A Masquerade of Spiders

Chapter 33: Will The Pain Away

Chapter 33: Will The Pain Away

"How do you hide the truth with a lie?"

When I was just thirteen, Pyren had taught me how to use a knife. Those were my favourite lessons. I felt different from myself with the weight of the knife in my hand. I was more than just a girl. Violence, no matter how frightening it was, how hard to look at, was a power that I craved. I hated feeling helpless.

"You divert their attention before your hit strikes true," Pyren said as he showed me how to feign, how to move in one direction, as if I was going to strike there, and then use the momentum of that movement to thrust forward in the other direction.

He twisted the blade around let me catch the hilt. "It's a silly trick," he said and then smiled. "But it works every time."

I tried it. I was a fast learner.

"You give a false narrative to blind them from the truth.

***

I had guards escort me wherever I went, which was never far because I was only allowed to go to the salon for my meals. They stood outside my door in shifts, with swords at their belts. I heard them conversing sometimes in low voices when I pressed my ear to the door.

The other Cervi lords and ladies whispered more vigorously about me, but I didn't mind them.

Thankfully, the smaller rooms in the Cervi house of the Masca Delen didn't allow maids to watch me from within the room. I had already, in advance, closed off any possible crack or hole in my room that could serve Lord Aspertin's spies.

It was disheartening to be confined, with only Emil for company. I had known this was coming, but I didn't exactly have a choice. The room felt more cramped with each day I spent in it and the Pinnacle ball, with the conclave, drew closer every moment.

I had much time for thought and when I thought I tried to make a clear picture out of the pieces I had.

The Kiri branch of house Usi had started the plot to reinstate the king.

And how would they achieve this goal?

They would remain neutral, and set all the houses against one another.

I tried to think like the Kiri would, and form a plan. But there were too many holes to fill.

And the biggest hole was why Pyren wanted Waryn away during the conclave.

What threat could Waryn possibly pose?

"You give a false narrative to blind them from the truth," Pyren had told me once during one of his lectures when I was a child.

I finally had a name, a face to see in my mind when I thirsted for revenge. I finally had an answer, and it was likely the wrong one.

***

On the fifth night of my confinement, Pyren took me to see Waryn. He provided a cloak, and a black servant's dress and mask with the Eloroan sigil embroidered on it in gold thread.

"You have until the next bell," he said and left me inside the enclosed garden that connected the main hall to the Eloroan house.

I found the room that had been mine empty, and used the hidden passage to reach Eloroan's. I listened through the wood-pane and changed the stone to summon him.

The minutes passed. I didn't know if I could even hear the bells from here. I didn't have paper or a pen and tried to write Waryn a message with wax on the tabletop.

I heard the tell-tale sound of a panel moving and voices coming from the corridor Nava had told me not to take.

Naturally, I had inspected it soon after she told me not to. It led onto only two more passages that ended in rooms which I assumed were Leah's and Nava's.