Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Thirty: Memories

The maid entered. Nova was dismayed to find it was the one who had taken against her; she had noticed her around frequently, though since Grace had stepped in she hadn't been quite so confrontational about her dislike. In front of the lord she was unable to speak, but the tight smile and the violence with which she scrubbed at Nova's face with the washcloth said enough.

No one seemed inclined to give any further detail on the problem, but Nova could take a good guess that they were talking about Silas. She had heard the intruder bells going off, sequestered in the kitchens with the household staff for safety, but hadn't been able to gather the reason behind the break-in until now. She thought about the boy's fear that his association with the Devils would be discovered, and couldn't help but feel just a little sorry for him; if they had taken the time to break him out of the castle from under the lord's nose, his debt to the guild must have been a heavy one.

She winced, stifling a hiss through her teeth as the maid tugged the stumps of her wings together and pinioned them behind her. A dress was dragged on after that, and as Nova turned so the maid could get at the bow, she caught Ethred's eye. The baron stared unashamedly, even when he realised she was looking.

She loaded as much venom into her glare as she could muster and held his gaze until he dropped it.

Before long she was up on the saddle of Faellian's stallion and the lord was mounting in front of her. For a moment she fervently wished Yddris was coming with them; she could neither see nor sense any sign of the Unspoken nearby and guessed he was busy with Jordan.

She supposed it wasn't the end of the world if she fell out of the saddle with no one there to catch her; she'd certainly had worse.

She looked back towards the castle one more time as they passed under the gatehouse, and realised with a jolt that Grace had followed the procession out and was watching them from the far side of the courtyard. She was holding a kitchen rag and clutching her arms to keep herself warm, but as Nova looked back she raised a hand and waved. Though she was too far away to make out her face, Nova felt the heat of that smile on her as they rode away.

"Stop fidgeting," Faellian snapped in front of her, "Or you'll find yourself walking."

Nova fell still, trying to keep her thoughts away from Grace and failing.

The city was quiet. Somewhere not far away, a Kellian church chimed for midday prayers, and in the distance others joined in. A minute later, the resounding gong of the house temple echoed over the quarter. Ethred, riding beside and slightly behind Faellian, made a disparaging noise in his throat and touched a fist to his chest, as if to ward off the influence of a god that wasn't his own.

The Orthanian house temple wasn't far from the castle, but the journey seemed to stretch on. They passed few civilians; those they did see were in a hurry to get somewhere, or else staring at their procession out of doors and windows. It was a depressing, grim kind of day; the twilight zone between the end of the light season and the onset of the dark. It was undoubtedly the worst time of the year in Nictaven, and even Nova – who got out of the castle very rarely and had even less to do with general city life – found it more miserable than usual. Even the sight of the temple, glowing with its many candles glittering off of polished stone, failed to mitigate the sheer greyness of everything.

Her wing stumps were aching. The maid had pinioned them cruelly tight; pain webbed over her neck and shoulders and down her spine. When she was pulled off the lord's horse she lost her balance, nerves screaming with pain as her knees hit the cobbled courtyard. A breeze rolled past her and made her aware of the spreading stickiness on the back of her dress where the wire had broken skin.