“It won’t be easy.” Garyus doesn’t raise his head. “- saw enough before to poison her drink.”
“And?” Alica turns back to observe the feast.
“The man slumped on the table beside her? He’s dead. She swapped goblets.”
I don’t ask myself how the Silent Sister had known hours before which goblet to coat with venom, or where she’d obtained such a thing, silent and young as she is. She knew the same way the woman below knew to exchange with her neighbour. Both of them carry the same taint.
“Jesu.” Alica leans against the banister, eyes hard. The woman hasn’t moved: she picks a last sweetmeat from her plate as she talks to the man beside her-the one who’s not dead. She laughs at whatever he just said. “So if not poison, then what?”
Garyus sighs, an unutterably weary sound, and lifts his head as though it weighs a man’s weight. “The men I have around me-they’re mine. I replaced Father’s with hires of my own, expensive, but they’re mercenaries of the highest quality, and their loyalty runs as deep as my pockets. We’ll wait for her in the Sword Gallery and. . she won’t leave.”
Alica raises an eyebrow at this piece of information. A moment later she hastens to the door and raps against it. A man in palace livery enters, pushing a wheeled chair. He’s a solid fellow, watchful, a thin white seam of scar below his right eye as if underscoring it. I’d like to say I would have spotted him as more than a flunky, but I don’t know if that’s true.
The Silent Sister helps Garyus into the chair and he waves to be wheeled out. He’s weaker now, more twisted. It’s more than exhaustion-his sister has spent his health to buy what she needed. A second hard-man waits in the chamber beyond amid the instruments too large to be taken away with the musicians, a harp, drums, long tubular bells. He helps carry the chair down the stairs. Any aristocracy who are staying at the king’s pleasure will be housed in the guest wing, and to reach that from the royal banquet hall requires you walk the length of the Sword Gallery. If the woman is planning murder she must have been invited to stay the night, or else she is cutting things fine.
I wonder for a moment that neither of Garyus’s men are armed-but of course he’s unlikely to have permission to have his own hires wearing blades in the king’s house, relative or not, especially not as a displaced heir. The mercenaries may be paid well enough to risk concealed knives, but they’d have to be damn small to pass unnoticed. It seems unlikely that my great-grandfather or his sire are so lax as to not have regular inspections-certainly Grandmother has become very keen on them in later life. Still, the pair of them could strangle this woman with a cord swift enough.
We walk through the palace, Garyus trundled ahead, rattling in his chair, taking familiar passages that have changed remarkably little in sixty years. Just before we reach the gallery Alica pauses, then the others, then me. The Silent Sister has stopped some way behind us, beside a black oak door. She’s pointing.
“What does she say?” Alica asks her brother.
“I. .” He seems lost. “I can’t hear her any more.”
The message is clear enough without words, silent or otherwise. We go through and find ourselves in a tall but narrow chamber lined with cabinets, each fronted with thin sheets of Builder-glass, and each sporting a score or more of butterflies, speared through with pins to keep them in place. In dusty legions they haunt the room, the brilliance of their wings muted through neglect, a dozen lost summers impaled behind glass. I’ve not been in here before, or if I have the insects have been removed.
“Did we miss her?” Alica ventures, pulling a small but wicked knife from the pleated folds of her cream skirts.
The Silent Sister shakes her head.
“Gwen! Is she safe?” Garyus tries to straighten in his chair, remembering their little sister. The one who Alica will put an arrow through from the walls of Ameroth Keep six years from now.
The Silent Sister nods, though there is a sadness in it, as if she now shares my knowledge.
Garyus turns his head with effort to look at the man beside him. “Grant, there’s a woman that needs to be killed. She’ll be coming down the Sword Gallery shortly. She’s a threat to me and to my family. When the deed is done both of you will need to leave the palace and my service immediately. You’ll be taking three hundred in crown gold with you.”
Grant glances at the man behind Garyus. “Will she be alone?”
“There may be others with her, but no guards, nobody armed. The Lady Shival is the only one who should die. The one with sapphires in her hair.”
“Blue lady. Got it.” Grant puts a hand to his chin. His fingers are blunt and scarred. “Three hundred? And you’re sure, my lord? Killing in the palace is no small thing. Not an end to be pursued without certainty. Unless your sisters can hide you you’ll be found at the scene.”
Garyus tolerates the questioning-it’s well meaning after all, if insolent. “I’m certain, Grant. Johan, is it a fair price?”
“It is, my lord.” The other man, darker, older, inclines his head. His voice, soft and high, surprises me. “The money will reach us where?”
“Port Ismuth. My factor there, Carls. Within two weeks.”
We wait in silence then, amid the dead butterflies, dry wings unmoving within their cases. Five minutes pass, ten. . an hour?
The Silent Sister raises her hand. Grant and Johan go to the door, we follow them out, Alica pushing Garyus along.
Double doors lead into the Sword Gallery and here I see a difference between the present day and the gallery of sixty years before. Grandmother has hung the length of the hall with oil portraits of swordmasters practising their art. Her father had his art in iron rather than oils, with a hundred and more swords lining the walls, each pointing to the ceiling, each different. Grant breaks a fine example free from its restraints, a long sword with a blade of black Turkman iron, and hands it to Johan. He takes another for himself, a shorter but heavier sword in Teuton steel, and advances toward the double doors at the far end.
The doors open a second before the two mercenaries reach them. And there she stands, Lady Shival, behind her a maid in royal colours escorting her to her rooms. The lady seems entirely unsurprised to see two men advancing on her with blades drawn. Her smile, on a face just a few years shy of being matronly, is almost a mother’s, reproachful but indulgent.
“Look at yourselves!” she admonishes, and lifts her hand revealing a small silver mirror.
Johan’s advance is arrested as if he’d walked into something solid. He lifts his off hand, grappling with something I can’t see. The muscles in his neck stand out, corded with the strain. To the left Grant finds himself similarly caught, horror crowding his face as he struggles, his sword hand trapped, his off hand trying to close on something. Lady Shival walks between the pair, leaving the maid standing stunned in her wake.
“Should you children be up so late?” She leans forward slightly to address the trio.
Alica doesn’t waste any time on small talk or threats, just springs forward, knife concealed at her side.
“No.” The lady is faster, a tilt of her hand and her mirror is aimed at the child, stopping her as effectively as it stopped both mercenaries. “And that leaves Gholloth’s twins. .” She faces them: Garyus hunched in his chair, the Silent Sister beside him. She ignores the boy and meets his twin’s gaze. “We’ve met already, dear.” Again the motherly smile, though I see something harder behind it now. “Quite the stare you have there, young lady. But if you go looking in places we’re not supposed to look. . well, let’s just say the future is very bright.”
The Silent Sister makes no reply, just stares, one eye pearly blind, the other dark and unreadable.
“This whole thing.” Lady Shival waves her arm at the mercenaries, still struggling, grunting with effort, making quick readjustments of their feet. “It’s very inconvenient. I have to move quickly now, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t stop to talk.” She moves her mirror into the line that joins her eyes with the Silent Sister’s. “It’s a hole,” she says. And it is. In place of the silver and reflections there’s nothing but a dark and devouring hole, sucking in light and sound and air. I feel myself drawn forward, drawn in, the very essence of me bleeding from my skin and pulling away toward that awful void.