Nova couldn't get the smell of death out of her nostrils.
She stood as far away from the body as her chain would allow. Faellian had tied it around the leg of the table where the corpse lay, just inches from the Unspoken man's blackened toes. She felt sick. She had seen battlefields. She had seen dead people before.
She had never seen a dead Unspoken.
There was something particularly awful about it. She could still sense the ghost of their magic, as if it were tethered to the body; she could feel the empty channels where it used to run freely, now horribly cold. The death was something more than corporeal, almost, as if the sources beneath Nictaven where the magic ran were mourning, too. The desolate nature of it turned her stomach.
The lord didn't seem to notice or care.
"Can you tell me how they died?" he demanded for the umpteenth time, orange eyes flashing at her. For once, any punishment he might offer her for being unhelpful didn't seem a hardship, just so long as she could get away from the body.
"No, sir," she said, and hated herself for not being able to control the tremor in her voice. "I don't know. I can't sense anything."
Faellian muttered something that might have been 'useless'.
They were not alone in the room. Lord Eril and Lady Kerrin had also arrived soon after the body had. Yddris had been and gone, stoic and practical as always and giving no indication of the anguish in his aura. She had been relieved when he left. The sheer misery made her want to faint.
"What do you want to do, Faellian?" Kerrin asked, stepping forward out of the shadows at the edge of the room. It clearly cost her to stand so close, and her eyes remained firmly on Faellian as she spoke. "The city will panic if this isn't controlled in the way it gets out. While we investigate, what do I tell my flock?"
"First things first," Faellian said. "We're ruling out the Devils. Eril, I presume you won't object to some early questioning of your temple's acolyte."
Eril very obviously objected to early questioning, but was too busy with his head in a pail to get out more than a handful of words before he noisily threw up again. Kerrin wrinkled her nose and averted her eyes.
"I agree with that plan," she said.
"He won't know anything," Eril said, spitting. He resurfaced, face bright red and sweaty. "Even if he was involved with that scum – and I refuse to believe that he is – why would they tell an Orthanian acolyte anything important? I've heard they're all such untrustworthy dregs that their leader sends some of them on false leads so nobody works out what the real plan is and steals all the glory."
"You don't know their leader, then," Faellian said tartly. "He certainly has the resources to pull off crimes without childish games like that. If he didn't, he'd be rotting in my dungeons already." He sniffed, and covered the body over with the white death shroud. "And while your first point likely has some truth to it, I currently have no other leads and no one else to question. It may still bear fruit."
Silas arrived fuming, but paled and almost collapsed when his eyes fell on the shroud and the unmistakable form under it. Faellian settled in a chair and watched the acolyte's reaction with narrowed eyes.
"Ah, Silas," he said, as if he hadn't been waiting impatiently for the boy to arrive. "Pleasure."
Silas dragged his eyes from the corpse and made a stiff bow. "It's all mine, my Lord."
"Glad to see you're recovering," Faellian said snidely. Silas's cheeks turned pink, hand darting to his side and aura exploding into a riot of anger. Nova suppressed a look of disgust; clearly the boy had been more than happy – had been expecting – Grace to stand trial and hang in his place.
At the thought of Grace, Nova fidgeted. She didn't know what had possessed her the previous day, to stand in front of her like that when Jordan's temper got the better of him. She had regretted it instantly; the Unspoken had already stepped in, and what use was she anyway? She had seen the peculiar look Jordan had given her and dreaded to think what kind of impression he might have taken from it.
Grace, in her usual manner, hadn't seemed to think anything of it. Nova hadn't seen her face to face since the incident; soon afterwards Faellian had summoned her so he could keep a closer watch on what she was doing. But when Grace had passed her once or twice, in the corridors or when she came to deliver something, she made sure to catch Nova's eye, no matter how much Nova tried to avoid it.
It felt too close to an exploitable weakness for Nova to be comfortable, and yet she didn't mind as much as she knew she ought to.
Silas approached the table. Two guards flanked him to hold his chains, but both of them were keeping back as far they were able, eyes averted as Faellian lifted the sheet again. Eril had made a concerted effort to gather himself in front of one of his house's acolytes, but at this he succumbed and disappeared back into the bucket.
Silas went stiff, jaw clenching until a tick showed. Nova kept her eyes on him so she didn't have to look herself, but she knew what he saw. His aura was pure horror. The news clearly hadn't reached his little prison.
"That's a...a..." he sputtered.
"Unspoken." Faellian feigned disinterest. "A dead one, to be precise." His gaze sharpened, and Silas flinched. "What do you know?"
Silas looked startled. "What?"
"Don't be obtuse," the lord pressed. "What do you know about this death?"
"Nothing," Silas replied. "I didn't even know it had happened."
Nova couldn't detect a lie on his aura, no pulse of guilt or worry. Faellian glanced at her, and she remained still and silent.
"Are the Devils responsible?" Faellian said.
"I don't know."
"But you are in contact with them, aren't you?"
"No."
"Lie," Nova murmured, only loud enough for the lord to catch it. She couldn't help holding a grudge against the boy for dragging her into this. And Grace, said a small voice in the back of her head, followed by the image of Grace crying as her brother signed his life away. She crushed it into silence.
"You're lying," Faellian said softly, "You are, aren't you?"
Silas set his jaw, shooting Nova a venomous look over the lord's shoulder. Faellian must have caught it, because he laughed.
"Oh, we're seeing another side of the pious little acolyte here, aren't we?" he said, sounding darkly delighted, "Lying, making threats, foul manners. Anyone would have thought you'd been raised in a barn."
Silas swallowed, and fear flashed across his aura. Faellian didn't notice the subtlety of the change, but Nova smirked. Few got involved with the Devils if there wasn't a hefty debt to be paid, a favour to be called in, especially not acolytes of a noble house.
"We'll be having words about that little lie later," Faellian said, "In the comfort of my study. Take him up there."
The guards bowed and led Silas away, the boy stumbling between them.
"Faellian, I have to object," Eril began, but Faellian cut him off.
"There is nothing to object to. The boy knows nothing about this incident as far as we're aware, but he is lying about involvement with the Devils. Either way, he has committed a punishable offence."
Eril looked sour, but said nothing else. Kerrin coughed delicately into her hand.
"What do we tell the people?" she asked.
Faellian was uncharacteristically grave as he covered the body back over. The Harkenns weren't known for their empathy, but Nova could tell he was upset. One would find it hard to rule over a country of corpses slain by demons.
"The truth, I suppose," he said. "There's no use hiding it. Two soldiers found it and it only takes one to spread it round the entire army. From there it will get to civilian ears. If people think we're keeping it secret, they'll riot."
"And who's going to tell them?" Eril demanded.
Faellian gave him a cold smile. "You are."
"Me? My Lord, I..."
"People will want to know that Orthan is on their side when they find out about Silas," Faellian interrupted. "And how better to convince them than to publicly condemn his actions? And while you're doing that, you may as well spare me the trouble of scaring them out of their wits."
He untied Nova's chain from the table, wrapped it twice around his wrist, and dragged her out with him as he swept away. She'd never been so glad to leave a room.
She eyed Faellian's back as he led her down the corridor. His aura was a mess of conflicting emotions, though fury was a prominent one. Whoever had killed the Unspoken had undermined his rule in a way that hadn't been attempted since his father's days, according to the history books. Nova suspected wounded pride accounted for the anger more than anything else.
In her relief at leaving the room, she hadn't noticed that the lord was leading her in a different direction to where she expected. He wasn't taking her to his study to help interrogate Silas, nor was he taking her to the kitchens to have her out of the way. A flash of apprehension went through her. It had been several years since he had rented her out to guests for the night – ever since he had learned how easily she told truth from lie – but whenever she was taken somewhere unexpected, she still feared that he had changed his mind. She had been little more than an exotic pet when he first bought her; a trophy of the Caelumese wars, despite the fact that she was not a prisoner of war and no one in Caelum would shed a tear over her absence. People didn't know that, though. To them, she was an Angel Harkenn had conquered in Caelum's last stand, a commodity people paid for the privilege to roll.
Not the crippled outcast she really was, at any rate.
She released her breath when she recognised the corridor they were in, banishing thoughts of laboured breath and unwelcome hands in the dark. It was richly furnished, and all along the walls were sets of shelves and cabinets piled with books and manuscripts. All the torches burned in glass cases, specially engineered to be almost shatter proof; the castle collection contained Nictaven's most valuable literature.
They were in the clerks' quarters. Faellian opened the vast library doors and shoved her in ahead of him. Several clerks stationed at the desks inside glanced up before quickly looking down again. The librarian shot up from his desk, glasses almost falling off his face as he rushed over and ducked into a low bow.
"My lord," he said, "What do you require today?"
"I want the crime records for the last two hundred years," Faellian said. "Put them on a free table."
As the librarian scurried off, the lord turned to Nova. "You're going to find me every similar incident in those records, copy them out and then bring them to me this evening. Understood?"
"Yes, my lord," Nova said, as her heart sank. There would be thousands of cases in those documents. She would have to skim every one of them, and then copy out the painstaking detail added to every relevant offence case. Still, it was better than a kick up the arse, which she would get if she refused, and it was a way to avoid the pounding headache she would get if she had to sit in a room with such strong emotions any longer.
"Go on, then," Faellian said, pointing at the table the librarian had just hefted four enormous tomes onto. "I'll send Brillan two hours before curfew."
It was just as tedious as she had expected it to be. The cases were written in agonising, dry detail, everything that had ever made it to the Assembly. Even though she was skimming, it took her the better part of two hours to read all the way through the first tome, and she hadn't found a single case that required copying out. The clerks avoided her like plague, so her only interruption from the tedium was the librarian checking in every now and again to tell her the time.
When he returned sooner than was really necessary she looked up, ready to snap, and came up short when she saw Grace standing there instead. They met eyes for the first time in days, and to her chagrin she felt her cheeks warming. In just a day, Grace had regained some colour and seemed quite happy to pretend none of her ordeal had happened. She had also tidied up her hair; it no longer covered her eyes and their bright hazel was more intense than usual – not that Nova had been paying particular attention before, she thought hastily.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, cursing inwardly at her bluntness as her cheeks burned. The words had been out before she'd really thought them through, and she didn't want to be left alone with the court records again.
"Who says?" Grace retorted. "I'm finally getting that afternoon off I was told I could have. I'm not allowed to leave the castle because of all the accusations flying around, so in short," she took the chair on the opposite side of the table, "there is no reason whatsoever that I can't be here."
"If I'm not done with this on time I'll get flogged," Nova said. "Sit there if you want, but don't expect much."
"I never do," Grace replied tartly. "Don't let me encroach on anything, will you?"
Nova smirked despite herself, bending her head to the next book to hide it. "I won't."
Grace pulled something out of her apron pocket and began fiddling with it. After reading through another case – long enough, she judged, not to find Grace staring at her when she looked up – she risked another glance at the girl opposite. Her face was screwed up in concentration, tongue peeking out from between her lips as she did battle with a very amateur attempt at embroidery.
"Don't. Say. Anything," Grace murmured without looking up, face smoothing into a tiny smile even as she fought with a knot in the thread. "I know how bad it is."
Nova looked back down at the book, but murmured, "Are you not taught embroidery on earth?"
"I wasn't. Leave me alone, Nova."
"It'd be very pretty from a distance."
A suspicious pause and then, with a smile in it, "How long a distance?"
"The other side of this room."
Grace gasped in mock offence. A moment later the embroidery piece landed with a soft pat on Nova's head. "You wound me. I'll never pick up a needle again."
Nova snorted. Grace giggled, a peal of light laughter that Nova fell into a short trance listening to. She blinked, and realised that though she had been staring at the page in front of her for three minutes, she hadn't taken in a single word.
"I would help you, but I can't read it," Grace said. She didn't conceal her wistfulness very well.
Nova looked up at her, pulling the square of cloth from her head. Grace's lips pressed together as she flicked it back.
"You don't want to be reading this," she said, "It's about as dull as Nict prayer hall."
The comparison went straight over Grace's head. "Can you teach me?"
Nova almost said no, but stopped herself at the last minute. She knew she was supposed to refuse; it would make more sense to do so. If they spent too much time together, someone was bound to notice.
Grace's eyes pleaded with her, and she felt herself cave like a slow-motion landslide.
"Take one of these with you," she said in an undertone, pushing over one of the sheets of parchment she had been given for copying out. "There'll be fresh ink bottles in the castle stores. Quills, too, I expect. I can't guarantee how much I'll be able to help with."
"Thank you, Nova," Grace said warmly, stuffing the parchment into her apron pocket and taking up her sewing with an excitable glint in her eye. "I really appreciate it."
Nova cleared her throat and focused on the page with a flicker of feigned irritation.
The warm knot in her stomach continued to flutter.