Then again, a few times he thought he’d been able to sense her. His own stomach had turned when she’d noticed her hands were contaminated. He’d felt it—sensed it—when the ambient seized her on the sparring floor. Not only her shock, but the ambient itself. He’d been deaf to it for so long he couldn’t be certain, but it had felt real.
He might just be interpreting her expression. She does have a delightfully animated face.
She is a child, he reminded himself then, what felt like the thousandth time that day. As with any other interaction with a child, his behavior would be under strict observation by the elders. In fact, if Deborah had woken in time, she might have refused to go along with the colonel’s plans.
And Deborah might be correct in her concern. He had not been on his best behavior. True, it was frightening how she read his thoughts like a book, but he’d found himself talking to Miss Anjir like he’d known her for years.
To be honest, he wasn’t sure that her attempt to see into his dreams had revealed anything new. He wasn’t sure the colonel’s idea of having her there when he actually dreamed would produce anything either. What she had done, though, was yank him out of his memories before he felt himself dying. If she could do that when he was actually dreaming . . .
“Why sacrifice Iselin?” Kai asked.
Kai and his father were standing next to Kai’s desk talking when Mikael looked away from the windows. Peder, Elisabet’s Second, stood in her customary place, his much larger frame nearly blocking the doorway completely. Kai had evidently gotten around Elisabet by taking one of her Seconds with him. Mikael wondered at that for only a split second before dismissing it as Kai’s capriciousness.
They’d discussed every bit of information they’d gathered with the colonel before he left, including the fact that Iselin had been struck from behind and tied up. Jakob’s conclusions after examining the body had evidently matched Miss Anjir’s revelations about Iselin’s death. “It wasn’t a sacrifice,” Mikael said.
Dahar paused midgesture. “What?”
Mikael left the windows and came back toward his desk. “This can’t be about sacrifice. If they were making a sacrifice, they would have stopped when Iselin died. From what I read in the Andersens’ files, the victim has to bleed out, so Iselin’s sacrifice wasn’t valid. Yet they kept carving the marks even after she was dead. That has to be the point, then, not the sacrifice itself.”
The expression on Kai’s face went guarded and still.
The first death, unsubstantiated since the body was missing, could have been seen as a mysterious death. The second killing had alerted the army to the murders, and the third, the Family. On a night when the Family was on alert, the killers had found a Family woman outside the fortress. Mikael would be interested to learn what Aldassa had heard from Iselin’s musician paramour—whether she’d arrived at their assignation at all. It might be important to know whether the questionable police officer and his accomplice last night had followed Iselin away from the palace grounds. Given the sudden headache he’d developed the previous evening, Mikael suspected that it coincided with Iselin being knocked unconscious.
“It’s a message,” he continued. “I don’t know to whom it’s being sent. We’re just in the middle here, between these . . . priests and whoever or whatever they want.”
Kai ran a hand through his dark hair, a rare nervous gesture. “The first two bodies were left exposed, even if one of them was later thrown into the river by the landowner. Iselin’s body was dumped on the riverside in the middle of the city. They wanted them to be found.” He turned away from them for a moment. When he turned back, his face was expressionless. “I’m supposed to be on the sparring floor soon. If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
Kai left, Peder trailing him. Mikael stared at the door for a moment, wondering what was running through Kai’s mind, what had caused him to leave so abruptly.
“He’s upset,” Dahar observed.
“Kai did train Iselin’s yeargroup on rifles at one point, sir. I can understand his feelings. And I think he and Elisabet are having a disagreement,” he added with a shrug.
“Don’t make excuses for him, Mikael.” Dahar strode over to his desk and picked up his teacup. After taking a sip, he turned to throw the porcelain piece into the fireplace, but then stopped himself and set it carefully back on the tray.
“You should go,” Dahar told him then, his burst of anger abated. He sounded exhausted. “You’ve had a long day.”
Mikael snatched up his coat from the chair where he’d placed it and left Dahar to brood.
• • •
Shironne felt the colonel’s worry as they rode in his carriage toward the house on Antrija Street. He’d queried her about her impressions of the palace and the fortress, and then what she thought of her newfound uncle and cousin. She hadn’t interacted much with the prince, and she tried to do her best to be positive about Kai.
“And Mr. Lee?” the colonel asked. “Was he too overpowering?”
She wouldn’t have thought to characterize Mikael Lee that way. “No. He’s very . . . practiced about when not to feel things.”
“He didn’t behave in any inappropriate way, did he?”
The colonel dreaded her answer, as if he was responsible for Mikael Lee’s actions. She didn’t see why he felt that way. It wasn’t as if she’d had no choice in the matter. “No, he was fine. He was . . . amusing.”
“You would tell me if you don’t want to work with him, wouldn’t you?” he pressed.
Ah, this was the tiresome child thing. “Absolutely. I’ve wanted to meet him for a couple of years now, sir. You know that.”
“And you’re sure you’ve never met him before?”
Now, that was an odd question. “Where would I have met someone from one of the Families?”
The coach came to a halt, and as soon as she sniffed she knew they were in the back courtyard at her house. The colonel opened the door, stepped down, and then helped her down.
“I do wish I could speak to your mother about today’s events,” he said as he led her toward the back door. “I would feel better if I could keep her abreast of what you were doing.”
Shironne sighed. Her mother wasn’t likely to be the problem. “She’ll be back soon, and I’ll tell her everything, I promise.”
She felt his resignation wrapped like a cloak around him. “I’d like to speak with her as soon as she returns,” he said, “which I realize she’s not supposed to do, but I’d prefer not to take you off to some tavern at night without her express permission.”
“I am an adult, sir.”
He chuckled and set her hand on the doorframe. “So you keep telling me.”
Shironne shook her head but bid him a good afternoon before going inside. After only a moment, she regretted coming inside. And letting the colonel leave.
Verinne was not happy with her.
• • •
Mikael ate a solitary dinner in the mess hall. Most days he sat alone there. If Deborah was unoccupied she would eat with him, but she was meeting with the elders—likely to discuss him again—so he didn’t have her to talk with either. He’d almost finished his solitary dinner when he looked up to find Elisabet standing across the table from him. He gestured for her to sit, surprised she’d honored him with her presence. “What do you need?”
She sat as stiffly as if she still wore her overcoat with its steel plates. “Keep an eye on Kai.”
“Isn’t one of your Seconds with him now?” Mikael asked, confused by the request. They were responsible for Kai when she needed to be elsewhere. She should ask them, not him.
“Peder is with him.” She paused, her eyes going distant for a moment before she continued. “Kai is having priority problems. He asked me to take myself off duty this afternoon. I’m concerned he might make a poor decision and endanger his safety.”
&
nbsp; That was the longest speech he’d ever heard Elisabet make, which meant it was important. “I’ll try,” Mikael said, “but he doesn’t listen to me, Elisabet. Are you concerned Peder or Tova might not be able to protect him?”
“Kai is intelligent, Mr. Lee, but foolish at times.” Elisabet stood, ending their conversation. She walked out of the mess hall without looking back.
Evidently, Kai had gone too far. Mikael had always considered Elisabet the less fragile of the two, and wondered why Kai didn’t see that. Then again, their relationship had always been a mystery to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Verinne, what if the colonel needs me to come in?”
The old woman blocked the doorway to Shironne’s room, her fear clearly evident. “The army can solve their problems without your help. It’s not a proper thing for a young lady anyway, to be around young men all day. I’ve told your mother that a thousand times.”
Melanna had crept into Shironne’s room the evening before and had listened to Shironne’s tales of her visit to the palace and the fortress below it. Then they’d spent an hour working their way through the novel that Shironne had secreted under her pillows. But Verinne had been displeased by this further flouting of her authority in the household and had decided that the only way to keep both of them under control was to lock them in their rooms. Confinement wouldn’t bother Melanna too much; she just saved her energy for later. Shironne, on the other hand, wanted to get back into the hunt for the killers.
“Mama will be home tomorrow,” she reminded the governess. “It’s only one day.”
“No,” Verinne insisted. “Don’t think I don’t know what kind of trouble a girl your age can fall into. If you let one man . . .”
Verinne went on, lecturing her on the evils of young men in general. Shironne listened with only half an ear. What had happened to Verinne when she was young to convince her that every man had lecherous intentions toward every girl he met? Perhaps there was a story in her past to justify her vehemence. But Shironne had extra abilities that most girls didn’t, and that allowed her to sense a young man’s intentions all too well. She was far safer in the company of Cerradine’s soldiers—and Mr. Lee—than she was walking along most streets.
So she gave the proper responses when called for, but Verinne wouldn’t be deterred, and then dropped her ultimate weapon. She sent the first housemaid into Shironne’s room to remove both her coats. The girl radiated embarrassment but said nothing.
Shironne was too surprised to protest—not until she realized that her gloves were in her coats. “You can’t take my gloves.”
“You won’t need them in here, will you?” Verinne snapped. “Take all her shoes too. Until your mother returns, Miss Shironne, you will stay here and think about your recent choices.”
The maid slipped out into the hallway, leaving Shironne too stunned to do anything other than listen to the door’s lock click shut. It was only then that she realized that her focus had still lain in the pocket of one of those coats, so she was without that as well.
She stood there, disbelief warring with outrage. Yes, her mother had left Verinne in charge, but that was no excuse for treating her like a criminal. She’d done no more than what her mother had permitted regularly for the last few years. After a moment, she forced her frustration down, determined not to let it rule her. She would just have to work around this setback.
She went to her old desk and opened the drawer. There she touched the rarely used contents until she located a small sheaf of paper, a quill, and ink. She took them back to the table and laid them all out. Shironne felt the top page to be certain the paper was blank. She swirled the ink, gratified to find it hadn’t dried out, and then eased out the stopper. Touching the edges of the paper, she tried to fix the bounds of it in her mind. She took the quill and dipped it in the well. Her hand remembered what had come so easily when she could see. She set the pen to the upper corner of the page, hoping she could still make a straight line.
• • •
Services in Below took on the nature of a thunderstorm. When hundreds of the Lucas Family gathered in the chapel, sound reverberated through the chamber, echoing off the impervious walls. Song became thunder, and the ambient in the chapel the wind, the will of hundreds joined in intention sweeping the hearts of even the mildest sensitive along with them.
Mikael sat in the fourth row with Deborah as the Lucas Family sang the memorial for Iselin. He stayed silent, knowing neither the words they used nor the unfamiliar tune. He’d never bothered to learn it, not in four years. His eyes followed the intricate patterns on the vast walls instead, trying to keep his mind calm and out of the ambient.
He was the subject of gossip again. Eli managed to come down the grand stair at the same time as Mikael, and asked him about his trek down to the depths of Seven Below with a Larossan girl on his arm. It was, as he’d expected, the most interesting gossip of the week, especially given that it was believed to be related to Iselin’s death. Mikael didn’t know how much he was allowed to reveal about the girl, so he chose to say as little as he could, although he did admit that Miss Anjir was Eli’s age.
And Deborah had, indeed, been dragged before the other elders to discuss his behavior yet again. As his sponsor, she was nominally responsible for his actions. When Mikael asked her about the meeting, she passed it off as a mere inconvenience, joking that if she’d known beforehand how many meetings the Head Infirmarian had to attend, she would never have accepted the post.
Only after the service did he notice several army uniforms among the Family, the blue glaringly obvious in that sea of brown and black. Cerradine’s children had come to pay their respects to the dead woman’s family. He spotted David Aldassa talking with Elisabet among the other twenty-fives. As the browns streamed out of the chapel in their yeargroups, Mikael tried to get closer to them.
He stopped suddenly, transfixed by the sight of Aldassa and Elisabet together, unmoving amidst the flow of black-clad bodies. The image flashed in his mind of a man, a memory from his dream, of a man watching Iselin Lucas die. Not the killer but someone else, a witness, anguish on his dark face. Miss Anjir had seen it too. She’d told the colonel and Dahar about it, only she hadn’t ever seen the man’s face—not with her own eyes. But Mikael had, talking with Elisabet and Aldassa in Cerradine’s office.
Hadn’t Iselin stopped because the police officer looked familiar to her?
Mikael shouldered his way toward Aldassa, pushing through the mass of bodies and apologizing as he went. Reading his loud urgency, sensitives cleared a path for him. Mikael laid a hand on Aldassa’s blue sleeve just as he turned to leave the chapel. Elisabet had already disappeared.
Aldassa looked pleased to see him. “Good. I was going to come up. Talk to you before I went back.”
“Paal,” Mikael said. “In the dream I saw Paal Endiren.”
“Not possible,” Aldassa said with a shake of his head. “He wouldn’t have come back to the city without reporting in.”
Someone nearby whistled, and Aldassa closed his eyes to gather himself and control his disquiet. A displeased look crossed his face. “Paal’s most likely dead, Mikael.”
“You’re wrong. Iselin probably didn’t know Paal, but they were only a few yeargroups apart, so she would have seen him regularly enough to recognize him years later. He was there when she died.”
“He’s not a killer,” Aldassa protested.
Mikael tried to dredge up that memory from the dream. “No, but he was forced to watch.”
• • •
A knock at her window startled Shironne out of her contemplation. The sound came again, and she sensed Melanna standing on her balcony. Fearful that one of the servants might walk past on the path below and report her to Verinne, Shironne ran across the room, threw open the balcony door, and yanked her sister inside.
“How did you get on my
balcony?” she asked, amazed.
“I climbed over the railing on mine and jumped to yours,” Melanna said, as if that were obvious. A thrill of exhilaration twisted about her.
“What?” Shironne touched her sister’s face, worried that she’d been hurt. Melanna felt nothing but pride in her accomplishment, though. Shironne tried to recall how far apart those railings were but couldn’t. When she’d been able to see, it had seemed much too far across to jump from one balcony to another. And it was a long way to the ground. “That’s dangerous, Lanna. I don’t want you to do that again. Promise me.”
“But you’re in here all alone and I’m bored,” Melanna said. “How long is Verinne going to make us stay in our rooms?”
“I don’t know. Mama could be back tomorrow.” That was an optimistic estimate. Fortunately, the first housemaid, still radiating discomfort over the whole business of taking Shironne’s coat and shoes, had brought up a tray from the kitchen with an ample breakfast. Neither of them would starve. “Verinne can’t find you in here. How are we going to get you back to your own room?”
“I can climb over the railing and down your tree,” Melanna said. “I can go in through the kitchen door. Cook will hide me.”
Shironne couldn’t figure out any alternative, not without a key, since both of their doors were locked. “Are you sure you can do that?”
Melanna nodded swiftly. “I wish I had a tree. I could climb down all the time.”
Shironne drew in a deep breath. Melanna seemed completely certain she could get down from the balcony safely. Mama wasn’t going to be happy about it when she found out, but it was good to know that there was some way out. “Very well, if you promise me you’ll be very careful. And that you won’t jump from your balcony again.”
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