The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [129]
Before he could answer, they heard the screams.
Something wasn’t right. Savedra had no mystical sensitivity of which she was aware, but she had learned to trust her instincts after years in the palace, and beneath the weight of sweat and hair and gauze her neck was prickling. Everyone on the dais was where they should be, guests laughing and chattering while the musicians rested. She could find nothing amiss as she scanned the room. Neither could she find Isyllt.
The musicians began again, a stately slow vals this time. A heartbeat later a murmur swept the room. Savedra didn’t understand the cause until movement on the dais caught her eye: Mathiros had risen, and descended the stairs. She thought he meant to leave the room, which would be rude but not unprecedented. Instead he walked toward the dance floor, the crowd parting around him. He moved slowly, stiffly, like a man steeling himself to something, and his face was pale beneath his mask.
The courtiers fell away, their obeisance and shocked looks unheeded, till only a woman in white stood before Mathiros. Savedra’s stomach twisted and chilled—she recognized Phaedra from Isyllt’s warning, and from her own glimpse of that white dress being fitted in Varis’s library. She caught Nikos’s shocked expression before he schooled his face.
She didn’t need to hear the whispers hidden by hands and fans to know what they said; the king had not danced with anyone in three years. But he offered his hand to this ghost now, and she took it, and together they claimed the floor. They moved in silence, never breaking the form of the dance. From the set of Mathiros’s mouth, he might have taken a mortal wound, and remained standing by will alone.
The dance ended and the music died, the musicians waiting for a cue, a clue as to the king’s will. The woman curtsied and stepped back, somehow vanishing into a crowd that gave her as much space as possible. She might have melted into the stones for all Savedra could tell. Mathiros stared after her, one hand clenching at his side. The courtiers waited, breathless, not knowing what they had witnessed.
Not knowing the woman in white was a witch and a murderer.
Finally Mathiros shook himself and turned away. When he sank back into his chair, the musicians stumbled into the beginning of a pavane.
A moment later Mathiros stood again. The crowd had no time to bow before he strode from the dais and out the private royal exit. Glowering, Kurgoth followed at his heels. Murmurs rippled across the room, then died as Nikos gestured for the musicians to continue.
After several moments Nikos leaned toward Ashlin, gesturing Savedra onto the dais as well. “I don’t like this,” he said. “I’m going to see what’s wrong. Charm the guests while I’m gone, won’t you?”
He rose gracefully, bowing over Ashlin’s hand and pressing a kiss on her knuckles. He also plucked her a feather from his tail, earning a laugh. He gave the crowd a jaunty wave as he rose; everything is fine, it said, carry on. Savedra wondered if anyone believed it.
“Charm them, he says,” Ashlin muttered. As the music died she rose, smiling as though someone had a knife to her back. “Play something livelier, won’t you?” she called, her voice carrying across the hall. “I’ve been sitting far too long.”
Immediately a dozen courtiers knelt before the dais, imploring her for a dance. Savedra recognized an Aravind, a Hadrian, and a member of the Iskari ambassador’s staff—the rest were strangers, or too well masked.
A man dressed as a circus acrobat twisted out of the crowd, vaulting over the kneeling Hadrian to land before the princess. He bowed toward the startled laughter and whistles from the crowd, then bent his knee to Ashlin. Laughing, she stepped down to take his hand.
Too late, Savedra saw the flash of steel. She shouted, lunging forward; gauze and velvet tangled her and it felt like trying to run in a nightmare.
Ashlin flung herself back as the assassin struck. Someone in the crowd screamed, then