The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [90]
“The assassin is dead,” she said.
“And Cazio?”
Elyoner looked at the girl, who blushed and said something too low for Anne to hear. Elyoner tittered.
“He’s well, more or less, albeit perhaps in danger of losing bits to the frost.”
“When he’s clothed, I want to see him. And Sir Neil.” Anne turned to watch Elyoner’s men carrying off the corpses of the guards.
Austra emerged a few moments later, having hastily thrown on an underskirt and an ample dressing gown of Nahzgavian felt. Anne recognized it as one Fastia once had favored.
That had been Fastia, hadn’t it? Her spirit or ghost, come in a dream. If she hadn’t waked her, the Sefry would have completed his job without hindrance; she would have died in her sleep with no protest.
“Aunt Elyoner,” Anne said. “You knew that passage existed?”
“Of course, dear,” she said. “But few others do. I thought it secure.”
“I wish you had told me of it.”
“I wish I had, too, dove,” she replied.
“Uncle Robert would have known about it, yes?”
Elyoner shook her head with great certainty. “No, my dear. That is an impossibility. I would not have thought…but then, I do not know as much about the Sefry as perhaps I believed.”
“What do you mean?”
Cazio chose that moment to arrive. He hobbled into the room making a desperate show of not hobbling, but the bandage on his foot was plain proof that he had received some sort of injury.
“Anne!” he said, coming quickly to kneel by the bed. “How bad is it?” He took her good hand, and she was surprised to feel how cold it was.
“His blade went through the meat of my arm,” Anne replied in Vitellian for his benefit. “The bleeding is stanched. There was no poison, fortunately. And you?”
“Nothing of consequence.” His gaze flicked up and away, to where Austra stood behind her. “Austra?”
“I was never in danger, of course,” Austra said, sounding a bit breathless.
Cazio released Anne’s hand—a little too quickly, she thought.
“He stabbed you?” Anne asked.
“A small wound, in the foot.”
“Cazio,” Elyoner said. “They found the two of you down by the canal. How did you get there?”
“I followed him there from the hedge maze, Duchess,” the swordsman replied.
“That’s where the passage comes out?” Anne asked. “That wall in the grotto?”
“Passage?” Cazio asked. His brow furrowed.
“Yes,” Anne said. “The passage there, in the wall. Behind the tapestry.”
Cazio glanced at the tapestry. “There’s a passage hidden behind there? Is that how he got in?”
“Yes,” Anne said, beginning to be irritated. “And it’s how he got out. You followed him, Cazio.”
“I’m sorry, I did no such thing.”
“I watched you.”
Cazio blinked, and for perhaps the second or third time in the months she had known him, he actually seemed to have lost his tongue.
“Cazio,” Elyoner said gently, “how did you get outside, do you suppose? To the grotto in the hedge maze?”
Cazio placed his hands on his hips. “Well, I—” he began confidently, then stopped, frowning again. “I…”
“Have you gone mad?” Anne said. “How drunk are you?”
“He can’t remember, dove,” Elyoner said. “No man can. It’s a sort of glamour. Women can recall the passages in these walls. Women can use them. A man can be led through one, but it never impresses his memory. A few moments from now poor Cazio won’t even remember what we were talking about, nor will any man here.”
“That’s absurd,” Cazio said.
“What’s absurd, dear?” Elyoner asked.
Cazio blinked, then looked a bit frightened.
“You see?”
“But the Sefry was male. I’m pretty sure of that.”
“We will determine that for certain,” Elyoner said. “There are ways of telling, you know. But I suppose the glamour was meant for humans. Perhaps it doesn’t work on Sefry.”
“This is all very strange.”
“Then your mother never showed you the passages in Eslen castle?”
“Secret ones, you mean?”
“Yes. Austra?”
Anne turned to where Austra stood, looking mostly at the floor. “I’ve heard tell,” she said softly. “I’ve only ever been in one of them.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Anne said.
“I was asked not to,” she said.
“So Eslen castle