Rogger had come in disguise.
Kathryn ser Vail rose from a seat by the crackling hearth as Dart flew into the room. She slipped a flap of cloth over something resting atop the table by the hearth. It hid an object the size of a small melon.
A third occupant of the room, Gerrod Rothkild, esteemed master and ally, remained seated, leaning over the table, encased in his usual bronzed armor.
Dart caught the whiff of some foul alchemies-then she was in Rogger’s arms. She hugged him tight to her. It had been an entire year. Too long. He chuckled at the fervency of her greeting.
She didn’t care. Of those who knew the truth about her, there were few who seemed to care less.
“Unhand me, foul wench!” he said after returning her hug.
Dart grinned and backed away.
Rogger searched around the room, then held out an arm. A bit of sweetcrackle appeared in his fingers as if out of the very air. “I think I owe someone else a greeting. Here you lice-ridden slab of mutton.” He bent, resting his other hand on a knee, dangling out the tasty tidbit. “Now where are you?”
Dart pointed toward the table where Castellan Vail stood. “Pupp is over there.”
“Ah,” Rogger said, straightening. He shared a strange glance with Castellan Vail. “Mayhap he should be away from there. Not something to be nosing, that’s for sure.”
Gerrod stirred, collected the covered object, and stood. “I will take the artifact down to my rooms among the masters. See what I can make of it.”
“Thank you, Gerrod.”
“And be careful with the skaggin’ thing,” Rogger added.
With a nod to the thief and a half bow to the castellan, Gerrod strode off with a whir of the mekanicals that drove his armor. Though Dart had never seen the man’s face, hidden behind bronze, all knew his story, how his body had been wasted by the alchemies necessary to attain the fifteen masterfields, the most disciplines ever mastered by a single man. Now he was forever dependent on the blessed mekanicals of his armor for support.
Once Gerrod was gone, Rogger waved Dart to one of the three seats by the hearth. Kathryn took the other. Rogger settled into the third, resting his heels by the fire. He tossed the bit of sweetcrackle to Dart for nibbling.
“What are you going to do now, Rogger?” Kathryn asked.
“I figured I’d stick tight at least until Tylar gets his cloak and sword back. Meantime, I’ll shed these robes, slink into the lower realms of these black halls, and listen about. Have you ever figured out who slew that young knight last year?”
Kathryn’s countenance darkened. She wore a knight’s black leathers, as if she had come in from a recent ride. Even her hair, a dark golden red, was woven into a horseman’s knot at the nape of her neck. It was one of the few ways the castellan relaxed these days, on horseback, the wind in her cloak. Rogger’s arrival must have thwarted a midday ride.
“No. And I fear we may never discover the truth.”
Dart had not seen the murder firsthand, but she had heard the tale in great detaiclass="underline" a knight’s body found slaughtered, sacrificed, drained of blood, alongside a pit of burnt bones. The murderers remained free.
“The trail has gone dead cold by now,” Kathryn explained. “Even Tracker Lorr has given up after spending an entire moon in the warren of sewers that drain the city.”
Rogger grunted. “And I thought my travels were harsh.”
“And now we have the abandoned sections of the city swelling with returning knights and rooms being readied for all the various guests. Any tracks we might have missed or overlooked are surely trampled, swept away, or muddied.”
Kathryn shook her head in defeat.
“So no way to pin it on One Eye?” Rogger said.
Dart knew that the castellan highly suspected Argent ser Fields in the deaths and disappearances. Especially with the warden wielding a cursed sword in his hunt for Tylar. Still, suspicions were not proof that could be brought before any adjudicators. Argent had even passed inspection by soothmancers, bloody-fingered men of fiery alchemies who could probe the truth in one’s heart.
Still, Kathryn was sure the Fiery Cross was somehow connected to the sacrifice. The fire pit, the circle of blood, and the spread-eagled man-all suggestive of some ritual with the Cross. But now they had all slipped away.
“Have there been any more disappearances?” Rogger asked.
“We’re keeping a daily roll now, especially among our younger knights. It seems Perryl was the last to vanish.”
Perryl ser Corriscan was another of their allies, a young knight new to his stripes, one who was taken from his room, leaving only a splatter of blood on his bed. Dart sensed this was who Kathryn sought more than any.
“With all the new knights arriving,” Rogger said, “perhaps a few words will slip, a bit of bragging done under the hem of a cloak. I’ll see what I can discern.”
“Be careful.”
Rogger seemed to read something in Kathryn’s hollowed gaze. “We’re not defeated yet. If One Eye is to blame, or those in his service, we’ll bring him low.”
Her expression didn’t change. “With all that’s happening beyond our walls, maybe that isn’t even for the best. Rather than looking back, seeking to place blame, maybe it is time to make peace. Shaking Argent out of his Eyrie will weaken us most when we need to be at our strongest.”
Dart’s eyes widened, shocked. She had never heard the castellan express such a sentiment.
Even Rogger was struck silent.
“No!” Dart said into the sullen quiet, remembering the artful bit of deceit and bribery just perpetrated against her. “It’s a false strength! He doesn’t seek the good of Myrillia, only his own power.” Dart related what had occurred just moments before in the Warden’s Eyrie.
Now it was the castellan’s eyes that widened. “Argent sought to set you up as a spy here? In my own hermitage?”
Dart nodded vigorously. “Do not let your guard down, Castellan Vail. Better to be few and true of heart than legion and corrupt.”
Rogger chuckled. “From the mouths of babes come the simplest wisdoms.”
Kathryn sagged back into her seat, but she nodded. “I’ve been too long in this tower.”
“But you’re not alone-never alone,” Rogger said. “And Tylar will be here in another day or so.”
These last words only seemed to wound more than heal. Dart had known the castellan long enough to recognize the pained narrowing of her lips, the tightening at the corners of her eyes. Matters between Kathryn and her former betrothed were even more complicated than between castellan and warden.
Rogger seemed blind to all this. “Once Tylar is here, all will be clearer.”
Dart sensed nothing could be further from the truth.
But this time she stayed silent.
Much later, as the sun sank and the first evening bell rang, Dart closed the door to her private room. Sore and tired, she shed her half cloak and wooden sword and pulled out of her boots. She could hardly think.
After Rogger left, Dart had found the rest of the day a blur of errands for the castellan. It seemed as each bell rang, bringing them only that much closer to the day of Tylar’s ceremony, more duties befell them all. Dart also had to attend a class explaining proper horse grooming and the care of riding tack, where a surly gelding had stepped on her toe. She still limped. It made the final climb up to the top of Stormwatch all that much harder.
But here her room waited. The room was really a closet, formerly a maid’s chamber adjacent to the castellan’s hermitage, but it was gloriously all her own. She even had a slitted window that looked out on the giant wyrmwood tree that graced the central courtyard.
As Dart limped to the window in her stockings, Pupp stretched, circled a few times at the foot of her bed, then settled to the floor.
Dart stared at the lesser moon, a sickle slicing slowly through the leafless limbs of the great wyrmwood. A few stars shone with cold light. She stared, lost in her own bleary thoughts of things she had to remember for the following morning. Another two retinues would arrive tomorrow-from Five Forks and Nevering.