“I’m glad you could make it,” she quipped, her voice not quite as steady as she wished.
“When you issue an invitation to your bedroom, it’s common practice to make sure the door is unlocked,” he returned without a pause. He looked beyond her and said, “It’s also common to wait until your partner’s here before you start getting the sheets hot.”
She turned and noticed that the smoldering blankets had begun to flame. Fires were the second magic that an apprentice learned, since fire is the easiest element to call into being. The first magic was how to extinguish them. She jerked the covers to the floor beside her. Given Kerim’s disbelief in magic, she assumed that he would think that she smothered the fire with the weight of the blankets.
To her continued astonishment, Sham liked the Reeve, Cybellian that he was—but she didn’t know if she could trust him. Twelve years ago she’d learned that fear was a brutal enemy, and she decided not to give him proof of magic’s existence for a little while longer.
“Sorry,” she quipped lightly. “I’m not familiar with the etiquette required of a mistress. Next time I’ll make sure that you’re in the bed before I throw hot coals at it.”
Kerim grunted in approval and swung the axe in a short arc that connected with the remaining hinge. The second half of the door dropped to the ground. By the simple expedient of grabbing both sides of the doorway and heaving, he pushed the awkward chair through the cleared opening and into her room.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You remember the demon that Talbot and I keep talking about?”
“The hypothetical one that’s the reason you’re here?” he said, rolling his chair slowly up to her.
She nodded. “That’s the one. It decided to check me out. It didn’t seem to care for more company, and so it left as soon as it became obvious that you were coming in.”
When he was close enough to see the blood in the shadows of the room, he said, “How badly are you hurt?”
“Not much, unless the cut on my shoulder is worse than it looks.”
He reached up and pulled her hair aside so that he could get a good look at her shoulder. “I’ve seen worse, but it’s deep enough to warrant stitching. Dickon’s pretty good at it.”
“Dickon?”
He laughed at the disbelief in her tone.
“He was a soldier before he was a valet, and he sews torn skin better than most of the healers.” He looked again at her shoulder and his brows lowered in thought. “It looks like a knife wound.”
Sham nodded her head. “A plaguing sharp knife at that.”
Kerim laughed. “From your disgruntlement I assume that you were hoping for claws and fangs?”
She smiled, closing her eyes to relieve the dizziness brought on by loss of blood. “Guess I was at that.”
“Come with me and tell me what happened.” He wheeled back to the doorway and pulled his chair back over the door sill.
“Have you talked to your stablemaster about modifying that thing yet?” asked Shamera, following him into his room.
“He and one of the carpenters are working on a new chair,” answered the Reeve, He gestured toward a seat. “Sit before you fall down. I’ll go get Dickon and you can tell me what happened after he has taken care of you.”
She complied gratefully and lowered her head to her knees. Dickon must have been sleeping nearby, because the Reeve returned with him shortly. She didn’t know how Kerim had explained the wounds, but Dickon was as contained as ever as he cleaned and mended the cut on her shoulder with small, even stitches. Determining the slice on her thigh was superficial, the servant bent down to get a closer look at the gash on her calf.
“My Lord says the magician last night was skilled in alchemy,” said Dickon as he pulled the skin of her calf closed.
“There’s a white rock, mined north of the glass desert. If it is mixed with water, an open flame held near it will ignite the surface of the water,” said Sham, trying to ignore the tug of the needle. “I didn’t get a clear view of the urns, but it seemed to be the kind of fire the white rock produces. I don’t know what the purple smoke was.”
Dickon paused briefly in his sewing to look at her in surprise, then a slight smile crossed his lips at her peace offering. “I’ve heard of the pigeons in the pot, but I’ve never seen one large enough to house an osprey.”
“There must have been some magic at work,” offered Sham, tongue in cheek.
Dickon snorted in disbelief, tying off the thread tidily. He produced bandages from the kit he’d brought in and began wrapping her calf.
“I’ve yet to see any magic that cannot be duplicated with a little work,” said the valet as he wiped his hands fastidiously clean.
Sham nodded congenially. “I’m sure that’s true.”
Dickon shot her a suspicious look, and she smiled.
“Will that be all, my lord?” he asked Kerim.
“Please see that the covering for Lady Shamera’s bed is discreetly replaced and the burned covering destroyed.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Dickon?” said Shamera. “Thank you.”
“Very good, my lady.” Dickon bowed himself out of the room and shut the door.
“How did you explain the fact that your mistress needed stitches in the middle of the night?” asked Shamera, pushing her hair out of her eyes with a hand that shook slightly.
“I didn’t. Are you steady enough to tell me what happened?”
She shrugged and immediately regretted it as the stitches in her shoulder pulled. “It’s more painful than damaging, I’m fine. I was snuffing the candles when something attacked me from behind.”
“You’re still sure that it was a demon? One that used a knife?” He sounded as if he were willing her to answer rationally.
Shamera sighed with more exasperation than she really felt. It would have been unfair to expect him to accept her view without allowing him evidence that true magic existed.
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t know enough. It looked like a man, but I didn’t get a glimpse of his face.”
“Why are you discounting the possibility that the killer is human?” He sounded honestly curious.
She felt guilty for deliberately misleading him with the truth, but she had never let a little guilt alter her course. “Because it picked me up and threw me across the room. I’ve been in a lot of fights, some of them with men bigger than you are. This thing was much stronger, and faster. I couldn’t see it.”
“It was dark,” he said patiently.
“So it was,” she agreed with equal patience.
“You said that it looked like a man—” he paused significantly, “—in the dark.”
“It did.”
“But it was a demon.”
“Yes.” Sham closed her eyes and yawned.
She could hear the squeak of the chair’s wheels as the Reeve moved around, but she was suddenly too weary to see what he was doing. He had a substantial presence that relegated demons to the realm of stories, despite the throbbing in her shoulder. She smiled to herself and started to drift off to sleep when a flash of memory caused her to sit up and open her eyes.
“The knife was in the room when I entered this evening.”
Kerim had been balancing the broken pieces of door against the wall. At her speech, he paused and looked up. “What knife?”
“The one the demon used. It was lying on the mantel next to the silver and porcelain dog. I noticed the ornaments on the mantel were altered from this morning, but I didn’t realize the dagger was new.”
Kerim pushed his way back into her room. He came back shaking his head. “There’s no knife there now. What did it look like?”
Shamera closed her eyes, trying to visualize it clearly. “It was ornate, like the swords on display in the hall—not inconsistent with its use as an ornament. The hilt was wooden. There was a dark stone set in one end. Ruby ... no, sapphire. A dark blue sapphire as big around as my thumb.”
“With etching on the blade?”