Authors: Mark Anthony
Aryn had been quiet through much of the discussion, but now she glanced up from her thoughts, her blue eyes bright. “I have an idea. It will only take a minute, but I need … I need another hand to help.”
Durge stepped forward. “My lady.”
Aryn hesitated, then gave a nod.
When the baroness and the knight returned to the chamber minutes later, his arms were filled with vellum scrolls.
“What are these, Aryn?” Grace said.
“Let me show you.”
The baroness took one of the scrolls and set it on the sideboard. She put a saltcellar on one corner, and Travis and Grace helped her unroll it. At first Travis could not make sense of what he saw. The scroll was covered with dim lines and circles.
Grace gasped. “It’s a map of the castle!”
Even as she said this the lines and circles snapped into place, and Travis could see it. “Look, there’s the upper bailey,” he said. “And the hedge maze, and the main keep. And these over here must be plans of the keep’s different floors. I had no idea there were so many.”
Durge started to set the other scrolls down, scrambled for them as they slipped from his arms, then managed to get them on the table. “What are we to do with these, Lady Aryn?”
“Look,” she said. “We have to look.”
It took nearly an hour. Some of the maps were very old—drawn by the master builders who had constructed Calavere over the centuries—and it was clear many of them were no longer accurate. Some depicted corridors and rooms that no longer existed, or showed nothing where towers now stood. Eventually they found a scroll that seemed less faded than the others. It was Beltan who finally found what they were looking for.
“It was just luck,” the knight said. He pointed to the small square on the map.
Travis peered at it. Yes, that had to be the storeroom with the Raven symbol on the door, the first one he and Grace had found. The other room had not been far from the first, and they soon found it on the map. But what did all this tell them?
Aryn drew in a sharp breath. “Beltan, pick up that map, the last one we looked at before this.”
He glanced at her, his expression puzzled, but did as she asked.
“Now place it over this map. Please.”
Travis saw what she was getting at. The map on top depicted the floor of the keep just above the floor with the two empty rooms.
“What is it, Aryn?” Grace said.
With her trembling hand the baroness pointed to two rooms on the top map. “This is the chamber where King Persard is sleeping. This chamber is King Sorrin’s.”
“And the two rooms Lady Grace and Goodman Travis found are directly beneath these chambers,” Durge said.
Travis flipped back the top map. It was true. He shut his eyes and saw again the ventilation shaft in the storeroom and the old dumbwaiter in the empty bedchamber. His eyes flew open.
“That’s how they’re going to do it! That’s how they’re going to get to the king they plan to murder.” He pointed to the map. “See these lines? These are shafts that run between each of the empty rooms and the chambers of the rulers.”
Beltan swore. “We have to go to King Boreas. From what Grace told us, the conspirators could strike anytime.”
Durge turned away from the window. He had been gazing into the night. “I would not be so certain of that,” he said.
The others stared at him.
“Lady Grace,” he said. “Did you not say in your tale that you saw the circle of stones at twilight? And that the crescent moon was just setting?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was very … vivid.”
Durge stepped away from the window. Light streamed through the rippled glass and cast a pattern like silver water
upon the floor. Outside the moon sank toward the castle’s battlements. A quarter moon.
Grace approached the window. “But I don’t understand. I saw it so clearly. The moon was a crescent.”
“And will be so in five days,” Durge said.
They all seemed to grasp the truth at once.
“It hasn’t happened yet,” Grace said as she turned back from the window. “What I saw, the two men in the circle of stones. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“Then that gives us time,” Aryn said. “Time to learn what’s really going on before we tell the king.”
Beltan frowned at this, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I still say we should tell King Boreas.”
Grace took a step toward the knight. “You are the king’s nephew, Beltan.” Her voice was cool and logical. “We can’t tell you what to do. But right now we don’t even know what other rulers, including Boreas, are in danger from this plot. I think we should find out more before we tell anyone. Right now the fewer people who know, the more likely we are to learn something.” Her eyes flickered to Aryn. “And there are other reasons for not telling King Boreas how I learned what I did.”
Aryn nodded, her face tight.
Beltan crossed his arms over his broad chest and considered her words. Travis held his breath. Grace’s visage was so calm, so assured. How many patients at Denver Memorial had seen that same expression as she explained a dire prognosis to them?
Beltan sighed and threw down his arms. “All right. I won’t tell Boreas, or Melia and Falken. But why do I have the feeling I’m going to get in trouble for all of this?”
It was a question no one cared to answer.
“It’s set then,” Aryn said. She gave a nervous laugh, her blue eyes bright, uncertain, thrilled. “We’ve begun our own conspiracy.”
Durge blew a breath through his mustaches. “Don’t proper conspiracies have names?”
“They do.” Aryn chewed her lip. “But what can we call ourselves?”
“We have to all swear an oath on something,” Beltan said.
“An oath of loyalty and secrecy. We’ll take our name from that, whatever it is.”
Travis searched around the room. What sort of thing did one swear an oath on? “The knife,” he said before he even really thought of the answer. “It’s the knife that got us into this.”
Grace picked up the onyx-hilted knife from the sideboard, drew in a breath, and held the blade out. “I swear myself to secrecy,” she said.
Travis laid his hand atop hers. “Count me in.”
“I also swear an oath of secrecy,” Aryn said. She rested her hand on Travis’s, light as a bird.
“As do I,” Durge said, and he added his hand to the knot.
Beltan was the last. “May our circle never be broken.”
The knight placed his big hand atop the others, and in that moment the Circle of the Black Knife was forged.
The next night, Calavere’s newest conspiracy embarked on its secret work.
The Circle of the Black Knife met just as the moon—waning now—sank beneath the western battlements. The doves had long since ceased their twilight song, and only a handful of torches guttered in the bailey below. In winter, in this world, light and all the things that made it—wood, peat, oil—were precious commodities, and not to be wasted. The Eldhish day lived and died with the sun. Most hid in their beds and waited for the rebirth of dawn.
Then again, there were those who favored shadows.
“There you are, Grace,” Aryn said with a sigh of relief.
Grace stepped through the door, into the dusty chamber. The others were already there.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “I’m afraid King Boreas caught me on my way here.”
Travis pushed his spectacles up his nose. “He doesn’t suspect anything, does he?”
Grace took a step back. At first she thought Travis meant
her lessons with Kyrene and the Witches. Then she realized he had meant the meeting of the Circle.
“No,” she said, then cast a nervous glance at the door. “At least, I don’t think so.”
Boreas had cornered her for a report on what she had overheard at the council that day. Grace had done her best to give it to him in calm, unhurried tones, but once he had left her she realized she had been shaking. She could only hope he hadn’t noticed. Luckily, their meeting had been necessarily brief—if Grace and Boreas were seen together, it would spoil the ruse that they had had a falling-out. It was an unforeseen result of Grace’s plan, but a welcome one.
“Let’s hope you’re right, Grace,” Beltan said. “Boreas might not consider what we’re doing to be treason. Then again …”
Durge moved to the door and shut it.
Grace crossed her arms over her gown and wished she had brought her cape. The room was cold. It was situated in the old watchtower, which—according to Aryn—was little used these days, because of a faulty foundation and the fact that it was not as high as the newer guard towers near the gate. That was why the baroness had chosen it for their meeting place.
The Embarran turned back toward the others. “Should we set a lookout to be sure no one overhears us?”
Aryn frowned. “But that won’t do. Whoever has to stand outside will miss our conversation.”
Durge’s mustaches drooped.
“I think … I think maybe I can arrange something,” Travis said.
Grace watched with interest as Travis walked to the door and pressed his hand to the splintering wood.
“
Sirith,
” he whispered.
Grace wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw a nimbus of blue light flicker around Travis’s fingers. Then he pulled his hand away.
She met his eyes. “What was that you said, Travis?”
“It’s the rune of silence.”
“What did it do?”
He stroked his beard. It was getting full now, with flecks
of copper, gold, and—Grace noticed for the first time—silver. Only thirty-three, and already he was becoming a graybeard.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Travis said. “Speaking something’s rune is supposed to awaken its power. But I think, if I spoke it right, no one on the other side of this door will be able to hear what we’re saying.”
Grace and Aryn nodded—his words made sense to Grace, even if she knew little of runes—but the two knights scowled as one.
“If that was the rune of silence,” Beltan said, “how come I can hear what you’re saying now?”
Travis scratched his head, then shrugged. “It’s a magic thing.”
The blond knight let out a snort. “Apparently.”
“Perhaps Travis would not mind a test of his skill at runespeaking,” Durge said. “He is a student, after all.”
A quick experiment confirmed that Travis’s magic had worked as intended. Grace and Beltan stood outside the shut door but heard nothing, although those within spoke in loud voices.
Beltan rested a hand on Travis’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“Don’t be.” Travis looked down at his hands and was quiet for a time after that.
Now that they knew they would not be overheard, it was time to get to the business at hand.
“I’ve found another marked door,” Aryn said without preamble.
The others regarded the baroness. Knowing what sort of rooms were being marked with the rune of the Raven had narrowed their search considerably. The night before, Aryn had shown them on the castle plans where each of the rulers was sleeping. The five had all agreed to stroll—alone, and at separate times of the day—past rooms that were adjacent in some way to those of the various kings and queens, and to look for any signs of the Raven Cult.
Aryn pulled a vellum scroll from a leather satchel and—with Beltan’s help—spread it on a table that listed more than a little to starboard. She laid a finger on the map.
“Here. You can only reach this room off the lower bailey. It’s for storing grain. In it there’s a drain leading to a stone
pipe that runs here.” She looked up to regard the others. “Right past Queen Ivalaine’s room.” A shiver coursed up Grace’s spine.
“Excellent work, my lady,” Durge said. “I fear I was not so lucky. But that is only as I would expect.”
Aryn gave him a puzzled look. “Why?”
The knight only gazed forward with serious brown eyes.
The baroness was not the only one who had found another marked door. Grace hadn’t—she had barely had a few minutes between the council and her lesson with Kyrene to search—but both Beltan and Travis had had success. One room was in the cellar, two floors below—but sharing a ventilation shaft with—King Lysandir’s chamber. The other was the room of a minor noble just above King Kylar’s chamber. Beltan had questioned the earl whose room it was, and he was certain the noble knew nothing about the symbol.
As she listened to Beltan, suspicion crept into Grace’s chest. Why was it that no marked door had been found near Boreas’s chamber?
Stop jumping to conclusions, Grace. No one found anything near Eminda’s chamber, either. The Raven cultist isn’t done yet. That’s the only explanation
.
With a piece of charcoal, Aryn marked the last of the new rooms on the map. “I believe we’ve learned a lot for our first day as a conspiracy.”
Beltan studied the black marks. “Really? And here I was thinking that things are more confusing than ever. Now there are five rooms to worry about, not two.” He looked up. “And why are they marking so many rooms anyway? Grace said they plan to murder only one of the rulers.”
“They always mark the places they plan to attack,” Travis said in a low voice.
The others gazed at him. His eyes were clouded behind his spectacles.
Grace swallowed, then broke the silence. “The conspirator I overheard said he didn’t know yet which ruler would be the target. I think they’re waiting to see how the council goes. Then they’ll decide who to take out, in order to alter the next reckoning.”
Durge stroked his mustaches with a thumb and forefinger.
“But which decision wins a king death, my lady? To reckon for war … or against?”
Grace didn’t have an answer to that. If they knew which way the Raven Cult wanted the council to vote, then they would have a much better idea of who was the intended victim. Right now they had to assume it could be any of the rulers … any who slept near marked doors, that was.
“All right,” Beltan said. “So we’ve found three more doors. Now what do we do?”
“We watch,” Grace said, and all eyes turned toward her.
That night the Circle of the Black Knife engaged in a stakeout. Eminda’s and Boreas’s sleeping chambers were not far apart, both within the main keep. In ones and twos, the members of the Circle concealed themselves in alcoves and watched passageways that seemed likely candidates for the Raven Cult’s work.