Page 51 of Shadow Throne King

Quuri shook her head, raising one hand and her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. I didn’t need to be fluent in the Imperial language of motion and speech to know that she was trying to express how little an idea she had.

“After he requested the room, his men brought boxes in. I asked if he wanted servants to clean it for him, and he said no. He required space and quiet, which was why he chose the room in the first place. He would lock it every time he used it. The other servants believed it was haunted.” She frowned as she said the words, and I wondered if she believed it as much as they did.

The Dog in front stepped forward, pressing his hand to a sconce barely visible on the wall. With a flash of electricity, he lit it, and it triggered a reaction in the room, every light flashing on.

The Dogs stood in the doorway, the dark shadowing hints of what was beyond. In the large room, there were metal hooks on the walls. Hands and arms hung from them on chains.

The Dog stepped forward, blade drawn, and Tallu and I followed him. There were five bodies hung on the stone walls, and the tables were covered with papers and notes, knives and what looked like instruments of torture, as well as spools of wire and pieces of metal that might be part of some machine.

I stepped forward, examining one of the bodies. A piece of wire had been inserted into his ear, driven down deep into his brain. Red blood had dried brown on his earlobe. His eyes were open, gray and blank.

He smelled, the scent of death unmistakable, but it wasn’t as bad as I assumed it would be. Because of its place under the palace, the room was so cold that it would maintain the bodies for some time.

“General Maki could not have done this himself,” I observed. “The emperor left him with one hand, and this work requires two.”

Turning to Quuri, I saw her go ashen. “Other than the men Maki left in place, were there any servants, any outsiders who had access to this room? Or who the general favored in some way?”

My mind flashed to the men that Rute Sotonam had turned to his side, servants who knew they were harming and hurting their fellows, but who couldn’t help cleaving to a more powerful presence. I had killed them, too. And I had a feeling whoever helped Maki do this would die the same way.

“He had two men,” Quuri said, her voice going unsteady. “They were palace guards. He asked for the strongest men we had, and they were proud to do the work that would save the Imperium.”

“And are they still here?” Tallu asked.

Quuri swallowed. “I thought—I thought he’d taken them with him when he left. It was night, and he took a great many, but now…” She raised her hand and pointed to the wall where two men hung, the remnants of their yellow uniforms torn down to their waists.

“That’s them?” I asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“What about bedmates? Did he or his commanders take any servants or locals into favor?” I thought about the lie I’d told about Topi Bemishu to get her free of the men who would kill her. “Anyone they might have spoken with?”

“No,” Quuri said. “No one. They kept to themselves. At meals, they spoke very little, even to each other.”

“Did they leave the palace?” I asked.

Quuri shook her head. “Not until he left in the dead of night over a week ago.”

Which meant all we knew was here in this room. I looked around the room again. If we had Hipati, we would have some hope of ever cataloguing all of the papers. As it was, I could only assume that Maki had been doing exactly the same experiments here as he had in the abandoned military outpost.

“So, which happened first? Did Maki abandon his outpost before or after his men were slaughtered?” Something terrible occurred to me, and I turned back to Quuri. “Did he have a girl with him? Pito Bemishu?”

Quuri shook her head sharply. “Only his own men were with him. Other military commanders and a few servants. They were enveloped into the household, and I would have recognized a young lady among them.”

That left few options. Either we had somehow missed Pito’s body at the outpost, or he had disguised her as one of his commanders.

There was a third option, and I looked around the room at the hanging bodies. Unless she was already dead, and he had kept her body here, out of sight of any servant who might recognize her.

“Close off this room,” Tallu said. “Have someone guarding it at all times. We will come back and examine it once I have met with the Krustavian king.”

The Dogs bowed in acknowledgment, and Tallu swept out, two Dogs following as the other two locked the door and took up guard positions. I made my way up the stairs, still thinking over everything we had learned. Quuri was behind me.

When I first heard her voice, I wasn’t even sure she had spoken.

“Will he kill me?” she asked.

I turned, looking over my shoulder. The walls of the passage were rough stone, not polished smooth like the rest of the interior. It would be easy to slip and fall, dying on the stairs.

Pausing, I turned. I was on the step above her, the stair adding more to our height difference. “Do you think you deserve to die?”