Chapter 12
Twelve
We all stared at the door, and I turned to look at Tallu.
One of the Dogs pushed forward, gently nudging me out of the way so that Tallu and I were bookended by Dogs.
Quuri was still held apart from us, one Dog between us and her.
Even they didn’t trust her, and whether it was from an abundance of caution or whether they also wondered why she had forgotten to tell Tallu about Maki’s experiments, I couldn’t tell.
The door had opened into utter darkness. There were no windows, and based on how far down the stairs had gone, I assumed we were underground.
“How did Maki even know of this room?” My question seemed swallowed up by the open door, and I wasn’t sure anyone would answer.
“I’m not sure. It was a closely guarded secret, even among the servants.
When he asked for it specifically, I took that to mean that you had told him about it.
My own foolishness.” Quuri shook her head, doubling over in an awkward bow, the top of her head brushing the Dog nearest her.
“Your Imperial Majesty, I have no explanation for how I allowed this to happen. I should be punished for such an offense. It was my error to let a traitor to the Imperium into your palace and give him the run of it—”
“We will deal with that later,” Tallu said. “Tell us what Maki was doing here.”
Quuri shook her head, raising one hand and her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. I didn’t need to be fluent in the Imperial language of motion and speech to know that she was trying to express how little an idea she had.
“After he requested the room, his men brought boxes in. I asked if he wanted servants to clean it for him, and he said no. He required space and quiet, which was why he chose the room in the first place. He would lock it every time he used it. The other servants believed it was haunted.” She frowned as she said the words, and I wondered if she believed it as much as they did.
The Dog in front stepped forward, pressing his hand to a sconce barely visible on the wall. With a flash of electricity, he lit it, and it triggered a reaction in the room, every light flashing on.
The Dogs stood in the doorway, the dark shadowing hints of what was beyond. In the large room, there were metal hooks on the walls. Hands and arms hung from them on chains.
The Dog stepped forward, blade drawn, and Tallu and I followed him.
There were five bodies hung on the stone walls, and the tables were covered with papers and notes, knives and what looked like instruments of torture, as well as spools of wire and pieces of metal that might be part of some machine.
I stepped forward, examining one of the bodies. A piece of wire had been inserted into his ear, driven down deep into his brain. Red blood had dried brown on his earlobe. His eyes were open, gray and blank.
He smelled, the scent of death unmistakable, but it wasn’t as bad as I assumed it would be. Because of its place under the palace, the room was so cold that it would maintain the bodies for some time.
“General Maki could not have done this himself,” I observed. “The emperor left him with one hand, and this work requires two.”
Turning to Quuri, I saw her go ashen. “Other than the men Maki left in place, were there any servants, any outsiders who had access to this room? Or who the general favored in some way?”
My mind flashed to the men that Rute Sotonam had turned to his side, servants who knew they were harming and hurting their fellows, but who couldn’t help cleaving to a more powerful presence. I had killed them, too. And I had a feeling whoever helped Maki do this would die the same way.
“He had two men,” Quuri said, her voice going unsteady. “They were palace guards. He asked for the strongest men we had, and they were proud to do the work that would save the Imperium.”
“And are they still here?” Tallu asked.
Quuri swallowed. “I thought—I thought he’d taken them with him when he left. It was night, and he took a great many, but now…” She raised her hand and pointed to the wall where two men hung, the remnants of their yellow uniforms torn down to their waists.
“That’s them?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“What about bedmates? Did he or his commanders take any servants or locals into favor?” I thought about the lie I’d told about Topi Bemishu to get her free of the men who would kill her. “Anyone they might have spoken with?”
“No,” Quuri said. “No one. They kept to themselves. At meals, they spoke very little, even to each other.”
“Did they leave the palace?” I asked.
Quuri shook her head. “Not until he left in the dead of night over a week ago.”
Which meant all we knew was here in this room. I looked around the room again. If we had Hipati, we would have some hope of ever cataloguing all of the papers. As it was, I could only assume that Maki had been doing exactly the same experiments here as he had in the abandoned military outpost.
“So, which happened first? Did Maki abandon his outpost before or after his men were slaughtered?” Something terrible occurred to me, and I turned back to Quuri. “Did he have a girl with him? Pito Bemishu?”
Quuri shook her head sharply. “Only his own men were with him. Other military commanders and a few servants. They were enveloped into the household, and I would have recognized a young lady among them.”
That left few options. Either we had somehow missed Pito’s body at the outpost, or he had disguised her as one of his commanders.
There was a third option, and I looked around the room at the hanging bodies. Unless she was already dead, and he had kept her body here, out of sight of any servant who might recognize her.
“Close off this room,” Tallu said. “Have someone guarding it at all times. We will come back and examine it once I have met with the Krustavian king.”
The Dogs bowed in acknowledgment, and Tallu swept out, two Dogs following as the other two locked the door and took up guard positions. I made my way up the stairs, still thinking over everything we had learned. Quuri was behind me.
When I first heard her voice, I wasn’t even sure she had spoken.
“Will he kill me?” she asked.
I turned, looking over my shoulder. The walls of the passage were rough stone, not polished smooth like the rest of the interior. It would be easy to slip and fall, dying on the stairs.
Pausing, I turned. I was on the step above her, the stair adding more to our height difference. “Do you think you deserve to die?”
“I have failed him. My predecessor failed the last emperor, and the Dogs killed him for it. I let an assassin have access to His Imperial Majesty. I failed to realize who Maki was. I have done more to harm the empire than anyone here.” She wiped under her eyes, then dried her fingertips against her yellow uniform.
“Is there anything else His Imperial Majesty should know?” I asked. “Anything you can think of?”
She shook her head, her lips pressed together. “I should have known. I was a fool.”
Tallu’s footsteps had faded, and Quuri and I were trapped in the narrow space of the staircase, the walls on either side oppressive. “Quuri, why was the girl’s tongue cut out?”
Her head snapped up, her breathing going fast. She bit her lip, then raised her chin to answer.
“They were going to kill everyone. The Dogs. They were going to kill everyone who had waited on Empress Koque, anyone who might have helped her. The girl was innocent. She was just a bath maid. I convinced them to spare her. And that was the price they demanded.” She leaned forward again, grabbing hold of my arm. “Do not trust them.”
Her eyes widened, and I turned to look over my shoulder. One of Tallu’s Dogs had come around the bend, the angle shadowing his eyes, so I had no hint at the expression on his face.
“We’re coming,” I said.
In all our weeks on the road, none of them had shown any signs of disloyalty. Even the Kennelmaster had seemed as though the only thing he wanted was the freedom to continue doing his job as he saw fit.
The Dog turned, saying nothing, and Quuri and I followed behind.
That night, after a meal that wasn’t poisoned, I couldn’t sleep. The quarters here weren’t as private as at the Mountainside Palace. There was no special lock on the bedroom door, and the Kennelmaster had insisted that two Dogs stay in Tallu’s room with him at all times.
Even with the bed curtains drawn, I could feel them with us and remembered Quuri’s panicked look. Do not trust them.
But who could I trust in the situation? The steward who had let one of Tallu’s enemies into his palace or the Dogs who had unfettered access to Tallu and might very well know Tallu’s true goals?
Tallu’s arm tightened around my chest, his hand pressed over my heart. Gently, his thumb rubbed over my skin. “What is it?”
“I am worried,” I said. Which was the truth. But I couldn’t tell him what I was worried about, so instead I named another thought spiraling in my head. “I am not sure any of the messages we have received were actually from the king of the Shadow Throne.”
“What do you mean?” Tallu asked, his finger stopping its slow circles.
“Every message we have received passed first through the Lakeshore Palace. This is where messengers would have stayed the night going in both directions. If General Maki was acting in your stead, he may have changed the messages to the Krustavian king and changed the response. Perhaps the reason we only received headless corpses was because General Maki wished it so. He couldn’t risk that we would learn of his presence.
He couldn’t risk that you might communicate openly with the king of Krustau. ”
Tallu rolled onto his back, and I turned, letting my fingertips draw over his forehead and down his nose. I could feel his closed eyes, the frown pulling his brows together.
“He may have decapitated the men himself so they couldn’t tell us he was at the palace. In which case, we have no real idea what we will find in the dwarven kingdom,” Tallu said.