26. Chapter 26
Crowe
The lamp is good for about five more hours. I turn it down to save it and sit in the chair with my back to the wall.
She said tonight, late.
That was four nights ago.
I wait. It’s what I do, and I’ve never once minded it before.
Now, I do.
The first night I went up. Four flights, along two passages, as far as the arch at the end of the long room.
The room was full. Fifty people in it, and she was at the head of the table with her mother on one side of her and three of the council on the other.
A man was telling her something at length, and she was listening to all of it.
She never had a chance of getting out of that chair. I stood there until I was sure of it, and then I spent the rest of that night walking the Eyrie, counting doors and stairs and ways out, being the man nobody notices.
The second night I went down instead of up.
There’s a lower gate at the bottom of the stores, and it’s the one they carried the body in through.
It took me two hours to find it. It’s a single door onto a ledge, with a track running north along the face of the mountain, and one man on it who was asleep by two in the morning.
I stood out there in the dark and worked out that one man could bring a body up that track in a night and nobody in this mountain would know.
Getting it onto the north face afterward, on a ledge where a search party would find it on the second day, and then walking out with that search party—that isn’t one man.
That’s one man and somebody holding the other end.
The third night I made a list. Those closest to her who might have reason to get rid of her. It’s a short list. She’s well-liked. So I stop asking who’d want her gone and start asking who could have got a body onto that mountain. That list is longer.
Tonight I don’t go up at all.
There are more people over my head than on any night since I got here. Feet on the floor above me and on the one above that. Heavy clothes. Whatever is going on, they’ve dressed for it.
Then the Aldrake’s voice. She’s running the room, and she does it in short sentences. Everybody stops talking when she starts, then they start again when she’s done.
There are toasts. This is a celebration, and I know exactly what they’re celebrating, because I heard it said out loud on the other side of a wall four days ago and I’ve been sitting with it ever since. A betrothal. Hers.
I know what I’m listening to. Two families, one long room, and the man they’ve all been waiting on.
The festivities go on for a long time.
She isn’t coming down.
I know it hours before I stop waiting. I sit there anyway.
Then the mountain goes quiet, and then it’s morning up there, and it stops mattering what I want, because the sun is up and I’m not leaving this room for eleven hours.
Aldis brings my blood down not long after, which he has not done once since I got here, and he does not leave straight away.
“They sat the council to discuss the funeral,” he says to the wall behind me.
“The Aldrake told them how it was done. The party went out on the second day. It came in through the lower gate after dark. She looked at the body herself and said it was her daughter.” He puts the jug down. “You didn’t hear that from me.”
That gives me something new to work with.
I take everything out of the pack, lay it on the bed, and go through it in order.
Three passports in three names, a driver’s license, a folder of border cards.
What’s good, what’s stale, which name I can still use where.
Money, both places. The notebook. I write down what I know, because I think better when it’s written down.
A grave with a woman in it who isn’t her.
The Aldrake looked at the body and said it was her daughter. That’s the most important detail I have. Whoever did this managed to convince Kalli’s mother she was looking at her daughter.
The party went out on the second day and was gone three days. That’s two clear days to bring up a body, dress her, and leave her where the search would find her.
Her grandmother’s ring was on its hand.
I read it back.
It isn’t enough. There’s an innocent answer for every line of it. I’ve seen stronger cases than this fall apart in a week.
You can’t work it from here.
That’s the part that takes me all morning to admit, but I know it because I’ve spent three nights trying.
I’ve walked the passages. I’ve found the gate and stood on the ledge.
The rest is closed to me. Everybody in this clan is somebody’s cousin, and nobody in this place would answer a question from me that wasn’t about the weather.
I’m the help. The help is leaving.
There’s nothing I can do for her up here anyway. The answers are not in this mountain. They’re out there where I know how to work the system.
I put the pack back together.
You can’t just leave her.
I push that thought away because that’s exactly what I have to do. Kallista Ondrathe has a life up here. People who care for her. A future I’m not part of.
I go up at dusk, when the light’s off the outer stairs.
The mountain is busy. People in every passage carrying things—cloth, planks, crates going up on shoulders. Two men come the other way with a table between them, and one of them says “Mind, mind,” to the other and not to me.
Nobody stops me.
I go up four levels and along two passages and out into a hall full of people, a pack on my back and a coat over my arm.
Not one person asks me where I’m going. Two of them stand aside for me.
One’s a girl of about sixteen with an armful of white winter flowers, and she puts her back against the wall and looks at the floor until I’ve gone past.
Days in this building, and I can walk out through a room full of people, and not one of them seems to notice it. The vampire who brought the Heir back is already part of the scenery.
The Aldrake’s steward finds me at the inner gate, which means somebody did tell her, and fast.
“You’re leaving.”
“I am.”
“Wait here.”
She comes herself. She’s dressed for the evening, and she’s got about two minutes. She doesn’t waste any of it.
“You didn’t name a figure,” she says.
“No.”
“Then I have.” A leather envelope, folded twice, held out. “It’s more than a regular client would have paid you and less than I’d have gone to. Take it, please, and don’t thank me for it. I’ve had a long day of people being gracious.”
I take it.
I’ve never wanted money less than I want this. I put it in the inside pocket of my coat without looking at it. If I refused it, everybody standing here would want to know why.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Thank you.” She’s already looking back the way she came. “You’ve been decent with her. She said so, which she doesn’t say often.” She puts a hand out, and I take it. Hers is warm the way all of them are. “I’d have had you at the wedding. But I don’t imagine our hours would suit you.”
She means the daylight. She’s right about the daylight. She’s gone before I’ve thought of anything to say.
“No,” I say, to an empty passage. “They wouldn’t.”
Being at the wedding wouldn’t suit me either.
She’s the first one who’s openly spoken to me about it.
Aldis is at the outer gate.
“Weather’s holding,” he says. “Cloud’s down to the fourth turning. You’ll be in the dark before you’re out of it.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Mm.” He works his jaw. Then he puts his hand out, which surprises me. “You did a good thing for us.”
“I was paid for it.”
“I know what you were paid.” He nods. “Go carefully on the wet steps. There’s no rail.”
“I remember.”
I’m at the top of the stairs when I hear her.
She’s on a gallery above and behind me with three or four people around her. She says something short, and somebody answers her, and she laughs at it. It’s the real laugh that I got to know in a truck on the road here.
I stand there until it stops.
Then I go down.
The steps are wet, as Aldis warned. I go into the cloud at the fourth turning, exactly where he said, and after that it’s just the steps, and a wall on one side.
Two hours down. Three. My coat is soaked through again, and I put the collar up.
The scent of dragon thins behind me at every turn until there’s only wet rock and cold air and my own wet coat.
The yard is empty, and the truck has a foot of snow on the roof. It takes me twenty minutes to clear it and get her started. She doesn’t want to. Then she does.
I lean back against the seat and stare out the windshield while the engine warms.
There’s a fae in a town called Marchand who sells information. He deals with anybody and doesn’t care who’s asking. He’ll want money, and then he’ll want a favor on top of the money, and I’ve got a full envelope and nothing else to give him.
Before that, there’s a call to make to Odile. And Aurora will want a report. I’ll tell them she’s back safe, and they’ll be happy with that. My work is done.
Just a job.
But it wasn’t. It was never just a job.
And it’s not finished yet.
I put the lights on and take the truck out of the yard. The road drops away west.
Behind me, the cloud closes over the mountain and stays closed.