by TR Cameron
“No, Empress, thank you.” She rose and was escorted out by Gwyn. The woman seemed irritated, probably at her harsh words to her superior. When they reached the waiting room, she passed the second part of the listening device to Invel and blocked the transfer with her body, then turned to distract the seneschal. “You know, Empress Shenni should perhaps have a care about who she associates with.”
The woman gave her a thin smile. “You overstep. I believe it is safe to say that henceforth, the only Leblanc House member who is welcome in the palace is the matriarch.”
Emalia nodded. “A release gladly accepted. I will miss you, though, Gwyn.”
The seneschal’s expression didn’t change. “Be well, Emalia.”
Invel offered her his arm again and they exited together. When they were out of earshot of the guards, he asked, “Did it go okay?”
She chuckled. “Oh, I’d say Shenni doesn’t like me anymore.”
He nodded. “What a horrible loss. My condolences.”
“Indeed.” She rested her head on his shoulder for a moment while they walked, then straightened again. “So, let’s go make other friends.”
In her research, she’d found records that clarified the betrayal House Leblanc had suffered at the hands of House Terriau. In simple terms, Elisinia and Thomas had trusted Matriarch Terriau to provide warning of any actions against them and that alert had never come. One of the later notes sparked her interest, however, as Cali’s mother had written that the head of that house had sent word that she was not involved in the action and that others in her family had isolated her from the knowledge she would have willingly shared.
It was not unheard of for those lower in the hierarchy to play their own games. Sometimes, the leader of the house permitted it in order to keep their hands clean. At other times, they were truly unaware. Her goal today was to discover the truth from the matriarch of House Terriau. Along the way, she shook out the remaining listening devices and slipped them into the disguised pocket.
She arrived exactly when she said she would, and the door opened at her approach. Again, Invel was given a place to sit and relax and she was escorted into a different room by a teenage girl. Matriarch Icille Terriau sat in a wheeled chair with a blanket over her legs. Her burnt-orange dress reflected a style long past, as did the heavy jewelry she wore on her fingers and around her neck. Her white hair was pulled into a tight bun and her voice was as sharp as her mind was reputed to be. “Girl. Get us tea and cakes and be quick about it.” She waved a hand at a chair next to her, and Emalia sat.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
The other woman snorted. “I have so few visitors these days, I would have accepted simply to break the monotony.” She smiled and it seemed genuine. “But our houses have a long and troubled relationship, much to my regret. I would not refuse you or your niece.”
“That relationship is what I’m here to discuss today.”
“I thought it might be.” She turned as the girl returned with a tray, which wobbled in her hold as she hurried to set it on the low table between the chairs. Sounding suddenly cross, Icille snapped, “Well, pour, girl. Honestly, where are your manners?” The young woman did as she was told and bolted from the room. The matriarch laughed. “She’s been coddled far too much. I’ll turn her into a force to be reckoned with, mark my words.”
“Your granddaughter, I presume? In the main line?”
She nodded and lifted her cup in a trembling hand. “Yes. My daughter’s girl. Her husband is an idiot—my daughter’s, I mean. The girl’s too young to marry. Anyone other than Styrris Malniet, anyway.” She cackled gleefully.
Emalia couldn’t resist a smile. “It is certainly so. And he is part of the reason I’m here, as well. May I explain?” The other woman nodded and gestured agreement. “The Malniets have a secret we must compel them to reveal. At the same time, we also seek the pieces of the house sword that was broken during the…uh, incident.” I probably shouldn’t use the word betrayal here. “Some writings left behind suggested that you might have knowledge that could help us.”
Sadness flowed onto the woman’s face, starting in her eyes and ending with a frown. “I know what happened to the boy—the matriarch’s brother. It’s a terrible thing. And I hear your unspoken question. No, I was not involved in the action to remove their parents. I was not.” She emphasized the last word as if arguing with an unseen opponent. “It was done without my knowledge. While I watched and waited, others kept information from me.”
If she’s acting, she’s good enough to have made a career of it.
“Is there any information you can share now?”
The old woman shook her head. “My children might know. In fact, I’m sure they do. They’re always in their room, whispering and plotting. I’ve tried to listen in magically but they’re wise to that trick.”
She grinned. “Would you tell us the location of the shard if you knew?”
“I would.”
“Do you think you could inspire them to talk about it behind closed doors?”
The matriarch nodded. “Certainly. I could make them fear its discovery or some such thing but I don’t know what good that would do.”
Emalia slid her hand into the pocket of her purse, retrieved the listening device, and held it up for her to see. “I think I have a solution to three problems at once. This will provide a way for us to find out about the shard, a way for you to find out what they’re talking about behind your back, and a way to help your granddaughter learn the important arts of secrecy and manipulation.”
Matriarch Terriau’s gleeful laughter was all the confirmation she needed that trusting her had been the right choice.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Once Cali had finished a long tirade at Emalia about how dangerous it had been to plant surveillance devices in the palace and House Terriau—which the older woman seemed entirely unmoved by—they’d agreed to use the kitchen as the base station for listening to the information from the bugs. Since the arrival times were unpredictable and the knowledge they might gain was so important, one of them would always be on call and Jenkins had volunteered to alert that person if the lights on the receivers changed colors.
It was her turn for that particular responsibility and she was sound asleep when Jenkins’ voice snapped her out of her haze in the middle of the night. “Matriarch Caliste, there’s something on the boxes.”
She sat with a yawn, dislodged Fyre from where he lay between her feet, and descended to the kitchen. Barely awake, she pressed the buttons to start the coffee brewing and settled in the chair in front of the black boxes. The LEDs on the top of two of them glimmered green. She started the one connected to the bug she’d left in Styrris Malniet’s den. The recording was of him berating a servant for bringing the wrong bottle of wine. She shook her head and sighed. “Well, that’s useful.”
“We already knew he was a jerk,” Fyre replied. He had curled in his usual position beneath the table.
“We did indeed.” She yawned again, rose to fill a mug, and looked at her watch. “One in the morning. Diana’s people could have made this more convenient, you know?”
He snorted, and his frosty breath chilled her bare toes. “I’m sure your comfort is their primary consideration.”
“Shut it, you.” She grinned and shook her head to focus. “Okay, Matriarch Terriau, let’s see what you have for us.”
She activated the playback and a soft click emitted from the box—probably a door closing. Two voices, low and urgent, were clear and understandable.
“Why the hell is the old bat talking about the sword now?” a man’s tone demanded.
“The aunt from Leblanc stopped by,” a woman replied. “She must have put it in her head.”
“Idiots. Both of them. But there’s no way she could know where it is.”
“My mother is many things, but stupid is not one of them. It’s been hidden there for a long time. She might have worked it out.”
&nb
sp; He laughed. “She’s in a wheelchair. She couldn’t have gone out there.”
Cali straightened in her chair, all traces of sleepiness gone, and pressed the button to pause the playback. “Jenkins, do we have a map that shows Terriau’s property?”
“Of course, Matriarch. All the houses have maps of the city. You’ll find it in the second-floor library in the bottom drawer of the cabinet.”
She didn’t quite run to get it but it was more than a walk. When she returned to the kitchen, she spread the large white paper with its black markings over the table. It took her a few minutes to orient herself, as the noble properties were only referenced by symbol and she hadn’t yet memorized them all. Finally, she remembered thinking that Terriau should be full of knights and found the stylized helmet that represented them. Like her property, theirs contained several outbuildings, which might be what the two had referred to. She started the recording again.
“No, that’s true,” the woman said. “Still, if she’s checked the ones on the path, that would tell her it could only be in the others.”
“Only if she thought to look before,” the man countered.
Matriarch Terriau’s daughter laughed sharply. “Have you met my mother? She puts the busy in busybody and we’ve been too involved in other things to keep an eye on her.”
He sighed. “I suppose you’re right. There’s only one thing for it. We’ll have to move it.”
Cali cringed, unsure of when the conversation had been recorded and fearful of what might come next.
But it must be from today after Emalia visited. Which means it should only be a few hours old, at most. They wouldn’t have moved that fast, would they?
The woman growled annoyance. “To where?”
He responded in kind, “I have no idea. How the hell should I know? She’s your mother. Why don’t you have control of her?”
Their argument was interrupted by a knock on the door and the recorder clicked off shortly thereafter. She gave Fyre a gentle kick. “Do what you need to do to wake up, buddy. Tonight, we get to be thieves.” The excitement surged through her and she raced up the stairs to dress.
She arrived at the Terriau estate at two-thirty in the morning, clad all in black. The compass symbols on her uniform were covered by their patches, and she’d pulled a watch cap on to hide her hair. The streets were deserted, which allowed her to reach the perimeter of their land without detection. That was the easy part.
Her careful approach had taken her almost all the way to the rear boundary and close to the ring that separated the Nine from the rest of the city. A six-foot stone wall topped with wicked-looking metal spikes protected the property from trespassers. In the darkness, it looked ominous and brought memories of sneaking into the cemetery in New Orleans.
Man, that feels like a lifetime ago. She ducked into the shadows and sent to Fyre, “Okay, tell me how many buildings there are that aren’t accessible to someone in a wheelchair.”
The Draksa flew overhead, hidden behind his veil. “I see three,” he replied. “A big one at the back and two smaller ones in front of it. They have a path between them but aren’t connected to the one that joins the main house with the others.”
“That’s weird. Maybe they had a disagreement at some point and dug it up?” The buildings on her family’s estate were all easily navigable. “Which do you think I should try first?”
A wave of mirth came across the channel. “Whichever you choose, it’ll be wrong. So does it matter?”
She put a growl in her telepathic voice. “No one likes a smart ass, scale-face.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
Cali sighed. No, it doesn’t. So we’ll do the closest one first. She looked around to be sure she was alone and built a staircase of force blocks. Her skills had improved a great deal since the night she and Fyre had met, and she scaled the fence quickly and landed on the Terriau grounds. She’d checked for wards but like her property, they had only secured the buildings, not the lawns and gardens surrounding them.
The one at the back was two stories high and built of what appeared to be white marble in the pale light from the dimmed false sun overhead. Windows were positioned across the second level at regular intervals. The only opening at her height was a heavy door made of dark wooden planks and flanked by carvings of the family’s symbol with both helmets facing inward. She moved into the shadows cast by a large tree that grew beside the structure and opened her senses.
Magic radiated from the building, which indicated at least one strong ward. I wish Zeb or Nylotte were here. They’re so much better at this than I am.
“Everyone is,” Fyre replied. “You’re terrible at wards. Oh, and you’re thinking loudly again.”
She couldn’t help but chuckle at the Draksa’s unending snark. “Shut it, you. I’m trying to work. You make sure you’ll be ready to cause a distraction if I screw up.” The backup plan was for him to fly through the property and trip all the wards from as high as he could so he wouldn’t be caught. She’d use the time to finish her search as quickly as possible.
But if I get it right, that won’t be necessary. So, let’s get it right.
Refocused, she switched from passive reception to active magic to poke and prod gently at the ward to get a sense of how it had been created. After a few minutes, she realized it exceeded her ability to untangle it. However, those who had placed it had done so with magical threats in mind, which meant the wards would only detect the use of magic. Several of those on her property had been the same before Zeb fixed them.
I guess we all have our blind spots. Maybe Atlantean culture is so tied to magic they can’t imagine anything different. She chuckled. Dasante would make a killing here with his three-card monte. They’d be searching for magic while he used sleight of hand to rob them blind.
She circled to the back of the building in search of a way inside that didn’t involve the use of magic. “Fyre, can you see through the windows?”
After a short delay, she felt the air move as he flew above her. “No, they’re all tinted.”
“Damn. Okay.” She had run out of options, but the crazy idea that slid into her head inspired her to keep looking. After a couple of minutes, she realized she had no other choice.
“Hey, buddy. Do you think you can lift me?”
It took a fair amount of coordination and the process wasn’t elegant, but the Draksa was able to carry her while she maintained a death grip on his front paws. He hauled her to the roof, and she barely managed to avoid sliding off the edge when she released her hold and the ceramic tiles broke under her feet. She hung by her fingers off the back of the building, facing a window. Once she’d caught her breath, she drew a dagger out of its sheath with one hand and shattered the glass. It fell inward with a shower of small sounds. She could make out shelves and other shapes, but the room was too dim to accurately identify anything.
It took a moment to clear the remainder of the slivers from the frame, and she eased herself in slowly, hung for a moment, and finally dropped the last several feet to the floor. She rolled and came up in a crouch, ready to deal with anything that might accost her in the darkness. Nothing did, and she waited in stillness for her eyes to adjust. When she could finally see, she confirmed that the area was a large storage room, although a heavy bag attached to a mount in the corner suggested that at one time, it could have been an exercise space.
That would explain the windows, anyway.
Heavy canvas tarps covered everything, and she pulled them off one after the other. Dust rose and settled with each movement. She revealed boxes, pieces of old furniture, and even a footlocker filled with clothes that looked a century out of date.
“Have you found anything?” Fyre asked.
She yanked the second to last tarp aside and revealed a tall wardrobe. It had a lock on it, the first she’d seen in the building. “Maybe.” A chain was threaded through the handles of the doors and while she was no good at lock-picking, the screws that he
ld the metal braces in place were a point of vulnerability. Quickly, she retrieved the multi-tool she’d taken from the go-bags her parents had left from her belt, folded the screwdriver open, and went to work. Minutes later, she had removed the handle and the door fell open.
Within lay a fabric-wrapped bundle, longer than it was wide. She held her breath, removed the covering, and sighed with relief. “I’ve got it.” She folded the cloth around it and turned to the main entrance. “And I think I’d like to leave a message.”
The wards had been designed to do two things. The first was to sound an alarm in the event of magic use. They did that job perfectly and a flood of people raced out of the mansion in their pajamas after what she considered an impractical delay. The second was that they were supposed to suppress the magic used so that the offender could be caught while they tried to determine why their power wasn’t working.
They successfully absorbed her first burst of force magic, but when Fyre flew in and iced the door and she followed up with a bolt of lightning, the combination overwhelmed the defenses and cracked the wood. Her next force blast hurled it free, and she turned and lobbed a fireball into the building before she launched herself over the fence. Somehow, despite the destruction, she thought Matriarch Icille Terriau would be laughing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Usha’s emotional state was volatile, to put it mildly. At some moments, she was almost giddily happy and flushed with the success of her victory over the Zatoras. At others, she veered to the opposite side of the spectrum and was overwhelmed by sadness over the Empress’s behavior toward her. It was an uncomfortable combination, and the only way she could cope with it was by taking action.
