Chapter 7 #2
“We came to an agreement that only wild horses should be preyed upon. Those being groomed and trained by humans aren’t permissible for consumption.”
“Hello?” Syla called into the dark foyer inside, travertine tiles stretching toward windows and glass doors in the back that overlooked the lake. To one side of the foyer, wide stairs with a blue carpet runner led to a balcony and rooms on an upper level.
The air smelled of recently baked bread, and Vorik’s nostrils twitched with appreciation. Maybe after they completed their mission of rescuing the cousin, they could also rescue edible goods from the kitchen. It would be a shame to leave them in a captive state.
Nobody answered Syla, and she stepped inside.
She hadn’t gone far when a scream came from upstairs, startling her into dropping the books.
Vorik surged to her side, sword in hand as footsteps thundered in an upstairs hallway beyond the balcony.
Whoever had screamed didn’t come in their direction. It had sounded like a woman.
“Teyla?” Syla called, not sounding certain. “Anyone?” She looked around the downstairs before her gaze shifted to the balcony again. “Do you think someone glanced out a window and saw Wreylith?”
“That’s possible.” Vorik didn’t add the thought that came to mind, that the red dragon might have been in the middle of plucking a horse from its stable.
Syla took a step toward the stairs but paused.
“I don’t sense anyone magical in here, do you?” She raised her moon-marked hand.
“Just you.” Vorik tried to remember how distinctive her cousin’s aura had been. She’d been an attractive young woman, but she hadn’t emanated as much power as Syla. Would he be able to sense her if she was in the manor? He wasn’t certain.
“Hm.”
Vorik walked at Syla’s side as she climbed the stairs. He thought about walking in front of her—Fel would approve, surely—but he trusted he could react quickly to any domestic trouble they might run into in a lord’s manor.
They passed a couple of open doors, some leading to guest rooms and sitting rooms and one a library, but they didn’t see any occupants. After the arrival of a dragon, the staff had cleared out.
Vorik and Syla left the balcony and entered a wide hall, and she waved toward the end. “Teyla’s room is down there right before her father’s suite. It was her parents’ suite, but her mother passed some years ago. She was the one who inspired Teyla to become an archaeologist.”
“Are all the women in your family academics?”
“There are a lot of us, but no.” Syla stopped before a closed door but glanced toward open double doors at the end of the hall, then turned back for a longer look. “Is that…”
Feet in socks were visible—someone lying on the floor to the side of the door. Someone lying and not moving. A pile of linens lay in the threshold. Dropped by a maid who’d intended to walk in and change the bedding?
Syla veered in that direction, sucking in a startled breath when the rest of the man’s body came into view.
His throat had been slit, and blood spattered the cream-colored rug that he’d died upon.
Clad in only the socks and a nightshirt, he looked like he’d been startled awake in the middle of the night by whatever intruder had done this.
A fireplace poker lay on the floor near the linens.
“That’s Lord Abbingdar.” Syla gripped the doorjamb. “Teyla’s father.”
Vorik walked into the room, one of several in the suite. He looked behind furnishings and into closets, but he believed the murder had happened several hours earlier. The blood had dried. Had nobody gone looking for the lord earlier that morning? Maybe he regularly slept in.
“Teyla wouldn’t have done this.” Still in the doorway, a stunned expression on her face, Syla sounded like she was convincing herself.
Vorik finished his search without finding anyone and returned to her side. “Even if he was the one keeping her captive?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t have killed her own father. They weren’t that close, but she didn’t dislike him.”
“What if he was the one to deliver those books to her?”
Syla shook her head. “She would have had caustic remarks for that, not daggers.”
“What if he agreed to marry her to Fograth?”
“Teyla might kill him but not her father.” Syla returned to the other door in the hallway and reached for the knob, but she changed her mind and knocked first.
Vorik arched an eyebrow but didn’t blame her for being rattled and not sure what to do. Nobody answered the knock, and Syla tried the knob. It was locked.
“This is grounds to force our way in, right?” She looked at Vorik, back to the suite and the fallen lord, and then to him again.
“I don’t know proper Kingdom etiquette in such matters,” he offered.
“I’ll give you that book to read later. Will you?” She gestured to the door and stepped back.
Vorik thought about pointing out that she could likely force it open, but Syla probably hadn’t had much opportunity to explore her new dragon-gifted power.
He kicked the door, and wood snapped as it flew open, revealing a spacious bedroom with walls painted in pinks and yellows with a mural of books with wings flying past clouds on the ceiling.
The many bookcases along the walls were also painted pink, as was a rocking horse in one corner.
“I don’t think Teyla came home much after she finished her studies and started working at the university,” Syla murmured, though she waved at a sword mounted above the fireplace, the one masculine item in the room. Raising her voice, she called, “Teyla? Are you in here?”
“Maybe she killed her father and fled,” Vorik suggested.
“She didn’t kill him.” Syla bit her lip and walked around the room.
“Are you sure she was ever here? And a captive? It was just the glassmaker who said that, right?”
“It was, but he seems reputable. He lent us his building and gave me a spare room, after all. Despite the questionable company I keep.”
“I’ll assume you refer to Wreylith.”
“My people are more offended by you. Trust me.”
“I don’t hurl people’s weapons into lakes and breathe fire at them.”
“But you’re no innocent.”
“No.”
Vorik couldn’t deny that he’d been more of a thorn—a very prickly thorn—over the years to the Kingdom subjects than Wreylith had. Before the wild dragon had crossed paths with Syla, she probably hadn’t paid much attention to the Kingdom or humans at all.
“We know Teyla was here.” Syla opened an armoire to peek inside.
“The maid wouldn’t have thrown those books out a window.
Ah-hah.” Near the bed, Syla found kerchiefs that Vorik had noticed but not thought much of.
“She might have been tied up with these, though I was imagining a guard standing outside her door, not that she was bound and gagged in her own room. Teyla?” she called again.
The room was smaller than the suite and didn’t take long to search.
They didn’t find the cousin. And, as they looked around the rest of the manor, they didn’t find any of the staff either.
Out a window, Vorik spotted a couple of people on the dock climbing into a canoe to paddle away.
They looked like staff, not home invaders, and Vorik suspected that the lord’s murderer had come and gone hours earlier.
Since everyone had departed, Vorik liberated bread and cookies from the kitchen. Syla didn’t reprimand him, instead taking a cookie for herself before heading outside where she checked the stable. Wreylith remained in the area but hadn’t tried to eat any of the horses.
“It looks like a couple of the carriages are gone,” she murmured. “Maybe Teyla escaped after her father was killed and went… where? Into the city? She must have heard about the moon-marked people being rounded up and known she would be in danger there.”
“She was in danger here too, wasn’t she?”
“I suppose so.” Syla looked up the winding drive that led to the highway. “I may need to go to the city.”
“Your captain is there gathering intelligence for you, right? Maybe you should return to the glassworks and help your aunt.”
“I don’t have any engineering skills to lend. Unless I can heal a sky shielder into existence, there’s little I can offer her except to hold her tools. Fel is probably handling that for her.”
“I’ll come with you to watch your back wherever you want to go.” Vorik nodded to her.
“You’re a good friend, Vorik.”
“Friend?” He offered a smile. “Was it our friendship that prompted you to cry my name repeatedly last night?”
“No, that was your fingers. And your tongue. They’re very… prompting.”
“Indeed.”
Syla headed for Wreylith.
“Where to next?” Vorik asked. “You told Captain Vonla to meet you here, right?”
“Yes, but not until tomorrow. I think it’s time to visit the capital.”
“The last time you flew near it, people fired cannonballs at you and your dragon.”
“You say that as if it’s a unique experience.”
“Well, it’s not for me.” Vorik flattened a hand to his chest. “But as a healer, you might have endured less of that kind of treatment.”
“I do miss the days when people brought me sweets and left coins in the temple offering urns.”
“That’s far more appealing than being shot at, I’d imagine. You’re the only one who’s ever brought me sweets.”
“Maybe you could have been lured over to our side earlier if Kingdom soldiers had tossed cookies at you instead of arrows and cannonballs.” Syla shimmied up Wreylith’s side with a mix of magic and newfound strength and pulled herself astride.
“Much earlier.” Vorik vaulted up to ride behind her.
After all the violent incidents they’d had with her people, he had misgivings about heading to the capital, especially during daylight hours, but he also felt an urgency to help Syla resolve her problem before the meeting with the tribes.
If he could tell them he was aligned with the Kingdom ruler, maybe it would make a difference in swaying people to his side.
Sadly, thinking one could reclaim a throne and vanquish one’s political enemies in two days was probably naive. But, aside from having his assistance, Syla had a dragon to help. Maybe that would be enough.