He cleared his throat quietly so that Kerim would know that he was there before he said, “The healer has chosen to wait in the kitchens until we retrieve his items. If you wish to rest a while on the table before we try to move you, Lord, the man didn’t seem to be in a great hurry.”
“No,” Kerim said, levering himself up with his hands until he was sitting.
Dickon brought a light robe. It wasn’t warm enough to wear outside, but in a room with a fire burning merrily and tapestries to keep out the draft, it was more than adequate. The Reeve’s face appeared more grey than brown against the dark blue satin of his robe and the lines around his mouth were more pronounced than usual.
Shamera worked hard at being solitary; she’d learned at an early age that people died, and if you let yourself care for them it only hurt worse. She’d become adept at hiding herself behind the roles that she played, whether she was mistress or streetwise thief. There were only two people Sham considered friends, and one of them had been killed by a demon. In less than a week, the Reeve of Southwood had joined that select group, and Sham was very much afraid he had become something more.
“If everything’s taken care of here, I think that I’ll run around and do a little snooping while people are still gossiping at court,” she said, suddenly anxious to leave the room.
The Reeve settled into his chair and nodded, as if conversation were beyond him. Sham worked the lever that opened the “secret” panel and stepped through. She started to close the aperture behind her when she noticed Dickon packing the healer’s belongings.
“Dickon,” she said. “Be careful how long you hold those wooden clubs—and make doubly sure that the healer gets them back.”
Dickon eyed the clubs, flexing his right hand slightly, as if he were envisioning returning the clubs in a less than gentle fashion. “You may be certain I will.”
Though the passage was kept dimly lit by candles during the day, most of them had burned out. Sham called a magelight to follow her as she was highly unlikely to meet anyone here. The steady blue-white light glistened cheerfully off the polished floor as she walked. There was a brief passage that ran back along the Reeve’s room and ended in a stone wall. She didn’t bother to travel that way but took a step to where the main passage branched to the right. Straight ahead was a narrow tunnel that ran the length of her rooms; she decided to go there first.
Since the only people living in this area were she, Dickon, and the Reeve, she’d only been this way once, though she’d learned the passages elsewhere in the Castle thoroughly.
Next to the hinged panel that opened into her bedroom was a set of brackets that held a board against the wall. In all the passages Sham had found such brackets marking spy holes into most of the rooms of the Castle. The boards were originally placed in front of the hole so light from the tunnel wouldn’t alert the person being spied upon. As the passageways were no longer secret, most of the peep holes in personal rooms had been permanently sealed.
Experimentally, Sham shifted the board, and it slid easily into her hand. Frowning, because she should have thought of it before, she set the wood back into the brackets and used a fastening rune to hold the board against the hole. If she stayed longer than a few weeks she would have to remember to renew the spell. Satisfied, she returned to the wider passage and continued her explorations.
The spy hole opening into the room next to the Reeve’s chambers revealed a meeting room of some sort when Sham sent her magelight through the opening to illuminate it. There were a number of uncomfortable-looking chairs surrounding a large, dark oak table. A space was left empty, the more visible for the uniformity of the spacing between the other chairs—a space just wide enough for the wheeled chair that the Reeve used. Finding nothing of interest, Sham turned away and crossed the passage to look into the room next to hers.
White sheets covered the furniture in the room, protecting the valuable embroidery on the chairs from the dust that accumulated with disuse no matter how good the housekeeping was. She could tell from the shapes of the shrouds that the muslin-covered furniture was arranged in fashion similar to the last room she’d seen.
Her nose wrinkled as a whiff of air came through the little hole and she frowned at the stench.
“By the tides ...” she swore softly, forcing herself to take a deep breath near the spy hole.
The Castle had been occupied for a long time, and all the rooms had their own smell. The Reeve’s room had the musty-salt smell of leather, horses, and metal; her room smelled faintly of roses and smoke—this room smelled like a charnel house.
Increasing the power of the magelight, she sent it up near the chandelier so she could get a better look. There was a large table surrounded by fifteen high-backed chairs, all draped in white fabric. With better lighting, Sham could tell that the chair just opposite the oaken door had been putted out of place. The dust covers made it difficult to tell, but it looked as if the chair faced the door rather than the table.
From the position of the spy hole, she couldn’t see anything else. She walked to the passage door. The levers worked smoothly and the panel slipped back onto a track and slid easily out of the way, just as the door to the Reeve’s room did. The full effect of the stench hit her when she opened the door, and she had to swallow hard before she entered.
She increased the intensity of her light again, as much for reassurance as for the increased visibility. The oddness in the placement of the chair seemed suggestive, and she remembered that the demon’s pattern should have led it to kill again several days ago —though no body had been found.
She took, a step into the room and noticed for the first time that the polished granite floor near the oaken door was stained with dried blood. Breathing shallowly. Sham rounded the chair until she stood in front of it. From there she could see more blood stains on the floor, washing up in splatters against other furnishings and disappearing under the chair’s covering. Between the door and the chair was a larger stain where there had been so much blood that it had formed a puddle. The rank smell of the rotting blood made her cough.
Oddly enough, the sheet covering the chair was virgin-ally white, as if it had been kept clean purposefully. A shroud, she thought, not to hide the body it clearly outlined, but to frighten the poor maid who found it the next time the room was cleaned.
She forced herself to step forward onto the dark-stained floor near the chair. Not wanting to disturb the body any more than she could help, she was careful as she tugged the sheet off and tossed it on top of the table.
Sham had lived in Purgatory for a long time. The sight of a body, no matter how gruesome, did not bother her ... much. It didn’t require an intimate examination of the dead man before she deduced that whatever had killed her old master had also killed this man. Thin cuts covered his skin, just as they had Maur’s.
His head had fallen forward, obscuring his features. The chances were slim that she would know who this man was; from the condition of the body, he had been killed near the time when she had moved into the Castle, but she had to look. Rather than moving the body, Sham crouched low so that she could look up into his face.
When she saw the bruised and battered death-grayed features, she swallowed hard against the terror that chilled her blood. This man had been dead at least three days, perhaps longer. Dead, Lord Ven wasn’t nearly as handsome as he had been when she last spoke with him—less than an hour ago.
The Reeve sat in his chair in front of the fire where she had left him; Dickon was nowhere to be seen. At Sham’s abrupt entrance he looked up. He appeared so tired and worn that she wondered if she shouldn’t find Talbot instead.