In that moment, she realized to whom the voice in the room belonged. Silas—the collector she’d followed since Loxlen—had arrived at last. With a new body in tow.
“Prepare the basin.”
Lux glanced quickly to the pedestal at her back in a panic. She hauled again at her finger and gritted her teeth at the sharppain. She could hear footsteps coming around the left side of the coffin. If she were caught here, what would happen? There were too many possibilities to consider, and she already didn’t like things as they were now.
Lux bared her teeth—and ripped her finger away.
Her mouth gaped in a silent scream before she stuck the damaged pad of her thumb inside it. She scurried around the opposite end just as boots and a black robe appeared in her periphery. Blood pooled in her mouth; she tried not to gag. Instead, she pressed her tongue to the wound and lamented the sting.
Around the coffin sat the source of the noise.
A wooden contraption. With two wheels, two handles, and a closed lid carved with another saint and words she couldn’t spare the time to read. She crouched beside it until she could be sure the collectors’ backs were to her. Except—they weren’t all collectors. She’d guessed wrong. Only one was. The other two were dressed in Mothlock attendants’ garb.
The body atop the ice was a strange sight. The opposite hand dangled on this side too. They’d allowed him his undergarments and nothing else, and she wondered how long he’d been dead. Beyond rigor mortis and so beyond her services for certain. On the dais the attendants were busy preparing the basin in whatever way Silas required. Lux heard the plink of something against it.
She glanced again at the chamber’s entrance. Had it always been so far away?
Would she make it?
She began to edge backward.
“Sweep the room for rodents. The torches were on when we arrived. Kill any you find and keep them for your dinner. Then return the cart to Lord Artemis.”
Lux’s muscles seized.Devil take me…Silas came around the coffin. She pressed herself against the cart, but aside from rapping on it in passing, he continued out of the room without a backward glance. Lux scanned the chamber for any new ideas but found none. When the attendants stepped from the dais, she used her last seconds of freedom to do the only thing she could think of.
She cracked the lid of the cart and climbed inside.
Chapter twenty-five
Littledotheyknowthey’ve already caught the rat,she thought, swaying with the cart’s movements. Her mind, quick to conjure anything grotesque these days, brought about an image of Ghadra’s overgrown alley rats, boiling away in a wide pot.
Silas.She shuddered.There is somethingwrongwith him. With that room. With…all of it.
The cart lurched, and Lux winced as her head knocked against the side. The men pulling it were not in sync with their hauling, and her many bruises were about to be proof. She carefully lifted the lid again; she’d done it twice already.
A sliver of torchlight and black stone came into focus. They were still in the same underground passage. A welcome rush of air filled her nose before she allowed the lid to ease shut. It smelled pungent, a sharp scent she was unfamiliar with and wished she had remained so. The same, faint smell she’d noticed when entering the tunnel.
What had she gotten herself into?
Because this was certainly no good and honest business.
Think,she scolded.What do you know for certain?
Nothing, was her first instinct, but she ignored that one.
She knew there’d been poisonings of Mothlock investors but knew neither by what nor why. She knew her own brilliance had broken somehow, and a probable madness previously tied to Riselda’s family had crept in. She knew there was a man frozen in an ice grave, and he looked near enough to the murdered overlord to unnerve her. She knew there were a lot more secrets here than she realized, and that chamber in particular felt like it housed an insidious one. But if buying up Ghadra’s lifeblood was one of the manor’s mysteries, why were there so many bodies gone to rot below ground?
If only she had also discovered the vault to be sure.
Lux bit at her cheek. She knew, of course, she must return to that chamber by whatever means. There was nothing else for it. She had to know what else they played at. Because she hadn’t seen any books.
The cart slowed. Maybe this was her chance to leap out. But her hand only brushed the wood before she was biting back a gasp. A grunt had come from outside and now, she lay fully horizontal.
The attendants werecarryingher.
Gravity gripped her, and she slid down to the foot. As they began their ascent upstairs, the attendants didn’t speak to one another, not even an oath. Aside from heavy breathing, they made no noise. Lux knew she wasn’t so heavy as that body had been; she’d hoped because of it they wouldn’t think to check at the start, and they hadn’t. But surely, carrying her would have been another thing. Did they not feel the difference?
“Should we just drown ourselves in the sea, Lucena?”
