Chapter 7: The Woman Who Knew My Name

The key went into the lock and stopped.

It wouldn't turn. Someone on the other side pushed hard enough to make the door shiver in its frame, and I heard a low, irritated breath. The key slid out. The boots walked away without any hurry, and the silence that came back was worse than the noise.

My nails had gone into my palm. I made my hand open.

Ilyra waited until the last echo died before she took her finger from my mouth.

"I left my own key in the lock on this side," she breathed. "It won't hold forever."

"Who was that?"

"Someone who'll come back."

It wasn't an answer, and she knew it. The questions were stacking up faster than I could carry them.

A flint clicked twice. The candle caught, and she cupped it low against her palm. The small light carved her face out of the dark, hair pinned tight, a crease between her brows, a tiredness that had nothing to do with the hour.

"How did you know I'd be here?" I whispered.

"I didn't, until tonight. You asked the under steward twice today where the old registers were kept." Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Girls hired yesterday don't care about registers. I followed you from the east stair. I meant to stop you at the door, but you're quicker with a pick than I am on my feet."

"And now?"

"Now there's a date." She didn't look at the book in my arms. "The page says tomorrow. Tomorrow begins at midnight."

Somewhere far above us a bell struck the quarter hour. I had heard eleven ring while I was hunting for my own name.

I made myself say it. "You know who I am."

"I knew you the moment you walked into the hall. I was there seven years ago, when they led you out." Something moved in her face and was put away again. "I haven't forgotten it."

I stared at her. I had spent seven years picturing the whole hall laughing. It had never occurred to me that someone might have watched in silence and kept it.

"Then why aren't you calling the guard?"

"Because I didn't write your death in a book, and I want to know who did."

My wolf shifted behind my ribs. That part is true. She said it carefully, and I noticed she'd said that part.

"Last night," I said, "someone stood in this room with Kaelith. Someone who said I already knew."

The candle trembled once in her hand, or I imagined it.

"Was that you?"

"Ask me tomorrow."

"Tomorrow I may be dead."

"Not if I can help it." Her eyes held mine over the flame. "Is the cause still blank?"

I nodded.

"Then whoever wrote it hasn't finished."

It should have comforted me. It didn't. A blank line is a decision someone is still making.

"These books," I said. "Marisse Orel. Annelise Orel. They didn't die by accident."

"No." The word came out flat. "Every name on those shelves belongs to a wolf who died when she shouldn't have, in ways that should have been asked about and weren't."

"Then why does he keep them?"

Her face closed like a door.

"Ilyra."

"Anything but that."

"That's the only thing I..."

"Then you'll have to ask him." Her voice stayed quiet, but there was iron in it now. "And you will not do it tonight."

I wanted to shake her. Seven years I'd chased these names alone, and the first person to hand me a real answer had drawn a line straight across the one I needed most. I could have pushed. I knew exactly how that would end.

She tilted her head, listening, the way I'd seen hunters do. Then I heard it too.

Footsteps. Not the slow boots from before. These came light and quick, with a faint chime of glass at each step.

Ilyra pinched the flame. "Give me the book."

"No."

"If they search you, they find it on you. If they search me, they have to explain themselves."

"To whom?"

"Seraphine." Her hand waited in the dark between us.

I hated this. Seven years of trusting paper and ink before people, and now I was about to hand my own death to a woman I'd known for ten minutes because her cloak was better than my dress. Everything in me said keep it. It was the only proof I had that anyone had ever planned my end, and I'd carried it out of the dark with my own arms.

But a cloak was what this room needed. I held the book out. She slid it inside and fastened it over her ribs, and the weight left my arms like a hand letting go.

"If I don't get it back..."

"You will. Don't thank me. I haven't done anything yet."

She turned the key and pocketed it. The door swung inward on a wash of torchlight, and Ilyra stepped into it as if the corridor belonged to her, one hand smoothing her sleeve. "Behind me," she murmured. "Eyes down. You're a servant who got lost."

I followed with my head bowed and my hands clasped, the way I'd practiced, and tried not to think about how loud my heart was.

A man stood in the corridor. Tall, thin, grey at the temples, in the dark coat of a royal physician, a silver case hanging from one hand. The clasp caught the torchlight.

His gaze passed over Ilyra, over the bare desk and the gap on the shelf behind her, and didn't pause. It kept going until it found me. I felt it in my spine, not a greeting but a man finding the last item on a list.

He smiled.

"Excellent," he said. "The king was hoping we would find her before midnight."