The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

“What . . .” Garyus’s voice is weak and croaky—more the voice I know. “What did you see?”

There is no answer. The silence stretches. I’m turning back to see what the woman is doing when suddenly the Silent Sister straightens up. Her hair parts and I see that one of her eyes is pearly blind, the other darkened beyond any memory of blue skies.

“Everything.” The Silent Sister speaks it as though it is the last word she will ever utter.

“We need to do something.” Alica, seeming a child for once, states the obvious. “Get me close enough and I’ll stick a knife in her.” The illusion evaporates.

“It won’t be easy.” Garyus doesn’t raise his head. “—— saw enough before to poison her drink.”

“And?” Alica turns back to observe the feast.

“The man slumped on the table beside her? He’s dead. She swapped goblets.”

I don’t ask myself how the Silent Sister had known hours before which goblet to coat with venom, or where she’d obtained such a thing, silent and young as she is. She knew the same way the woman below knew to exchange with her neighbour. Both of them carry the same taint.

“Jesu.” Alica leans against the banister, eyes hard. The woman hasn’t moved: she picks a last sweetmeat from her plate as she talks to the man beside her—the one who’s not dead. She laughs at whatever he just said. “So if not poison, then what?”

Garyus sighs, an unutterably weary sound, and lifts his head as though it weighs a man’s weight. “The men I have around me—they’re mine. I replaced Father’s with hires of my own, expensive, but they’re mercenaries of the highest quality, and their loyalty runs as deep as my pockets. We’ll wait for her in the Sword Gallery and . . . she won’t leave.”

Alica raises an eyebrow at this piece of information. A moment later she hastens to the door and raps against it. A man in palace livery enters, pushing a wheeled chair. He’s a solid fellow, watchful, a thin white seam of scar below his right eye as if underscoring it. I’d like to say I would have spotted him as more than a flunky, but I don’t know if that’s true.

The Silent Sister helps Garyus into the chair and he waves to be wheeled out. He’s weaker now, more twisted. It’s more than exhaustion—his sister has spent his health to buy what she needed. A second hard-man waits in the chamber beyond amid the instruments too large to be taken away with the musicians, a harp, drums, long tubular bells. He helps carry the chair down the stairs. Any aristocracy who are staying at the king’s pleasure will be housed in the guest wing, and to reach that from the royal banquet hall requires you walk the length of the Sword Gallery. If the woman is planning murder she must have been invited to stay the night, or else she is cutting things fine.

I wonder for a moment that neither of Garyus’s men are armed—but of course he’s unlikely to have permission to have his own hires wearing blades in the king’s house, relative or not, especially not as a displaced heir. The mercenaries may be paid well enough to risk concealed knives, but they’d have to be damn small to pass unnoticed. It seems unlikely that my great-grandfather or his sire are so lax as to not have regular inspections—certainly Grandmother has become very keen on them in later life. Still, the pair of them could strangle this woman with a cord swift enough.

We walk through the palace, Garyus trundled ahead, rattling in his chair, taking familiar passages that have changed remarkably little in sixty years. Just before we reach the gallery Alica pauses, then the others, then me. The Silent Sister has stopped some way behind us, beside a black oak door. She’s pointing.

“What does she say?” Alica asks her brother.

“I . . .” He seems lost. “I can’t hear her any more.”

The message is clear enough without words, silent or otherwise. We go through and find ourselves in a tall but narrow chamber lined with cabinets, each fronted with thin sheets of Builder-glass, and each sporting a score or more of butterflies, speared through with pins to keep them in place. In dusty legions they haunt the room, the brilliance of their wings muted through neglect, a dozen lost summers impaled behind glass. I’ve not been in here before, or if I have the insects have been removed.

“Did we miss her?” Alica ventures, pulling a small but wicked knife from the pleated folds of her cream skirts.

The Silent Sister shakes her head.

“Gwen! Is she safe?” Garyus tries to straighten in his chair, remembering their little sister. The one who Alica will put an arrow through from the walls of Ameroth Keep six years from now.