Page 13 of House of Dusk

YENERIS

Y eneris walked along the hallway, five precise steps behind Sinoe. Close enough that she could still serve her purpose. Not so close that she intruded on the royal presence.

She saw how Sinoe’s shoulders hunched. The clench of her jaw that had been there ever since her brother delivered the summons.

But this was an opportunity. That’s what mattered. A chance to finally see the fabled Sibyl of Tears at work. Better to focus on that. Not the way Sinoe’s slender fingers clutched at the hem of her gown, picking and picking at the embroidery.

“He’s a mystic,” Ichos was saying. “A dedicate to the Serpent.”

A small thread of relief unspooled. There had been a small chance it might have been another Bassaran agent. But this was nothing to do with her.

Still, she had to be cautious, if Lacheron was involved.

It was the last warning Mikat had given her.

Above all, beware the king’s heron. He is a master of rumor and secrets.

His people are everywhere. You never know when you might fall under his shadow.

His sharp beak waiting to plunge and tear you into the light.

She’d asked Mikat why no one had been sent to simply kill the man, if he was such a danger to their cause. They were. They failed. The man has an uncanny ability to survive.

Yeneris halted behind Sinoe as they confronted a tall, arched door.

Two soldiers flanked it, their bronze armor shimmering in the light of the brazier, their faces hidden beneath the ostentatious helms the Helissoni favored, scarlet crests like bloody wounds.

As if they were proud of all the death they wrought.

Careful . She schooled her expression to calm indifference.

But her heart would not listen. It rattled in her chest. She stared up at the doors, heavy and glossy black, set with bright silver studs.

She tried to count them, to steady herself.

When they finally peeled open, she had reached eleven, the number of great deeds of Akoret.

She tried to take courage in that, as she followed Sinoe and Ichos into the king’s audience hall.

The chamber was large, the high ceiling domed, with an oculus at the center staring up into the night sky.

It felt larger still, with so few people within.

Braziers burned before each of the eighteen marble pillars bracing the curved walls.

The flickering light caught in the carved stone of the capitals, so that the lions and stags seemed to leap and prowl, hunting and hunted.

On the far side stood an alabaster chair, flanked by two lions, though these were carved of red porphyry and decorated with golden collars.

On the left, the sleeping lion, his ruddy mane curled like a magister’s beard.

On the right, the wakeful lioness, her eyes winking rubies, her jaws pulled back in a growl of warning, gold-tipped claws ready to pierce her stone pedestal. Between them sat the king.

Yeneris had prepared herself. She did not stumble. She had never seen Hierax before, except at a distance. But she knew all too well what he had wrought. The lives spent for his pride and ambition.

The hard part isn’t remembering who you’re supposed to be , Mikat had warned her . It’s forgetting who you truly are. The face you hide. The tears you cannot spill.

She would never forget. She lowered her head, studying the man through the veil of her lashes.

Heavy-lidded, heavy-lipped, heavy-browed.

Everything about him was slightly overdone.

Like the paintings in the oldest temples, the ones that had frightened her as a girl, because the people in them had looked so odd, their eyes enormous, devouring the rest of their faces.

Her mother had told her it was because in the old times people had not yet learned that seeing too much could be as dangerous as seeing too little.

Hierax had those same eyes. They fixed on Sinoe.

The princess breathed in, a hitch in her step the only sign that she felt the weight of her father’s gaze. Ichos quickened his pace, so that he was slightly in front of her.

The air pressed on Yeneris, a storm waiting to break. Was it only her thrumming heart that made the room feel so thick?

They were halfway across the hall before she noticed there was someone else beside the king.

A spare man with a lean, ageless face that reminded her of an old statue, blurred by wind and water.

His clothing was equally bland, a simple tunic that was neither gray nor brown, but the same indistinct color as the thin hair scoured back above his high forehead.

“Finally,” rumbled Hierax, as Sinoe and Ichos halted before him. “If I’d known it would take you so long, Ichos, I would have sent one of the soldiers instead.”

Yeneris had halted several paces back, making herself small and insignificant between two of the pillars. It meant that all she could see was the slight flutter of Sinoe’s sleeve as the girl touched her brother’s arm.

“It wasn’t Ichos’s fault, Father,” she said. “I was in the garden. He had to come in search of me.”

The king’s jaw jutted. “I will assign blame as I see fit.” He beckoned toward an annex along the side of the hall.

Two soldiers stepped forth, a man shuffling between them, wrists bound with thick rope. Behind them followed a pair of servants, one carrying a small brazier, the other a light wooden writing desk.

The servants moved with a practiced air, as if they’d done this many times. The one with the brazier set it down midway between Hierax and his children, the bronze feet precisely matching the lines of the marble floor. Then they drew back to stand beside the scribe, who knelt at the desk, waiting.

Hierax flicked his fingers. “Lacheron.” The colorless man responded, pacing out a few steps.

Even now, with all their attention upon him, the man seemed indistinct.

Yeneris found her gaze slipping away from his face, to the gray-brown weave of his tunic, to the single bronze pin at his shoulder, to the pattern of his shadow on the wall behind him.

She knew very little about Lacheron, other than that he’d served Hierax even before his rise to power.

He struck her as one of those men who hitched their cart to the strongest ox, hoping it would pull them to greatness.

“We captured the man in the western foothills three days ago,” said Lacheron, “where he had summoned a host of skotoi and sent them against his own kin.”

The prisoner jerked his head up, eyes wide, protests rendered to gibberish by the cloth stuffed in his mouth.

“Remove it,” said Lacheron.

One of the soldiers pulled the cloth free.

“I didn’t!” the protest tore out of the man, ragged with outrage and pain. “I tried to stop them! But I couldn’t...I couldn’t...” He shuddered.

“Lies,” said Lacheron, coolly. “We can see the truth, written on your own skin.” He gestured to the prisoner’s left arm, where his sleeve had been torn away.

Beneath, Yeneris could see a ring etched onto the man’s skin.

“The Serpent’s mark,” said Lacheron. “The man is a mystic, a traitor to the Ember King and all he stands for.”

The words skimmed past Yeneris like clouds across the sky.

There was nothing she could catch hold of.

Her training had focused on other things.

How to kill a man without spilling blood.

How to move silently. How to hold a perfect mental map of the palace in her mind.

She wasn’t like these Helissoni, obsessed with claiming old glories. Her duty was to the future.

“No!” the man protested. “I swear by the Fates! It’s not true.”

“You do not need to lie,” Lacheron told the prisoner, his voice smooth as a pebble along the shore. “You cannot deceive the Sibyl of Tears. She hears the whispers of the Fates.”

The prisoner was terrified. He shifted his feet. He wanted to run.

“You have a choice,” Lacheron continued, still in that voice that should have been reading out shipping accounts. “You can tell us where to find the dagger now, of your own free will, and earn a quiet death. Or the sibyl will reveal your secrets, and you will die screaming.”

The man slid a terrified look toward Sinoe. “I don’t—I can’t—Fates, they’re all dead. I tried to stop them! Please believe me!”

Lacheron’s lips pressed thin. He gestured for the soldiers to restore the gag.

“Then we’ll find our own truth.” Lacheron turned to face Sinoe.

For the first time, there was a spark to sharpen his features, giving Yeneris something to catch hold of.

A brightness in his eyes, which now struck her as a clear gray.

“Sibyl,” he said. “It’s time.”

The princess had gone very still. Like a small creature, sensing the circling eagle above.

“It’s very late, Father,” began Ichos. “Surely this can wait until—”

“You think the future of our realm can wait?” Hierax leaned forward, the long glimmering folds of his tunic catching the light.

There was more gold at his throat. Glinting on his fingers as they gripped the head of the snarling lioness.

“Lacheron has brought me rumors for months now. And tonight, a report of skotoi, spawned from our own necropolis.”

She held her face still, watching Ichos stir at that. How he glanced to Sinoe. Then back over his shoulder, at Yeneris. She settled her vision in the middle distance, ignoring him.

“The Serpent nearly destroyed the world once before,” said Lacheron. “And it was only the Ember King who saved us. Now, he must do so again. King Hierax must fulfill his destiny and reclaim the dagger Letheko. It is the only weapon that can slay the Serpent. Our only hope, if he returns.”