“I expect difficulties and obstacles. Always.” He snugged the chair harder against the door before deeming it good enough and gave his full attention to his companion. He tapped a finger to his ear, pointed to the door and the walls, then tapped the same finger to his lips. Difficulties included eavesdroppers. She nodded to indicate she understood his gestures.
“While you’re browsing the market, I’ll explore the city. I hear Domora has many things to see and the market is one of the finest. Pick something for yourself while you shop. We can meet later and visit the royal library. It is one of the wonders of the Empire, filled with knowledge on everything from the histories of lost cities to the artifacts collected by the old emperors.”
If he’d chosen his words right, and she was as quick as he always knew her to be, she heard the true plans under the surface ones. He’d reconnoiter the palace while she roamed the marketplace and kept an ear out for any information he might find useful. He’d then come back for her so they could go to the royal library.
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to visit the library,” she said in a girlishly excited voiced so at odds with her somber expression. “My father once told me ghosts haunt the library. Do you think we’ll see one?”
Gharek offered her a short bow. She’d understood just fine. “Maybe.” He pointed to the bed and then the floor. “Come to bed then, my beauty.” Like her, he’d affected a misleading tone to his voice. Siora froze for a moment before a bright blush swept herfeatures. He even managed to startle himself with how sincere he sounded.
He approached her where she still sat at the table and bent low to whisper in her ear. “That should convince anyone with an ear to the wall or door. Now choose your sleeping spot. Floor or bed, and if it’s the bed, we’ll share, because I’m not giving up a comfortable bed over some misplaced sense of modesty.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Bed,” she said before rising with an agile grace to skirt around him and claim her place on the mattress closest to the wall. She wiggled out of her tunic but kept on her shift and slid under the covers, leaving Gharek to gutter the lamps. He dragged the half full hip bath to a spot under the open windows—another warning system in place but still allowed him and Siora to take advantage of the breeze blowing into the room and cooling it down.
Siora scooted closer to the wall, whether to give him more space or to avoid touching him, he couldn’t say. She’d been the one to make the choice. If she didn’t like his proximity, she was welcome to stretch out on the floor.
They lay together in the peaceful room, she on her side facing him, he on his back as he gazed into the darkness and listened to the sounds of a city slowly falling asleep. Male voices murmured in the background, their deeper notes mingling with higher, feminine voices punctuated with sultry laughter and the occasional moan of pleasure from one of the other rooms nearby.
“The royal library will have every ward ever created recorded in some scroll or book,” he said in a whisper. “Including the one that protects the Windcry from thievery. Our challenge will be to find the counter one we need to break it.” Her soft breathing draftedgently across his shoulder. “It probably has what’s needed to get rid of a ghost-eater, though I doubt we’ll have time to search for such a thing among so many records.” He turned his head to look at her, face cast half in deep shadow, half in pale moonlight spilling through the nearby window. “Much has changed since Dalvila died and you and I left the city. At first glance it looks the same, but there’s no possible way that’s so, not with the throne contested by every aristo wanting to claim the seat for themselves. There’ll be plenty of gossip.”
“There’s already something different.” She spoke in the same hushed tones, but something else there—an unspoken dread—made him roll to his side and face her. “It isn’t just the living who make noise. Ghosts do too, even when they choose not to reveal themselves to me. Every place possesses such a sound. It’s like a memory of life. Even the earth joins in sometimes, I think. But not in Domora, at least not any longer.” The bed shook gently with her shiver. “There’s a silence underlying the sound of the living that doesn’t belong. Isn’t natural. There should be spirits in the city. There were before. There aren’t now.”
After what he’d witnessed in Zaredis’s tent, Gharek took her at her word. “Spoken like a true shade speaker,” he said. “Can you not sense your father?”
Another shiver, harder this time. “Even if I could, I dare not reach out to him, not with whatever is preying on the lingering dead.”
“But we’re much farther from the cursed city now.” He hadn’t expected her reluctance to reach out to her father’s ghost, especially after she’d admitted his warnings had saved her more than once from a sure death.
“Not far enough for my liking.” She edged a little closer to him. “Besides, as I said before, I can’t just summon a spirit. They have to come of their own free will.”
He rolled to his back again, smiling into the darkness. “You lied to the general about getting a ghost’s help.”
Her voice rose with her agitation. “I did not.” At his warning “shhh,” she lowered it to a whisper to match his. “I said I could possibly coax a spirit. Not a lie. There’s a difference between coaxing and summoning.”
Somehow during her protest, her hand had found a place to rest on his chest. For a moment, Gharek forgot to breathe. No more than the perching of a butterfly, that delicate touch burned a hole through his shirt, and yet he refused to shrug it off. There was a magic about this woman that had nothing to do with ghosts or necromancy and everything to do with softness. Softness of the soul, of the mind, a calming for tortured thoughts and dark fury, of regret and despair. He had at turns considered her a gift, then a curse. Who knew what she represented now? Forgiveness? Hope? He mentally shrugged off the ridiculous idea of the last. He’d lost an understanding of that emotion long ago. Whatever sorcery the woman sharing his bed at the moment practiced, it confounded him greatly. And if he was honest with himself, frightened him at times.
They lay quietly together, her weight pressing ever heavier into his side just as her hand settled harder above his heart. Gharek thought her asleep until she spoke in a drowsy voice. “I dream of the sea sometimes. It sings a lullaby.”
“It sings a dirge.” He had no love for the sea.
Her body’s heat enveloped him, and Gharek prayed for a stronger zephyr to cool him off.
“Who were you once?” She avoided saying his true name aloud, but he fancied he heard it come to rest on her lips. “Before you became a man of splinters and bitterness?”
He didn’t remember. Not really. Nor did it matter. “Go to sleep, Siora,” he ordered before turning onto his other side and putting his back to her, doing his best to ignore the skin-prickle sensation of her hand as it now hovered just above his spine—not touching—before she dropped it with a sigh and grew still.
CHAPTER SIX
Siora reveled in the feel of clean, new clothes against her skin. Except for the clothes bought for her when she first came to work for Gharek, they were the finest things she’d ever owned, matched only by a pair of sturdy shoes snugged to her feet with straps and real buckles. The rags she’d worn a day earlier were gone, whisked away by one of the troop of maids who’d sailed in once Gharek opened the door. Siora suspected they’d been tossed into the closest fire and were now part of the hearth’s ash pile. She wouldn’t miss them.
She and Gharek had stood out of the way as the others removed the tub and buckets and cleared the table of the previous night’s supper, replacing it with a tray of pastries well as a pitcher of milk and another of ale. Siora had worn her napkin like an apron to keep her new shift as clean as possible and piled her plate high with breakfast. Anything left over that could be transported without going off or making a mess she’d wrapped in the napkin when she was done and stuffed it into her already packed satchel. She doubted she’d ever eat this well again in her lifetime.
No one commented on the odd placement of the tub or the sight of a scone peeking out of her satchel. These servants were likely used to seeing many strange things in the rooms they cleanedand prepared for their next clients and were warned not to speak of it. In fact they didn’t speak to Siora or Gharek at all except for wanting to know if there was anything they were needing. When Gharek said no, they filed out in an orderly line without another word, marching down the corridor on quiet feet toward the stairwell.
“They remind me a little of your servants,” she told him. Maybe not as quiet as these but very discreet and unobtrusive. They’d also never accepted her into their small group, so some of their silence around her was ostracism. Siora hadn’t cared. She was warm, fed, and in the company of a cheerful, interesting child with extraordinary resilience. And every once in a while she’d caught glimpses of a man who was far more than the loathed henchman to a mad empress. A man who loved with a ferocious devotion. Life had been good in the cat’s-paw’s household.
“They’re paid to serve, not socialize,” he replied. “In my house and I expect in this one as well.”
When she was dressed and ready to slip on her shoes, Gharek motioned for her to sit in one of the chairs. “Let me help you,” he said, startling her with the offer until she recognized his ploy. She perched on the edge of a chair while he knelt in front of her, one of her shoes in his hand. He leaned in close enough so that only she could hear him when he whispered.