Twenty Three: A Book

"I think I made things worse."

Grace blew in on an icy gust of wind through the kitchen door. Nova looked up from the book she was reading, saw the look on the girl's face, and placed a marker in her page with a quiet sigh. It was going to be a long evening.

She stared at the potboy loitering in the corner until he noticed her, took the hint and scurried off, leaving them alone in the room.

She didn't ask what Grace meant, only watched her as she pulled off her outer clothing, which included a too-large wool jerkin she hadn't left with earlier in the day. Grace hesitated over the jerkin as she hung it across a washing line to warm up, then visibly shook herself out and did the same with her shawl. She padded over to the table and sat down beside Nova, staring at the opposite wall without seeing it before groaning and dropping her head onto her forearms.

"I was too harsh," she said, muffled. "I feel horrible."

Nova closed the book in front of her. It was going to be a very long evening.

"You're going to have to enlighten me," she said, somewhat cautiously. Grace never came back from a visit to her brother this miserable. She moaned about the Gift a little bit, usually, but always had a brightness and energy afterwards that Nova never saw at any other time and which she definitely didn't envy.

This time, however, the otherworld girl was grey-faced and tear-streaked, and Nova didn't like it.

"I didn't think it through. I just wanted him to know how I felt," Grace said. "But sometimes it's kinder not to say something, I guess."

Nova blinked. Something had evidently happened that she'd missed. "You've lost me."

Grace sniffed and propped her chin on her hand, eyes scanning Nova's face. "You didn't know, then?" When Nova stayed blank, she added, "When you said I'd be able to get hold of Yddris, he was having a meeting with Harkenn about Thorne and a trip."

Nova pressed her lips together. Not only was the evening going to be long, but she would be spending it in trouble. She knew what Grace was going to say before she even took another breath.

"My brother tells me you knew about this."

Nova kept her face neutral. "It wasn't my place to tell you."

"Bollocks it wasn't! Sometimes I wonder if this whole thing doesn't mean as much to you as it does to me. You know," she gestured, "us."

If by not as much, you mean everything, then that would be correct. Nova frowned.

"I'm sorry," Grace said after a minute. "That was uncalled for. I'm full of it tonight."

Nova sucked in her lower lip. "Do you really believe it doesn't mean as much to me?"

It wasn't a thing she thought about often, because Harkenn could tell when something had changed with her and he was already suspicious of Grace. It also made the hours at his side and the nights in the cage below his chambers unbearably slow. The nights in the cage had drastically reduced since Brillan left, but she didn't want to get into bad habits if he returned or if Harkenn finally hired another butler.

She felt a shiver of dislike for herself. Years of imprisonment hadn't done her any favours. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, she wondered if she would ever be able to give Grace what she wanted.

"No," Grace said after a pause. Too long a pause. "I'm sorry."

"I am more likely to give us away," Nova said. "You're a maid, you're not in his sight most of the time. If he worked it out, he'd fire you at best." She felt a little guilty saying it, as she knew Jordan had struck a deal with Harkenn that meant corporal punishment was off the table, but Grace was stubborn. "It doesn't mean anything more than that."

Grace propped her chin on her hand, tracing shapes on the table. "I wish he'd let you go."

Nova almost laughed, but it wasn't quite the moment for it. "So do I. I've wished it for ten years. It still hasn't happened." She stretched her legs out, cramped from sitting crossed on the stool. "You need to talk to him more often. Being Unspoken isn't easy, even less so early on, and I'm not going to say these things on his behalf. It's not my place, and I don't know enough to do it justice. He is not my brother. My brother is dead, and I barely knew him. If you want to know him still, even after he takes the black cloak, you take hold with both hands and you don't let go. Do you understand me?"

They stared at each other, and Nova suspected there was as much surprise on her face as there was on Grace's. She hadn't been planning to say even a fraction of those things. A tightness occupied her chest, gnawing at her insides like a shadeling, a heavy weight that pricked at her throat and eyes. She'd been old enough to know the difference when Leo had been buried, killed in a war she was training for. He had gone to the dirt a stranger.

Grace's mouth worked for a moment, and then she said, "I think so."

"You should know it," Nova said softly, eyes still fixed at the bottom of grave dug twenty years before. "He should, too. The Gift changes people, and I'm sure he's expecting you to react badly. If you want to keep up, you'll have to start now. Even if it does seem like it'll take nothing short of a smack around the head to get him talking."

Grace nodded, laughing, and Nova knew she already knew that. "Sometimes I wish we'd both manifested, and then we'd understand this whole thing better and stop saying stupid things that upset each other. Only sometimes, though. Demons are terrifying."

"I wouldn't advise trying to provoke it," Nova said drily. "It's not a certainty even when the circumstances are right. If it was, there'd be far more Unspoken around."

"I wasn't going to." Grace foot nudged her leg under the table, face softening. Nova felt a frisson of relief she wasn't going to admit to. "What determines who gets the Gift?"

"No one knows," Nova said. She slid her book off the table and into her lap. She needed to return it to the stacks soon, before the librarian went running to Harkenn. "The only commonality is a life-threatening encounter with a demon. Everything else is too variable. It turns out you don't even have to be from Nictaven." They exchanged a wry smile. "I heard one Unspoken theorise once that it chooses those at a crossroads in their life, gives purpose to the purposeless. But that assumes a lot of things, chief of which is that Nictaven is sentient and capable of conscious choice."

"You don't believe it is?"

"Sounds too close to a god for my liking." Nova got down from the stool, frowning again. "Gods are there to be a comfort and a calling, not interfering."

"I think a lot of religious folk would disagree."

"True." Nova nodded. "But a lot of that comfort comes from the knowledge that nothing alarming is going to happen because some untouchable being thought you weren't decisive enough."

Grace laughed. "No, I guess not. Where are you off to?"

"Library." Nova held up the book. "Before the librarians get jumpy."

"I'll come."

Normally she would have argued that it was taking an unnecessary gamble on Harkenn discovering them, but she didn't have the energy for it. Recalling her past was always exhausting, especially the painful parts. Grace was in the present, and for the moment making it more pleasant than it had been in years, and it was hard to see past that when she was so tired.

Grace seemed content to walk in silence, still wrapped up in thoughts that had put a crease between her brows. It was uncharacteristic of her not to quiz Nova on the book she was reading, so she left the girl to it. She led them through the servants' passages to keep out of sight of the guard for the most part, and Grace followed without questioning, falling in behind and murmuring greetings as staff came the other way. Nova's stumps prickled like they often did when there was someone behind her, even though Grace had seen them many times. It was still sometimes hard to fathom that it didn't put the girl off.

Grace livened up a little when they reached the library, some of the distress clearing from her brow. For the first time, she glanced at the title of Nova's book, and frowned.

"Is that about...the dead?"

Nova glanced at her. She had been peripherally aware that Grace was being taught in Nictavian script, but it still took her by surprise. "Yes. A history of practices, actually."

"Just out of morbid curiosity, or...?"

"Research," Nova replied. Grace seemed to pick up on her reluctance to expand, but didn't look any less tempted to ask. She hovered at Nova's shoulder, lips pressed together, as she found the shelf she'd taken the book from and returned it. The ability to browse the library was a nice one, but she knew Harkenn kept an eye on every book she took out; he had the librarians reporting on it. He only allowed it to help take her investigations into the Unspoken murders further, since he'd finally been forced to concede that the body itself had no more answers, at least not without a different approach. There had been no more attacks on Unspoken since the siege, but Nova didn't believe that meant the threat had passed, and she had a feeling neither Harkenn nor Yddris did, either.

She scanned the shelves for more promising titles as Grace also took the opportunity to covertly browse. She had the whole day off, as far as Nova knew, and had no reason why she couldn't be in the library, but the librarians still looked askance as they passed and Nova was careful not to look like they were working together.

A book low down on the shelves caught her eye. It wasn't relevant to her current search, but something made her pull it out anyway; Anatomy of a Riot, by J.G.Tivier. She hadn't read anything by the author before, but she was sure the name sounded familiar from somewhere. She'd heard someone mention it, perhaps at a dinner or in a meeting where they thought she wasn't paying attention. She was sure, if she could just grasp that memory of who'd mentioned it, she'd know why the book stood out.

The question was whether taking this one out would get her into trouble. After all, it wasn't relevant to her investigation, and 'just a feeling' wouldn't wash with Harkenn if she was pressed on it. Perhaps it was just a reaction to current events; her mind playing tricks on her. She'd been trying so hard to find clues out of thin air that she wouldn't have been surprised.

She put it back, contemplating and then dismissing the idea of asking Grace to take it out for her; that wouldn't go down any better than if Nova had. The average worker picking up a book about working class rebellion was bound to catch a lord's eye in a time like this.

When her search turned up empty, she sighed and decided to return the next time Harkenn allowed her out of the study, whenever that was. She needed a new approach, because learning increasingly morbid facts about death wasn't helping her figure out how a body might survive without its organs, or how anyone could manage to be free of aura entirely. It was farcical that she was even in charge of this particular endeavour – she was only a slave, after all, and a foreign one at that – but the thought of failing was equally unpleasant.

She looked at the Tivier book again, and then wandered off to find Grace. The girl was chatting animatedly to one of the librarians about something. It was probably better to leave her to it, and Nova wasn't much in the mood for discussing Thorne again. She'd said her piece.

She left the library, walking slowly enough that Grace could catch up if she wanted, but eventually found herself wandering the corridors alone. She knew there was a meeting that evening with all the heads of the Houses to address the food stores and the plague problem and she would be expected to be there, but before that, if Harkenn didn't know where she was he couldn't summon her unexpectedly. She kept to the more obscure corridors. Though the Angel spy who had tried to kill her last time she went on a purposeless ramble was dead, the memory of it was seared into her mind and she hadn't been in the public corridors alone ever since. She kept to the narrow stone passages, hugging her arms around her to keep warm, and eventually came out into a familiar corridor.

She hovered at the top of the steps for a while, listening to the occasional groan and the muffled rumble of the guards talking in the office at the end of the jail row. This was a stupid idea without any guarantees of getting her anywhere, but she found herself descending the steps anyway.

Memory prickled over her skin as she descended into the damp stink of Harkenn's dungeons. She had spent a spell here herself, a lengthy one that had ended with the loss of her wings. Somehow it was worse now she was coming down alone, but she had no reason to think she'd end up in that situation again. After all, Harkenn had built her a cage of her own.

Ethred looked even worse than he had a few weeks before during Harkenn's interrogation. His filthy hair now reached below his shoulders, and he was much thinner. One might have thought the circumstances would have diminished a man's ego after several weeks of confinement, but the dark glance that flashed through the grizzled mane as he looked up was as arrogant as ever.

"For a moment there, I thought you'd got bored of me, Faellian," he said, then straightened properly. It appeared to cause him pain, and a part of Nova shivered with vindictive pleasure to see it. The ex-baron looked around her, a slow smile spreading across his face when he realised she was alone. "Well, well. I can't say I was expecting that."

Nova watched him through the bars, thinking the same thing. There was nothing to be gained from this, but her frustration and the niggling seen-before feeling from the Tivier book had brought her down here anyway.

"You think you'll have more luck than your owner?" Ethred goaded, shuffling closer to the bars. She forced her feet to stay still, forced down the memory of his hard grip on her at the Hallow dinner and his shouts as she was throttled by his Angel spy.

"I know you're guilty," she said, with no inflection in her voice. "I don't need any luck."

Something was prodding at her, and if she could only grasp it she'd know what she was really doing here. She clawed after it in her mind, staring at the baron's face and willing it to come together.

"You were involved in the food store plot," she said suddenly as if she was certain, even though it was a wild stab in the dark. The flash of confirmatory shock in his aura told her she was on the right track, even as his expression hardened and he offered a dramatic eye-roll.

"Oh, please. I've been down here for weeks, how could I possibly have had any part in that plan?"

"But you do know about this plan." News had never reached her during her stays in the dungeons, and another ripple of uncertainty in his aura confirmed that it still didn't make it down here on a regular basis.

"The guards mentioned it," Ethred said. He was scowling now. Very little of the serene smugness in the face of Harkenn's anger was present. "It's a big thing, they've been on about it for hours."

Nova smiled. Enjoying the rage in his aura which had followed quickly on the tail of a blatant lie, she wandered away, slowly enough to rub it in, and knocked on the door to the guards' office. A guard reeking of smoke and sweat opened it, still clutching his playing cards in one hand. He did a double-take when he saw her, and she was hard-pressed not to roll her eyes. That particular reaction was getting very tired.

"Your prisoner says you've been spouting outside news in earshot," she said. The guard's confusion told her all she needed to know before he opened his mouth to deny it.

"I can assure you we haven't. Not worth my post."

"Thanks. Carry on."

She left him standing there and returned to Ethred's cell. "Does the name Tivier ring a bell?"

It was a great relief that for once she'd managed to wipe all traces of his strange fixation with her off of his face. The baron's already-sallow face was now chalk-white and he'd retreated further back in the cell, but his dark eyes were still sharp and hateful. "The author? Are we playing riddles now? Yes, I know he writes books. What of it?"

"Do you recall what he writes about?"

Ethred's eyes narrowed. Nova had a dim recollection of Ethred's face at some dinner buried in the depths of her memories, difficult to dredge up since it had been one of the many occasions she'd been trying not to stab him with something. He'd been talking to Callan of House Nict about Tivier, and a few other authors besides...that was it. That was why the book had stood out. Anatomy had been in that stupid satchel he made an Orthanian acolyte carry about behind him all the time.

"Of course. I've read them all. But I hardly see how trying to start an impromptu book club is going to make me confess to something I had no part in, so I repeat what I said. What of it?"

Another lie shimmered across his aura.

"Curiosity." She didn't want to give too much away – though he had potentially given something away. Had he been researching the factors that started riots...and did that bear any relevance to the motives behind burning the food stores? Though why anyone would want to incite a civilian riot was a gaping hole in her puzzle, and another was how it linked to the body in the crypt. She knew she was making a lot of leaps based on a chance glance at a library book.

Besides, there was a possibility still that Ethred had outside sources he could report to, and she wasn't convinced he was at the centre of this particular web, if there was one. She didn't want to put herself in needless danger by alerting whoever was. "Did you have any part in the Unspoken deaths?"

He groaned, but his posture had relaxed. She was back on comfortable territory for him. "Not this again."

She could go through the motions as normal, but she had what she wanted, and there was no point pressing further without Harkenn present; her word would not be enough on its own. Harkenn knew she wasn't a neutral party in this particular trial.

"Fine," she said. "Worth a try."

She left the dungeons, happy to remove herself from the damp stink. It occurred to her that the guards might report that she'd been down there, but it was too late now, and besides, she wanted Harkenn to keep picking at this one. She wanted to see Ethred fall.

And a link with the Devils came with a very long drop.