The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [58]
They emerged filthy and exhausted from a sewer access in Birthgrave. Not the sort of place Isyllt liked to be at midnight, but she was too tired and sore to be nervous. If anyone tried to cut their throats or purses, she would be perfectly content to let Spider eat them and throw the bodies in the river.
No one tried, though, and they staggered into a better neighborhood and finally managed to waylay a carriage. The man’s eyes widened when she showed her ring, and she shoved Khelséa into the cab before he could decide to bolt. Spider ghosted inside as well, but Azarné had vanished.
The carriage deposited them at St. Alia’s, Archlight’s own hospital—the driver didn’t wait, despite Isyllt’s promise of more payment if he did. Khelséa found a physician to inspect her ruptured eardrum, but Isyllt waved away offers of assistance. The hospital was unusually full, and she wanted sleep more than anything—dying in the night of the concussion was a risk she was prepared to take.
Spider waited for her when she emerged; the building’s wards were too powerful for him to easily pass. He didn’t offer her his arm this time and she was just as glad, though she could have used it.
“He thought I killed Forsythia,” she finally said when they reached Calderon Court. She could hear again, though her ears still rang like cathedral bells and her voice sounded queer and not her own.
Spider shrugged. “I imagine lairing there hadn’t been good for his mind. Who knows what he thought, or why?” He met her eyes unblinking, but she didn’t know his tells enough to find truth or deception in his face or stance. He wasn’t telling her everything, though, and he’d silenced Forsythia’s vampire before she could learn more. “Does it matter? You have what you sought.”
It matters to Forsythia. But that would hardly sway him. Nor could she say it had been too easy, though she knew in her gut it had.
“No,” she said at last, wrapping her arms around herself. She couldn’t stop shivering. “It doesn’t.” He was a demon, with his own agenda—she couldn’t let herself forget that for a few kisses.
He reached for her, but stopped at her flinch. “You should rest. I’ll find you again when you’ve mended.”
And he was gone, with only a cool draft to mark his passage. Isyllt lingered on the steps, watching the eastern sky pale. The moon had set, and false dawn glowed above the rooftops. The Dragon’s fire, chasing the Hounds below the western horizon. The leader of the pack was already hidden by the city skyline.
By the time the second hound had nosed beyond view, the sky was tinged with blue and her shivering had become a teeth-rattling tremble. Lights flickered to life in nearby windows. At last she turned, unlocked the door with shaking hands, and began the slow climb to her rooms.
Spider was right: She had accomplished what she needed to. The queen’s jewels were found, and would be returned to her crypt, and Mathiros need never be the wiser. The vrykoloi responsible were dead, and she had the petty satisfaction of revenge for the attack on her and Ciaran, and more knowledge of vampires than she’d had before.
But there was a dead woman moldering on a slab without justice, and Isyllt still didn’t know why any of it had happened.
Sleep claimed her as soon as she pressed her face to the pillow, but it brought neither peace nor satisfaction.
PART II
Nocturne
CHAPTER 8
On the seventeenth of Hekate, seven days after the party, a carriage left Erisín through the Aquilon Gate, on the north road to Arachne. The coach bore no colors or devices, but everyone in the palace knew it carried Savedra Severos and was bound for her family estate. Four Severoi guards rode beside it—all the archa would lend her—and an octad of hastily hired mercenaries. Excessive, some said, but everyone also knew that banditry in the countryside increased with every wave of Rosian refugees driven south.
Rumors and speculation chased each other through the court: Savedra had quarreled with the prince; she had quarreled with the princess; her famous