“Undoubtedly, Your Grace.”
He looked back down at the grey patch. There’s no chance an Idrian did this, he realized. Not if he used Awakening. “What was this Lifeless creature you mentioned?”
“A Lifeless squirrel, Your Grace,” one of the men said. “The intruder used it as a diversion.”
“Well made?” he asked.
They nodded. “Using modern Command words, if its actions were any judge,” one said. “It even had ichor-alcohol instead of blood. Took us the better part of the night to catch the thing!”
“I see,” Lightsong said, standing. “But the intruder escaped?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” one of them said.
“What do you suppose he was after?”
The priests wavered. “We don’t know for sure, Your Grace,” one of them said. “We scared him away before he could reach his goal—one of our men saw him fleeing back out the way he had come. Perhaps the resistance was too much for him.”
“We think that he may have been a common burglar, Your Grace,” one said. “Here to sneak into the gallery and steal the art.”
“Sounds likely enough to me,” Lightsong said, standing. “Good work with this, and all that.” He turned, walking back down the hallway toward the entrance. He felt strangely surreal.
The priests were lying to him.
He didn’t know how he could tell. Yet he did—he knew it deep inside, with some instincts he hadn’t realized he possessed. Instead of disturbing him, for some reason the lies excited him.
“Your Grace,” Llarimar said, hurrying up. “Did you find what you wanted?”
“That was no Idrian who broke in,” Lightsong said quietly as they walked into the sunlight.
Llarimar raised an eyebrow. “There have been cases of Idrians coming to Hallandren and buying themselves Breath, Your Grace.”
“And have you ever heard of one using a Lifeless?”
Llarimar fell quiet. “No, Your Grace,” he finally admitted.
“Idrians hate Lifeless. Consider them abominations, or some such nonsense. Either way, it wouldn’t make sense for an Idrian to try and get in like that. What would be the point? Assassinating a single one of the Returned? He or she would only be replaced, and the protocols in place would be certain that even the Lifeless armies weren’t without someone to direct them for long. The possibility for retaliation would far outweigh the benefit.”
“So you believe that it was a thief?”
“Of course not,” Lightsong said. “A ‘common burglar’ with enough money or Breath that he can waste a Lifeless, just for a diversion? Whoever broke in, he was already rich. Besides, why sneak through the servants’ hallway? There are no valuables there. The interior of the palace holds far more wealth.”
Llarimar fell quiet again. He looked over at Lightsong, the same curious expression as before on his face. “That’s some very solid reasoning, Your Grace.”
“I know,” Lightsong said. “I feel positively unlike myself. Perhaps I need to go get drunk.”
“You can’t get drunk.”
“Ah, but I certainly enjoy trying.”
They walked back toward his palace, picking up his servants on the way. Llarimar seemed unsettled. Lightsong, however, simply felt excited. Murder in the Court of Gods, he thought. True, it was only a servant—but I’m supposed to be a god for all people, not just important ones. I wonder how long it’s been since someone was killed in the court? Hasn’t happened in my lifetime, certainly.
Mercystar’s priests were hiding something. Why had the intruder released a diversion—particularly such an expensive one—if he were simply going to run away? The servants of the Returned were not formidable soldiers or warriors. So why had he given up so easily?
All good questions. Good questions that he, of all people, shouldn’t have bothered to wonder about. And yet, he did.
All the way back to the palace, through a nice meal, and even into the night.
24
Siri’s servants clustered around her uncertainly as she walked into the chaotic room. She wore a blue and white gown with a ten-foot train. As she entered, scribes and priests looked up in shock; some immediately scrambled to their feet, bowing. Others just stared as she passed, her serving women doing their best to hold her train with dignity.
Determined, Siri continued through the chamber—which was more like a hallway than a proper room. Long tables lined the walls, stacks of paper cluttered those tables, and scribes—Pahn Kahl men in brown, Hallandren men in the day’s colors—worked on the papers. The walls were, of course, black. Colored rooms were only found in the center of the palace, where the God King and Siri spent most of their time. Separately, of course.
Though, things are a little different at night, she thought, smiling. It felt very conspiratorial of her to be teaching him letters. She had a secret that she was keeping from the rest of the kingdom, a secret that involved one of the most powerful men in the entire world. That gave her a thrill. She supposed she should have been more worried. Indeed, in her more thoughtful moments, the reality behind Bluefingers’s warnings did worry her. That’s why she had come to the scribes’ quarters.
I wonder why the bedchamber is out here, she thought. Outside the main body of the palace, in the black part.
Either way, the servants’ section of the palace—God King’s bedchamber excluded—was the last place the scribes expected to be disturbed by their queen. Siri noticed that some of her serving women looked apologetically at the men in the room as Siri arrived at the doors on the far side. A servant opened the door for her, and she entered the room beyond.
A relaxed group of priests stood leafing through books in the medium sized chamber. They looked over at her. One dropped his book to the floor in shock.
“I,” Siri proclaimed, “want some books!”