Tracks

Chapter 67: Tracks

The trackers worked. The wolves padded the corridors in fur and silence, noses close to the stone. They drew a map of scents that on any other night would have been meaningless: a servant’s spilled soup, a guard’s wet boots, a duchess’s rare tea trailed all the way from the western passage. Tonight, they wove it into a net.

At the Queen’s chamber, nothing new: old perfume, old prayers, the steady hum of a life that had held its routines like a ritual. At the King’s, a tang of something not his: salt and clove and the wet-stone echo that had tugged at Kael. It scuffed faintly along the River Stair and vanished in the night-breath. The outer posts had been doused in wine.

“A clever fox,” the Huntsmaster said, frowning at the wet footprint’s memory on his fingertips. “Masking the trail with a barrel tipped where the river wind would push the smell.”

Kael’s eyes half closed. The bells were still tolling; they would until noon. Each peal went through him like a hammer.