If it weren’t for my spy mission this evening, I’d want nothing more than to curl up in the warm bed and fall asleep to the sound, surrounded by books I could not yet read.
But first, I had some poisoning and espionage to undertake. I pulled open the wardrobe and snatched the herbs from the bottom.
On the table, I found a spoon and bowl to use as a makeshift mortar and pestle. The nightshade berries were sweet, and they would blend into the wine well enough. When I’d mashed up a dark, juicy paste, I scooped it into one of the wine bottles.
I swirled it up until I was sure it had dissolved. Then, with a breezy smile, I opened the door to find the two soldiers stationed outside.
“Hello, gentlemen. This wine is really not up to my standards. Will you send it off, please? Please return with something better.”
One of them snorted. “Is she joking?”
“ Of course not,” I said. “I’d like something a bit dryer, please. It’s too sweet for me.”
With a smirk, one of them grabbed it from my hand. “Of course, we will get right on it.” He nodded back at the door. “But you must go back into your room.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll be waiting.”
I slipped back inside and shut the door again. Outside, lightning rent the sky, and the wind howled through cracks in the windows. The candles around the room were burning down to their wicks now, the light growing dimmer.
I paced the floor, my thoughts roiling like the storm outside.
Most of the servants were murdered.
I wondered if Sourial knew more than he was letting on. Samael had been cutting off people’s heads outside the castle. Wasn’t he the most likely culprit? Someone who just lost control? The man had corpses hanging from his castle walls. Clearly, he didn’t feel bad about murdering mortals.
A sharp tendril of guilt curled through me. Alice had never told us where she was going. If she’d come here, maybe she felt like she had to keep it a secret. She always called herself a patriot—a true Albian woman. She’d once broken a boy’s nose for suggesting the Raven King was just a legend.
If she got the chance to escape the slums where we lived, maybe she took it without uttering a word. There weren’t many opportunities for us. Either you were a prostitute, or a thief, and either way you’d likely end up in the clink. Who could blame her for seeking a better life? But maybe she thought I’d judge her. I wished she’d confided in me.
I glanced at the door. I needed to wait just a little while longer before the sleeping potion took hold. And I still had to figure out how to get to the Tower of Bones.
I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for—I supposed clues that Alice had been there. I hoped not to find any.
Mentally, I tried to bring up a picture of the entire complex—the central castle, the two sets of outer walls. But the Tower of Bones could be any one of the twenty-one towers.
I needed to know where I was going before I left here. Pivoting, I surveyed the stacks of books that surrounded my bed. I couldn’t read words, but I could manage a map. I snatched my little children’s alphabet book off the table, then crossed to the bed.
In the dimming light, I climbed onto the mattress, and scanned the rows of books.
Some of them had no titles on the sides. Some had words I couldn’t read, others little silver or gold engraved pictures. I traced my fingertip over the spines, looking at them one by one, until I got to a crimson volume with a gold-embossed picture on the side. Four impossibly high towers, stretching upward. Looked like Castle Hades.
I pulled it out and cracked it open, blowing dust off the page. At the start of the book was a map of the entire place. Each tower, each building had been labelled.
It took me a few minutes to figure out the letters I needed to find—but the first letters sounded like a B in ball, and an O like oak, an N like night. And without Sourial here, there was actually something deeply satisfying about decoding the words. I wanted to know how to read all of them, but I would start with Bones.
So I scanned the little map until I found what I was looking for. B O N seemed enough to know