The tower floor had been repaired and the crumbling parapet finished off months ago, but the project of extending the walls back to their original height had been postponed so as to devote manpower and materiel to more urgent needs. With the fog lurking perpetually upon the southern seas these days, added height would not extend their range of view.
From this vantage Abramm could see the morning fog already shredding over the land, burned off by the sun’s clear rays. The tang of the salt air was a welcome reprieve from the stench of the bird dung below, and up here the sea gulls’ calls were not so much enraged as sullenly resigned. He turned to the sea, where the mist still hung thick, shrouding the lines of a Chesedhan frigate as it glided slowly away from them past the mouth of Kalladorne Bay. Kildar Fortress on the opposite headland lay completely hidden and would likely remain so throughout the day. Having swathed the southern shoreline for weeks now, the fog had everyone spooked. The other day there’d been an alleged sighting of several galley ships off the coast of Chastwort. The subsequent discovery of a small fleet of long, narrow Thilosian fishing vessels, blown off course by the recent storm, had relieved the coastlanders’ rising panic. But the fact remained—anything could be out there.
He watched the frigate move into the mist until all but its topsails were lost to sight. The Esurhites had to know about the morwhol by now, and that the White Pretender had become king of Kiriath. They would know, too, that they had best strike before he readied his people to defend themselves.
Restlessness drove him back across the landing to look down into the inner ward. Two men stood atop the mound, flailing away with the spike ends of their picks. The iron was at least biting into the guano’s pale surface, though with penetrations of only an inch or so at a time, they stood little chance of uncovering anything worthwhile today. And what if there’s nothing there at all? Then I’ve wasted their time and effort, and drawn them away from more productive pursuits.
“I don’t know, my lord,” Trap said from his side, as always seeming to read his mind. “The platform and stanchions in Hur were not encased like this. Why would this heart be so encrusted and the other not? And, as I’ve asked before, why didn’t it reveal itself to you when you cleared the fortress of spawn six months ago? Or when you were crowned? Or when you destroyed the latest corridor last week?”
Abramm had had the newly reclaimed tapestry brought up to his apartments the very night he and Maddie had found it, so Trap had seen it many times by now. He’d conceded Abramm’s hopes had merit. But they knew so little about these hearts—or guardstars, as Maddie said they’d been called— he’d been unable to embrace those hopes as his own yet.
“Maybe it did reveal itself,” Abramm said. “Under all that guano, who would see it?”
He felt Trap’s eyes upon him. “Do you have any other reason besides size and shape to think there’s something there, sir?”
“Size and shape seem fairly compelling indicators.”
“Well, if you really think the barbarians hid it from us in plain sight . . .maybe it would help to shoot it with the Light. See if that might help break it up easier.”
“Good idea,” Abramm said. “Jared, run and tell Lieutenant Brookes to try using the Light on that thing. And tell him— Wait a minute.” His eye caught on the party of three riders coming through the main gate, and his heart leaped as he recognized one of them even from a distance: Madeleine.
“What is she doing here?” Trap muttered, glancing at Abramm accusingly.
“I didn’t invite her, if that’s what you mean.”
Trap frowned at him. “Then why is she here?”
“Well, let’s find out.” Abramm turned back to Jared. “After you talk to Lieutenant Brookes, fetch Lady Madeleine up here for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Trap was scowling at him outright now, Channon’s expression of disapproval only slightly less obvious. “I thought you and she had decided to avoid each other,” the Duke of Northille muttered.
Abramm shook his head in exasperation. “I can’t believe you two! Of all people, you who know me best and are with me most, you know there’ve been no trysts.”
“I’ve seen the way she looks at you, Abramm.” Trap glanced at Channon, who wasn’t quite bold enough to nod his agreement but managed to show it anyway. “More than that, I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“The way I look at her? I haven’t even seen her since the night we found the tapestry. And as for how she looks at me—in case you haven’t noticed, she stares primarily at the floor whenever she’s in my presence.”
“Exactly.”
Abramm stared at him in befuddlement.
Meridon rolled his eyes. “It just seems more than coincidental that the first time you’re away from the palace in over a week, here she is.”
“She’s the one who suggested we keep away from each other in the first place, Trap. If she wanted to see me, all she had to do was ask for an audience.” Not that she’d ever done that. “I hardly think she’d follow me all the way out here to do it.”
Trap did not argue his point, his gaze focused now on Madeleine’s party, glimpses of which could be seen between the buildings as they ascended through the inner ward toward the terrace and the work on the mound.
Abramm was surprised by the degree of pleasant anticipation he felt at the prospect of seeing Maddie again. He’d not liked the new arrangement from the moment she’d suggested it, and the last nine days had only increased his dislike of her plan. Her assistant, Jemson, a weedy little man with thin, perpetually windblown hair and a sparse beard, had delivered to Abramm her written reports every couple of days. Unfortunately, he was never able to answer any of Abramm’s questions, forcing the king to write them down and send them back with him. She always answered promptly, but her answers always demanded further correspondence, so that in the end—though not in person—they had their dialogues anyway. It was just infernally inconvenient now, and he longed for the days when he’d been able to thrash such things out face-to-face.
He watched now with his men as her group came into full view in the yard below them and dismounted. Maddie was greeted by Lieutenant Brookes, who immediately gestured toward the watchtower, presumably calling her attention to Abramm’s own presence. From a distance he thought she seemed to stiffen as she turned her face up toward him, hand shading her eyes. He lifted his hand in greeting, and she responded in kind. Then she turned her attention back to the mound atop which two workers now stood directing tendrils of Light into it. When the effort seemed to have no effect, they gave up and the laborers returned with their picks. But now it seemed to Abramm they were loosening much larger clods of guano than previously.
The rapidly approaching patter of feet on the tower stair preceded Maddie’s arrival, and as she ascended into view he turned, startled by how pretty she looked. Flushed from the ride and the crisp morning air, the high color of her cheeks brightened the blue of her eyes and imparted a glow of life and energy he wasn’t accustomed to seeing in the courtiers who surrounded him. Her fawn-colored hair was pulled into the long braid she preferred for riding, tendrils of it teased free by the wind to float beguilingly around her face. She stopped before him, breathless from her ascent of the stairs, and her eyes came up to his, held there for a moment, then darted away as she dropped him a short curtsey. “Your Majesty.”
And for some reason—most likely Trap’s ridiculous accusations combined with the fact both men were staring hard at him—Abramm felt acutely selfconscious. “I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Trap had said. Whatever that meant. Now he felt as if he couldn’t look at her at all, could hardly even talk to her without them seeing hidden signs of desire. Thankfully, she didn’t look at him again after that one brief glance. He hoped his companions were alert enough to take note of it.
“My lady, how pleasant to have you join us. If I’d known you were interested, I would have invited you to come with us.”
“Oh. That wouldn??
?t have been . . . I mean . . .” Her eyes flicked up to his again, and her color deepened with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t—” And then, thankfully, she gave up trying to be diplomatic and just blurted it out: “I didn’t know you’d be here, sir. I was told you would be resting in preparation for your address to the Table of Lords this afternoon, that Duke Eltrap would be supervising the excavation of the mound.”
Abramm grimaced. “Yes, well, if some of my advisors had their way, I’d be resting for the rest of my life. And my address was prepared days ago.” He turned back to the parapet and focused again on the workers at the mound, feeling a jab of disappointment at knowing she’d only come because she thought he’d be in Springerlan.
“Who told you he wouldn’t be here?” Trap asked her now.
“My assistant, Jemson. I believe he got the information from Count Blackwell. Or maybe it was Mason Crull. Of course, Jemson could well have misheard. His strengths do not reside in verbal communication.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Abramm said sourly.
She came up on his right, glanced over the edge of the parapet, and gasped, drawing his startled attention. She stood frozen, eyes wide, gloved hands pressed hard against the stone ledge, face dead white beneath its scattering of freckles. He looked downward, seeking whatever had unnerved her, but found nothing—just the wallwalk with its cannon and its bored guards on patrol.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning toward her as she pushed off the stone and turned her back to it, eyes closed, face still far too white.
“What did you see, my lady?” he asked, looking down yet again.
“Nothing,” she said, opening her eyes and giving him a small smile that tried to convey embarrassment and couldn’t quite divest itself of the fear. She lifted her chin and fixed her gaze upon the mist-cloaked sea. “I guess I didn’t realize how high we were.”
Abramm frowned at her. She’d told him that in her youth she’d taken special pleasure in climbing the masts of her father’s ships and had spent hours up there alone avoiding her tutors and chaperones, so he found this hard to believe. Yet her fear was obvious.
“Perhaps you would be more comfortable if you went back down,” Trap suggested.
“I’m fine,” she said to Trap, then made good on her claim by shaking off her discomfiture and turning to Abramm.
She began rattling off all she’d learned of the guardstars, even though much of it she’d already given to him. How Avramm had been drawn to the guardstar at Avramm’s Landing when he first came ashore, though accounts differed as to whether it was lit or not. The books in which they were recorded had disappeared, however. . . .
As she chattered on, he was surprised by how much pleasure he found in listening to her. He missed her excited recitations, even if he often couldn’t follow them. They almost always led somewhere intriguing.
“It’s almost like they’re hidden.” She paused, her eyes darting up to his and then away. Gazing over the inner ward, she pulled a strand of windblown hair from across her face and said, “Rather like the tapestry. And the crown. And even the way the regalia manifested after being lost to you all these years. That can’t have been an accident.” She turned to him then and said, “You don’t happen to know where I might find the original architectural plans for the palace, do you?”
He shook his head. “Newer ones, yes, but I know all the oldest plans are gone. I looked when we were trying to map out all the secret passageways to get them blocked off.”
“So. Another thing lost,” she said. “Or hidden.”
The gull came out of nowhere, causing them all to duck as its claws caught on Madeleine’s hair, pulling out two loose loops above the braid. Then it was gone, leaving them all to straighten in astonishment, staring at the moving dome of gray-and-white birds soaring and flapping around them. Where earlier Abramm had assumed they were circling by rote, their attention focused on the mound, now he saw a malevolence in their dark glittering eyes and an intelligence the birds themselves did not possess.
He turned to Maddie. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, fingering the loops of hair the gull’s claws had pulled loose, eyes on the circling birds.
Trap said, “Sir, perhaps it is time to see how they are progressing with the mound.”
Abramm offered no argument, and they descended from both tower and wallwalk. As they entered the inner ward’s top terrace, Abramm was gladdened to see the workmen had finally broken through the hard outer crust of guano and were now shoveling out mounds of soft dark earth even more odiferous than the moistened guano.
“Smells like they used it for a latrine,” Brookes commented beside him.
Abramm wouldn’t have been be surprised if they had, knowing the hatred rhu’ema and their servants nursed for things of the Light.
As the workmen dug deeper, it became apparent that the mound had an outer stonework wall with three heavy iron struts emerging from the stone and bending downward toward the center of the structure. The men had dug down about four feet and had removed almost all the earth when they found bones laid out across the hole’s hard-packed floor: six human skeletons whose crushed rib cages all bore the golden shields of Terstans glittering in the sternums.
They brought the bones out and laid them along the mound’s outer slope, and for a while work ceased as everyone stood and stared at them.
“Odd that they didn’t take the gold,” Maddie murmured.
It had long been the custom of Eidon’s enemies to rip out the sternums of the vanquished and burn them to melt out the gold.
“I think they wanted to make a statement,” Abramm responded, suddenly and acutely aware of just how deeply the mark upon his chest penetrated his body.
In addition to the skeletons, they found the remains of several long-dead griiswurm still clinging to the stone walls, and a cache of gold medallions and silver jewelry. But no guardstar.
“This certainly looks like one of the platforms, though,” said Trap, standing back as the workers chipped away the softened guano from the exterior.
“Maybe someone moved it,” Maddie suggested.
“With all those passages below,” said Trap, “there’s certainly a wealth of hiding places.”
“Or maybe they just destroyed it,” Abramm said. “We don’t know they can’t be destroyed, do we?”
“We don’t know they can, either,” said Maddie.
Abramm walked around the mound again, the vague recollection of a dark muggy chamber tugging at the edges of his mind. Finally, for lack of a better idea, he climbed the rough-cut steps and jumped down into the shoulder-high hole that had been dug out, then walked the perimeter of the excavation, the hole about as twice as wide as he was tall. The iron struts had been pressed down and sideways against the stonework walls, running along their circumference amidst the petrified branches of an ancient vine. Soot painted the walls and hard-packed floor, but there was neither sign nor sense of a guardstar’s presence. He sent a flickering of the Light toward the ground but felt no answering flicker from below.
A scrabbling sound mingled with the gasps of expended effort marked Trap’s arrival at the hole’s edge, Maddie right behind him.
“The accounts say it was roughly the size of a cannonball,” she supplied.
“I know what one looks like, my lady. And they’re bigger than cannonballs.”
He stopped in his circuit and stood, hands on his hips, staring at the ground. Where is it, my Lord? Is it even here at all?
An image floated up in his mind, an underground grotto lit by the bluish glow of filtered daylight coming in through an underwater opening. Low rocky ledges stood exposed by the tide, gleaming with moisture and pocked with dark pools. Near one of the pools, nine leathery orbs lay split like halved melons, each thick dark rind cradling a tiny tentacled kraggin no more than a hand’s breadth in length. A tenth, uncloven, stood apart from the others, perfectly round with a pebbled, leathery skin that was black-veined rather
than mottled.
He looked up at her. “Remember when we found those kraggin eggs a few months—”
He broke off, his gaze drawn to the mass of sea gulls that appeared to be diving straight toward her. Twenty of them, at least. The threat was so unexpected— so hard to even see as a threat—that he stood there gaping a moment too long. Trap, apparently alerted by Abramm’s sudden fixation, was already turning to face the birds as the first of them hit, striking Maddie about the head and shoulders in a frenzy of claws and beaks and beating wings. Trying to evade them, she stumbled forward, slipped on the edge of the hole, and tumbled into Abramm’s arms. Her shoulder thudded into his chest as he caught her, pulled her close, and twisted round, putting his back to a feathery barrage of squawking birds. Wings and claws and beaks beat at his back as he hugged her to him, instinctively conjuring a shield of Light around them. He felt the strong, close sense of her mental presence mingled with his own, and the shield redoubled its strength. The gulls screamed. Distantly he heard Trap and other men shouting.
Then the birds were gone. The men still shouted somewhere as he stood there with Lady Madeleine hugged so tightly against his chest he could feel the rapid beat of her heart, feel the soft touch of her hair against his chin and smell her clean lemongrass scent. One of her arms clutched round his back, and the other rested across his chest, her hand gripping his biceps. For a moment he stood there, acutely aware of her softness and her womanly curves and her scent as his fear for her dwindled away and something else took its place. Something hot and tingly and not altogether unfamiliar.
She seemed to sense it even as he did, for they released each other and stepped sharply back at the same time. She didn’t look at him, but her face was as red as he’d ever seen it, and from the feel of his own he could only give thanks Trap and Channon were off chasing gulls. For a moment they stood there awkwardly. Then she turned to scramble back out of the hole. After a moment’s hesitation he stepped to catch her about the waist and boost her up, even that small contact accelerating his heartbeat, and stirring up feelings he desperately did not want stirred. Will Ames was coming up the stair by then and hurried to help her onto the edge. Abramm pulled himself up after her and stood stiffly beside her. It was only embarrassment, he assured himself. The embarrassment of finding her in my arms like that . . . nothing more.