Chapter 11 #2
Syla peered up and down the shadowy aisle she stood in, bookcases looming to either side.
At the end, on a table next to a lamp, her pack lay stuffed—Fel would say overstuffed—with food, water, clothes, maps, and a first-aid kit that included all the necessities, as well a few antique medical tools she’d taken from her room.
Because they might be useful, she’d told herself, not because she worried her room, as well as the rest of the castle, might be inaccessible to her when she returned.
The antique venom extractor had come in handy on her first trip.
It wasn’t a superfluous piece of nostalgia.
The reflex hammer and metacarpal saw wouldn’t likely be needed, but she’d tucked them into her surgical kit in case she once again found herself needing a weapon to help in a fight.
She could wield medical tools far more comfortably than swords.
Beyond the high, narrow windows on one wall, predawn light was brightening the courtyard, but the shadows inside the keep lay deep. Syla didn’t hear anyone but couldn’t shake the sense that she was no longer alone.
When Fel had finished packing, she’d sent him to the harbor to try to find passage to Harvest Island for them. She had few whom she could trust and figured he had more experience doing such things than Teyla, but maybe sending him away had been a mistake.
A snick sounded. A door closing?
Syla started toward her pack, thinking to grab it before someone noticed it.
“Are you sure she’s in here?” a low male voice asked from the front of the library.
Syla froze.
“Yes,” another male speaker said. “There’s her pack.”
“Where does she think she’s going?”
Syla didn’t recognize the voices. She retreated farther down the aisle from the table and the revealing lamp. At the end, she eased behind a bookcase but peeked back toward the light. Two uniformed men came into view, looking down at her belongings.
“A dungeon cell is what I heard. I’d pack a bag too. She might be there a long time.”
“You really think that’s the general’s plan? If he wants to take power, or he’s helping someone else take power… it would be better if, you know.” The soldier made a throat-slitting motion.
“Well, I’m not assassinating a princess, so he’d better not ask. I don’t even want to… She’s a healer. She fixed up my arm a couple of years ago.”
“I don’t want to kill her either, but we have to be realistic.
She’s not going to take and hold the throne.
The military is going to belong to whoever does, so we have to follow orders.
” The soldier lifted the pack, as if Syla might be hiding underneath it, then looked into the aisles to either side of the table.
Syla didn’t move or even breathe. The shadows wrapping about her should keep the men from spotting her, unless they had eyes like Vorik’s. But it was getting lighter outside, so she might not be as fully hidden as she wished.
“Not orders to assassinate her.”
“The general didn’t say anything about that. We’re just supposed to lock her up.”
Since Syla didn’t want to suffer either of those fates, she backed away.
After turning down another shadowy aisle, she debated on circling past the bookcases and trying to slip out through the front door.
But they had her pack. In addition to the practical—and nostalgic—items she’d tucked into it, Wreylith’s figurine was inside.
She couldn’t leave that behind. It was the only way she could communicate with the dragon from afar.
Syla spotted the stairs in the back of the library that led to the basement.
Aunt Tibby had found much of her research material down there, and Syla knew it held tomes that weren’t accessible to the castle staff or visitors who wandered through.
In her youth, before she’d moved to the temple and become a less frequent visitor here, she’d enjoyed reading the offerings down there.
There was even a small room that took a moon-mark to open.
Tibby might have found her books in there.
The soldiers’ boots thumped softly on the thin carpet.
It sounded like they were also heading toward the back of the library.
They would likely think to check the basement.
Or would they? There were no lamps lit on the stairs or anywhere around them.
Still, if she descended and they followed, they might trap her.
Unless…
An idea popped into her mind. Unless she trapped them.
Impulsively, Syla dug a kerchief out of her pocket, a monogrammed M on it.
She dropped it at the top of the stairs, then hurried down and patted her way to and through the door at the bottom.
There were lamps on the walls, and she groped in the tray under one for a dragonspark match. Ah, there was one.
Footsteps neared the top of the steps as she lit the lamp.
She hurried away, passing a couple of tables and entering aisles not as long as those upstairs.
Down here, no windows let light inside, so it was dark as soon as she left the influence of the lamp.
The bookcases, shelves bowed with age, held ancient tomes written by hand before the printing press had been invented.
There were numerous scrolls as well, and there… There was the special chamber.
She rested the back of her hand against a silver plate by the door. It opened, revealing more bookcases and scroll repositories inside a single room.
Murmurs came from the top of the stairs. The soldiers had found her kerchief.
She wished the special room were larger. With only a small table with chairs and a couple of bookcases in the center that one might hide behind, it wouldn’t take long to search.
Syla thought about tossing something else inside, like a hound trainer leading animals by putting down a trail of treats, but she didn’t want to be too obvious about setting her trap.
The open door ought to be enough to convince the men to check inside.
Besides, what treats did she have? A blackberry cobbler might have lured Vorik in, but she didn’t keep those in her pockets.
As she backed away from the door, the moon-mark on her hand tingled and glowed a slight silver.
Syla stared at it. When that happened, it was typically because she was drawing upon her power, but she wasn’t trying to do that now. If anything, with the men walking into the basement, she didn’t want to risk the glow giving her away.
She started to clamp her other hand over it, but as the mark tilted slightly, the silver glow illuminated a few books on a case near the door. The filigreed title on the spine of a tome bound in leather reflected the light.
The Secret Life of Queen Erasbella.
Goosebumps rose all over Syla’s body. She wasn’t shocked that such a book existed but wondered by what whim of the gods her moon-mark had guided her to it.
“Check over there,” came a whispered voice from the bottom of the stairs. “She wouldn’t have left a lamp on if she’d departed.”
Syla grabbed the book off the shelf, a cloud of dust that accompanied it wreathing her face. She backed out of the room, her nostrils tickling, and looked for a nearby place to hide while the men searched inside. But the aisles were such that they would be able to see down them.
A sneeze surprised her, and she barely kept from swearing.
“Princess Syla?” one of the men called, footsteps heading straight for the room. “Is that you? General Dolok sent us to deliver a message.”
The other man snorted.
A message. Right.
Syla took several steps down an aisle, leaned the book on a shelf, then started climbing. The wood groaned, threatening to give, and she wished she were athletic and lean instead of curvy and plump. If the entire bookcase collapsed… the men would find her easily.
Worse, her nostrils were quivering as badly as the shelves. She worried she would sneeze again.
“She must be in there,” one of the men said, lantern light bobbing on the walls as he approached the special room.
Of course they’d brought a form of illumination.
Syla reached the top of the bookcase and eased her body onto it, lying parallel to the ceiling.
“Is that a secret room? I didn’t know it existed.”
“What if there’s a hidden door back there, and she disappeared into the tunnels? I don’t want to go down there again. Roxin and a bunch of others got killed under the castle by stormers.”
“They’ve been cleared out.”
“We think. The stormers never should have been able to get in there to start with. If she’s down there, she’s on her own.”
Syla kept her body hidden and didn’t dare peek down, instead listening to their voices and footsteps, trying to gauge by their sounds when they went into the room.
“There might not be a secret door,” one said.
He was inside. Syla risked peeking over the edge. Neither man was visible from her perch. Had they both gone in?
“They’re all over the castle,” the other said. Yes, he was inside too.
Willing her descent and her nostrils to be silent, Syla eased off the bookcase. A faint creak made her wince.
“Did you hear something?”
She reached the floor, heard something bump in the room, and gave up on silence. She lunged and pressed the back of her hand to the plate by the open door.
Both men turned to look at her. They were toward the back of the room, and one had been peeking behind a bookcase.
“Princess Syla,” the other blurted, lunging around it and jogging toward her.
The door swung to close, but would it do so quickly enough?
“Thank you for not wanting to assassinate me,” she said to the nearer man, his face vaguely familiar. He must have been the one whose arm she’d healed in the past.
He hesitated.
“Shit, get her.” The other man vaulted over a bookcase.
The door thudded solidly shut before they reached it, and a moon-mark glowed on the plate to indicate it was secured.
Not certain how sturdy the door was, especially from that side—it had been designed to keep people out, not in—Syla didn’t hesitate to snatch up the book on her great-great grandmother and run for the stairs.
Thumps and muffled shouts followed her. She apologized to the precious books housed within the chamber and hoped the soldiers wouldn’t grow so irate as to destroy them. Someone would be along to rescue the men eventually.
Still running, she reached the table upstairs and barely slowed as she grabbed her pack. She spun to hurry out of the library and almost crashed into another uniformed man. Swearing, she came up short. What would she say?
But it was Sergeant Fel who gazed blandly down at her. “I’ve arranged transportation.”
“Oh, good.”
He looked behind her, his hand lowering to the mace belted at his hip. Expecting enemies on her trail?
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she assured him, spotting Teyla leaning through the door, a pack of her own over her shoulders, several book-shaped objects bulging against the seams. Syla almost laughed. Every woman in the family packed in a similar manner.
“Who’s after you?” Fel asked, not yet moving to follow.
“General Dolok sent minions.”
His eyes narrowed. “To do what?”
“There was chatter of assassinations, but I believe their current orders are to throw me in the dungeon.”
Fel scowled, though he had been present for her last interaction with Dolok and couldn’t be surprised. “This may not be an advisable time for you to leave the castle.”
“It actually struck me as an extremely good time to leave.”
“If you don’t return for weeks—”
Syla lifted her hand. “I know. Dolok may have seized power by then. Or someone else may have.” She thought of her ambitious cousin, Relvin.
“I’m hoping those who think themselves the next rulers of the Garden Kingdom will end up squabbling amongst themselves and won’t have solidified power by the time I return.
If we can get the shielder repaired, Harvest Island back under protection, then…
” She tilted her palm toward the ceiling.
“That’s as far as I’ve gotten with my plans. ”
“You will gather allies and assert your right to be queen.”
The way he said it, Syla couldn’t tell if it was a question or an order.
“If you don’t,” Fel added softly, “yours won’t be the only life at stake.”
Syla gazed bleakly at him, then also toward Teyla. Surely, her friends and relatives wouldn’t be targets, would they? Hadn’t all those associated with her suffered enough?
No, Fel was right. They might all be targeted if there was a military coup.
Anyone with a moon-mark, with royal blood and a link to the throne, would especially be considered a threat to a usurper’s right to rule.
The Moonmarks had been placed in power by the gods themselves before the divinities had departed.
For many people, those with the birthmark were inextricably linked to the throne.
And might not a bodyguard for one of the Moonmarks be in danger too?
Fel’s grim face suggested he believed that.
“I’ll keep that in mind. I promise.” Syla nodded to the door, wanting to escape the castle before more soldiers showed up.
Fel grunted, grabbed his pack off the floor, and followed her, waving for Teyla to follow him.
As they slipped out through the gatehouse in the back of the castle, where Fel exchanged a few words with the guard on duty, thanking him for saying nothing of their departure, Syla tried not to feel like she was abandoning the capital, if not the entire Kingdom, to chaos, anarchy, and the ambition of power-hungry men.