Palace of Silver (The Nissera Chronicles #3) - Hannah West Page 0,89

hard in the basin between his shoulder and neck, then swiped up and smacked him across the face. He roared like an angry bear as he stumbled back and fell, fatally striking his head on the stone mantel.

Orturio lay on the ground in an unmoving heap. I flung away the fire iron and dug into his breast pocket for his key ring.

“The Uprising won’t die with us,” Lord Orturio said, his wide eyes darting to and fro.

Clenching the keys in one fist, I extracted the iron effigy of the Holy of Loyalty from the pouch sewn at my waist. I slid it into his breast pocket and patted it. “We’ll see about that.”

I waited only a moment before his broad chest ceased its frantic rising and falling.

Victorious, I started my limping trek toward the cellar door before any of the servants could discover the carnage and try to stop me.

The corridor seemed to stretch to eternity, and the pine cellar door seemed so far away.

Behind me, I heard a shuffle and a deep groan. I looked back to find Orturio careening after me, blood gushing over his face. Had he pretended to breathe his last breath, or had rage reanimated his battered body?

With a wail of fear, I limped faster. I fumbled with the keys, my hands quaking. My ankle collapsed beneath me, and I rammed my shoulder into the wall, knocking down a lyre on display. Its strings made a discordant noise as its hollow body bounced across the floor. I strove on, but Orturio bellowed with anger and the lyre flew past my head, breaking to pieces on the cellar door.

Just a few more uneven, halting steps, and I would reach it. My pulse hammered as I found the right key. I slammed against the door, jammed the key into the lock, and heard the click. But before I could open the door, a hand wrenched back my shoulder.

I turned to face my wild-eyed enemy, my controlling captor. The blood leaking from Orturio’s wounds made me queasy. He reeled back to strike me, but over his shoulder I saw the same stoic maid who had brought me my tincture. She held a kitchen cleaver in her grip. Its wide blade winked in the dim light.

Perhaps Orturio knew how to make servants obey, but he didn’t know how to earn their loyalty.

Setting her jaw, the woman buried the cleaver in the middle of her master’s back. Shock turned to pain as it passed over his features.

Turning my back on him, I swung open the cellar door and locked myself in the dark on the other side. I listened to the heavy thud of Orturio’s body slumping to the floor, and then the soft, careful steps of the maid finishing the job. A wet shink let me know she had dislodged the weapon from his back, and another announced the final, deadly blow. Orturio’s last breaths gurgled out.

I fled clumsily down the dark stairs and ran to the shrine, so focused on my destination that I forgot about the table and rammed into it with my left hip, letting out a yelp. I groped the idols until I found the round shield boss and flicked the panel open.

The thought hadn’t struck me until now: What if Orturio had moved the maid’s body and my elicrin stone after last night, threatened by the idea of anyone sneaking around in the cellar? Or worse, what if he had disposed of Lucrez’s body here, too?

When I yanked the shrine away from the hidden room, I felt the barrel at waist-level and the blood squelching on the floor. I pried off the lid and plunged my hands into the blood bath, refusing to think about the cold tangle of limbs and swath of matted curls. I whimpered in disgust at the vague odor that had begun to emanate from the corpse. But finally, finally, I felt something hard and small. A grunt of joy burst out of me when I lifted the elicrin stone from the muck and raised it high, its bloody chain dangling.

“May you live on in the land of light,” I whispered to the maid’s dead body. Then I clutched my elicrin stone. “Carathin har,” I said. Light spilled through my fingers.

I slipped the jewel around my neck with my blood-slicked hands and searched the shelves of the secret room by its comforting light.

I found a large leather satchel of gold coins and slipped it over my shoulder. I also spotted