Rylan was tempted to slip out the back when Lorelei went to answer the knock at the front door, but the sort of trouble he’d landed himself in would follow him wherever he went. Plus, he seemed to have found an ally in Lorelei. He’d be a fool to throw that away now.
So he was still sitting on Lorelei’s couch, rubbing his hands while trying to control his nerves, as Lorelei, Creed, Ash, and Praefectus Damika entered the quaint sitting room. Creed leaned against the wall beside the fireplace with a hangman’s stare. Ash and Lorelei sat across from Rylan. Praefectus Damika, the last to enter, sat in the upholstered chair to Rylan’s right.
Lorelei proceeded to tell Damika everything, from her initial suspicions to her arrest of Rylan at the palace, her rescue of him in the Crag, and his admission about Raef and the chalice.
When she finished, Damika nodded to Creed. “Tell her what you found.”
“I didn’t find anything,” Creed replied. “It was all Ash.”
Ash, holding Korvus’s red journal, looked small and fragile as an orphan. “By the time Creed and I got to the shrine, Master Renato had been pronounced dead. The shepherds were questioning everyone. I nearly got into trouble for being gone, but Creed vouched for me.”
“Do you know what happened?” Rylan asked.
“An accident with the scaffolding, apparently. They wouldn’t tell us anything. I’m not sure they knew anything to tell us. They shut down work for the day. When they were done with me”—he opened the journal over his knees—“Creed and I went back to the Tulip and I looked this over.” He flipped several pages before landing on one with an ordered table of numbers. “Korvus was studying the flow of aura and umbra around the Holt. He’d chosen high points and low points, hills and valleys, some with vegetation and some more barren. He was trying to figure out if the flow rates varied by geography type. He seemed to have stumbled onto . . . something.”
“What kind of something?” Lorelei asked.
“He noticed a shift in the pattern of umbra, in particular. It was moving in ways he didn’t expect . . . over a fairly long time, about fifteen years.”
Lorelei shrugged. “What are you saying.”
Ash tapped a paragraph below a neatly drawn table. “Here, he says that something—”
Damika rolled her eyes. “Ah . . . something, again. How helpful.”
“Please, Praefectus,” Lorelei said, “Let him continue.”
Damika shrugged. Lorelei nodded at Ash.
“Something in the Holt was causing the shift. He suspected a sinkhole was about to form, which is quite rare. He seemed rather excited about it, and hoped to observe it if he could. In his last entries he talks about a second journal to record it. He must have taken it with him on his final expedition, the one on which he and the ferryman disappeared.”
“The place Korvus was looking for,” Rylan said, “is probably where the peat came from, yes?”
Damika glared at Rylan and cleared her throat loudly. “Against my better judgment, I’ve allowed you to stay because Lorelei believes you can help. So tell me, what do you know about this sinkhole?”
Rylan tried to think of anything he might have heard, mostly to try to mollify the Praefectus, but he came up empty. “I don’t really know anything about it.”
“Do you know where it might be?”
“I don’t. There are literally hundreds of bogs and fens in the eastern Holt. The peat could have come from any of them.”
“Then why, by Alra’s beneficent smile, should I not take you to the Crag right now?”
Rylan felt his freedom slipping away. “Because I can help you. I know a lot about the Red Knives. Stuff you probably don’t.”
“Such as?”
Rylan felt a bit like he was betraying his people—he was brought up to think the empire was the enemy. He needed to stop thinking that way. This was too important. “Lorelei told us about Tomas showing up at the Tulip and acting . . . weird.”
Damika glanced at Lorelei, who nodded. Then she looked at Rylan again. “So?”
“I think Llorn compelled him.”
“You mean magically compelled?”
“Yes, with a cobalt lucerta.”
Damika frowned. “That knowledge was lost centuries ago.”
“It was, but Llorn’s mother could have found it.”
Damika paused to think. “The Book of the Holt was burned when Rygmora was executed.”
Rylan nodded. “A copy was burned. Are you sure it was the only one?”
She paused, then jutted her chin at him. “Go on.”
“Tomas would never have gone to an inquisitor on his own. Knives vow not to. It would put his entire family at risk. But Llorn could have compelled him with a lucerta from Fraoch.”
Lorelei looked dumbstruck. “Galla’s autopsy report said the evidence was consistent with a compulsion by a cobalt dragon.”
Creed grunted. “Might also explain why his eyes were so red.”
“Okay,” Damika said, “but why would Llorn make him admit anything?”
Rylan took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure, but it was worth a shot. “Because Aarik was working on a peace deal with my father.”
Damika’s mouth fell open. “Aarik Bloodhaven and Marstan Lyndenfell were working on a peace deal?”
Rylan nodded. “Not just working on it. They were nearly done. They were putting the final touches on an amendment to the Covenant. My father thought patricians in the Holt would vote for it. All that was left was to convince the quintarchs.”
Creed glowered. “Llorn wouldn’t have liked it.”
“Not at all,” Rylan said. “I suspect it’s why things have been so violent of late. Llorn was acting out. But I don’t think even he knew quite how close a deal was. If he did, he probably would have tried to overthrow Aarik.”
Creed said, “Llorn was the first one to spot us in the mine.”
Lorelei nodded. “Almost like he’d been expecting it. And then, after he escaped from the mine, he killed Tomas to hide what he’d done.”
“I don’t know,” Damika said. “It feels like a stretch.”
“There’s more,” Rylan said. “Blythe admitted to me that Llorn had been in a terrible mood before the meeting in the mine and that he’d been having headaches. I read an ancient account once about an imperial thief from Lyros. He used cobalt lucertae to steal mounds of treasure, but came away with headaches that lasted for days afterward. It’s what got him caught. When Lyros’s quintarch learned of his headaches, she knew what caused them.”
“Fine.” Damika shifted in her cushioned chair. “I’ll admit the possibility. Put on your dress uniforms. We’re going to the palace to explain this to Quintarch Lucran.”
Lorelei swallowed hard. “We?”
“Yes, we. The sooner we nip this in the bud, the better.”
“Yes, Praefectus.”
Lorelei left to get her uniform. Damika leaned toward Rylan. “You have a personal relationship with Blythe, as I understand it.”
The very mention of Blythe’s name made him worry about her relapse. “I do.”
“Is she still in Ancris?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
Damika nodded. “Tyrinia is angry. She’s going to try to sway her husband. I’m going to request leniency for you, but I need a bargaining chip. I’d like to tell Lucran you’re willing to get Blythe to corroborate some of this, find out what else she knows. Can I?”
It was no small thing. She wanted him to become an agent of the empire, which would mark him as a traitor in the eyes of the Red Knives. But he’d committed himself when he’d remained to speak with them. Besides, he’d wanted to check on Blythe anyway. “You can.”
Damika stared at him a moment, then rapped her knuckles twice on the table. “I’m going to hold you to that promise.”
Lorelei returned in short order wearing a fresh inquisitor’s uniform. “My mother knows you’re staying,” she said to Rylan. “Make yourself at home.” She gestured to the couch. “Sleep if you like.”
Rylan’s eyes grew heavy at the very thought. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
She gave him a brief smile and nodded.
Ash, Lorelei, and Damika soon left. Creed stayed, ostensibly to watch Rylan, but minutes later, his head was lolling, and he sat down in the chair Damika had vacated. Soon, he was snoring softly.
Rylan lay on the couch, hoping to catch at least a little sleep, when Adelia came down the creaking stairs with a pair of blankets. She laid one over Creed and handed the other to Rylan. “You must be hungry after the business at the Crag. I made cranberry muffins. I’ve got some pine milk as well. Would you like some?”
Rylan dearly wanted sleep, but Adelia gave him the impression she wanted to talk. Besides, his last meal had been the stale bread and mashed peas in the Crag. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
Adelia headed toward the kitchen, and Rylan leaned back on the couch. Clanking plates and running water in the kitchen lulled him. When she returned with the platter of food, Rylan blinked his eyes open. He had fallen asleep. She set the platter on the table and sat down across from him.
The muffin was fragrant and sweet, redolent of the kitchen at Valdavyn, and pine milk never failed to remind him of his days with Uncle Beckett and Aunt Merida in Thicket. The simple pleasure he found in both brought a smile to his face.
Adelia blew on her tea and sipped it. “Lorelei tells me you’re to help her on her inquisitor business.”
“I am.”
“She says it’s important.”
“It is.”
“And that she thinks you’re sincere.”
Rylan paused his chewing. “I am.”
“Good, because, hear me well, Rylan Holbrooke, if I find different, the next muffin I give you is going to be laced with nightshade.”
He swallowed hard. “I would hardly blame you. You’ve raised a fine young woman. It’s nice that you’re so close.”
“It is. And you? Are you close with your mother?”
Rylan laughed. “We’re about as close as this sitting room is to the Olgasian Sea, though I would hardly call the Holt’s First Lady my mother.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about Kathrynn Lyndenfell, but your Aunt Merida.”
Rylan squinted, wondering how could she possibly know about Aunt Merida.
“Lorelei and I talk a lot,” Adelia said.
“Unfortunately, Aunt Merida and I drifted apart.”
He’d worded the statement in a neutral way, but their drifting was all his fault. His memories of Uncle Beckett’s death were so painful he gradually stopped visiting Thicket altogether. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, but the memories were too much to bear.
Creed suddenly shifted in his chair, snorted loudly, and fell to snoring again.
Adelia smiled at him, then returned her gaze to Rylan. “What you went through was very sad. It was bound to affect your relationship with her.”
Yes, Rylan mused, but it should have made us closer. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?”
She shrugged, downed more of her tea, then nodded.
“What does Tyrinia Solvina have against Lorelei?”
Adelia laughed. “That’s a rather long story.”
“I’m happy to hear the short version.”
“It’s to do with Lorelei’s father, Cain.” She jutted her chin. “Those are his clothes you’re wearing.”
Rylan felt rather like a thief caught in the act.
“He passed more than two decades ago, but I haven’t had the heart to get rid of his clothes.” She paused. “As you may already know, he was an inquisitor. He was smart, dedicated, persistent. Lucran loved him. He rose through the ranks quickly and was on track to becoming the youngest Praefectus ever. But shortly before Lorelei was born, he was assigned a case. Some statues had been stolen from the palace. He went to Highreach a few times to interview witnesses. One of them was Tyrinia, but the interviews went curiously slowly. She was constantly diverting the discussion, then the interview would be cut short by some interruption or another, forcing Cain to leave and come back later. And then he would have to start all over.”
“Hmm,” Rylan said, knowing where this was headed.
“Hmm, indeed. During their final interview, Tyrinia propositioned my husband. He declined, but Tyrinia does not take being told no well. She became obsessed with him. I’m convinced it was why he never made Praefectus. I’m also convinced it was why he was given the most dangerous assignments, the last of which got him killed.”
“That’s horrible,” Rylan said. “I’m so sorry.”
Adelia’s smile was restrained, but she stared stoically into his eyes. “After he died, Tyrinia became obsessed with Lorelei. Lorelei was young then, only five. Tyrinia, perhaps feeling guilty, invited her to the palace to play with Skylar. She even offered to have Lorelei taught by the same scholar who was tutoring Skylar and Ash. Years later, she helped get Lorelei a place in the inquisitors’ academy.”
“Forgive me for asking, but if she did all you say she did, why accept her help?”
“My husband died defending this city and the empire. I had little income of my own, and raising Lorelei was a challenge. She needed attention. Lots of it. Don’t misunderstand me. I was happy to give it, but it left me little time to do much else. The empire owed us that money, that tutoring, that job, and a lot more.”
“I agree, but I’m a bit confused. If Tyrinia lavished her with all this attention, why is she now trying to end Lorelei’s career?”
“I wish I knew. Things changed when Lorelei got her inquisitor’s badge. Sometimes I wonder if she expected Lorelei to fail. Or maybe seeing Lorelei with a badge reminds her of Cain, and has hardened her heart. I don’t know why, but she’s been keen to make sure Lorelei doesn’t get promoted. And now she wants her tossed from the inquisitors altogether.”
“A mercurial woman, it seems.”
“Mercurial . . .” Adelia flashed a wicked smile. “I had another word in mind entirely.” She stood and headed toward the stairs. “Sleep well, Rylan Holbrooke.”