I am Odilo, the steward here. You, I can see, are on a mission of some confidence to … Father Inire?”
“Yes,” I said. “But first I must require my sword of you.”
I had hoped that he had seen Terminus Est and would produce her for me, but he looked blank.
“I was escorted here earlier. At that time I was told that I would have to surrender my sword, but that it would be restored to me before Father Inire required me to use it.”
The little man was shaking his head. “I assure you, in my position I would have been informed if any of the other servants—”
“I was told this by a praetorian,” I said.
“Ah, I ought to have known. They’ve been everywhere, answering to no one. We have an escaped prisoner, your honor, as I suppose you’ve heard.”
“No.”
“A man called Beuzec. They say he’s not dangerous, but he and another fellow were found lurking in an arbor. This Beuzec made a dash for it before they locked him up, and got away. They say they’ll take him soon; I don’t know. I’ll tell you, I’ve lived in our House Absolute all my life, and it has some strange corners’some very strange corners.”
“Possibly my sword is in one of them. Will you look?”
He took a half step back, as though I had raised my hand to him. “Oh, I will, Your Honor, I will. I was only trying to make a bit of conversation. It’s probably down here. If you’ll just follow me …”
We walked toward the other stair, and I saw that in my hasty search I had overlooked one door, a narrow one beneath the staircase. It was painted white, so that it was almost of the same shade as the stone.
The steward produced a heavy ring of keys and opened this door. The triangular room inside was much larger than I would have guessed, reaching far back beneath the steps and boasting a sort of loft, accessible by a shaky ladder, toward the rear. Its lamp was of the same type as those I had noticed in the antechamber, but dimmer.
“Do you see it?” the steward asked. “Wait, there’s a candle about here somewhere, I think. That one light’s not much use, the shelves throw such heavy shadows.”
I was examining the shelves as he spoke. They were piled with clothing, with here and there a pair of shoes, a pocket fork, a pen case, a pomander ball.
“When I was just a lad myself, the kitchen boys used to pick the lock and come in here to rummage about. I put a stop to that—got a good lock—but I’m afraid the best things disappeared long ago.”
“What is this place?”
“A closet for petitioners, originally. Coats, hats, and boots—you know. Those places always fill up with the things the lucky ones forget to take with them when they go, and then this wing has always been Father Inire’s, and I suppose there’s always been some that came to see him that never came back out, as well as the ones that come out what never came in.” He paused and glanced around. “I had to give the soldiers keys to keep them from kicking down the doors when they were searching for this Beuzec, so I suppose they might have put your sword in here. If they didn’t, they probably took it up to their guardroom. This wouldn’t be it, I don’t imagine?” From a corner he drew out an ancient spadone.
“Hardly.”
“It seems to be the only sword here, I’m afraid. I can give you directions for getting to the guardroom. Or I can wake up one of the pages to go and ask, if you like.”
The ladder to the loft was shaky, but I scrambled up it after borrowing the steward’s candle. Though it seemed exceedingly improbable that the soldier had put Terminus Est there, I wanted a few moments to think over the courses of action open to me.
As I climbed I heard a slight noise from above that I supposed was the scurrying of some rodent; but when I thrust my head and the candle above the level of the loft’s floor, I saw the small man who had been with Hethor on the road kneeling in an attitude of intense supplication. That was Beuzec, of course; I had failed to recall the name until I saw him.
“Anything up there, your honor?”
“Rags. Rats.”
“Just as I thought,” the steward said as I stepped from the last rung. “I