“That sounds lonely.” Lore knew loneliness. It covered everything she did, a spiderweb that couldn’t be seen but was impossible to free yourself from. It clung.
“Yes,” Alie murmured. “Yes, it is.”
“No pastries left, then?”
The voice was deep, familiar. Lore spun around to face Bastian’s easy grin. He braced his hands on the back of her chair, leaning over her, his shadow darkening her teacup.
The tension locking her shoulders leaked out, just a bit. Returning the book to his father’s study must’ve gone smoothly. Part of her had been worried he’d get caught and send all of this crashing down around their ears.
Bastian dropped a quick, reassuring wink, like he could read the pattern of Lore’s thoughts on her face. “There’s more where this came from,” he said to Alie, keeping his eyes on Lore. “If my sweets haven’t had enough sweets.”
Alie groaned. “Please, not the puns.”
“Give me a moment, let me workshop something with buns.”
“I would truly rather perish.” Alie grinned, dark-green eyes sparkling. “Besides, you’ve treated us enough, I think.”
“Never.” He spun one of the empty chairs around and sat in it backward, propping his chin on his crossed arms and peering at Alie through the dark fringe of his hair with mock lovesickness. “Is there anything else I could get you to prove my undying affection, Alienor Bellegarde? Would you like the chocolates in swan shapes next time? Bare-chested attendants to feed you grapes?”
Alie lifted a wry eyebrow. “I imagine you’d be the bare-chested attendant?”
“Of course.” Sly eyes slid toward Lore, a nearly imperceptible flicker. “Though I could probably get Remaut to come, too.”
Her playful smile fell only a fraction, pink staining Alie’s cheeks. “Actually,” she said, “Bri and Dani just went to pilfer through your rooms in search of wine.”
“I truly can’t think of a corner where I haven’t hidden some, but if you want to be sure they’ll find it, go tell them to look behind the mirror next to the bed on the top floor.”
“Of course that’s where it is.” Alie stood, wagging her finger between Bastian and Lore. “Behave yourselves.”
“Oh, never,” Bastian replied. He watched until Alie was out of sight. Then he turned to Lore, all playfulness gone. “It happened again.”
The village. Lore nodded. “I know. I ran into Bellegarde on my way here.”
He grimaced. “My condolences.”
“He was acting like he was looking for something,” Lore said. “Or looking for somewhere to hide something—he had a piece of paper in his hand. When he left, I looked behind one of the tapestries, and found the paper there, pinned to the back. But it just said seventy-five, so I don’t know whether it was actually a note or something else.”
Bastian’s face went pale. “It had to be a note.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how many people died in the last village,” Bastian said. “Seventy-five exactly.”
Footnotes
1 Stricken from the Compendium after Margot D’Laney, Second Night Priestess of the Buried Watch, attempted to open Nyxara’s tomb in 200 AGF.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It takes more than one cloud to make a storm.
—Kirythean proverb
That…” Lore’s head spun, fitting the information together. “If it was the number of bodies—”
“It means Bellegarde is in on it,” Bastian finished, low and dark.
“We met August in the hallway.” Lore’s mind twisted in a thousand different directions, taking pieces and filling them in where they fit. “He didn’t look at the tapestry where Bellegarde hid the note, but they were talking when I left. Something about groups being processed, about bindings—”
Danielle’s bright voice cut her off. “Bastian! We found the wine. It isn’t sparkling, but I suppose it will suffice.”
“Well, I didn’t know you wanted sparkling.” The Sun Prince flipped from serious to jovial in an instant. Even the way he held himself changed, rigid tension softening into lazy lines as he settled into his still-backward chair. “That’s in one of the second-floor guest rooms.”
“This will do.” Dani wagged the bottle in the air, a slight frown drawing a line between her brows when she looked at Lore. “Are you all right, Lore? You look pale.”
“Just my stomach,” she said, picking up her now-cold tea and taking a long sip.
“I’ll have some of that sent to your rooms,” Brigitte said, nodding to the teacup as she wrapped the cork of the wine bottle in her skirt and tugged. It came off with a pop, and Alie offered quiet applause. Brigitte bowed and poured the wine into the now-empty cups. “It’s the only way I get through the cramps.”
“Thank you,” Lore murmured. Lying to Brigitte felt rotten. Repaying kindness with dishonesty always did.
Bastian stood so the four women could have the chairs—“I will lean fetchingly against the wall instead, and if any of you feel the sudden inspiration to paint me, I won’t even charge a modeling fee”—while Alie and the others sipped their wine and idly gossiped.
Lore sipped her wine and thought about how in the myriad hells she was going to find where August, Anton, and now Bellegarde were hiding seventy-five-plus bodies.
“I’m hoping to see Luc again next week,” Danielle said. Her eyes darted from her teacup to Lore. “He’s on a business trip with his father for a few days.”
Luc. The docks. Lore frowned, putting something together. “You said someone was hiring people from the docks to move cargo?”
For the second time, curious eyes turned Lore’s way, not quite sure what to make of her question. Lore forced a grin, hoping they thought her strangeness was due to social ineptitude bred in country isolation. “I… ah… have an interest in transportation,” she stuttered. “The… the mechanics of it. What are they moving? And how?”
Well done, Lore. Not only will they think you’re socially deficient, they’ll also think you have the most boring interests in all of human history.
An unreadable look flickered over Dani’s face. “Like I said before, I don’t know what it is they’re moving. Just that they’re being paid quite a lot to do it.”
“I’m telling you, it has to be poison.” Brigitte settled back in her chair, holding the slender stem of her wineglass. “What else would someone pay good coin to haul from one place to another?”
Dani waved a dismissive hand. “Luc said it’s far too heavy to be plants. It takes at least three men to push the carts to the drop-off point. That’s the only detail he’d give me.” She grinned. “It’s all very cloak-and-dagger.”
Poison could be pretty damn heavy if you had enough of it, but Lore thought Luc was probably right—poison runners were a secretive bunch, not prone to hiring random help off the docks. “Did he say where that drop-off point was?”