Chapter 29
An hour later, we’d found no leads, I’d knocked six house guards unconscious and left them slumped in various dark corners, and even Gareth was beginning to look worried.
As we hurried down yet another quiet, carpeted hallway lined with portraits of dead Lemaires and elaborate wooden carvings of the Knotwood, I thought over Mother’s words for the hundredth time: A towering staircase.
A pretty room and a pretty bed. A man with rings. A piano, and it’s making such a racket.
Evocative words, but the only towering staircase I’d seen since entering this wretched house was the one in the ballroom, and that part of the mansion was Gemma and Talan’s territory.
No matter how far I stretched my senses, I couldn’t take in the whole house at once, and all I could really hear anyway was a faint din from the party.
And footsteps against the carpet, approaching steadily from around the corner up ahead.
I held out an arm, warning Gareth away. He fell back and stood flat against the wall.
His hand hovered over the knife strapped to his hip, hidden under his coat.
He gave me a sharp nod, and quick as a cat I raced ahead down the hallway and darted around the left corner.
The footsteps belonged to a house guard on patrol—tall, broad-shouldered, quite obviously bored.
I delivered one sharp blow to a spot between her shoulder blades, and she collapsed to the floor before she even got a chance to see me coming.
I carried her to a linen closet we’d passed, tucked her inside, and returned to Gareth.
“Another guard,” I muttered. “Let’s keep going.”
“That makes seven,” he said, joining me as we hurried down the now empty hallway. “Someone might start noticing something’s wrong if we dispose of too many more.”
“If it were just me, I could probably slip past them with no need for incapacitation.”
“If you’re implying that it might have been better to leave me safely at Kirsa’s house,” he said wryly, “I can’t say I disagree with you.”
In fact, I was starting to think this very thing. The longer the night crept on, the more I worried about him, and the more I worried, the more distracted I became. Normally, my mind was clear and sharp as crystal during missions. No agitation, only calculations.
Tonight, however, I felt as though I was laden with precious, vulnerable cargo. Gareth could fight, certainly, but would he be able to see well enough to do so?
“I do wish you had your glasses,” I admitted.
“That makes two of us.”
More footsteps. I held out my arm and waited for Gareth to flatten himself against the wall, then hurried down the corridor, turned right at the next junction, and knocked the patrolling guard unconscious with a swift kick to his head.
And that makes eight, I thought grimly, hurrying back to Gareth. But he wasn’t where I’d left him. He was moving slowly back down the hallway, running his fingers over the wall with his head slightly bent as if listening hard to something.
I hurried to him, fighting the urge to scold him for wandering off. “What are you doing?”
“These wall carvings,” he murmured. “I’ve been pressed up against several of them now while you dispatched our guard friends, and they all look the same: twisting branches, leaves, the occasional animal.
A lovely tribute to the Knotwood. But every ten feet is a random nonsense word tucked into the carvings.
The letters are scrambled. But right here”—he touched a particular gnarl of wood—“this is an actual word. It says enter.”
I squinted at it. “All I see are leaves.”
“It’s well hidden unless you can read Zelophar. Then it leaps out like a beacon.”
“Good thing you’re a brilliant Anointed sage with a mind like a steel trap who memorizes and files away everything he’s ever seen.”
“Yes, that helps too,” he said pleasantly.
Zelophar. The word sounded familiar. “Is that an Olden language?”
He nodded. “Believed to be the favored tongue of the gods. Various sites all over the world are marked with these characters—high mountain cliffs, excavated caves, the land where the five Cloisters now stand. Old places, places scholars agree were marked by the gods themselves.”
“How many people can read Zelophar?”
“Besides me? Two of my colleagues at the university. Certainly the five abbots.” He paused. “The four abbots, now.”
“And when were you going to tell me about all these hidden words you’ve been fondling?”
“When I found something worth reporting,” he replied. “Is your eyesight good enough to determine whether this wood is newer than what surrounds it?”
I bent down to examine the letters, which looked to me more like pictures drawn with harsh lines. Scanning the minuscule whorls in the wood, I caught the faint sheen of oil from recent fingerprints—and older, fainter fingerprints beneath that.
“It’s certainly different from the rest,” I said slowly. “It’s a slight shade darker and less worn. And someone besides you has touched it many times. But the wood surrounding it is clean.”
“What are the chances someone would touch this one specific spot on the wall and ignore all the rest?”
I straightened. “It says enter?”
“Yes, but if there is a secret door hidden in the wall, it won’t budge.” He glanced at me sheepishly. “I was too curious to wait for you.”
“A curious librarian,” I muttered. “Now, that’s a shock.” I scanned the wall once more, then glanced at him. “Stand back. There is a door. I can see the seams. I’m going to kick it open as quietly as I can. Then we’ll wait to see if anyone comes to investigate the noise.”
He stared at me. “You can kick open a door quietly?”
In answer, I spun around and struck the wall with my right foot.
At the last second, I pulled back the slightest bit, and my foot made contact with only a slight thud.
But the seething power coiled in my leg muscles did its job anyway.
The door flew open, and we hurried into the stone passage behind it, which was dimly lit by a single flickering torch in an iron sconce.
I pulled the door mostly closed, leaving only a sliver of the hallway visible. For five excruciating minutes, I listened hard, stretching my senses down every corridor I could find. Nothing. Silence. Satisfied, I pulled the door all the way shut. It clicked into place with barely a sound.
“Have I ever mentioned,” Gareth murmured, his eyes merry in the torchlight, “how devastatingly beautiful you are when you’re kicking down doors and knocking out guards?”
I shot him a small smile and grabbed the torch. “Let’s see where this goes.”
“Ah, let me carry that,” he said, gesturing for it. “It matters much less if one of my hands is occupied.”
He had a point. I gave it to him, and we crept down the passage in silence, shadows flickering all around us, until suddenly a faint noise made me freeze. I grabbed Gareth’s arm, my heart pounding.
Music. I was hearing music.
Someone was playing a piano.
A piano, and it’s making such a racket.
A small chill skipped down my arms. Gareth was tense beside me, not daring to say a word. I pressed on along the passage, and I knew the moment Gareth started to hear the music too. He drew in a quick breath, and the faint murmur of his heartbeat grew faster, louder.
The passage ended at a wooden door set into the stone wall, lit by a second torch.
I paused beside it, listening past the cheerful music for any sign that someone besides our mysterious pianist waited on the other side of the door.
But gods, the piano was making a racket; the music was frenetic and gratingly loud.
Skillful, but inelegant. I immediately thought of Farrin, how much better this music would sound if played by her dexterous fingers.
A little flare of worry sparked in my mind: Where was my sister at this moment? Was she safe? Was Gemma?
I shoved the thought aside and glanced at Gareth. “Stay here until I signal for you.”
He didn’t look happy about that, but he nodded and stepped back, and I opened the door as quietly and slowly as I’d ever done anything in my life.
It opened into a small but grand ballroom, lit only by a few glimmers of candlelight.
The parquet floor gleamed softly; flowering vines wound through the white rafters.
A girl with white-blond hair sat at a piano in the center of the room, wearing a prim, lace-trimmed dress.
Beyond her, a spiral of iron stairs climbed nearly all the way to the ceiling.
At the top was a small landing and a door set into the wall.
My blood ran cold. I wished passionately that I could shove Gareth into a safe cupboard somewhere; the frantic music rattling around the room and the lone girl and the lone staircase told me something terrible was about to happen.
The staircase was so odd, standing out harshly against the room’s pastel finery.
And where did that door at the top lead?
I went to Gareth and said against his ear, very calmly, “Take off your coat and douse the torch with it, but keep it with you to use as a club if you have to. Head for the staircase, but keep to the edges of the room. The shadows might hide us.”
He nodded, his expression grim, and followed me into the ballroom.
My mind raced through every possibility I could think of.
The girl was clearly Griselda Lemaire, for Aralinda was the second of the three sisters, and this girl playing the piano was smaller than she was.
The moment she saw us, she might use her elemental magic to send the ceiling vines whipping down toward us.
Or she might call for help, or press a secret mechanism that would alert the house guard and bring them rushing in.
Or she might cower at the sight of us and run off to cry in a corner. The little brat has a weak stomach, Aralinda had said to her friends.