After a few moments, she noticed a sort of secondary portal projecting from the body of the house, bordered by pilasters and capped with a block of carved stone more than half again as tall as the recessed door itself. Just above that coping were round stained-glass windows, that, if her memory of various dances and parties wasn't playing her false, ran along the wall of a clerestory overlooking one of several spacious halls.
She pointed to the entry, and Thamalon nodded. They waited until neither of the guards were looking in their direction, then darted up to the portal and crouched in its shadow.
Shamur quickly climbed to the top of the capstone, then, feeling vulnerable and exposed to the view of the sentries above her, examined the windows. She hoped they'd been designed to open. Otherwise she'd have to extract one from its frame, a time-consuming process that would greatly increase the likelihood of someone catching sight of her.
But fortunately, it wasn't going to come to that. A moment's scrutiny revealed the simplest of latches. She worked a thin strip of steel between the stile and post, popped the fastener, cracked open the window, and peeked inside at a shadowy gallery illuminated only by a single oil lamp burning at the far end. No one was in sight.
Shamur tied off a thin rope and dropped it to enable Thamalon to ascend to her as quickly and quietly as possible. When he joined her, she freed the line, coiled it, started through the window, and froze.
"What's wrong?" Thamalon whispered.
"Nightingale floor," she replied, "built to squeak when anyone treads on it. I am rusty. I nearly failed to notice in time."
He peered past her at the gloomy interior of the building. "It's a marvel you noticed at all."
She shrugged the compliment away. "You can generally tell by the kind of wood, and the pattern in which the planks were laid."
"Does this mean we can't go in this way?"
"Luckily, no, but you must step precisely where I do."
"Very well. Lead on."
She did, taking care to trust her weight only to those spots where she reckoned the floorboards made contact with the joists beneath. She and Thamalon reached the arched entrance without either making a sound.
After that, they crept through the keep, listening for the voices and footfalls of others, ducking for cover and avoiding being seen whenever possible, strolling casually and pretending they belonged in the mansion when observation was unavoidable. Had they waited another hour or so to break in, there would have been fewer people roaming about, but Errendar Spillwine had taught Shamur that shortly before midnight was an advantageous time to enter a wealthy house. Many of the occupants had either retired already or were preoccupied with preparing to do so, and unfamiliar persons walking the corridors were less likely to excite alarm would be the case later on.
Finally, lurking in the doorway to a playroom full of balls, dolls, toy men-at-arms, and hobbyhorses, the Uskevren spied what they had been searching for. A brown-haired young man with a wispy mustache and the characteristic slim frame and wry, intelligent face of the Talendar, some bastard son of a female servant, perhaps, judging from the fact that he wore an ill-fitting hand-me-down doublet cut in last year's style, ambled rather unsteadily down the corridor.
The youth was alone. Indeed, as far as Shamur could tell, no one else was even in the immediate vicinity. So she lunged from the doorway, seized the lad, poised her dagger at his throat, and hauled him into the playroom. Thamalon shut the door behind them.
As she'd expected, the youth smelled of wine, but she saw no confusion in his wide, bloodshot eyes. Perhaps fear had sobered him up.
"What do you want?" he croaked.
"Tell me about the plan to assassinate the Uskevren," she said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Shamur believed him. It made sense that few members of the household would be privy to a criminal conspiracy. "Then tell me where Ossian Talendar is."
"Gone."
She increased the pressure of the keen edge against his neck. "Don't lie, or I swear to Mask, I'll kill you."
"It's true! He left a couple hours ago and took some of the warriors and Lord Talendar's mage along with him! Some other wizard in a moon mask went along, too, somebody I never saw before."
Shamur and Thamalon exchanged glances.
"Where did they go?" Thamalon asked.
"I don't know," said the boy. "They didn't tell anybody. All I know is that the guards didn't wear their uniforms, or take any arms or armor they couldn't hide under weathercloaks."
Shamur frowned. Did Ossian and the masked wizard mean to attack Stormweather Towers itself? No, surely not, they must realize that even with Jander and Master Selwick dead, such an effort had little chance of success. Did they then have hopes of catching one or more of the Uskevren children away from home? That seemed equally unlikely. Tamlin, Thazienne, and Talbot knew they were being hunted, and thus ought to have sense enough to stay in after dark.
Perhaps the enemy meant to attack and burn one of Thamalon's warehouses or merchantmen at anchor, as in the days when the vendetta between the rival Houses was at its fiercest.
"Nuldrevyn must know what's afoot," said Thamalon. "Where is he?"
"I don't know that, either," said the youth.
"Nonsense," Thamalon rapped. "The lackeys and retainers in a great house always have some notion of where their master is and what he's up to. The lad's playing games with us, milady. Carve him up a bit to prove we're in earnest."
"No!" yelped the youth, squirming futilely in Shamur's grasp. "I'm telling the truth!"
"Then explain," Thamalon said.
"No one's seen Lord Talendar since this afternoon. Master Ossian fetched him away from a conference with a quarryman, then returned later to tell the fellow that something had come up, and his lordship couldn't give him any more time. We've all been kind of wondering where the old man's gotten to."
"You're sure he didn't depart with Ossian and the others?" Shamur asked.
"Yes," said the boy. "Somebody would have noticed." ?
"And no one saw the masked spellcaster arrive?" she persisted. "Suddenly he was simply here inside the castle?"
"That's right."
Shamur nodded. "Is there a part of the mansion where people don't generally go? Where Lord Talendar and Master Ossian could confer with a third party without anybody else knowing it? Where, perhaps, a guest could even take up residence without the rank-and-file members of the household getting wind of it?"
"I suppose. I mean, there's a section nobody's used for at least a generation."
Shamur looked at Thamalon. "Perhaps well find Nul-drevyn there, or failing that, some clue to Master Moon's identity or his current intentions. I admit it's by no means a certainty, but I don't have any other ideas."
"Nor do I," Thamalon said. "Tell us how to get there, boy."
The youth obeyed, whereupon the intruders gagged him with a long gown commandeered from a marionette, trussed him to a chair with a pair of jump ropes, and left him in the playroom.