More applause. The Guildmaster had finally shut up. Now Elban rose, and a thick and instantaneous blanket of silence fell over the hall. Elban’s face—otherwise as handsome as Gavin’s—bore a crosshatch of old battle scars, earned honorably or otherwise, that left it craggy and granitic. “The Guildmaster has spoken well,” he said. “This House is the jewel of Highfall, and Highfall is the jewel of the empire I have spent my entire life building. Every province, guild and noble family stands united under my banner, from the Barriers in the east to the sea in the west, from the border of the Southern Kingdom to the dead lands of the north. We are powerful. We are prosperous.”
Another cheer from the courtiers. And it did sound nice when he said it that way, using words like united and prosperous. Darid, the House stablemaster, had told her that Elban’s cavalry horses came back covered in blood, when they came back at all.
“But we must be vigilant,” Elban continued, and the cheers died. “There are evil forces at work in our city, seditionists who would eat away at us from the inside like woodworm. Who would work against Highfall’s best interests by disrupting our factories and starving our workers; who would even sink so low as to sabotage the very Wilmerian envoy we celebrate tonight, claiming their gas lines carry poison. Even worse, they spread lies about our soldiers. Calling the expedition across the Nali Strait a rout, saying they stumbled home in defeat. Yes, stumbled!”
Elban called anyone who disagreed with him a seditionist. The word had long since lost any meaning, but derisive jeers filled the air. Not that the courtiers cared about the soldiers; they just liked to jeer.
“The Nali expedition was designed to draw out the Nali, to test their capabilities. It was a resounding success.” Elban’s icy eyes swept the room. “Were lives lost? Yes. Such is the nature of war. Those lives were freely given. We learned much at the Battle of the Nali Strait. We learned that the Nali are unnatural, inhuman. More like insects than men. Like insects, they would invade, and they would devour, even swarming over Highfall itself if they thought they could.”
More jeers. Elban held up a finger; the jeers stopped. “In two months, I will cross the Nali Strait again. With the knowledge gained from the last campaign, and the marvelous ever-burning fire of the Wilmerian Guild, we will do more than defeat the Nali on their own shores. We will sweep them from the world like the infestation they are. We will annihilate them.”
He spoke without emotion, but the crowd leapt to their feet with a deafening cheer. The Wilmerian to Judah’s right did so a bit drunkenly, the courtier to her left with courtier-like reserve and panache. None wanted to be caught lagging. None wanted to be seen cheering less exuberantly than the rest. Judah stood, too, but she didn’t bother to clap or cheer. A door opened; the musicians came in. With the musicians came drummers and with the drummers came fire-dancers, spinning pots of flame on cords around their bodies. Another wave of cheering broke over the hall and the horrible new gaslights were extinguished. The orange light of the flamepots shifted and swung crazily in the darkness.
It was the distraction Judah was waiting for. When the lights came back up, she was gone.
* * *
Despite the gas lamps, deep shadows nestled between the pillars lining the gallery outside the hall. Judah shivered; the wide neckline of her poorly cut dress left most of her shoulders exposed. She could hear the quiet slip of her pinching, uncomfortable court shoes on the flagstones. Outside, the rosebushes stretched thorny fingers against the window and the spitting snow glinted in the purple light.
Another cheer erupted from the hall.
She wandered through the liminal quiet, considering. She could go to the stables, where Darid might let her muck out stalls or oil tack or do some other small, useful thing; but her court shoes would dissolve within minutes in the snow and mud, and her boots were a long walk away, back in her room. Besides, the stablemen might be having their own celebration. Guildspeople, with their odd clothes, assumed names and forced piety, were never much liked by outsiders, and the Wilmerians were cruel to their horses. Darid had lost more than one night of sleep trying to keep their starved, overworked beasts alive—because he loved horses and didn’t want them to suffer, but also because a dead horse would mean a dead stableman, another head on the spikes in the kitchen yard. Once the Wilmerians left, their horses would suffer again, but Darid’s stablemen wouldn’t. That was worth celebrating. Darid was kind to her, but she knew she made the stablemen nervous, and didn’t want to intrude.
Meanwhile, most of the rooms in the huge, sprawling House would be empty. As long as she avoided the kitchens, which would still be frenzied from the feast, she could do anything, go anywhere: the library, the catacombs, the portrait hall. She could go to the council chamber and dance on the massive wooden table; she could sit in Elban’s throne and issue imaginary proclamations. The wearing of perfume by courtiers is now forbidden. Chocolate caramels will be served with all meals. Everyone caught wearing heels of three inches or higher will be summarily beheaded.
Then she heard a noise. She was never sure afterward exactly what kind of noise it was: the swish of heavy fabric, a rough drunken breath. Maybe it wasn’t a noise at all, but the faint smell of dirt. Whatever it was, something inside her sent up a warning. She tensed, and turned.
It was the Wilmerian. He’d followed her out of the hall. The hood of his cassock was down. His eyes were watery and unfocused and his jaw hung slack. She probably wouldn’t have heard anything if he’d been sober. An alarming thought.
“Bertram.” His voice sounded breathless, with none of the aloof piety it had held earlier.
“I’m sorry?” she said, carefully.
“Bertram. Before I took my vows. My name was Bertram.”
The back of her neck prickled. “All right.”
“You have to give up everything when you join a Guild. Even your name. I—” He hesitated, and took a step closer. The words tumbled out of him all in a rush. “I want to touch your hair.”
“No,” she said.
Bertram’s thin lips were dry and as she watched, he licked them. His hands reached out like talons, those bleary eyes glued to her hair. “They say you’re witchborn. That you stole Lady Clorin’s soul. Killed her.”
Judah hadn’t heard exactly that variation before. She didn’t believe in witches and she didn’t believe in souls, but this didn’t seem like the time to mention it. He stood between her and the open end of the gallery; the only door behind her led to the chapel, and was no doubt locked. She’d been stupid. She should have circled around him as he spoke so he couldn’t trap her. Even if she did manage to bolt past him, her shoes weren’t made for running any more than they were made for snow. Drunk he may have been, but he could still probably catch her, and if he caught her she would be well and truly caught. The Wilmerians were all broad-shouldered. Judah was sturdy but small. The gaslight above her burned steady with its creepy purple glow. Six months ago, it would have been an oil lamp, or a torch, and she could have thrown it at him. Now she had nothing.