Beneath the Veil Read online

  We looked at each other. My heart pounded so fiercely I thought it might burst through my chest, but Daelyn only smiled slightly.

  "Answer it," he said.

  I had barely turned the knob when the door flew open. Disheveled and distraught, Rosten tumbled into the room. His coat tails flew around his thick waist and his hair flopped in his face. He spluttered when he spoke.

  "My lord prince!"

  Daelyn lifted a brow and slipped beneath his covers, then settled himself against his headboard. "The hour is late, Rosten."

  "The House of the Book, my lord...." Rosten appeared to be having difficulty breathing. He gasped and spluttered again. "Has been violated!"

  Daelyn gave me a glance before looking back to Rosten. "How so?"

  Rosten took a moment to compose himself. He smoothed his greasy hair and gave me a sneer. "Wine, boy."

  I poured him a cup from the flask I'd had brought for Daelyn, and Rosten gulped it down without a breath. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, which made Daelyn wrinkle his nose with distaste. Rosten didn't notice.

  "I was making one last round of the cells, my lord prince, as is my habit, when I noticed something awry."

  "So late?" Daelyn's fingers plucked idly at the coverlet, as though he were bored with Rosten's story. Only the glance he gave me showed me the level of his interest. "Is it always your habit to wander the dungeons of the House of the Book so late at night?"

  "I sleep poorly these days, my lord prince." Rosten smoothed his clothes and buttoned his coat. "I often wake after but a few chimes sleep. I find the wee hours of the morning a perfect time to make my rounds, check up on my charges...to speak to those who perhaps might earlier have resisted my questions."

  "I see."

  So did I. Like a ghoul, Rosten rose when most people slept to torture and interrogate his victims. I rubbed my sore tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep myself from muttering.

  "I went to the last cell, where the three follies were awaiting their sentence in the morning. And they were gone!"

  "Gone?" Daelyn pursed his lips. "Really."

  "The guards saw nothing! There was no sign of tampering with the keys, the locks, nothing! Surely you see what this means!"

  "Please. Enlighten me." Daelyn's soft voice seemed to send Rosten into a further fury.

  "Someone took them away! You can no longer deny there is an insurrection at hand, my lord prince, right here in Alyria! Someone came in and took those follies out, practically from under my very nose!"

  "I think perhaps you should have a word with your guards," Daelyn said, again in a voice so soft I had to strain to catch his words. He fixed Rosten with an unwavering gaze. "You are the Book Master, are you not? And your duties include not only making laws but also enforcing them, as you so oft remind me, is that not so? And your role also includes forming and overseeing an army, does it not, my lord?"

  "It does, but –"

  "Then I suggest," Daelyn said, in a voice gone lethal, "You find it within yourself to deal with this situation. You wanted the responsibility. Now take it."

  Rosten straightened his back. Once I'd seen two lizards that wanted to warm themselves in the same patch of sun. Both had hissed and shown their fangs, though neither would make the first move against the other. Rosten and Daelyn reminded me of those lizards.

  Rosten gave his coat one last tug. "You are correct. Forgive my intrusion, my lord prince."

  Daelyn inclined his head, then gave a pointed glance toward the door. Rosten nodded, then turned. At the doorway, he paused to look back.

  "You gave me leave to do what I wished to stop this rebellion. This desecration. This...pornography. I intend to take it."

  "I understand that, Rosten."

  Rosten left.

  Daelyn sighed.

  "Where were you tonight?" I asked.

  Daelyn reached over and blew out the lamp on his nightstand. The room plunged into darkness. "Don't ask questions you don't want answered, Aeris."

  "But I do want answers!"

  "Good night," was all he said, and I went back to my niche with a thousand questions whirling in my brain.

  As I fell to sleep, an image formed in my mind. Three women, climbing a mountain, their follyblankets thrown back from their faces and their feet shod in sturdy hiking boots. None of the three were missing their hands.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  News of the breakout was all over the city by the next afternoon. The marketplaces and poetry houses were abuzz with speculation. Who had done it? And why?

  Daelyn said naught more of where he had gone the night before. I thought of what he had said about not asking questions I didn't wish to be answered, and though I still wanted to learn, I kept quiet. Instead, I vowed to keep my ears and eyes open, my mouth shut, and learn more of his secrets.

  I'd no doubt he was behind the escape. Whether he had done it himself or had someone else do it, I couldn't say. Rosten's investigation turned up footprints in the muddy ground, but the guards, unused to tracking women, had obliterated the trail with their own clumsy passage toward the edge of the city. Rosten had ordered the men who'd ruined the trail beaten and their rank stripped from them. I thought they were lucky he didn't do more.

  Several days passed, but no matter how many witnesses Rosten "questioned," nobody was able to give him an adequate explanation about what had happened.

  "They all look the same," was what I heard one man say to another more than once as I went through the city on errands for my prince. "Follies in their veils...who can tell them apart?"

  After a fortnight the news faded in favor of other, more fashionable topics. The Feast of Sinder was coming, a time of revelry and party-making before the Fast of Sinder, a far more sober holiday. The city and probably the provinces, too, were abuzz with preparations.

  All but Rosten, who ordered a curfew of three chimes and doubled the soldiers patrolling the streets. He posted sentries at most of the poetry houses, where they stood like solemn statues as their peers laughed and drank and sang around them.

  Despite the cooling, rainy weather, I continued to meet Lir each morning on the fight field. My body grew lean with muscle. I studied the Art and practiced my swordsmanship, and I took everything Lir could teach me as fast as I was able.

  "You could easily beat Vermonte now, if you wanted." Lir paused in our battle. "Even if he cheated."

  I flexed my fingers to keep them warm. Harvest time in Alyria didn't last very long. Winter was well on its way.

  "If I wanted to."

  Lir drank from his flask. "Don't you?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe knowing is enough."

  "Interesting theory." Lir's gaze weighed on me.

  "Lord Vermonte has little enough to do with me, my lord Akean."

  "True enough. You stay out of his way."

  "Yes." I didn't mention I saw no need to invite the Fashion Master's scorn and mockery. Vermonte was one of Daelyn's closest companions.

  "You avoid confrontation with him."

  "Of course."

  Lir tossed back the rest of his flask and hung it on the wooden sword frame. "You don't avoid me, yet I seem to make you grit your teeth at least as often as Vermonte. If not more."

  "I'm learning from you. Vermonte has nothing to teach me."

  I'd thought we were going to practice some more, but Lir only nodded, his eyes moving over me. "Get on back to Daelyn now. I'm sure he's missing you."

  He always dismissed me that way. Today, something in his tone made me pause. He stared into the distance, toward the mountains we could see over the top of the wall surrounding the fight field.

  "Do you think they made it?" he asked.

  I thought of the vision I'd had. "I hope so."

  He gave me a shrewd look. "Do you?"

  I nodded.

  "Best not let Rosten hear you say that."

  I nodded again. He broke the gaze first to look back to the mountains. I left him like that and went back to my prince.