There were boring rooms, which could be improved with better people.
Then there were hotel conference rooms with fluorescent lighting, beige carpet, and the faint smell of despair, which could not be improved at all and should be studied by exorcists.
And finally, there were rooms where a woman had been locked after being falsely claimed by a husband she’d never met, threatened by a man with the soul of an eel in church shoes, and advised by the lady of the house not to murder anyone unless absolutely necessary.
The east chamber at Belmaine’s house was currently winning its category.
Amelia stood in the middle of it with an iron poker in her hand, her cloak still around her shoulders, her wimple listing sideways as if it too had lost faith in the situation. The fire had woken at last, orange tongues catching along the split wood,and the room had warmed just enough to make the air smell of smoke and rosemary.
Below, Belmaine’s household moved in fits and starts. A door opened. A man cursed. Men’s voices rose from the hall, then dropped quickly, as if someone had remembered that sound carried in old houses and servants had ears.
Good.
Belmaine had taken her from Ashcombe by law, or the ugly costume of law, and he meant to keep her long enough to make Thomas do something rash. Or long enough to make Crale’s lie stick.
She looked down at the poker. Amelia was small, tired, hungry, and furious, which gave her a certain amount of spiritual reach but did nothing for upper-body strength. If Crale came in again, she’d have one good strike. Maybe two if rage decided to help. If Belmaine came in, she suspected rage would bring friends.
Still, a proper plan required options. Something smaller and sharp. Amelia set the poker by the table, exactly where Dame Margaret had left it, and searched the room again. The coffer. The bed. The mattress. The rushes near the hearth. The jug.
The jug was ordinary brown pottery, thick-bellied, and filled with sour ale as Amelia picked it up, judged the weight, and considered.
No. Too large and unwieldy. The cup, though…
She turned the little cup in her hand. Coarse pottery, chipped along one rim, its glaze dark and uneven.
Breakable.
She wrapped it in the corner of her cloak and slammed it on the floor near the hearthstone.
The crack was louder than she expected. Amelia froze, but nothing moved beyond the door. To be safe, she waited one breath. Two.
When no one came, she crouched and unwrapped the cloak.
The cup had broken into four pieces, two useless, one jagged, and one perfect shard with a curved edge that fit against her palm with a sharp point mean enough to make an impression.
“Congratulations,” she told the shard. “You’ve been promoted.”
She wrapped it in the hem of her sleeve, tucking it where her fingers could reach if she bent her wrist just so. The edge pricked through the linen. Not enough to cut, but enough to remind her it was there.
A key scraped in the lock. Amelia straightened so fast her wimple slipped back another inch. She kicked the broken fragments beneath the edge of the bed, moving with the kind of speed that would’ve made her mother say,See, honey? All those years of panic-cleaning before guests arrived paid off.
The door opened. Joan slipped inside with a candle, a folded cloak, and eyes as round as trenchers.
“My lady,” she whispered. “You’re not supposed to have that.”
Amelia looked at the poker.
“This?”
“Aye.”
“It was here when I arrived.”
“It was not.”
“That’s very inconvenient of you to remember.”
Joan’s mouth twitched despite herself. “Dame Margaret says you’re to look less like you mean to bash someone over the head before Sir Roger comes.”
