Elloven accepted the knife and advice. It could come in useful, if her evasion of the guards failed, and it was never imprudent to have a backup plan.
“May the Guardians be with you, girl, for you are otherwise on your own from now forward,” Gertrude said as she led her to the narrow, spiral staircase to Sestinn’s rooms. “No one else knows you’re here?”
Elloven shook her head.
“Should you fail?—”
“I will not fail.”
“Who shall I send word to?”
“No one,” Elloven said quickly, but it was impulsive, and she’d promised herself cunning that night. “Asterin Edevane. That is, if you can get the message out this time.”
“Oh?” This caught Gertrude off guard.
“He’ll know who I am and why I was here. He was once a dear friend of my mother’s.” Elloven clapped a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Though I intend to tell him myself.”
“I speak for many of us when I say I pray you do.”
Elloven left Gertrude at the base of the steps and tucked the knife into the band of her trousers. She counted her steps in time with each beat of her heart. As she neared the end of the smothering stairway, she listened carefully for any signs of activity. Sestinn had a guard outside his chambers, but she’d be entering through his sitting room. Unless he was having a read in the middle of the night, he’d be sleeping soundly at the other end of his apartments.
When she reached the door, a flash of panic set in. What if it required a key? Gertrude hadn’t mentioned the need for one, but the woman hadn’t been expecting to abet an assassin either.
But the door opened with ease. The sitting room was richly decorated, many of its accoutrements garishly filled or lined with gold. It was exactly how she’d imagined a man like Sestinn would choose to live.
The chamber was cold. She knelt to touch the ash in the hearth. It was old, more like dust. Not from earlier that day, and maybe not from any time recently. It lent credence to the rumor he was bedridden, but even a dying dog could bite.
Elloven started on the tips of her toes, but the tapestries trapped the sound of her footsteps, so she walked normally. She moved from the sitting room to another, similar room, just as flamboyant and needless and empty as the last. A third was the same, differentiated only by a desk spanning half of the back wall. It looked about as used as the hearth.
She stopped at the next doorway. It opened into a more somber space, heavy dark curtains shut and tied tight. There were several tables full of various items, basins and tinctures and rags, evidence of convalescent care. In the corner of the mirror’s reflection, she saw the end of the bed, the thin lump of blanket in the shape of upright feet. The putrescence of disease was powerful. She longed to open a window and let the air in, but the reek of his fading life galvanized her. It reinforced the injustice that had built her world, perhaps all worlds, that a man like Sestinn should enjoy almost nine decades while pure souls like her brother barely had two.
She ran her fingertips along the basins and bottles, to allow herself one more moment, one final composure before she slayed another of her monsters.
“Who’s there? Claire? Eve?”
Elloven opened one set of curtains to make use of the moonlight. “Are those your nurses or your victims?” she asked and approached the end of the oaken bed, stepping intentionally into a place where the light would reveal her. “Or both?”
Sestinn was indeed frail, half the man he’d been when she’d last seen him: eyes sunken, flesh thin, mottled, and nearly translucent. His lower jaw had shifted to the left, and he couldn’t quite close his mouth. His arms lay straight atop the blankets as though they’d been positioned there by someone, and his fingers were gnarled inward, like he had the desire to make them claws but not the strength. She would not have recognized him if she’d seen him out of context.
“I know you.” His shaky voice rattled in his throat and off the tongue. “How do I know you?”
One final insult. He and his son had harmed so many girls and women that he couldn’t even keep them straight. “You knew me. Your son knew me better though.”
“You’re not Claire or Eve. Wait. You’re... Castien didn’t tell me... I signed your divorce decree, so why would you... or are you my granddaughter? Your name escapes me, dear. Some things go and some things remain. I don’t get to choose.” He squinted, his bony nose scrunching. A thin tension spread across his face, and his eyes dilated. He slid his hand along the quilt, toward the table and a bell he could ring for aid.
Elloven retrieved it herself. She placed it near a basin and sat on the side of the bed nearest the arm still pointing toward the nightstand. Revulsion crept up, and she reverted to an old habit, tapping and counting with her fingers on her outer thigh. “Has it come to you yet?”
“Abbess.” Gone was the doddering, confused old man. In his rheumy eyes was the diabolical schemer who had made the Reliquary the mainstay of his corruption, ruling from the shadows.
“Yes, that’s what they called the young women punished for the actions of men,” Elloven said bitterly. “A means to atone for our waywardness, they said, like it was a choice.”
“What...” His throat rattled when he cleared it. “Where is my son?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll see him again soon,” she replied. Gertrude’s knife cooled against her hip. Chaos whispered in her ear. But Elloven didn’t need or want either. If she was going to take a man’s life with clear intention, she would choose the most basic weapon of all. She would feel every second of his death. As he waned, she would rise. “Say my name. Tell me you remember. Say it aloud and I’ll make it quick, though you don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t...” His head shook on the pillow. The moisture pooling beneath his lid was infuriating, but she couldn’t spiral. Not there. Not then. “It was so long ago.”
“For you. For me, it was yesterday.”
