Chapter 42
KIERAN
The wax had been softened with Shadow. Eiryx held the delivery notice beneath one of the ward lamps while I scraped a thumbnail along the underside of the seal.
A dark residue came away in a thin line, easy to mistake for soot if you had never been taught what to look for.
I had. That was the problem. The western receiving passage was quiet at this hour.
Somewhere above us, the Sanctum was preparing for Solstice; music had been drifting through the mountain since midday, broken now and then by the scrape of tables and the dull thud of ceremonial doors being tested.
Down here, the walls were older than most of the western archives, the stone damp around iron doors that had been fitted centuries after the corridors themselves were carved.
Eiryx took the notice from me and turned it beneath the ward lamp. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” He rubbed his thumb over the disturbed wax, his face darkening. “The seal, the claimant-less request, the Council duplicate, now this. Someone is getting very comfortable moving through places they should not be able to reach.”
“Not comfortable. Familiar.”
His eyes lifted to mine. “You recognize the method.”
I rubbed the residue between my fingers until it disappeared into the grooves of my skin.
The method was familiar. So was the restraint behind it.
Whoever intercepted the message wanted information without announcing that the message had been touched.
The claimant-less requests had done the same thing.
Quiet entry. Quiet removal. Leave the machinery intact so nobody noticed the hand inside it.
I had grown up around men who worked that way.
“I recognize the kind of man who uses it. That is not the same as knowing which one.”
“That distinction seems to be bothering you more than it comforts me.”
“It should.”
Eiryx crouched beside the first receiving ward. The old brass channel had been set directly into the floor. He ran two fingers along the groove, stopped near the hinge, and wiped a faint gray smear onto his thumb. “This was disturbed recently. Yesterday at the earliest.”
I crouched beside him. “Staff?”
“No. Staff use the proper entrance unless they enjoy being disciplined by three separate archive masters.” He pointed toward the archway twenty feet behind us.
A narrower maintenance cut had been built into the wall, mostly concealed by shelving and a later stone support.
“Someone came through there and reset the lower ward afterward.”
I crossed to it. The latch looked untouched. The ward beneath it did not. A faint Shadow residue sat inside the groove, too clean to be accidental.
Eiryx rose behind me. “We tell Halos now, he seals the wing.”
“And whoever did this knows we found them.”
“He may know that already.”
I hated that he was right. The missing acquisition packet had been accessed before we divided the work among ourselves.
Damon’s Council duplicate had been marked before collection.
Now the Balethorn delivery notice had been opened before the records reached the lower vaults.
The trail was narrowing around Lyra. She had spent the previous night furious because I would not explain why that frightened me.
Telling her more would not have made her safer.
I had repeated that to myself enough times that the thought had begun to sound hollow.
I checked the ward clock. “Where’s Dax?”
“He left the dining hall twenty minutes ago. I assumed he was sulking somewhere about you threatening to break his legs.”
“He should have taken the threat more seriously.”
Eiryx’s mouth flattened.
I looked at him. “Where is Lyra?”
He said nothing.
Fuck. “Eiryx.”
“Vareena covered for her.”
I closed my eyes for one second because murdering one of my oldest friends would create paperwork I did not currently have time for. “You knew she was going.”
“I suspected she might.”
“And you let her?”
“No, Kieran. I declined to physically imprison the woman you are sleeping with because you have apparently decided one tyrant in her life is insufficient.”
My stare snapped to his.
“There he is,” Eiryx muttered. “Save that face for whoever is waiting downstairs.”
I was already moving.
Eiryx caught up before the stair. “Kieran.”
“What?”
“If you find her down there, do not spend the first thirty seconds telling her you were right.”
I stopped. He looked entirely serious. “You think that is what I’m worried about?”
“No. I think you are worried enough to say something worse.”
He knew me too well. It pissed me off. I left before I answered him.
The outer receiving door stood open. That was wrong.
The intake bell had sounded recently enough that its vibration lingered faintly through the stone, and one of the registry lamps burned inside.
The lower vaults were not meant to be empty during an active delivery.
I stepped through the threshold and tasted foreign Shadow immediately.
Whoever had used it knew how to keep residue close.
Eiryx felt it a second later. His hand went to the knife at his side, and whatever irritation remained between us disappeared.
Dax’s voice carried from farther inside. “Tell me Father did not send half the west wing.”
Lyra answered, “You were the one who asked for everything relevant.”
“I asked Emrin for anything relevant. Those are very different instructions when your family keeps records like they are preparing for the end of civilization.”
“They may have been.”
“That is not comforting.”
They were alive. The relief came hard and brief.
We moved deeper. The receiving vaults ran beneath the old western archive in a series of long chambers divided by caged shelving.
Some held newly arrived documents waiting for inspection; others had stone tables set beneath preservation wards where outside bindings could be checked before entering the Sanctum proper.
The ceiling sat lower here, supported by thick square columns that interrupted the sightlines every few yards.
Dax stood at the second intake table. Lyra was beside him.
The Balethorn chest sat between them with its Tharellan seal split down the middle.
Her fingers grazed the broken wax. “Do not touch anything else.”
Both of them turned.
Lyra straightened the moment she saw me. “You followed us.”
“I was already coming here.”
“That sounds suspiciously convenient.”
Dax looked between us, reconsidered whatever he had intended to say, and tapped the chest instead. “Before the two of you start whatever this is, someone opened it.”
I came closer. The family seal had been cut cleanly, then hidden beneath a receiving stamp. A clerk rushing through intake could have missed it. “Where is the attendant?”
Dax pointed toward the outer room. “There wasn’t one when we came in. The door was open, the intake lamp was burning, and apparently my survival instinct took the afternoon off.”
“Apparently.”
He gave me a look. “I am already regretting admitting that.”
Eiryx had moved away from us, checking the cages and the door behind the final intake table.
Lyra folded her arms. “Go ahead.”
I looked at her.
“Tell me how irresponsible this was. You have been holding that speech since last night.”
“Later.”
That unsettled her more than if I had taken the invitation. Her arms lowered. “Later?”
“Did either of you touch anything besides the chest?”
Dax shook his head. “No. We barely had time to realize the seal was wrong before you arrived.”
Lyra’s attention moved toward the back of the room. “I touched the wax. Nothing else.”
The first lamp went out. The second died immediately after it.
Dax’s Earth came up through the floor before the third could fail, a rough ridge of stone forming around his boots.
The final flame vanished. Foreign Shadow crossed the room.
I felt the movement before I saw it, a narrow sweep kept low against the floor.
It wrapped around Dax’s ankle and yanked.
He went down hard. Earth bucked beneath him, splitting the binding before it could drag him beneath the intake table.
Lyra’s Starlight filled the vault with silver-blue.
Too bright for my liking. Too revealing.
A man stood near the rear shelving. Gray receiving coat.
Archive insignia sewn properly at the shoulder.
Hair cut short enough to disappear beneath a clerk’s hood.
He held a narrow blade in his right hand.
When Lyra illuminated him, he did not run. He went straight for her. “Move!”
She did. The first cut missed her throat by inches. No. Not her throat. He had never aimed for it. The blade passed the inside of her arm, deliberately shallow, and came around again before she could reset. Cold went through me. “Lyra, keep away from the floor markings.”
She twisted beneath the second strike. “What floor markings?”
The operative drove her backward before I could answer. She put Starlight into his chest. He took the impact and rolled with it, hitting the side of an iron cage hard enough to rattle the shelves. Eiryx was on him before he recovered. Their blades met once, twice, then disappeared behind a column.
Dax pushed himself upright. “What the hell does he want?”
“Seal the western passage.”
He looked toward Lyra.
“Dax.”