his nervous meaty hands whipped the horses toward the livery.
Caliph glanced back in the direction of the gates. It was three hundred yards to the drawbridge from the center of the south bailey. He felt strangely isolated.
A courthouse and a row of statues shone green in the sultry night. Crickets chirped. The last queelub of the season flickered in a stately stand of maples to the west. After dusk, when the visitors had signed out, the small village of governmental edifices became austere and chilly, like monuments in a park. Even with all the night noises, the humidity seemed to stifle sound.
“Why are the lights out in the kitchen?” asked Caliph. The bank of mullioned panes west of the foyer usually glowed all night.
The spymaster scowled. “I don’t know.”
A lone cicada screamed from nearby.
“Everything is fine,” Caliph soothed.
Even so, Sena felt her skin prickle.
Zane led them toward the front door, up a steep staircase, across another miniature drawbridge to the lavish foyer decorated with tile and statuary and lit by gas. Vhortghast rapped. The glazed door was unlocked.
They stepped inside.
A short extravagant hallway flickered with amber glass on either wall. Lit by candles in hidden guardrooms, the narrow colorful panes covered arrow slits; the paneled ceiling: murder holes. Isca Castle had not been in danger of siege for so long that its defensive architecture had been concealed with more aesthetically pleasing fixtures.
At the top of a second staircase, the grand foyer engulfed them like bits of food under domed glass. To the north, the great staircase curled down from the second story, ending at the foot of one of several pillars that framed a series of four lofty arches to the grand hall: a room that currently glowered in darkness. Other doors led to guardrooms, the kitchen and the east wing.
The silence was interminable. Sena’s thoughts reduced to the book hidden in Caliph’s bedroom. The emotional impact of the orchestrated ambush at the theater and now the empty abandoned corridors of the castle were sinking in, fomenting into panic.
Vhortghast said something soft and unintelligible, probably because the wrongness of their surroundings was also affecting him.
“I’m going to have a look,” said Sena.
Zane hushed her savagely but she ignored him. They had made enough noise coming up the stairs that any unfriendly ears in the nearby rooms would certainly have heard. Caliph looked at her apprehensively.
“I’ll be fine. Trust me.” She pinched him and slipped away, moving up the stairs.
Caliph nearly cried out, almost pleaded with her to come back, but he didn’t. The oppressive quiet in the castle seemed to crush his ability to shout.
Zane had drawn a long knife from his belt. It curved away from his forearm like a claw. He was circuiting the foyer. Checking doors. Peering into various rooms. He let Sena go without a word and Caliph realized suddenly that the spymaster’s only responsibility was to the High King’s safety.
Caliph swore and headed for the grand hall, determined to turn on some lights.
“Your majesty—?”
Caliph didn’t answer. Like at the opera house, he had had enough. He strode into the darkness and immediately fell over a large obstacle. Three bodies lay in a low pile, obscured by the darkness of the archway. Caliph scrambled up, stifling a shriek. His fine suit was smudged with blood. Zane pulled him back, picked up a sword from the fallen guards and handed it to him.
Caliph’s terror was burning off as his anger mounted. He would find whoever had done this.
Sena had always lacked confidence in her abilities as a Sister of the Seventh House. Her accelerated ascension and keen awareness of her unfair promotions had resulted in timidity and self-doubt.
In crisis, she often choked.
But the dangers she had faced since spring had begun to chip away at her insecurity. She had survived two, possibly three attempts on her life if she counted tonight—though that was a bit premature. She had moved the Csrym T through Skellum under Megan’s nose.
Her diffidence had begun to crumble.
Without shoes, without a weapon, she slid from the great staircase into the blackness of the upper hall. To the west, the white marble and tall windows of the grand hall’s second story chilled the air like a solid cube of ointment. Leaf shadows twirled and danced in swaying rhythms across the floor. She headed east toward the High King’s bedroom, up another set of marble stairs.
When she reached the fourth floor, she had yet to see a guard. A post, flooded with yellow lamplight, revealed