Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

Voices float from outside as a party of loud men argue in the distance.

“Hush! Coriander, blow out your lamp. We can’t let them see light in here!”

I rip several strips of cloth and hurry over to the oracle. She shrinks back as I loom over her. I must be ruthless even though she is just an old woman. If she screams, they’ll know we’re alive and Lord Gargaron will find out that his poisoned food did not work. She easily gives in as I tie her hands behind her back and gag her. This must be what they teach the girls raised in closed rooms to prepare them for a life in the tomb: to accept what others tell you to do without questioning.

Merry wraps the dead infant in cloth and sets him in the oracle’s lap. “Maybe our poor brother’s body will comfort her. How strange that she holds him as if he is her own. I wonder if she had a baby once? But how could she if she was raised in the temple to be an oracle?”

I blow out my lamp and we feel our way into the oracle’s chamber to sit huddled together by the bed. Amaya snores noisily, burps in her sleep, then farts with a long gassy whistle.

Maraya shudders against me, and I can’t tell if she is silently giggling or shaking with grief. I’m so grateful Amaya is alive that I can’t laugh.

When Maraya speaks I am surprised by how much anger heats her whispered words.

“Father could have sneaked us all onto a ship. It’s a lie to say he had no choice, that he wasn’t swayed by ambition. If he really wanted to, he could get work as a soldier in a mercenary company like the Shipwrights. Mother could have taken in washing or sold goods in a market. We could have sailed away together to another land.”

“Yes, that’s a lovely story, Merry, but it’s not that simple.”

“It seems simple to me!” She shivers as with a fever. “The worst thing was waking up. It took me a while to understand that we were trapped inside… and then I heard scratching… and I was afraid the corpse was trying to claw out of the coffin.” She chokes on the memory.

“Hush,” I whisper. “The coffin is sealed. Even if the borrowed spark hasn’t died, the flesh can’t get out past the seals.”

A long silence follows. Merry’s breathing deepens and slows. I need to sleep but I am wide awake listening to the baby’s fretting.

“Cook,” I whisper. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you leave with the other servants?”

“I could not leave your mother, Doma Jessamy, not when she was so distraught. Years ago she saved me from a bad place. I owe her my life, so obligation binds me to her. If the gods have led me to this place, then I am content with it.”

“But you’re a Patron, and she’s a Commoner.”

“I am a woman, and so is she. Now rest, Doma Jessamy. We need your strength.”

My eyes close as I allow myself to relax. The infant whimpers. Mother wakes and nurses the baby while Cook coaxes her to take more placenta and broth. Afterward Mother weeps wearily, the grief seeping out of her like blood from an oozing wound. Maraya crawls onto the bed to comfort her. They all sleep while I stretch out on the floor.

Again all grows quiet, a perfect stillness. In the half-aware state between sleep and waking I sense the stone’s contours beneath my legs, I breathe along its shadows, I feel through my skin the quivering of each vibration that stirs the earth beneath the tomb. Stone has a shadow and a secret name too, and maybe even a self.

A scratching like fingernails dragged listlessly along wood shudders me into full heart-pounding alertness. It sounds exactly as if it is coming from inside the coffin.

Is the body of Lord Ottonor trying to claw out?

My breathing squeezes tight as I pray it is only a rat. Yet rats might swarm at us out of the dark and gnaw out our eyes before we can wake up.

Scratch scratch scratch.

I wish I had the knife. What if Coriander murders us in our sleep? No, she loves Mother too. We are all here because Mother saved us.

Finally the scratching stops. A low moan jolts me until I realize it is the wind in the shaft. I lie still for the longest time. At last with the hum of the wind as my lullaby I let go of my anxious thoughts and sink, praying that nothing attacks me while I sleep.

28

The horns of dawn wake me from a sound sleep. Morning light gleams through the tiny gap in the wall through which the oracle speaks. A man is coming up the path singing a familiar song about a sailor going to meet the lover who will wash his clothes just the way he likes.

Maraya leaps up. “That is Polodos!”

She hastens with her rolling gait past the sleeping oracle in the central chamber and into the entry chamber. I catch up as she kneels by the slit where offering trays can be slid into the tomb. Footsteps crunch up to the porch. She whistles the melody as in answer.