Page 44 of Rhapsody of Ruin
Rhydor’s mouth went to stone. The heat under my sternum looked up and bared its teeth. “They want their spectacle back,” I said.
“They want their narrative back,” Rhydor corrected quietly. “They want to decide which of us looks harmless in public and spend the afternoon proving themselves right.”
I lifted the page with the hymn and slid the copy beneath it; my hand did not shake. “Then we bring them a narrative of our own,” I said. “We bring a witness the steward cannot own and a rule the tablet must recognize, and we make them choose which thing they want to pretend not to understand. We present the hymn to the Whitewood’s keepers and ask for a gloss they will be ashamed to withhold. We call for the steward’s oath to be rewritten out loud on the floor and then call for the second witness to place his hand on the same words two minutes later. We, ” I looked at Rhydor. “, load your delay with the guilt it deserved and turn it into a blade.”
“And ever so politely,” Rhydor said, mouth bending.
“Of course,” I said. “We will be very decorous.”
He made a small, low sound that I could have called a laugh if the stone had not been listening. He reached for the book I held without taking it from me; his knuckles brushed my thumb, the new scar along his index catching a fraction of my skin. Nothing in the room changed but the way it felt to breathe. The wards underfoot hummed once, very faintly, like a throat clearing. I enjoyed nothing more dangerous than the thought of enjoying it and set the copy beside my notes.
Sir Thalen looked anywhere but at our hands. One does not spend a life in a palace without learning when to pretend to be worse at seeing than one is. “If I might suggest,” he said carefully, “we use the steward’s own neatness. Ask him to read the rule aloud. Ask him to read it again. Ask him to reconcile the disgraced oath with the inscription right here in the Princess’s own hand. He will do it to prove his perfection. And then the masks will make their mistake.”
“What mistake,” Rhydor asked.
“The only one they still allow themselves in public,” Thalen said. “They will try to look bored while trying not to look afraid.” His eyes flicked sideways just enough to read my face. “People in my profession learn to love that moment because it means the next line doesn’t belong to the mask. It belongs to the law.”
I had not expected to like Sir Thalen Morwyn. The hall liked me enough to make such a thing difficult, usually. I found the slow, careful way his mouth tucked itself out of the way of his duty a more honest pleasure than the song at Veythiel had been, and I let him see it for the breath a good servant deserves.
“We will want the Whitewood’s signatures on the hymn copy tonight,” I said. “And we will want one copy of the ledger entry stamped with Varcoran’s seal.” I looked at Rhydor. “Draven can find the seal at a party if we let him bring a bottle. Torian can find a sober Varcoran caretaker.”
“Torian will prefer to bring the bottle and Draven the caretaker,” Rhydor said. “But I will give them orders.”
“Good,” I said. “I will go charm the scriptorium and frighten the keepers, in that order.”
He lifted a brow. “You admit their fear.”
“I admit they are more comfortable with me when I am doing my mother’s smile than when I am doing my own,” I said. “Fearis simply the name they’ve learned to give for the moment when they realize I know the difference.”
The archive gave a small shudder. Not a sound. A sense. As if something in the door had remembered a name it had not been allowed to say aloud. Sir Thalen turned his head toward the threshold. “Do we need to be done,” he asked.
“We need to look as if we were done before anyone else decided to arrive,” I said. “Which is not the same thing.”
Rhydor slipped his pen into the fold of his notes and capped his inkwell with an efficiency that would have delighted any quartermaster. I wrapped my copies in plain paper and sealed them with wax pressed by the little stamp I wore for correspondence I did not want my mother’s steward to declare ceremonial. Sir Thalen moved to the door and stood with one hand just touching the silver inlay, the posture of a man listening for footsteps with his skin. The scribe who had tried to keep the door closed wilted sideways into view; he held himself like a candle near a window: upright, flickering.
“What,” Rhydor asked, not unkindly.
The scribe’s swallow convulsed his whole throat. “Forgive me,” he said. “It is nothing.”
“Nothing never makes you look like that,” I said gently. “Tell us.”
“The Sign Manual,” he said. “It is on the Steward’s wall. But there is a second hand alongside it today.” He forced himself up to full height, which was not very high, and set his chin. “I do not think the chamberlain would have dared to hang it without… permission.”
My mother’s private sign was her mask in ink. I did not like the picture that painted for me. I liked even less the picture of a second signature beside it, fresh enough to make a clerk panicat the thought that the law had just grown new teeth while he wasn’t looking.
“Whose hand,” Rhydor asked. His voice made the scribe answer, something it is never wise to underestimate.
“The Prince,” the scribe whispered. His eyes cut to the place on the door where the little key lived and then away again, as if he were afraid the symbol would accuse him of treason for having said it out loud. “Iriel.”
Steel moved under my skin. It was not courage. Courage uses breath, and mine had gone still enough that I had to name what moved as anger.
“Then we have two days,” I said, not trusting myself with longer words. I slid the wrapped notes into my sleeve and smoothed the silk over them as if I could erase the shiver from my hand. “And no hours to waste.”
Sir Thalen stepped back, hand off the silver, door open. The corridor’s wax-scent washed in. The scribe pressed himself flatter than the wall, as if he thought if he became the wall it could keep him from danger. Rhydor paused with one hand on the arch and looked down at the sigils. Shroud. Tower. Key.
When he spoke, it was too low for the doorway to count it as law. “You have the key,” he said. “Use it.”
I walked out into the grey and promised the stone I would.
