplessly. “I—I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “Luckily, I do,” Royce said. He pulled out two parchments. “Here, this one’s for you. It’s from Hadrian, explaining why you need to take me and Mercator to the duke and insist on an audience. Although now we’ll have to settle for just me.”

  “And the other?” Roland pointed at the parchment but made no attempt to take it.

  This guy is a lot smarter than I gave him credit for. And that’s good because whether either of us likes it or not, we’re about to become a team.

  “This?” Royce held up the letter from Genny Winter. “If we’re lucky, it’s a weapon we can use to
prevent a slaughter tomorrow.”

  Roland continued to look puzzled; then realization dawned. “The Feast of Nobles?”

  “Exactly. We need to see the duke. Right now.”

  Governor’s Isle was an odd name for the ancestral residence of dukes, but Royce guessed it had something to do with all that gibberish Evelyn had blathered on about. The place didn’t look anything like a ducal castle. The Estate had the typical ugly wall surrounding the grounds, but it appeared out of place, newer and more slapdash than anything inside, all of which was extraordinarily precise. Brick paths wound through open lawns and alongside trimmed hedges. One led through a small orchard and garden to a stable, a coach house, barracks, and a kitchen built separate from the main structure, all constructed from a smooth rock with no visible mortar.

  The Estate itself was a rambling country home built of the same precisely cut stone—something the elite of Colnora might have referred to as a grand villa. The house was three stories high with gables and a centered portico complete with stone pillars. Royce counted five chimneys and twenty-nine glass windows facing front, including a round one set at the portico’s peak. At the very top, the ducal flag flew just below the colors of Alburn. The entry path formed a circle before the front doors, and fine gravel lined a neatly edged lawn, well-trimmed hedges, and early purple flowers that Royce couldn’t identify. The style was relaxed, opulent, and open, nothing like the homes of western nobles, which skewed toward the dull and solid—with an emphasis on solid. In places like Warric and Melengar, a duke’s residence was barely discernible from a stronghold. Even successful knights lived in gray stone citadels with narrow, glassless openings. But this place . . .

  If the wall was a relatively recent addition, Royce struggled to imagine how the Dukes of Rochelle could have lived in an open, defenseless house. The idea was both incredible and unfathomable. The lack of walls suggests an absence of enemies, but no ruler fits that description. Had the ancient governors been so ruthless that sheer terror replaced the need for walls? Perhaps in place of stone battlements they had encircled the island with posts laden with corpses. Or . . . An odd, alien thought popped into Royce’s head, one that was as unlikely as his walking alongside the captain of the guard into a ducal estate. Could there have been no need for walls because it was a more virtuous world? The sort of place where Hadrian would have fit in? Royce pondered all this as he walked past the yellow-flowering forsythia bushes, listening to his feet crush the gravel. Hadrian is one of those people born too late, and I? Am I born too early?

  Royce wasn’t surprised that obtaining an audience in the dead of night was difficult even for the captain of the duke’s guard. Wyberg had to browbeat the soldiers at the gate, who complained about his lack of an appointment. At the front doors, Roland had to remind the pair of men about his rank in order to gain entry to the foyer.

  Looking up, Royce spotted an open third-story window. He could have already entered the duke’s bedroom by then, though the meeting might not have been as cordial with that approach.

  Inside, the Estate continued to impress. The duke’s foyer was ballroom-sized and decorated with sculptures and paintings instead of swords and shields, the normal ornaments for any serious lord intent on projecting a sense of power. Royce was genuinely impressed by some of the art. When he’d visited such places in the past, the homes were always dark, and he was in too much of a hurry to notice the furnishings. The place was elegant, but he wouldn’t want to live there. The residences of the rich always felt cold.

  “Duke Leopold does not meet with his soldiers in the middle of the night,” said the duke’s chamberlain, a portly, balding man who displayed a well-worn frown beneath a neat mustache. While unarmed and unimposing, he was proving to be a worthier adversary than the gate or door guards. With thumbs hooked on the breast of his robe, chest thrust out, he stood blocking the way. “We have a hierarchy to handle problems.”

  “Exactly, and I’m captain of the guard,” Wyberg declared.

  “But did His Grace request an audience?”

  “No, this is an emergency.”

  The chamberlain’s frown deepened. “Aren’t you supposed to handle emergencies? Why does the duke have you in charge, if not to provide him the luxury of sleeping at night? As you can see, the sun is down. We don’t bother him with trifles when he is sleeping.”

  “Trifles!” Roland burst out. “I just said—”

  “Tut-tut!” The chamberlain placed the palms of his hands together then tilted the tips of his pressed fingers toward Roland. “This is what you will do. Tomorrow morning—and not too early—you can come and make an appointment to speak to the ducal clerk. Given the feast, I’m sure he’ll be too busy to receive you, but if it truly is an emergency”—he looked at Wyberg skeptically—“he’ll get you in to see the duke’s secretary, who will evaluate your request and determine if it warrants an audience. If it does, your request will be passed on to the Ducal Council of Attendance, which will review His Lordship’s itinerary and try and find time in the schedule for you. Now, doesn’t that sound like a better way to go about this? I’m sure whatever the problem is, you can manage it for a while.”

  “This can’t wait!” Roland exploded.

  Royce stayed out of the confrontation. He had entered behind the captain, acting as Roland’s shadow, and soundlessly moved about the foyer, feigning interest in the art. With all of Wyberg’s outbursts, the chamberlain only gave Royce a cursory glance, then ignored him altogether. Royce inched behind the chamberlain, slipping beyond his peripheral vision. Spotting a painting of a stag in a river valley, Royce moved toward it. While it wasn’t the best art in the room, it was near the corridor. Moving over, he leaned in to inspect it further.

  “I must see the duke tonight!” Wyberg shouted and thrust his arms out in a rage. “You have no idea what’s going on! If I don’t—”

  “Calm yourself!” the chamberlain snapped, throwing up his hands and cringing as if he felt Wyberg was about to attack.

  Royce took that opportunity to slip into the unguarded hallway.

  Wood paneling, tiled floors, and an arched ceiling complete with painted designs in the ducal colors greeted Royce as he trotted down the corridor, moving fast—far faster than if he were burgling. It felt odd. This was wholly without precedent, and Royce wasn’t certain how to proceed. What do I do if I spook a servant or, worse, a guard? He guessed his normal solution might not be the best choice in this instance. He was there to talk to the duke, not kill him or his servants. He was acting blind. Moving boldly through a lit house, unannounced and unwanted, was strange when doing so with none of the normal tools he used in such situations.

  This is more like something Hadrian would do. The man is becoming a serious liability.

  As he searched the vast estate for clues to the duke’s whereabouts, Royce reviewed the pros and cons of continuing his partnership with the man who didn’t seem to live in the same world. He genuinely liked Hadrian, although at that moment he wasn’t able to bring to mind a single reason why. But is liking something a good enough reason to offset the risks? I like Montemorcey wine, but too much will kill me. The more he thought about it, the more similarities he found between them. They both impede my ability to think sensibly, resulting in bad judgments, and too much of either gives me headaches.

  Still, the best argument was also the worst. Hadrian was wrong. I do have a unicorn in my world, and the damn thing goes by the name of Hadrian Blackwater. He’s a mythical beast impossible to believe in, even when he’s right in front of me. Royce had never had the need to believe in anything before, but that was the effect of the unicorn on a mortal man. It made him consider things he thought impossible. Because if unicorns were possible . . . what else might be? In that way, Hadrian was less like Montemorcey and more like Alverstone. Perhaps that was why Royce could never throw either of them away.

  Finding another stair, Royce took it, guessing the duke slept on the highest floor. Reaching the top, he found t
he residence to be more inviting. Deeply stained wood and tapestries softened the hard edges. Small tables topped with bouquet-filled vases added a dash of personality through spring blossoms. Expansive windows framed with thick green drapes invited moonlight in and made the house feel more like a home—a three-story one with a footprint the size of a large island and filled with priceless art. Royce passed an open door and spotted a chambermaid turning down a bed. She didn’t see him, and Royce slipped quickly past.

  A boy in a white tunic, who carried a tray of porcelain cups and plates, did see him, but the lad didn’t say a word—just walked right past.

  I’ve been doing it all wrong, Royce thought. Apparently, I can saunter into any mansion, lift what I like, and stroll right back out.

  He looked at the corridor of closed doors and considered his next move. Should I knock? The idea felt absurd.

  Royce heard a noise behind him and spun to find the chambermaid stepping out, holding a pile of white linens. She, too, saw him; he was certain she had, but the maid—like the boy—didn’t raise her eyes to the level of his face. As she turned to leave, Royce had an insane idea. It was the sort of crazy notion that Hadrian would propose.

  “Excuse me,” Royce said, feeling ridiculous. “Where might I find the duke?”

  As soon as he said it, Royce knew he’d made a mistake. He wasn’t Hadrian, and such things only worked for him. Maybe if I was wearing polka dots . . .

  “I believe His Lordship is in the library, sir,” the maid replied. “He’s having trouble sleeping again, sir.”

  Royce stared at the woman, dumbfounded.

  Apparently, mistaking his bewilderment for an unfamiliarity with the Estate, she added, “Around the corner. First door on the left, sir.”

  “Ah . . . thank you,” he replied.

  She nodded and walked off with her armload of sheets.

  What sort of place is this? Yes, please. Right this way, sir. The duke is right in here. Have at him, sir. Slit his throat. Would you like tea with that? Royce shook his head while watching her vanish down the steps, then remembered why he was there.