The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [87]
She lay in a heap beside the hearth, perilously close to the unscreened fire. Books and parchment scattered around her, torn and crumpled pages drifting like snow. Kiril locked the door, hands tightening at the sight of mangled books. He held back a curse as he crouched beside her, gathering her hair and skirts away from the fireplace. Even in the shadows and red light he recognized the books: her books, her work that hadn’t been destroyed at her death. Some he’d taken during the careful sack of Carnavas and others he’d stolen from the Arcanost later. Murder he could stomach, but the loss of knowledge sickened him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, gentling his voice. Phaedra rocked and moaned in his arms, face contorted in the firelight.
A cold draft and movement in the shadows made him glance over his shoulder, already tensing to deal with some new intruder. All his dark-sharpened eyes found were an open casement and a bird perched on a chair beside it. A raven, huge and glossy. It mantled, oilslick rainbows rippling across its wings, but remained on the chair-back. A quick touch found his wards intact; her pets could pass through them as easily as she did. His nape prickled at the thought.
Phaedra’s keening died and she gulped air she didn’t need. Awkwardly, he cradled her to his chest and stood, carrying her to a chair. His back and knees screamed, but she was lighter than a living woman, dry of so many of life’s fluids. He left her curled against the cushions and bent to retrieve what he could of the books. A few scraps of paper curled and fell to ash in the hearth, but most of her violence had been to rip out pages. Many of those he thought he could salvage, or at least rewrite. He shoved the survivors into his desk and lit a lamp. The raven regarded him with one black eye, its gaze canny for even a clever bird.
“What happened?” he asked again, risking a stretch past the bird to close the window.
“Someone was snooping around the castle.” She rubbed her face though she had no tears to wipe away. “Pawing through our things.”
That made him stiffen. No need to ask which castle, or who else she meant by our. “Who?”
“I don’t know. No one the birds had seen before. They fled west, so I imagine they weren’t Sarken.”
“Fled from what?”
She sat up, trying to smooth her tangled hair. “My birds drove them off. I should have burned it, should have razed the stones to the ground.”
He drew a breath. Let it out again. “Mightn’t it be wiser not to draw attention to the castle? To you?”
“It’s difficult to draw attention to my past these days.” She gave up on her hair and tugged her gown straight instead. Wine-red velvet today, a modern style. Varis’s work, no doubt. “You wrought that very well indeed. But not, apparently, well enough. We’ve had enough invasion, enough destruction and callous looting. The bones of Carnavas belong to my family now, and they may guard their treasures as they see fit.” Her wild rage cooled, settling into an angry chill.
“Be as that may, a little discretion would be wise. You won’t find revenge as a pile of salted ashes. Varis and I have no desire for that fate either.”
“No. No, Varis doesn’t deserve that. He was always so kind to me.”
“He worshiped you in university,” Kiril said, weary enough for unhappy truths to spill. And you repay him by making him a party to treason. But that was unfair—Varis had begun this. Phaedra’s magic had kept her from true death, but Varis had found her and nursed her back to sanity and kindled in her the desire for revenge.
Phaedra blinked. “He never said anything.”
Kiril nearly laughed. You never see what’s right in front of you. Isyllt had told him that years ago, her voice heavy with exasperation and resignation. And he, to prove her point, still hadn’t realized what she was speaking of. If