It happened when I took my boots off. The heavy clunk of the heels hitting the floor. The shoes. The whisper. The memory. The knowing chill that had settled across my shoulders the first time I heard their footsteps. Reverence and restraint.
It hit me suddenly and violently, and I thought I was going to be sick.
I leaned over the chamber pot, a damp sweat springing to my brow.
They had changed everything but their shoes.
I swallowed the salty sick taste on my tongue and fanned my anger instead. It flamed to a rage and propelled me forward. I bypassed the guards and used the hidden passage. Where I was going, I could not have an escort.
* * *
This time when I strode through the catacombs and then down into the cavern where piles of books waited to be burned, I gave no care to the loudness of my footsteps. When I got there, no one was in the outer room sorting books, but the far room was dimly lit. I saw at least one robed figure within, hunched over a table.
The inner room was almost as large as the first, with several piles of its own waiting to be hauled away and burned. There were eight robed figures within. I stood at the entrance watching them, but they were so consumed with their tasks they didn’t notice me. Their hoods were drawn, as was their practice, supposedly a symbol of humility and devotion, but I knew the purpose was as much to block out others so they could remain focused on their difficult work. Their deathly work.
The priest I had met with back in Terravin had sensed something was amiss, even if he hadn’t known exactly what it was. I wouldn’t speak to the other priests of this matter. They might not all agree where loyalties lie. I realized now that he had tried to warn me, but if the Komizar had coaxed these men here with promises of riches, I might be able to sway their greedy hearts with greater treasures.
I looked down at their shoes, almost hidden by their brown robes. They seemed out of place here instead of tucked behind polished desks.
I had grabbed a large volume from one of the piles of discards as I walked in, and now I threw it to the ground. The loud smack echoed through the room, and both the seated and standing scholars turned to see me. They showed no alarm, not even surprise, but the seated scholars left their chairs to stand with the others.
I stopped in front of them, their faces still hidden in the shadows of their hoods. “I would expect at least a cursory bow from subjects of Morrighan when their princess addresses them.”
The tallest one in the middle spoke for them all. “I was wondering how long it would take you to find us down here. How well I remember your wanderings in Civica.” His voice was vaguely familiar.
“Show your traitorous faces,” I ordered. “As your lone sovereign in this wretched kingdom, I command it.”
The tall one stepped forward. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
“But you most certainly have. Your new attire is decidedly plainer.”
He sighed. “Yes, I do miss our embroidered silk robes, but we had to leave those behind. These are much more practical here.”
He pushed back his hood, and my stomach turned with nausea. He was my tenth-year tutor, Argyris. One by one, the others pushed back their hoods too. These weren’t just any scholars from remote regions. These were the elite inner circle, trained by the Royal Scholar himself. The Royal Scholar’s second assistant, the lead illuminator, my fifth- and eighth-year tutors, the library archivist, two of my brothers’ tutors, all scholars who had left their positions, presumably for other work in Sacristas throughout Morrighan. Now I knew where they had really gone, and maybe worse, I had known early on that they weren’t trustworthy. Back in Civica, I had felt agitation in their presence. These were the scholars I had always hated, the ones who filled me with dread, the ones who wrestled the Holy Text into our heads with all the grace of a bull, and with none of the tenderness or sincerity I heard in Pauline’s voice as she sang remembrances. These before me shredded the text into torn pieces of history.
“What did the Komizar promise to make it worth turning your back on your countrymen?”
Argyris smiled with the same arrogance I remembered from the days when he looked over my shoulder, berating me on the spacing of my script. “We’re not exactly traitors, Arabella. We’re simply on loan to the Komizar by order of the Kingdom of Morrighan.”
“Liar,” I sneered. “My father would never send this kingdom anything, much less court scholars, to—” I looked at the piles of books around us. “What new menace are you working on now?”
“We’re merely scholars, Princess, doing what we do,” Argyris answered. He and the other scholars exchanged smug grins. “What others do with our findings is not our business. We simply uncover the worlds these books hold.”
“Not all the worlds. You burn pile after pile in the Sanctum ovens.”
He shrugged. “Some texts are not as useful as others. We can’t translate them all.”
The way he couched his words and distanced the scholars from their treachery made me ache to rip his tongue out, but I restrained myself. I still needed answers. “It wasn’t my father who loaned you to Venda. Who did?” I demanded. They only looked at me as if I were still their impetuous charge and smirked.
I pushed past them, shoving them out of the way, ignoring their indignant huffs, and went to the table where they’d been working. I shuffled through books and papers, trying to find some evidence of who had sent them. I opened one of the ledgers, and a roughly garbed arm reached past me and snapped the tablet shut.
“I think not, Your Highness,” he said, his breath hot on my ear.
He pressed so close, I could barely spin to see who it was. He pinned me against the table and smiled, waiting for recognition to wash over my face.
It did.
I couldn’t breathe.
He reached up and touched my neck, rubbing the small white mark where the bounty hunter had cut me. “Only a nick?” He frowned. “I knew I should have sent someone else. Your sensitive royal nose probably smelled him coming a mile away.”
It was the driver from the stable yard. And now I was certain, the tavern guest Pauline had mentioned to me. You didn’t see him? He walked in right after the other two. A thin, scruffy fellow. He shot plenty of sideways looks your way.
And also the scruffy young man I had seen one night with the Chancellor.
“Garvin, at your service,” he said, with a mock-genteel nod. “It’s lovely to watch the wheels spin in your head.”
There was nothing about him that would stand out. Medium build, ashy uncombed hair. He could blend in with any crowd. It wasn’t his appearance that had left an impression on me. It was the startled expression of the Chancellor when I stumbled upon him and two scholars in a dark nook of the eastern portico. Guilt had flooded their faces, but I hadn’t registered it then. It was the middle of the night, and I had just snuck in from a card game and was so concerned about my own detection that I hadn’t questioned their odd behavior.
I glared at him. “It must have been such a disappointment for the Chancellor to learn I wasn’t dead.”
He smiled. “I haven’t seen him in months. As far as I know, he thinks you are dead. Our hunter has never failed us before, and the Chancellor had gotten word that the Assassin was on your trail too. There was little doubt that one of them would finish you. Wait until he finds out the truth.” He chuckled. “But the spin of your greater betrayal to Morrighan in marrying the Komizar may serve his purposes even better. Well done, Your Highness.”
His purposes? I thought of all the jeweled baubles that graced the Chancellor’s knuckles. Gifts, he had called them. What else was he getting in return for delivering wagons of wine and the services of scholars to the Komizar? A few sparkling ornaments for his fingers could hardly be worth the cost of treason. Was it a ploy for more power? What else had the Komizar promised him?
“I would tell the Chancellor not to spend his riches before they’re in his greedy palm. I’ll remind you, I am not dead yet.”
Garvin laughed, and his face loomed closer to mine. “Here?” he whispered. “Yes, here you’re as good as dead. You’ll never be leaving again—at least not alive.”
I tried to push past him, but he tightened his grip on the table. He was not a large man, but he was wiry and tough. I heard the snickers of the scholars, but I could see only the stubble on Garvin’s chin and feel his thighs pressing close to mine.
“I’ll also remind you, though I may be a prisoner of the Komizar, I’m his betrothed as well, and unless you’d like to see your thin, sour hide served on a platter, I would suggest you move your arms now.”
His smile disappeared, and he stepped aside. “Be on your way, and I’d advise you not to come this way again. These catacombs have many forgotten and dangerous passages. One could easily get lost forever.”
I brushed past him and the scholars, tasting the bitterness of their betrayal, but when I was a few yards away, I stopped and slowly scrutinized them.
“What are you doing?” Argyris asked.
“Memorizing each of your faces and how you look in this moment—and imagining what you’ll look like a year from now as you face death. Because as you all well know, I do have the gift, and I’ve seen every one of you dead.”
I turned and left, and heard not a shuffle nor a whisper in my wake.
It was the second time in less than an hour I had perpetrated a sham.
Maybe.
Because in a brief cold second, I saw every one of them hanging from a rope.