Herald down in front of him and screamed. But the High Seneschal was a formidable adversary. In response to her tantrum, he offered her cream.
Recognizing the iron wall for what it was, Sena ordered him from the room.
That night, she strapped her utility belt around her waist, tugged on her soft black boots and slipped her kyru in its sheath. King Lewis would be well guarded. She closed her eyes and the colors returned, guiding her. She knew the way.
Time became something she could gloss before it happened. She could see castle guards before they turned the corner, saw their numbers like halos in the air. Probabilities. Angles. Algorithms of the next.
Her vision didn’t compute in three dimensions anymore. It was ghosted with time, future happenings all around her. Sometimes they blurred where probabilities split, made whole corridors hazy with risk. But if she waited, silent and safe, things changed, pathways opened, unpredictability passed away and she could move again. Pale cones of perception spread out from people’s eyes, both current and future. All she had to do was walk or stand outside their line of sight.
She left the High King’s bedroom through a window. Since her outburst, Gadriel had placed sentries just outside the door . . . in case she felt ill again, he said, or needed assistance.
Sena smiled at his pathetic attempt to cage her and stretched for the cornice above the window, touched it and left the bedroom empty in her wake. She moved quickly, like an arachnid, fingers sticky with holomorphy. She was blindfolded but she could see. She sensed Lewis in the towers above, behind a locked and brightly guarded door. He sat by himself, playing with a stack of ivory plaques, fortune-telling devices once trusted by the general public, now sold in Three Cats only to amuse.
Sena saw the guards as well. Her new eyes made everything easy. She re-entered the castle through an open window twenty stories up into the night. It was a lightless side room and she paused to listen to the men outside the door.
Her eyes were well, but she still wore the shylock. She had discovered a new use. With a single word she could pinch it, goad it with a cantrip and the thing would tighten to her face, appendages that normally hung like decorative leather straps writhed. She felt it take a deeper bite. Blood oozed below the mask, ran in perfect painted lines along her cheek.
She spoke, robbed the creature of its meal, forced it to draw more sustenance as she burnt her own holojoules in prosecution of the air. Logic twisted. The Unknown Tongue sentenced six castle guards to coma.
Sena opened the door and stepped over their sleeping bodies. The shylock squirmed. It took only what it needed then stopped. She bent to recover a heavy ring of keys.
Beyond King Lewis’ door she could tell the coals were dying, dribbling purple light across the floor.
She pulled the bolt back with a loose clank and the thick portal opened slowly, heavy timbers floating on oil.
Lewis looked up to see her standing in the door frame.
He scowled, obviously trying to make sense of it. She imagined the extraordinary image: a blond woman, seemingly blind, the fallen guards, the little trails of red oozing from her mask.
Encircling her was an oversized belt that holstered her sickle and other tools. In her right hand was a potion, a decanter she had just pulled out. It was made of glass and filled with something red.
She saw Lewis toy with the idea of taking her hostage but the gory potion and her mask seemed to distract him.
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’m the High King’s witch.”
“So I’ve read in the papers. Midnight snack?” He gestured to the decanter.
“Something like that. Holomorphic provisions.”
“Ah.” Lewis lifted his eyebrows and then gestured to the bed. “I’m afraid I’m short on furniture, but please . . . sit.”
Sena placed herself on the edge of the mattress, one knee draped over the other, perched like something weightless. She dangled the decanter between her fingers.
“It’s dark in here.”
Lewis chuckled. “Try taking that . . .” he noticed the blood tears again, “. . . mask off.”
Sena came to the point.
“I want to know why you’re here.”
Lewis smiled. “You’re not here officially are you?”
“I’m not asking,” said Sena.
Lewis glanced out at the incapacitated guards. “No. I suppose you’re not. Pretty as a seashell though. Maybe my friends contracted you through Skellum to clean me up?”