“Old runes?” He thought a moment. “I might have one that would help.”
Kneeling, he drew a thin volume from the bottom shelf and brought it to her. “This is something I picked up in the market a number of years ago. It’s quite a bit older than it looks, and it has runes in it I had never seen before.”
“Thanks,” she said taking it.
“You may leave by the front door if you wish.”
She turned to bat her eyelashes at him. “And have the Reeve’s mistress be seen leaving your manor at night? I can find my own way out, sir.”
“So Halvok isn’t calling demons?” asked kerim, pulling another pillow behind his back to prop himself up higher.
Sham, so tired that her very bones ached, struggled to think clearly. She had come directly here after leaving Lord Halvok’s chambers, without stopping to find a safe place for her newly acquired books—not that there ever was a really safe place for a Black grimoire.
“I don’t think so,” she answered finally. “If he is summoning demons, he is a better actor than I think he is, and he’s not doing it from his home.”
Kerim nodded. “Good enough for me. Why don’t you go to sleep and we’ll see what the morning brings.”
Sham gave him a mock salute and exited under the tapestry.
Alone in her room, Sham stood for a moment in the darkness. The rune book was no trouble, but she wasn’t sure what to do with the other one. Even though she had replaced the spell-warding on the book, the signature of black magic leaked from it.
Sighing, she set the book on the nearest flat surface she came to and set the second, more innocuous one on top of it. She could deal with it in the morning. She stripped out of her filthy clothing—the rain had turned the thick layer of dust to mud—and tossed her clothes in the trunk. As she shut the lid, the thought of the mildew the damp clothing invited crossed her mind, but she was too tired to deal with it.
12
The thunderous pounding on Kerim’s door was loud enough to force Sham to sit up in her bed and curse under her breath. From the weight of her eyelids, she estimated she’d been asleep less than an hour.
She thought seriously about ignoring the noise and going back to sleep, but anything worth waking up the Reeve at such an obscene hour of the night was worth investigating.
Knowing her intrusion might not be welcomed, she stretched out on the floor and raised the bottom of the tapestry until she could see into Kerim’s room.
Kerim had already thrown on his bedrobe and was using his quarterstaff for balance as he hobbled painfully across the room.
“Yes?” he called out, before he opened the door.
“My Lord, Lady Tirra sent me to tell you that Lady Sky is in danger.”
Sham heard Kerim throwing the bolt on his door and the hinges squeaked once. A chest obscured her view, so she had to rely on her ears.
“I don’t know the exact circumstances, but Lady Tirra seems to feel it may be due to the Lady’s recent miscarriage.” From his voice the messenger was painfully young.
Kerim reappeared in Sham’s sight. He grunted as he settled himself in his wheeled chair and tossed the quarterstaff on his bed. Wasting no time he left the room.
As soon as the door shut behind him, Sham leapt to her feet and opened her trunk, shuffling through the assorted mess until her hand closed on damp cloth. She preferred her wel thieving clothes to court dress. As she wrestled with recalcitrant fabric, she realized she hadn’t had to unlock her trunk. Once decently clothed, she slammed a hand on the leather and wood top and spelled it closed without bothering with the latch.
Quickly she opened the panel into the passages and slipped through. By this time, she knew the passages of the Castle better than she knew the halls where more conventional people traveled from place to place in the Castle. There were only three short sections of main thoroughfare she had to cross. Either luck or the lateness of the hour blessed her with empty halls, and there was no one to see when she cautiously scurried from one passage to the next on her way to Lady Sky’s quarters.
Like most of the occupied rooms, the spyhole to Lady Sky’s bedchamber had been sealed. It took Sham less than a wisp of magic to pull the board off the wall. Before she pulled the board completely away, Sham doused the magelight. Luckily, Lady Sky lived on the third floor where all the unmarried ladies of the court stayed, so there were several windows to let moonlight into the room.
Lady Sky might almost have been posed for an artist. The silvery light of the moon played upon her fair hair and caressed her graceful figure, which was as slender as if her pregnancy had never been. The white muslin gown that she wore made her appear younger than she was. She sat cross-legged on her bed, staring down at a dagger she held in both hands.
Sham couldn’t see her face except for the corner of her jaw, but she had a clear view of Lady Sky’s fine-boned hands turning the dagger over and over, as if she were examining the knife at a marketplace, looking for flaws.
Sham began searching for a hidden door that would let her enter the room. Purgatory had eliminated any sympathy she might have had for people who took the easy way out, but the lady had the excuse of her recent miscarriage: It was common knowledge that such women were overly emotional. Sky had become as close to a friend as she had among the women at court, and Sham didn’t want anything to happen to her. She was exploring a likely looking area when she heard Kerim’s voice. Quickly she darted back to her spyhole and set her eye against it.
“Give me the dagger, Sky.”
The bolt must not have been thrown on the door, for Kerim’s chair had stopped just inside the threshold. Lady Sky held the dagger up until the moonlight danced on the blade.
“This was my husband’s,” she said in conversational tones. “He was very careful that all his weapons were kept sharp.”
“Sky, do you know how hard it is to kill yourself with a dagger? Unless you know what you’re doing, it can take days to die of such a wound. Despite Fahill’s axioms, dagger wounds are very painful ... and messy.” Kerim matched her conversational tones exactly, as, with an easy push, he sent his chair rolling toward her bed.
A fresh breeze blew in from the window, causing the modest white muslin of Lady Sky’s nightgown to flutter softly against her skin. Wheels touching the edge of her bed, Kerim waited patiently for her reply.
“They all die,” Lady Sky said finally, in a child’s soft bewildered voice. “My babies, my parents, my husband. Ven—everyone. I think perhaps I’m cursed. There are so many people dying here—if I am dead too, maybe it will stop.”
“Sky, dying never stops.” Kerim’s voice was gentle but implacable. “The only certainty life contains is death. Would your parents, Fahill, or Ven want you to die for no reason’? Should there be one less person mourning their deaths and one more person to mourn? Fahill loved you. I fought side by side with the man, and he was a withdrawn, embittered warrior until you came to him. During the few months he had you, he was happier than he had ever been. He would not like it if you used his death as a reason to destroy something he loved so.”
In the passage, Sham backed away from the spyhole. There was no threat to Kerim here, and somewhere along the line she’d developed faith in the Leopard’s abilities—he would talk Sky out of her foolishness without her help.
Shamera needed to get away from Sky’s voice. It wasn’t death that was hard, or the dying, though the tides knew it could be bad enough: it was finding a reason to keep on living. She wished Sky luck.
From the lady’s room, Sham heard the sound of a dagger flung to the floor, followed by sobs muffled against a man’s shoulder. Sham stopped, and turned back to the spyhole.