What Lurks Beneath (Prihine's Story)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Prihine’s father had been considered cursed by the court in Brunen.

It’d started off as a joke, one of the usual japes and jibes common among courtiers, but there was something strange about the odds of having seven daughters across three wives. Nowadays it wasn’t required to pass off one’s estate to a male heir, but Prihine’s father was a traditionalist: he’d wanted a son, a mirror-image of himself to shape, mold, and bestow upon all of the privileges and education that was due to a minor lord of a backcountry estate—for he had a low opinion of the female sex. His desire for a son was such that he was willing to divorce and move on to a new wife if his current one was unable to provide accordingly. Prihine’s mother had been his last. Well aware of the pressures his previous wives had faced—for she was one of the very women who had sought to displace them, whispering cajolements and remonstrations in Lord Naveen’s ear over thick goblets of wine—she had turned her face to the wall in shame when they lifted her screeching infant out of the childbed and showed her that she was a girl. She’d hardly acknowledged Prihine since, though she was also unable to conceive another child after. Prihine’s father, having no use for either of them, simply ignored them, and it seemed Prihine’s mother blamed her for this, too.

From that point on, it became clear that Lord Naveen’s seven daughters were good as marriage-fodder only: chattel to be traded and parlayed for a dribble more political power, for a fairly useful alliance here or there. Gallego Naveen had a surplus, and like any merchant with an oversupply, he was careless and hasty with selling his daughters off, even if it wasn’t much to their advantage. Discounted daughters, the Brunen nobles used to say. Prihine would later theorize that his haste was also motivated by anger and shame: the court jokes grew, as did his own embarrassment. He did not like looking upon his daughters. They only reminded him of his failures—and so they were to be dispensed with as speedily as possible.

The whole thing ought to have brought them all together, at least, but it was not so. The girls were divided along their mothers’ bloodlines, and few of them got along well with each other besides. Pansila, the oldest, was shrewd but cruel; Naydra was placid and biddable; Laynala was simply stupid. Their mother had been a woman of dark and florid beauty, and they had inherited a trace of this, which meant their later marriages would be the most advantageous. The next three were plain and fretful and nervy, like their mother, who had been selected for her family’s plethora of male heirs rather than for her looks. Pandsala was slow, sleepy, and sensitive to loud noises; she had a way of looking at a person out of the corner of her eye that could imply slyness or dull vapidity. Karayan was solemn, righteous, and pious, considered an expert at draining the energy out of a room with her unsmiling sermons. Cipris was the prettiest of the three, but flighty and moody and so high-strung that some people wondered if she was a little mad.

And still, out of all of them, Prihine had been the loneliest and the least-liked. It wasn’t only that she was the sole child of their father’s third wife, a conniving interloper who had been partially responsible for the downfalls of their own mothers. She was an ugly, unpleasant infant who wailed constantly with colic, and then a grasping, pink-faced child, prone to foot-stomping tantrums and jealous weeping. If there had been any inclination to dote on their youngest half-sister, it had vanished the first few times she screamed for attention at Cipris’s birthday party, or pushed down a visitor’s child for making Naydra laugh. Even the servants seemed to mislike her. And yet young Prihine found that if she didn’t scream, no one would even glance her way. The silence of her nursery was worse than whatever half-hearted scolding she received for misbehavior. And eventually they gave up on scolding her at all.

On her ninth birthday, one of her father’s pages gave Prihine an orange kitten with a pretty blue bow tied around its neck. Well, he’d thought, if none of the humans can stand her, perhaps her soul will be soothed by friendship of a different kind. And for a time, it had worked. Prihine was enchanted. She carried the kitten everywhere, clutched protectively against her chest, kissing and stroking it even when it squirmed and tried to leap down from her arms. More than once she was told to loosen her hold, or to leave the poor creature alone, else she might smother it. She responded by keeping it on a leash made of white ribbon, which the kitten bit and clawed at.

One day she awoke to find that the cat had escaped from her room. In a panic, she tore through the estate, screaming at the top of her lungs, sending pages and errand-boys running to look through the stables, the kitchen, the pond in the courtyard. Good gods, they said, what if the little creature had drowned? Who would she blame in that case? Could a nine-year-old order a servant to be flogged?

They found the kitten a half-hour later, nestled in a melting puddle in Pansila’s lap while she read in the library. When Prihine ran into the room, puffing and out of breath, the first thing she saw was her cat, purring as her oldest sister caressed it fondly, as natural a picture as if she had always owned it. When she tried to retrieve the animal, it latched onto Pansila’s skirts with all eighteen tiny claws. Pansila had lifted her eyes to Prihine’s with a slight, chill smile.

“Oh, leave it alone,” she said. “Can’t you see it’s enjoying itself for once?”

The kitten was gone by the end of the day. Prihine told the page that she didn’t want it anymore, and it was to be taken away out of her sight, given to some kitchen maid or servant boy to bring home. Another gift of that nature did not come her way again.

#

By morning, the three Shepherds and their accompanying platoons of City Guards had not reemerged from the sewers.

“Still, it doesn’t seem as if they’ve found any trouble,” Prihine observed, craning her neck to look out the window as Eleret gently combed the tangles out of her hair. She could see a lot of activity around the manholes visible from her upper-story apartment, but nothing that indicated danger; nonplussed officers and aggravated maintenance workers milled around each hatch like so many ants around an upturned nest, scratching their heads or arguing. “Or found anything at all, really. Oh, look. There’s Captain Alder.”

A burly-looking City Guard gave Trouble a hand up as the stout blond sniper levered himself out of an access pipe, looking cross and weary as he shook his head and shrugged, his broad shoulders signaling, Hael if I know, but we’ll keep looking.

Prihine shuddered just as Eleret began massaging a setting cream into her scalp. “I can’t imagine splashing around down there in the dark for hours. Cordelia had better be down there, or they’ll have been mucking around in the filth for nothing.”

“From what it sounds like, those particular pipes bring freshwater into the city, milady,” Eleret pointed out sensibly as she worked. “I don’t think they’re wading in waste, but water directed from the Eduin river.”

“Hmph. Still.”

She sat back, and the bedroom was silent for a while, each woman lost in her own thoughts as she contemplated facing a new day. Lady Rovaque’s party last night had ended in shambles, especially after the Shepherds’ abrupt departure, but that had been expected. Prihine had been perfectly willing to shred her nascent goodwill with the Courtshore nobles if it meant helping the investigation—she could, after all, simply sell her place here and move. Courtshore may have been the fashion capital of the world, but it wasn’t Haven, after all.

But what had been unexpected was Lady Rovaque asking her to a small, intimate breakfast this morning. What could they possibly have to talk about now, especially after the display last night?

“I’m sure they think you have inside knowledge of the investigation,” Eleret said mildly, twisting Prihine’s hair into a deft chignon.

Prihine snorted. “Which I do.” Of a sort. So long as I make myself useful to the Shepherds. Now that suspicion had eased slightly off of the nobles, and especially Robbhan Vallinari, she wasn’t sure how much more involved she was going to be in this whole drama. She had nothing to contribute when it came to trawling through sewers.

“Lady Rovaque and her friends must intend to press you on any updates or news you might have heard of, that’s all.”

Prihine thought of the looks on their faces last night, when they’d heard that anyone among them could be the demon and not even know it. The glance of loathing from Lady Metriss, and the tattered panic in Vallinari’s eyes… “Hmm. Maybe so.”

Eleret’s hands stilled against her hair. “Are you sure it’s all right for me to help Aida again today, my lady?”

Both of them knew that Prihine brought Eleret with her everywhere. They’d spent more time apart in these last few days than they had in the entire year since Eleret had first joined Prihine’s employ. Not even Turti had seen as much of Prihine as Eleret had on a daily basis. But Prihine, thinking a little guiltily of Eleret’s pale, devastated cousin, and especially of Cordelia, possibly trapped under the city somewhere, suffocating or drowning or dead already, merely shook her shoulders out and said crisply, “Of course. You said yourself that she’s having trouble keeping up with her household tasks. We wouldn’t want Cordelia to return and find her lady’s maid dismissed for shoddy service, would we?”

Eleret smiled in response and began tidying away her hair tools.

Prihine lifted her eyes to look at the maid’s back in the mirror. “But, Eleret?”

Her attendant turned back, curious.

“Just don’t forget whose house you belong to.”

#

She took her own coach to one of the elegant, charming little restaurants that Courtshore was so known for, a bright and airy space where nobles could sit and talk over khav at their leisure. Lady Rovaque, it seemed, had tired of entertaining guests at her home. When she was shown in, Prihine was unsurprised to find that the usual crowd was already present, Lady Cordelia’s particular friends and the people who would most want to hear what was going on with the investigation. Robbhan Vallinari was there, of course, because if he didn’t show up, all the scrutiny, suspicion, and backbiting would turn on him; and if Lady Rovaque didn’t invite him, she’d be making a public statement about him that she might not be prepared to make. That they weren’t willing to cast their stained friend to the winds yet said something about this group’s loyalties, at least, and perhaps endorsed Vallinari’s character, as well. Still, Prihine had learned not to trust appearances. No one had thought Turti was capable of anything more sinister than tax fraud, either.

The ladies Amintia and Metriss were there, too, and lords Alfern and Duner. A new man, whom Prihine surmised was Lady Rovaque’s current paramour, rose and introduced himself as Rial Dy Sandar. He was a cheery, friendly sort with chin-length, wavy dark locks and lips that curved in a slim, pretty bow, and Prihine couldn’t help but warm to him quickly. Out of everyone at the table, he was the only one dressed in bright colors, his overcoat blazing like a parrot’s red feathers, and he was the only one who didn’t have dark, tired circles under his eyes, too. But then, he hadn’t been at the party last night. He’d been keeping his pregnant sister company, he said.

Breakfast proceeded with the usual delicate greetings and murmurs, the meal a light fare that consisted of sugared fruit, the thin, buttery lattice-like crepes that they called “lace cakes” in the South, and glasses of bright and tangy larkon juice. Prihine, despite the fact that she hadn’t eaten much since before Cordelia’s disappearance, picked desultorily at her food and listened to the other nobles talking about some sort of sport tournament involving an acquaintance she didn’t know. The food sat like a lump of lead in her stomach, and she thought, suddenly irritable, What a waste of time this is. Why don’t they just come right out and ask me what it is they want?

She liked being in a position of power, of course. She liked being the one that others came to for advice, insight, knowledge. It was how Lavinet had positioned herself in life—her sisters and cousins came to her for help, and so too did friends and acquaintances who wanted her connections or strategy; in fact, it was her greatest value to the Shepherds, too—but there was another side to it that Prihine was beginning to view with more speculation than she had in her youth. None of it was real. The friendship, the admiration, the flattery… She’d wanted it, yes, and craved it still. But the sensation of feeling dispensable—of all of that going away as soon as she didn’t give them what they wanted—was chafing and acute.

Finally a little silence fell over the table, Prihine looking up as the others fidgeted or cleared their throats and took fortifying sips of their juice. Finally Lady Rovaque said softly, “Lady Prihine, we have been thinking… Did your Shepherds mean the ghastly thing they said last night, about a demon living in a person’s mind… without anyone else even knowing it? Without the person themselves knowing it? Or was that all a jest?”

They’re not my Shepherds, Prihine wanted to say, thinking suddenly of her old bodyguard—who’d reached greater heights in Haven than even she had. But she kept quiet on that point and said instead, “It’s true, of course. We… we see such things in Haven.” Had Turti even known what was living inside him, all those months? They still didn’t know how he’d been exposed to it. Had he been infected by the Faceless Lord as the victim of a contagion, or had he called it and welcomed it somehow? Had he ever been “himself” in those last weeks of living together, or had the demon simply been wearing his mask the whole time, having already strangled his consciousness like an infant in a crib? Or if he’d still been in control of his faculties, at least for some of the time, was he aware of the slow attrition of his senses, the waning cry of his soul…?

No, he’s dead now. No point in thinking about it.

“The Shepherds don’t joke about things like that,” she continued firmly.

“I suppose I always thought Endarkened were… very recognizable,” Lord Duner remarked cautiously. “The stories always depict them as unmistakable: ten-foot-tall red-skinned giants, monsters with beetle-eyes, naked sirens with horns. That kind of thing.” Lady Metriss cleared her throat softly, as if admonishing him for his candor.

“No,” Prihine said grimly. “That’s a certain type, but there are many. The most dangerous hide themselves away in mortal vessels called thralls. It… it allows them to grow in strength, until they’re ready to walk this plane on their own. Like a… a caterpillar inside a chrysalis, not yet ready to hatch, feeding on the nutrients of its shell.” She paused as they all absorbed this gruesome concept. “When it comes to Endarkened, anyone could be a suspect.”

Rovaque, Metriss, Vallinari, and Duner all exchanged uneasy looks with each other; Lady Amintia pressed her knuckles against her mouth as if she wanted to bite them. Only Dy Sandar looked puzzled. Vallinari said then: “My valet overheard… a conversation between the blond Shepherd and that diplomat from the Ivory Isles. There was some mention that there have been other disappearances. Women who were taken or killed before Cordelia.”

At this, Prihine pressed her lips together. Well, she hadn’t been briefed on how she should respond to this. Could it help the case at all, or hinder it? She suddenly thought, I don’t know how Lavinet does it. You have to think twelve—no, thirteen steps ahead—it’s enough to make my head spin!

She said, “Yes, I… heard about that, as well.”

All the looks around the table sharpened. Vallinari said, leaning forward on his elbows, “Do you know the dates when these other women disappeared? Surely that could… clear things up a little.”

“The dates? No, I…” Then she looked around at them all and saw it. Ah. They’re trying to prove their own innocence. Not to me, or even to each other. To themselves. Those wide, anxious eyes held a desperate hunger in them, a need for certainty. To know. To know that they did not hold a demon inside their souls, housing a slumbering parasite that squirmed and grew each time they slept… She suspected that none of them would be able to sleep again until she could put their consciences at rest. Oh, a woman was taken on the fifth of Loa? It could not be me, then, or any of us, for we were out of town at a fete in Conte…

Of a sudden, that world-weary disgust came surging back like bile. “Well,” she said spitefully, “it is not certain that the same person who took those other women was the same one who took Cordelia. They could have been working together, or… they could not be related at all. The circumstances are quite different, anyway. Common women kidnapped from the streets, taken through the sewers to evade detection, and a noblewoman taken from her bedroom when the sewers are closed, and by unknown means…”

Her voice trailed off rather lamely as what she was saying set in, and quite suddenly, her heart began to pick up speed. One-God’s tears, it did have to be someone who knew Cordelia, didn’t it? The other women could have been crimes of opportunity, low-risk grabs, depending on the neighborhood—but to steal into Cordelia’s fortified home and kidnap her from the midst of her guards and servants required a motive far more personal and intimate. And… that really did mean it could be any one of them. One of the very people at this table, in fact. And if Cordelia could have been taken under such circumstances, who was to say that one of them wasn’t next? And who was more vulnerable than a newcomer like Prihine, with no great household or connection to this city’s rulers to protect her…? It would be very easy for the couriers to take the message back to Haven—the lady Prihine Naveen, friendless and unguarded by a husband or family, met her demise in a faraway city, and there is nothing to be done about it now…

A chill came over her, then, gooseflesh prickling almost painfully all over her body. I’ve been foolish, she thought in a sudden dazed panic. I’ve been acting like an observer, like I can help at all, but if I draw the wrong attention…

She swallowed thickly, and silence reigned at the table for a moment more. Finally friendly Dy Sandar stirred and said gently, in a kind, affable tone: “I would hope for your sake, Lady Prihine, that Cordelia’s captor and the perpetrator of these other crimes are one in the same.”

Prihine’s back stiffened in suspicion at this. “Why so?”

Their eyes seemed to glitter like a flock of crows staring down at a shiny trinket, each one contemplating who would be the one to swoop in first. “Because,” Robbhan Vallinari said slowly, his face unsmiling and grave, “if these crimes don’t stretch back over the last months… then you are the newest variable to this equation, Lady Prihine. Cordelia only disappeared the same day you met her. And you already have a troubling history with these kinds of infections…”

The blood roared in Prihine’s ears. She clutched the napkin in her lap, her nails digging white crescents into her palms. They knew. They knew!

Lady Metriss’s mouth was twitching a little, though out of nervousness or glee, it was impossible to say. “And none of us can account for your whereabouts the night she vanished,” she finished triumphantly. “And who is more likely to be housing something that might have wished Cordelia harm? Us, her dearest friends, who lived in perfect harmony with her for over twenty years… or the stranger who forced a meeting on her the very same day she disappeared? In fact, you are the only stranger to have come into contact with Cordelia in quite some time…”

“How dare you,” Prihine began, feeling the acidic, liquid heat of anger flooding along her jaws and cheeks, making her skull tingle. “I had nothing to do with any of this!”

Lady Metriss shrugged slightly, though it definitely seemed to Prihine that her eyes were laughing now. “Neither did we,” she purred. “But as you say, when it comes to Endarkened… how can any of us truly know?”

#

Blade thought, grimly, that it ought to be standard procedure to have a Hunter assigned to every squad that ever left the compound.

They didn’t have nearly enough Hunter officers to support that, of course. But it would certainly save a lot of damned time. Arma was good for many things, but tracking a nine-month-old trail through a sewer system full of running water wasn’t one of them.

Beside him, Chase gave his cloak hood a shake, sending a spray of tiny droplets into the air. The tunnel was wide enough to allow four men pass through shoulder to shoulder, the cool dim stream of ankle-high water now slowed to a sluggish trickle as the watermen worked to divert the flow elsewhere. But they were still going cautiously: one of the foremen had warned that the construction project was intended to shore up cracks and weaknesses in the tunnels to prevent collapse. Which, given that Blade had just dispatched over fifty men into the underground system, only added to his current stresses. Chase, more subdued than usual, said quietly from behind him: “How long do we plan on keeping this up?”

The thief never seemed to grow weary, but he did sound bored—and, for once, slightly annoyed. Blade couldn’t say he blamed him. They’d been at the search for hours, chilled to the bone with wet and cold, starting first with the areas where the first women before Cordelia had disappeared. They walked along likely routes that shared interlap and intersections with each other, but so far, nothing had turned up. Trouble had already gone back up to the surface to track down and interview the names that had cropped up in the files of the other missing women, hoping to find some commonality between them that could hint to their captor; it seemed a more worthwhile use of his time.  

Blade, straightening from his examination of an empty culvert, answered in a low tone, “I’ll give it another hour before we turn things over to the City Guard. At this point, it doesn’t exactly require expert supervision.” Either Cordelia was down here alive, or… she wasn’t. At which point, plumbing these depths was not their most urgent concern.

Chase huffed a quiet, ironic laugh. “Or if it does require an expert, that expertise is beyond us. I don’t know, Spike. Nine months since the last time a woman would have been dragged down here, and all this running water—no blood, no forensics, certainly no witnesses. What else are we looking for?”

“Do you have something else you’d rather be doing?” Blade asked mildly. It wasn’t sarcastic: if there was some better avenue to carry out this investigation, it was worth considering. And he had learned to trust Chase’s instincts. When the thief cared to share them, they were almost never wrong.

Chase twisted his spine at the hips, interlacing his knuckles so that multiple joints produced alarming pops. “I think I’d want to take a crack at that priest,” he admitted finally. “Or Robbhan Vallinari, or the father. Something that night triggered Cordelia’s kidnapping. I feel it in my gut. I’d want to retrace her steps with a fine-toothed comb, see exactly what provoked this thing into attacking her when it’d lain, nice and quiet, for the nine months prior… If it could do that, waiting patiently while the sewer was closed, what was it that broke its patience?”

“Rage?” Blade guessed. “Madness? Fear? Could she have seen or witnessed something that might expose it?”

Chase snapped his fingers. “That’s what I’m wondering. She had that lady’s maid, didn’t she? Those maids follow their ladies everywhere, make note of each person they meet. Someone ought to…”

He broke off just as they heard a series of heavy splashes behind them. Blade’s hand touched his sword, but soon enough a familiar voice was bouncing off the tunnel walls: one of the City Guard captains who had accompanied them into the sewers, along with three of his officers. One of them had a wide-eyed look on his face. “Commander,” the guard captain said, his normally stern voice slightly shaky. “You’d better come. One of my lads found a body.”

They followed the officers at a fast clip, though the tunnels became narrow and difficult to navigate: the workmen had hung some cables with sputtering gas lamps to illuminate their efforts, but these were weak and unreliable, and there were labyrinthine twists and turns in the path besides. But eventually the City Guards led them to a little metal door set in the tunnel wall, more a rusted hatch than anything. At Blade’s look, the captain muttered, “It’s some sort of emergency access. Built, maybe, in case a worker gets stranded down here and the waters flood.”

To enter the hatch, they had to crawl on their hands and knees, a prospect that made every instinct in Blade’s body bridle. No space to swing a sword in that blind, cramped space, nor to defend oneself or even beat a retreat… But the City Guard captain assured them that his men had already checked the space beyond the little channel, and that it was perfectly safe on the other side.

Still. “Put two men to guard our backs,” Blade said, and he forced the City Guard captain and the remaining officer to crawl ahead of them first. They complied, though with some grumbling; Chase shot him a rueful look and climbed in after. Blade followed, his bones chilled with the icy flame of all his arma priming for an attack. The dim lantern light of the main tunnels receded behind them like the extinguishing of a candle flame.

It was only about a hundred feet of crawling, but Blade’s back ached with tension all that way. Where his shoulders brushed the top of the access tunnel, he felt the smattering of dislodged dust and mortar. Shoring up the tunnels against collapse, indeed… How many of these stones and bricks had moldered and crumbled in the moisture of the sewer over all these years?

But then they were on the other side of the passageway, and Chase was turning to check on Blade as he unfolded himself and rose to his feet. There was a little room on this side, no more than a dozen feet by a dozen feet; already the air was hot and close from the mingled breaths of Blade, Chase, the City Guard captain, and his other man. The chamber was completely dark, save for a handheld lantern someone had left on the floor in the corner. In its weak light, Blade saw a crumpled, limp form with long red hair.

The coiled tension in Blade’s chest did not relax. Dead, then. He approached carefully, his steps soundless across the cold stone floor, and he knelt to examine the body. Behind him, Chase took in a hiss of a breath.

The dead woman’s features were shrunken and warped now, but she could not have been Cordelia Trask. She’d died months ago, though Blade noted there was no immediate signs of the cause of death. Even more curiously, the limbs were shriveled and withered, not bloated and stinking with the damp. There was a dry, contracted quality to her skin, almost like a grape that had been pressed and drained of all its moisture. And there was no smell, no stench of rot and death that should have accompanied a corpse like this…

“Blade,” Chase hissed then. “Look at her neck.”

Blade looked. At the nape of the woman’s neck, above a shabby pink dress that could have belonged to any shopkeeper’s daughter, there was a pair of tiny, needle-like puncture wounds.

There was exactly one beat of silence. The City Guard officer breathed, “It… it drained her. A blood-sucker, then?”

Blade and Chase exchanged looks. They’d never come across this particular Tainted creature before, but the signs were clear enough. Not a true Endarkened. A Fext.

Not a madman, or a possessed thrall. A hunter in full possession of its senses—and all those senses are bent on chasing down its prey.

There was a scuffling sound behind them then, the sounds of the captain’s guards talking. Had reinforcements arrived? But no, Blade’s heightened senses caught the notes of alarm in their voices—he turned and instinctively drew his sword. Chase had already sprinted to the passageway and dropped to his knees. But it was already too late. There was the sound of shouts, a strange kind of rumbling reverberating from down the little tunnel, a choked cry as the rumble loudened to a roar…

The small square of light on the other side of the tunnel disappeared.

#

Prihine was in a rotten mood by the time she made it back to her home after that disastrous breakfast. It had taken all her willpower not to fling her drink into all their faces, to prevent herself from dragging Lady Metriss across the table by her hair and pummelling her silly—but in the end, she had only excused herself from the conversation and stormed out of the restaurant. Which, in hindsight, would have social consequences no less disastrous than if she had flung her drink in their faces.

She spent the rest of the day stewing. There were still the renovations she had come to Courtshore to make, but suddenly none of it seemed at all worthwhile. Why should she spend more money, buying furniture and replacing the drapes, if her reputation in this city was now in pieces? What need would she have to stay? And anyway, Eleret wasn’t there to help her, though there were some other servants around. But these had been her husband’s creatures, a butler and housekeeper and a cook who lived here in Courtshore, and she did not know them. And the Shepherds were still nowhere to be seen, so she found herself at a loose end for the majority of the afternoon.

 It was a familiar feeling. At her father’s house, when her sisters had planned outings or played with each other in the lesser parlor or the lawn, she had often found herself trammeled away as punishment for some misbehavior, or simply due to plain neglect. The silence of the apartment was very much like the oppressive emptiness of her nursery. By the time the afternoon shadows had lengthened to inky streaks, Prihine was boiling with an energy that made her want to scream.

How dare they turn this whole thing against her, she thought, pacing a warren through her thick living room rug, when all she had been doing all along was try to help! Those stupid fops wouldn’t know a thing if she hadn’t taken it upon herself to bring in the Shepherds, and—and—that they would insinuate she had anything to do with Turti’s demon was obscene! But she should have known that they were planning something like this, the snakes. It had been an ambush, plain and simple, no friendly overture of budding friendship, after all. Of course Lady Rovaque wouldn’t allow the Shepherds’ sudden intrusion on her party pass without some kind of reproof. And of course, when threatened for the first time in their lives, these people would choose to close ranks and cast their blame on her, the lone outsider. They were making it clear that if she kept helping the Shepherds turn unwanted scrutiny onto them, poking and prodding into their affairs and making dark insinuations, they would respond by doing the exact same thing back to her—and they had the greater connections by far! By the One-God, what if they went to the prince with this, if only to be rid of the nuisance of her and the Shepherds once and for all? She gnawed on her thumb. How foolish she had been! She’d been worried that her clear outsider status and isolation made her vulnerable to the demon, but in actuality it made her a prime target for the cutthroat nobles…

Unbidden, angry tears had sprung to her eyes, rimming her eyelids like hot glue. Prihine scrubbed at them with rage, and then thought, And where is my so-called lady’s maid, anyway? Doesn’t she remember that I need her, too? She’d just been through Hael, and she was rich and powerful, as she had never been, and yet why was she still alone?

With a lack of anything better to do, she threw on her cloak and ordered her coach to take her to Cordelia’s house. She might as well pick her maid up, anyway: it seemed safer, now that the sun was beginning to lower yawningly towards the orange sea. But when she swept into the Trasks’ foyer for the second time in two days, the answering footman only gave her a puzzled look. And Aida, when Prihine walked into the kitchen, turned around and backed up against the counter, looking downright shocked.

“My lady!” She gave a hasty curtsy. “Eleret has told me about how much you have helped—”

Prihine wasn’t in the mood to hear it. She didn’t even think she’d helped anyone, except Lady Metriss in the campaign to humiliate her. “Where is my maid?” she growled.

Eleret’s cousin turned white. “What?” she asked, her hand going up to her throat.

“My maid,” Prihine repeated more loudly. She was getting the dangerous urge to stamp her foot. One-God help her, she lent out her servant for once in the spirit of charity, and now the ingrates meant to keep her? Hadn’t she already done enough? “It’s getting late, and I would like her to attend on me for the evening. Is that too much to ask?”

It was unkind, but she couldn’t help it. Aida turned even paler, and Prihine thought nastily, Did your mistress never turn a sharp word against you? Well, too bad, for I fear she’s dead now…

Aida looked as if she was about to faint. “But… but Eleret isn’t here,” she stammered. “I thought she went home hours ago!”