It had been inside his head.
Verengir.
“Zelen? Is everything all right?”
“Ah. Yes, sorry. Thought I heard a fly.”
Gedomir frowned. “If you do, I’ll have words with the servants.”
“No, no.” Zelen hastily waved off the complaint. “You’re right. I’ve had too much on my mind lately. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to repeat yourself.”
The way Gedomir smirked was also familiar. Zelen had seen the expression when he’d fallen off his first horse and started wailing. “I was saying that Kolovat is the obvious heir, if one measures simply by duration in the post. Starovna was bred and raised to nobility, so it would come far more easily to her.”
Zelen had never noticed either of the councillors struggling with their duties. Gods knew that Kolovat, who’d been an army officer before a few uncles had died childless, acted far more sure of himself than Zelen, “bred and raised” to his status, ever felt. He didn’t make the argument, both for the same reasons that had kept him from speeding the conversation and because he knew it would make no difference. “I’m not certain she wants it. She’s a great one for her studies, you know.”
Verengir, said the voice again. It was clouded and cracked, as though coming to him through a wind-filled tunnel.…ind. The…
He tried to appear interested in the matter of Starovna versus Kolovat, and only in that.
“It hardly matters what she prefers. She knows—” said Gedomir, and then there was a knock on the door. “Yes?”
His anger was icy. He’d come to sound entirely like their father at such times. Zelen’s back twinged with memory.
It wasn’t a hapless servant standing at the door, but Hanyi, the younger of Zelen’s two sisters. She usually had more of a friendly word for Zelen than his other siblings did, but just then didn’t even seen to see him. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’re needed.”
“Incompetence,” said Gedomir, in the same tones other men might have used to curse. “Wait here, would you? With the gods’ favor, I’ll be back before too long.”
“Of course. Can I help?”
“No,” Gedomir said, and vanished out the door.
Zelen closed it behind his brother. Later, he would say that the hallway was drafty, which wasn’t entirely a lie. He stood in front of it, listened to the footsteps as they receded down the hall, and, for lack of other ideas, opened his mind the way he did in prayer.
Bookcase, said the voice. It was clearer, but still not nearly conversational. Zelen got the impression that every word took effort.
More words weren’t really necessary, though, because he knew what the speaker meant. He’d seen the shape, the way the shadow of the bookcase had changed from what he remembered. Zelen darted over to the spot he’d seen, where a gap of a few inches ran on two sides between the case and the walls.
An object was changing the shadow, a long, thin object that someone had wrapped in dark cloth and shoved behind the bookcase. Whoever it was had done a decent job of hiding it back there—even the shadow wouldn’t have made Zelen catch on if not for the voice—and had wrapped it well.
He knew what it was all the same. The words wouldn’t come, but his stomach roiled when he saw the shape, his body recognizing what his mind couldn’t yet. Listening for returning footsteps, Zelen only had the nerve to unwrap the top of the object, but that was all he needed.
Dark blood had dried on gilt, leaving the outline of three fingers clear, though slightly distorted. Above it, the magelight shone off a huge fire opal, the same one that Zelen had seen over and over again in the hilt of Branwyn’s sword.
Chapter 28
Part of him had known. Part of him must have known, Zelen realized, because he didn’t collapse from shock, or vomit, or shout in rage. He didn’t so much as pause before wrapping the sword back up again, as tightly as Gedomir or Alize—it would have been one of the family, no point going through names—had concealed it before.
I’ll come back later, he thought at it, and stumbled to his seat. There was the shock, manifesting after the initial urgency had pushed it aside. He knew such things. He’d read the books and trained with the priests, even when his father had forbidden him to actually enter the Dark Lady’s service.
He would come back to that fact later too.
At first he toyed with the idea that his family might have been framed for the attack, thinking,They’re my blood. I owe them at least the same courtesy I gave to a Sentinel, but it wouldn’t wash. None of the household had been staying with the Rognozis. Except for Zelen, none of them had been in the city.
If, by whatever freak chance, they’d come across the sword innocently, it wouldn’t have hurt them at all to take it to the guard or one of the temples. They’d even have been praised for it, perhaps, as providing a valuable clue.
Why hadn’t they?
Because their story would raise questions, and they couldn’t swear to the truth of it in front of Tinival’s altar. Because at least one of the Verengirs had been involved in killing the Rognozis, and possibly in framing Branwyn for the murder.
