Chapter 157: The North Wing

I stood beside Dream Haven for perhaps five seconds. Then I went to wake James, which was how I knew the situation had become serious.

His room was two doors down. I knocked once, and nothing happened. I knocked again, and nothing happened again, and I considered going back to bed.

[Alash.]

’I was only considering it.’

[Do not.]

’Controlling.’

I knocked harder. James opened the door in trousers and no shirt, wearing the expression of someone working out whether murder technically broke Academy rules.

"What?"

"I heard something."

He stared at me. "Congratulations."

"Beastkin."

The sleep went out of his face. "What?"

"A call. From somewhere below us. North, I think, toward the closed wing."

James looked past me at the empty corridor. "You’re sure?"

"Yes."

That was enough. He stepped back into his room. "Give me thirty seconds."

I went back to mine long enough to pull on my boots and shrink Dream Haven small enough to carry under one arm without it becoming a tactical obstacle.

[You are taking Dream Haven.]

’Obviously.’

[You intend to enter a guarded section of an unfamiliar estate.]

’Exactly.’

[And the pillow is essential.]

I looked down at it. ’I’m not leaving it here.’

There was a pause.

[Of course not.]

***

Elizabeth was awake before James reached her door. I suspected princesses developed the skill early. Sophie took longer, and Daphne took the least time of anyone. When we gathered in Elizabeth’s room again, James went to the fireplace, Sophie took the couch, and Daphne went back to the window. I sat on the rug again. Some things remained stable.

"Tell us exactly," said Elizabeth.

So I did: the sound, the direction, Mia’s refuge, and the fact that I had heard it more than once. James stood by the fireplace with his arms folded. Sophie had stopped looking sleepy at around the word beastkin. Daphne watched from the window.

When I finished, Elizabeth asked, "Could you have mistaken it?"

"No."

"Could it have been an animal?"

"No."

"A servant?"

"No."

She watched me a moment longer, and then nodded.

James pointed toward the north side of the house. "So we go now."

Elizabeth didn’t disagree right away, and that worried me more than if she had.

Sophie looked between them. "We said tomorrow."

"That was before this," said James.

Elizabeth was still looking at me. "What does the call mean?"

"I don’t know."

James frowned. "You recognize it, but you don’t know what it means?"

"I recognize what it is."

"Which is?"

"A way of making noise without using words."

"Helpful."

"I try."

"The direction matters more," said Daphne, from the window. Everyone looked at her, and she pointed down. "The blood was below the corridor." Then she pointed north. "The call came from below, north of his room. Same direction."

Elizabeth’s face tightened. It still wasn’t proof, but it was getting much harder to explain away. She crossed to the window and looked out. Two Academy guards were walking the western courtyard, and a third stood by the arch to the carriage yard. Renn really had doubled the watch, which was good of him and inconvenient for us.

James came to stand beside her. "That pair passes every few minutes."

"You’ve been watching?"

"I was awake."

She looked at him. "You told me you needed sleep."

"I did."

"And?"

"I failed."

I understood completely.

Elizabeth looked back out. "Those are our people. If they see us wandering around after midnight, they send us back."

"Probably," said James.

"And then they tell Renn."

"Definitely."

Sophie leaned forward on the couch. "Merrow’s guards are worse."

"Obviously," said James.

"I meant there are more of them."

"Also obvious."

"You’re unpleasant when you’re tired."

"So are you."

"No, I’m charming."

"Focus," said Daphne, without turning from the window, and they did, at once. I was beginning to understand why Greywall listened to her.

Elizabeth folded her arms. "We are not getting all five of us into that wing."

James opened his mouth.

"No," she said, and he closed it. "Alash and Daphne."

I looked up. "Why me?"

Four people stared at me.

"Right," I said.

"Daphne can tell us where the blood came from," Elizabeth went on. "You can recognize injuries, medicine, collars, suppressors, anything medical."

"Assuming there’s anything there."

"Yes."

James looked unhappy. "I should go."

"No."

"I can get them out if something goes wrong."

"And if you use Spatial inside Merrow’s estate and someone senses it, we’ve explained our intentions to him for free."

James’s jaw tightened. She was right, and he knew it.

"What do we do?" asked Sophie.

Elizabeth looked at the door. "We make sure nobody notices that two people are missing."

That turned out to be easier to say than to do.

***

The plan was not elegant, which reassured me. Elegant plans tend to need people to behave exactly as expected. Ours only needed the guards to keep walking.

Renn’s doubled watch was concentrated around the guest wing, the western courtyard, and the estate’s exits. His people were there to protect us from whatever was supposedly outside, not to guard the inside of Merrow’s house from us. That helped a little.

James had memorized the rotation. One Academy pair crossed beneath Elizabeth’s window to the outer courtyard and came back along the covered passage. Another guard stayed by the western stair. A fourth moved between the guest entrance and the carriage yard. Nobody had been posted in the upstairs corridor, probably because Renn hadn’t expected his five charges to decide that midnight trespassing was a reasonable answer to being told not to create work for him. That was understandable.

Elizabeth left her door partly open, and Sophie stayed with her. If one of Renn’s guards came upstairs, he would find two people awake, visible, and doing nothing illegal. James took the alcove at the end of the central hall, where he could see both the guest stair and the doors to the north wing. If anyone found him there, he was a guest who couldn’t sleep and had gone looking for the kitchens. Nobody would hear him from inside the wing, so his signal only mattered on the way back, once we reached the doors. One cough meant someone was in the hall and we should stay where we were. Two meant the hall was clear.

He objected to the cough, quietly.

"That’s the signal?"

"It sounds natural," said Elizabeth.

"I can do better than a cough."

"That’s why you’re coughing."

He looked personally injured.

"And three coughs?" I asked.

"I haven’t decided."

"Useful."

"Go."

We went.

***

The corridor was empty. Daphne went first and I followed, with Dream Haven under my arm. Yes, I was creeping through a nobleman’s house after midnight carrying a pillow. No, I didn’t consider that the strangest part of the evening.

We stopped at the western stair. There were voices below: one of Renn’s guards talking quietly with another by the courtyard door. Daphne looked at me, and I looked at her, and we waited, which is a thing I am naturally gifted at. Footsteps moved off. A door opened and closed. Daphne started down.

On the lower landing we crossed behind the tall partition that separated the guest stair from the central hall. One of Renn’s men stood at the far end with his back half turned, looking out at the courtyard. Then he turned. Daphne caught my sleeve and pulled me into the shadow beside a cabinet so quickly I nearly objected, before deciding that survival mattered more. The guard looked along the hall, paused, and went on toward the outer door. He hadn’t failed to see us; there had simply been nothing to see when he looked. That was Daphne’s timing, not mine.

The hall narrowed as we went north. The polished stone of the guest house gave way to the older walls Merrow had shown us the day before: no portraits, fewer lamps, less carpet. The double doors to the north wing stood ahead of us, closed and unguarded. James had read the outside posts correctly. Merrow’s guards watched the wing from outside, its side doors and the service courtyard. Nobody had expected anyone to come at it from inside the house.

I reached for the handle, and Daphne caught my wrist and pointed at the floor. A thin line of light showed under the door. Someone was awake on the other side.

We waited. There was a faint scrape, and then footsteps, coming closer. Daphne and I stepped back behind the wall as the door swung inward, and a servant came out carrying an empty covered tray, the same shape as the one from the night before. He didn’t look our way. He turned south, and when his footsteps had faded, Daphne put two fingers against the door before it could settle shut, and we slipped through.

***

The north wing smelled different. Dust first, then old wood and cold stone, and underneath all of it, stronger now, the salve.

I stopped. Daphne noticed.

"The same?"

"Yes."

Ahead, the main stair to the upper floor had been closed off with a velvet rope, which probably existed because nobles believed a rope could do a lock’s job. To the left, a narrower passage sloped downward toward the storerooms Merrow had said were still in use. Daphne looked at it.

"Blood."

I nodded, and we went down.

The air grew colder. There was no carpet here, and our boots sounded too loud on the stone, so we slowed. At the bottom was a low-ceilinged corridor with storeroom doors on both sides. Most of them were ordinary. Through the gaps in the old wood I could smell crates and wine and lamp oil and wool blankets.

Then we came to a door with an iron bar across it. The bar was hinged at one end and rested in a bracket at the other, and it was the only new thing in the corridor. Storerooms were locked to keep thieves out. This had been put there to keep something in.

Daphne stopped. "Here," she said. "Spilled."

I heard breathing on the other side of the door. More than one person. Somebody coughed, and then the silence came back.

I looked at the bar. "I don’t suppose Gravity opens doors."

"It opens bars."

She laid two fingers against the iron. I felt a faint pressure in the air, and then she lifted the bar with one finger as easily as if it were made of wood. It rose without a sound, and I caught it before it could swing too far.

She glanced at my hand. "Useful."

"I have moments."

We slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind us. It had shrunk in its frame over the years, and a gap the width of a finger ran down the edge where the bar sat. Daphne put her eye to it, found the iron, and let the bar settle slowly back into its bracket, as gently as a leaf landing. From the corridor, the door would look exactly as it had.

I looked at her. "We’re locked in."

"Yes," said Daphne. "So is anyone who checks."

***

There were people in the room. Beastkin. Cat.

The first thing I saw was a pair of golden eyes in the dark, and then more of them. Adults sat along the walls, and two small children were huddled in the back corner, one of them asleep against an older woman’s side. Nobody moved toward us, and that was the worst part. A frightened person who is still healthy moves: back, forward, somewhere. These people only watched, as if they had learned that movement made things happen.

I forgot about being tired.

The last time I had been in a room full of cat beastkin, they had been the ones keeping me alive.

The room was bigger than it looked from outside. Old storage racks had been pushed against one wall. Blankets covered part of the floor. One bucket in the corner served as a latrine, and another held water, not nearly enough of it. The older woman with the children had grey threaded through her dark hair, and her ears angled back when she saw us. Her eyes went to Daphne first, then to me, then to Dream Haven, which was fair.

Then I saw the collars. They were black metal, thick, with a small stone set into the front of each one. Mana suppressors. I knew what suppression did. Mia’s refuge had used an artifact strong enough to shut down Mana Aegis. These were smaller, personal, and sitting against already damaged skin. The man nearest to us had raw, broken skin all around the metal, where someone had tried to pull it off.

"Don’t," the older woman whispered, so low I barely heard it. I wasn’t sure which of us she meant.

I lifted both hands. "We’re not guards."

She looked at my uniform. "Human."

"Yes."

Daphne glanced at me. I wasn’t sure what else the woman expected me to say.

Her eyes went to the door. "Leave."

That wasn’t what I had expected. Sophie would have asked why, and James certainly would have. I didn’t.

"Are there more of you?"

She didn’t answer. I looked around the room properly. Bruises. Old cuts. A bandage wrapped badly around one man’s forearm. A girl about our age holding her ribs. One of the children with dried blood under her nose. Nothing that would kill anyone tonight. That was good, and it was not remotely good.

Daphne crouched beside a wooden crate by the wall. Its lid had been taken off and laid face down. She lifted one edge of it, and I saw the mark burned into the underside: three curved cuts around a narrow central line. It was simple and stylized, and it was the same shape I had seen scratched into a wall in Marrowfield.

A tiger.

Daphne looked at me, and I nodded once. It still didn’t prove what the mark meant, but it was running out of room to be a coincidence. The older woman saw us looking, and her expression changed, very slightly.

"Tiger?" I asked.

Silence. Then: "Leave."

It wasn’t fear for herself. I looked at the children, and understood before she said it. If we were caught in here, guards would come, and if guards came, they would punish the prisoners. We weren’t the ones carrying the risk. They were. I hated that.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and two men’s voices, close.

Daphne was on her feet at once. There was nowhere useful to go. The storage racks offered almost nothing, and the room offered less. Daphne pointed at a recess behind a stack of grain sacks, and we moved. I shrank Dream Haven as small as it would go and pushed it inside my coat. There are moments when dignity becomes optional. We squeezed in behind the sacks.

Outside, the iron bar scraped up out of its bracket. The door opened, and light swept across the room. One of the children made a small sound. A guard came in. The other stayed in the doorway.

"Quiet," said the first.

Nobody answered him.

"Tonight," said the one in the doorway.

The first guard looked back. "All of them?"

"The ones going to the western road."

I stopped breathing.

The first guard looked around the room. "And the small ones?"

"They stay."

The older woman’s arm tightened around the sleeping child.

"Collars?" said the first guard, more quietly.

"Off before transport."

"Lord Merrow’s order?"

A pause. "Do you need it twice?"

"No."

"Then stop asking."

The first guard grunted. He crossed to the water bucket, checked it, then looked at the man with the torn skin around his collar.

"You pull at that again, the girl loses her dinner."

The man stared at the floor. The guard smiled, not widely, which somehow made it worse. Behind the grain sacks, I found that my hands had closed into fists, and I opened them again slowly. A healer’s hands are supposed to stay steady. Then he went out, and the door closed, and the bar dropped back into its bracket with a clank.

We waited. Ten seconds, twenty, longer. Daphne didn’t move at all, and neither did I. Eventually she touched my arm, and we came out from behind the sacks.

Nobody in the room spoke. Neither did I. There are moments when I usually have something to say, and this wasn’t one of them.

The older woman looked at us, and now there was anger in her face. I was glad of it. Anger was better than nothing.

"You heard."

"Yes."

"Then leave."

Daphne looked at the door. "It’s barred."

The older woman looked at the man with the torn collar. After a moment, he reached under his blanket and brought out a thin strip of iron, a bucket handle beaten flat, and worked its end into the gap between the door and the frame. He had clearly done it before.

"It reaches," the woman said. "It doesn’t lift. The bar is too heavy, and when it falls, the whole corridor hears."

"Why haven’t you used it?" I asked.

She looked at me, and then down at the collars, and then at the two children in the corner.

"And go where?"

I had no answer for that.

Daphne crouched beside the gap at the edge of the door, where she could see the iron. "It won’t be heavy."

The man looked at her, then at the woman. The woman nodded once. He pushed up on the strip, and on the other side of the door the bar rose without a sound.

Before I opened the door, I looked back at the older woman. "We’ll come back."

Her face hardened. "Humans say many things."

She was right. Humans had said a great many things to her, and some of them had ended with a collar around her throat.

I didn’t answer. A promise made quietly in a locked room was still a promise, but she didn’t know me, and she had no reason to believe one. So I didn’t ask her to.

Lyssairia’s token was in my storage ring. I thought about it, and left it there. A Cat clan token would have earned me this woman’s attention, but in a human’s hand, in a barred cell, hours before some of these people were taken to the western road, it would only have been a bigger promise with nothing behind it yet. I would show it to her when I could stand behind it.

We went out. In the corridor, Daphne lowered the bar back into its bracket so softly it didn’t make a sound.

***

Getting back was harder. We climbed the service passage, and halfway up, voices came from above: Merrow’s guards. Two shadows crossed beneath the lamp at the top, and we backed down three steps. One guard said something about the rotation, and the other complained about the cold. I considered both of them unreasonable. Eventually they moved off.

We reached the north wing’s double doors. The servant with the tray hadn’t come back. I opened one door a fraction, and the central hall looked empty.

Then someone coughed, once. James, very faint.

We stayed where we were. Academy boots crossed the far end of the hall, one of Renn’s guards, and went down the western stair. Silence. Then James coughed twice.

Daphne looked at me. "Twice."

"Clear," I said.

We slipped out into the hall, and James came out of his alcove to meet us. His eyes went to my face, and whatever he had been about to say went with them.

"How bad?"

"Elizabeth’s room."

That was enough.