We looked at each other. My heart pounded so fiercely I thought it might burst through my chest, but Daelyn only smiled slightly.
"Answer it," he said.
I had barely turned the knob when the door flew open. Disheveled and distraught, Rosten tumbled into the room. His coat tails flew around his thick waist and his hair flopped in his face. He spluttered when he spoke.
"My lord prince!"
Daelyn lifted a brow and slipped beneath his covers, then settled himself against his headboard. "The hour is late, Rosten."
"The House of the Book, my lord...." Rosten appeared to be having difficulty breathing. He gasped and spluttered again. "Has been violated!"
Daelyn gave me a glance before looking back to Rosten. "How so?"
Rosten took a moment to compose himself. He smoothed his greasy hair and gave me a sneer. "Wine, boy."
I poured him a cup from the flask I'd had brought for Daelyn, and Rosten gulped it down without a breath. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, which made Daelyn wrinkle his nose with distaste. Rosten didn't notice.
"I was making one last round of the cells, my lord prince, as is my habit, when I noticed something awry."
"So late?" Daelyn's fingers plucked idly at the coverlet, as though he were bored with Rosten's story. Only the glance he gave me showed me the level of his interest. "Is it always your habit to wander the dungeons of the House of the Book so late at night?"
"I sleep poorly these days, my lord prince." Rosten smoothed his clothes and buttoned his coat. "I often wake after but a few chimes sleep. I find the wee hours of the morning a perfect time to make my rounds, check up on my charges...to speak to those who perhaps might earlier have resisted my questions."
"I see."
So did I. Like a ghoul, Rosten rose when most people slept to torture and interrogate his victims. I rubbed my sore tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep myself from muttering.
"I went to the last cell, where the three follies were awaiting their sentence in the morning. And they were gone!"
"Gone?" Daelyn pursed his lips. "Really."
"The guards saw nothing! There was no sign of tampering with the keys, the locks, nothing! Surely you see what this means!"
"Please. Enlighten me." Daelyn's soft voice seemed to send Rosten into a further fury.
"Someone took them away! You can no longer deny there is an insurrection at hand, my lord prince, right here in Alyria! Someone came in and took those follies out, practically from under my very nose!"
"I think perhaps you should have a word with your guards," Daelyn said, again in a voice so soft I had to strain to catch his words. He fixed Rosten with an unwavering gaze. "You are the Book Master, are you not? And your duties include not only making laws but also enforcing them, as you so oft remind me, is that not so? And your role also includes forming and overseeing an army, does it not, my lord?"
"It does, but –"
"Then I suggest," Daelyn said, in a voice gone lethal, "You find it within yourself to deal with this situation. You wanted the responsibility. Now take it."
Rosten straightened his back. Once I'd seen two lizards that wanted to warm themselves in the same patch of sun. Both had hissed and shown their fangs, though neither would make the first move against the other. Rosten and Daelyn reminded me of those lizards.
Rosten gave his coat one last tug. "You are correct. Forgive my intrusion, my lord prince."
Daelyn inclined his head, then gave a pointed glance toward the door. Rosten nodded, then turned. At the doorway, he paused to look back.
"You gave me leave to do what I wished to stop this rebellion. This desecration. This...pornography. I intend to take it."
"I understand that, Rosten."
Rosten left.
Daelyn sighed.
"Where were you tonight?" I asked.
Daelyn reached over and blew out the lamp on his nightstand. The room plunged into darkness. "Don't ask questions you don't want answered, Aeris."
"But I do want answers!"
"Good night," was all he said, and I went back to my niche with a thousand questions whirling in my brain.
As I fell to sleep, an image formed in my mind. Three women, climbing a mountain, their follyblankets thrown back from their faces and their feet shod in sturdy hiking boots. None of the three were missing their hands.
Chapter Twenty-Two
News of the breakout was all over the city by the next afternoon. The marketplaces and poetry houses were abuzz with speculation. Who had done it? And why?
Daelyn said naught more of where he had gone the night before. I thought of what he had said about not asking questions I didn't wish to be answered, and though I still wanted to learn, I kept quiet. Instead, I vowed to keep my ears and eyes open, my mouth shut, and learn more of his secrets.
I'd no doubt he was behind the escape. Whether he had done it himself or had someone else do it, I couldn't say. Rosten's investigation turned up footprints in the muddy ground, but the guards, unused to tracking women, had obliterated the trail with their own clumsy passage toward the edge of the city. Rosten had ordered the men who'd ruined the trail beaten and their rank stripped from them. I thought they were lucky he didn't do more.
Several days passed, but no matter how many witnesses Rosten "questioned," nobody was able to give him an adequate explanation about what had happened.
"They all look the same," was what I heard one man say to another more than once as I went through the city on errands for my prince. "Follies in their veils...who can tell them apart?"
After a fortnight the news faded in favor of other, more fashionable topics. The Feast of Sinder was coming, a time of revelry and party-making before the Fast of Sinder, a far more sober holiday. The city and probably the provinces, too, were abuzz with preparations.
All but Rosten, who ordered a curfew of three chimes and doubled the soldiers patrolling the streets. He posted sentries at most of the poetry houses, where they stood like solemn statues as their peers laughed and drank and sang around them.
Despite the cooling, rainy weather, I continued to meet Lir each morning on the fight field. My body grew lean with muscle. I studied the Art and practiced my swordsmanship, and I took everything Lir could teach me as fast as I was able.
"You could easily beat Vermonte now, if you wanted." Lir paused in our battle. "Even if he cheated."
I flexed my fingers to keep them warm. Harvest time in Alyria didn't last very long. Winter was well on its way.
"If I wanted to."
Lir drank from his flask. "Don't you?"
I shrugged. "Maybe knowing is enough."
"Interesting theory." Lir's gaze weighed on me.
"Lord Vermonte has little enough to do with me, my lord Akean."
"True enough. You stay out of his way."
"Yes." I didn't mention I saw no need to invite the Fashion Master's scorn and mockery. Vermonte was one of Daelyn's closest companions.
"You avoid confrontation with him."
"Of course."
Lir tossed back the rest of his flask and hung it on the wooden sword frame. "You don't avoid me, yet I seem to make you grit your teeth at least as often as Vermonte. If not more."
"I'm learning from you. Vermonte has nothing to teach me."
I'd thought we were going to practice some more, but Lir only nodded, his eyes moving over me. "Get on back to Daelyn now. I'm sure he's missing you."
He always dismissed me that way. Today, something in his tone made me pause. He stared into the distance, toward the mountains we could see over the top of the wall surrounding the fight field.
"Do you think they made it?" he asked.
I thought of the vision I'd had. "I hope so."
He gave me a shrewd look. "Do you?"
I nodded.
"Best not let Rosten hear you say that."
I nodded again. He broke the gaze first to look back to the mountains. I left him like that and went back to my prince.
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Chapter Twenty-Three
Not even Rosten's curfew could curtail Daelyn's desire for merriment. He went out as often, if not more, than he ever had, and came home later. Sometimes he smelt of sex and perfume. Most times, he stank of sweat and blood.
I didn't ask him about the fights, just as I never asked about the lovers. Both made me uncomfortably envious. Maybe my pretended lack of interest was what finally prompted him to tell me I could accompany him on one of his jaunts. Typically, he didn't invite me, he ordered me to go as offhandedly as he told me to order him breakfast, and when I stood gape-mouthed with surprise, he scowled.
"Quite dawdling and dress yourself! I'm already late." Daelyn clicked his fingers at Lir, who made a show of leg and bowed. "You too. You can't possibly go wearing that."
"I'm quite comfortable with what I'm wearing," Lir replied mildly.
Daelyn laughed aloud. "Just because you need not woo them doesn't mean you need not dress as though you must."
I ducked behind the curtain to my room and changed quickly into the same uniform as previous, only unwrinkled and smelling rather fresher. I could do nothing for the constant, slowly healing bruises and scrapes all over my body, but I brushed my hair until sparks flew from its length. Remembering Daelyn said he liked it worn loose, I plaited only four small braids coming back from the crown, then let the rest hang down my back.
I'd only taken a few minutes, wary of the need to not displease Daelyn, already in a strange mood. He disappeared behind a large screen and items of clothes began flying over it into the room. I ducked a large codpiece as it thudded to the floor at my feet.
Lir had leaned against the pillar opposite me, and he nodded toward the screen. "He'll be out in a moment. You'd better have his cosmetics ready."
His assumption that I didn't know my own duties made me frown."I think I can manage."
"And he'll need you to do his hair, too, I'd wager."
Daelyn's voice carried over the screen. "Leave the lad alone, Lir. Must you always taunt and tease him? You know it sets him aflame."
Lir held up his hands in a gesture of apology. "Your mercy, love."
Before I could figure out if he was apologizing to me or to the prince, Daelyn swept from behind the screen. "Make me up, and let's go."
He smelled too good and looked too tempting. I had to clench my fingers hard around the brushes to keep them from trembling. I painted his lips crimson to match his stockings and outlined his bright blue eyes in midnight colored kohl. I did a fair job, with only a little smudging when I applied glimmering silver powder to his eyelids.
He didn't bother looking in the glass I held up. "When I walk into the room, all eyes will be upon me. If I see them look at me as though they'd like to eat me, you will have done your job properly. If I see them laughing behind their hands, I'll have Lir beat you senseless. Now, let's go. I'm ready for some merriment and fair to aching for some herb and worm."
Lir laughed. "You have such a way with words about you, Dae. You've shocked him."
I lifted my chin, not wanting to give Lir credit for the truth he'd discerned of me. "I'm not so easily shocked."
For an instant, Lir's eyes flickered in anger, quickly replaced by the broad grin painted on his lush mouth. He strode to me so quickly I had no time to turn away, and his hand was at my throat before I could move. His fingers squeezed me, not restricting my breath but close enough I did not dare move.
"I think you will be tonight." His breath moved over my skin, over all the places he'd so recently abused on the fight field. He bent closer, and the vision of his face filled my entire world. I could see nothing but Lir's dark eyes, his curving lips, the smooth pale gold of his skin. "Shall we place a wager?"
"We're not on the fight field now," I managed to say.
"But I am still the master and you the student."
He stepped closer to press his body against mine. It was a movement designed to intimidate, not arouse. The smooth hardness of his codpiece pressed against my belly, and the heat of him burned me even through that and the barrier of my clothes.
"You're not allowed to fuck my fetchencarry, Lir," Daelyn said in a bored voice. "You'll get plenty of that where we're going."
Lir let go of me and stepped away. My throat burned with the effort of holding my temper, but he must have seen a glint of it in my eyes, because the bastard gave me a slow, easy smile, and a wink. I wanted to stab out his eyes for that wink, that casual gesture that told me he found me no threat.
"Aeris, you're making me wait." Daelyn sounded annoyed, and I put my attention from Lir.
"I plead your mercy, my prince."
Daelyn rolled his eyes. "Less pleading, more walking. I want to get there before all the herb is smoked, the wine all drunk and everyone already fucked!"
"It's bound to be chilly this evening," Lir spoke up.
The sound of his voice made my jaw clench, as once more he pointed out how I was failing in my duties. "Let me get your cloak, my prince."
Daelyn shifted on his heels, strutting to and fro in front of the mirror to catch a glimpse of himself. I found a thick, soft cloak of sable fur hanging in his armoire and pulled it close over his shoulders.
He fluffed the sleek fur and made a purring noise. "Let's be off, shall we?"
Instead of going out the door of his bedchamber, Daelyn went to the back of the room and lifted a candle from its sconce on the wall. With a twinkle in his eyes that showed me he was delighting in surprising me, he pushed on a square of decorative tile set beneath the sconce. A door opened in the wall where there had been none before.
To give myself credit, I managed not to gape this time. I refused to give Lir the satisfaction. I followed Daelyn through the narrow doorway, Lir close behind us. For a moment, the passage was lit by the candle's glow, until Daelyn blew out the flame.
We were plunged into instant and total darkness.
"No light." In the darkness, Daelyn's voice echoed. "We know our way, and soon you will, too. But this passage weaves its way through many rooms in the palace, not all of them friendly to its use. We go without a light to prevent anyone in those rooms from catching a glimmer through a crack."
I nodded, realized he couldn't see me, and answered. "I understand."
"Reach out your right hand and touch the wall. Always follow the right hand passages to go and the left to return, and you'll not get lost." Daelyn chuckled. "And you won't end up at the bottom of the sea, which is where you will end up if you don't follow these directions."
The sea was a good two-day's journey from the palace, but I didn't comment. Another chill gust of wind blew across me, and I fancied I could smell salt. I reached out my right hand, but instead of finding the cold stone, I found soft fabric.
A warm hand closed around mine, the fingers strong. Our palms met for a moment. Then Lir put my hand on the wall.
Neither of us said anything, but his presence suddenly overwhelmed me in the dark. I could smell him above the chilly stench of salt and mildew. I shivered.
"Ready?" Daelyn asked.
"I'm ready," I replied as we began to walk. "But please could you tell me where we're going?"
"To sample delights you've never dreamed of." Daelyn stopped so short I bumped into him and got a face full of soft fur for my clumsiness. "You realize what a chance I'm taking with you, Aeris? How much I'm trusting you?"
"I realize that, my prince."
"And do you think you're worthy of my trust?"
I shivered again, not covered by a warm cloak as he was, nor even a heavy wool jacket such as Lir wore. "I'll try to be."
I heard no trace of amusement in Daelyn's voice. "Because the penalty for betraying my trust is severe, Aeris. You don't want to know what it is."
"Stop trying to scare the lad." Lir's warm breath puffed the back of my neck. "And move your arse, Dae, it's fair to frigid in here!"
Daelyn began moving again, and we followed. The passage turned and turned again, and I felt more gus
ts of wind as we crossed other passages. Occasionally, a square of faint light marked the presence of another hidden doorway, but we always passed by them. Always we kept our hands to the wall on the right, and soon the passage floor began to tilt upward. We were climbing.
Now the scent on the air changed, and the breeze itself grew warmer. Fragrant with the odor of spices and perfumes, good food and drink. The faint sound of music grew louder as we got closer.