Thirty-Five: Bad Signs

Nova entered Grace's room to find her with her face in a book.

She cleared her throat and Grace jumped, snapping the book shut and shoving it under her chair, before realising it was Nova and sighing. "Christ, Nova. At least knock first."

"I can leave if you're busy," Nova said, turning to go.

"No, no! Not busy. Please come in."

Nova crossed to Grace's bed and sat down, looking around as she did so. She was starting to prefer this place to her spot by the hearth; Faellian never bothered her here. Some small part of her put up a token resistance, wondering what would happen if they were found out, but the longer it went on, the smaller that part got. She knew it was incautious of her, but the calm she felt in this room was addictive. She pointed out a piece of embroidery on the bedside that hadn't been added to since she'd last been in here. "Given up?"

Grace glanced at it as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh. No, I haven't. It's just really boring." She slid the book back out from under the bed. It wasn't a large thing, but it was old, with unfamiliar characters on the cover. Nova supposed it was a language, but it wasn't one she'd ever seen before. "I'm trying to dredge up enough of a language I learned a bit of years ago. Wish I'd paid more attention in that class."

Nova folded her feet up underneath her and tucked the edge of the blanket around them. They were blue with cold from hours of sitting near the wall in Harkenn's study, out of the line of the fire's heat. "What language is it?"

"German," Grace replied, which left Nova no better off than before she'd asked. "An otherworld language. Jordan bought me this." She flipped through it until she found the page she wanted. "Here, look."

Nova cocked her head at the illustration hovering in front of her face. "A portal?"

"Yes, exactly," Grace said. The excitement faded from her face as she returned the book to her lap, devolving into despondency. "But I can't read the damn thing. It's only about two hundred years old, you know – the book, I mean. At least, it was during the timeline I was on back home." She frowned, and then sighed. "Portals move through time too, don't they?"

"Yes," Nova said. "Part of the reason why it's such unpredictable magic. There are too many places, and the scope of the whole timeline in those places. It's incredibly difficult to pinpoint the spot you want to go to. Impossible, if you don't know what you're doing."

Grace closed the book. "But there used to be portals to other places, right? Before the Isolation."

She'd been doing her reading. Nova confessed herself impressed at just how quickly Grace had picked up Common script. "Yes. But they were fixed in place by magic the likes of which has been lost since. When my people escaped their dying world, they had no idea where they'd end up." She offered a sardonic smile. "I expect they were thoroughly disappointed to find it populated and with a ruling family."

"And full of demons," Grace said.

Nova smirked. "And full of demons."

Grace put the book away again, as if suddenly finding it hard to look at. She got up, straightened out her skirts, and then joined Nova on the bed. Her eyes traced the new blisters on Nova's neck and ankles from being chained for days on end, and her lips pressed into a firm line. Nova was relieved when she didn't say anything.

"You haven't been to see me for days," Grace mumbled, breath tickling Nova's hair. An arm snaked around her waist and tugged her back until they lay side by side on the pillow. The dull ache that had taken up residence in Nova's spine over the past week began to ease as she relaxed into the embrace.

"Was stuck in all his meetings," she replied. She watched firelight dance with the gold in Grace's hair. "He's losing it over a missing key on top of everything else going on. And I'm useful to have about for interrogations."

"You definitely played your hand too early with that truth and lie thing."

Nova snorted. "I suspect that if it wasn't for that, he would have got bored of me by now. It's preferable to the things he used me for before he realised I had that ability."

Grace pulled back, eyes wide. "He didn't..."

"No." She pushed back the memories as they rose to the surface. "Not himself. I was...rented."

"Why does anyone tolerate him on the seat of power?" Grace hissed. She tried to get up, but Nova pulled her back down. She already regretted saying anything. She came here for peace, and she'd ruined it herself. Grace lowered herself back down, but she lay stiff now.

"Because he's good at it," Nova replied simply. "Because he stands between the people and a Caelumese regime. What he does in his own chambers doesn't worry many, as long as he can keep their families fed and protected."

"I don't know how you can speak in his favour after all he's done to you. After what he did to Jordan." She closed her eyes as if it still pained her. "I work for a man who would have hanged me for something he knew I didn't do."

"I'm not favouring him," Nova said, a little more coldly than she had intended. "I'm speaking the truth. He is a good ruler. He is an abhorrent man. They aren't always mutually exclusive."

"My brother is falling apart because of him. And he's not even protected for it."

Something in her tone made Nova open her eyes after they'd drifted closed. She peered at Grace's shadowed face in the darkening room, felt the tension in her like a spring. For the first time, she properly looked at her aura, and found guilt there. Guilt and pain. She sat up. "What's happened?"

It took a long while for Grace to reply. When she did, it wasn't in words; she got up soundlessly and drifted to a drawer under her bedside table, and retrieved a small slip of paper from it. She stood with her back to Nova as she looked at it, as if still debating whether to show it, but then she turned and held it out.

It was written on poor quality paper – a student's practice sheets, she would have guessed – and she had to read it a couple of times before she recognised what it was referring to.

There is a man who wants to meet you because he knows your brother. I do not think they are friends, nor do I think he intends to be friends with you. I do not think the danger is where they are telling you it is. If you do go, don't go alone.

Regards, Dela

As she unfolded the note in its entirety, another slip of paper fell out. This looked more like the corner of a page torn out of a book, and the handwriting was cramped and spiky, as if they were unused to writing.

Greetings,

I have an urgent matter to discuss with you in regards to Jordan. I will be at the Ram Inn near the castle's south gate on eighthday, two hours before the guard curfew.

It had no signature, and seemed to Nova like whoever had written it had attempted to be polite but wasn't really sure how to go about it. She frowned. "You're not going, of course."

Grace's aura immediately gave away that she had been considering it, even as she shook her head. "Of course not."

"Who's Dela?"

"A Kelian acolyte. I've met her a couple of times."

"She seems trustworthy?"

Grace frowned. "Well, I guess. As much as I can tell from a couple of brief meetings."

Something tickled at the back of Nova's memory, and she had a sudden image of a young acolyte accompanying the Lady Kerrin to the meeting about the plague, the same one she had seen talking to Grace in the aftermath of the food-store assault. The acolyte was as good as Grace's brother at getting dragged into whatever was going on at the time. "I think I know who she is." She looked down at the second note. "I've got my suspicions about this one."

It was bold to try and lure anyone away from Harkenn's castle, let alone one as distinctive as Grace. Yet if that person had been bold enough already to court an apprenticeship with the lord's future household Unspoken, then it didn't seem such a stretch. There was no astral signature on it she recognised except Grace's. The paper had been handled enough that any other traces were faint anyway. Thorne had been asking her to keep an eye out for Devils asking after Grace for months, and she had a sinking feeling that this was one of them. Just as her brother left the city for a few months, of course.

"If they're dangerous," Grace said, "then why do they have anything to do with Joe? Is someone after him?" She squinted. "Nova, do you know something I don't?"

Abruptly, she made a decision. It was probably a stupid one, but she wasn't exactly in a position to ask Thorne for herself. She was so tired of lying to Grace's face, and it hadn't gone very well for her last time. Besides, she told herself, if Grace didn't know the extent of the danger, she wouldn't put it past the girl to go chasing after it anyway. It wasn't like Nova could stop her. "Your brother won't be happy with me for telling you this. You're aware of the group known as the Devils?"

"The assassin group?"

"Yes. They're not just assassins. If it's illegal, they deal in it. They've had designs on your brother for a while."

Grace went very pale. "What?"

Ignoring the guilt gnawing at her gut, Nova continued, "The warehouse kidnapping was them. They have been using you as...leverage." She considered telling the whole truth about Thorne's apprenticeship with them, but Grace was looking so sick already she couldn't face it. She wasn't certain, either, that Thorne wouldn't do something drastic if he found out she was the one who told her. "He is under Harkenn and Yddris's protection, as are you. I would wager that this," she held up the note, "is an attempt to get around that protection."

"I don't understand. What do they want with him? And why doesn't he tell me anything?"

"Because he's Gifted. Because he's otherworld. They think he has something they want. They know that in a few years' time he'll have Harkenn's confidences. It could be any or none of those. I don't know. I strongly suspect he didn't tell you because he didn't want you to live with it hanging over you." She cocked her head. "And as the impromptu bodyguard he asked me to be, I'm telling you not to go to this meeting."

Her eyes darted to Nova's face. They sparkled with unshed tears, but it was hard to tell even from her aura whether they were from anger or fright. She let out a watery chuckle. "You're my bodyguard now?"

"It would seem so."

Grace forced her face into mock seriousness. "Is he paying you?"

"Favours are a very valuable currency when you're in my position," Nova said. "And he owes me a lot of them."

They sat in silence for a while, only the crackling of the fire interrupting it. Nova didn't want to break it first. She was unsure how Grace felt about the news, her aura was such a riot. She was apprehensive about how many of the flashes of rage she saw might be reserved for her. Then, to her surprise, Grace began untying the straps of her pinafore and rolling off her stockings.

"This is a morning problem," she said firmly, though her voice shook. "It always...always looks better in the morning. So I want you to distract me."

Nova's face blazed as the firelight played on Grace's body. Warmth enveloped her, and the world fell away.

She didn't mean to fall asleep in Grace's room, but when she woke, she was wearing nothing but her slave collar. She had been under the sheets so long that the chain was warm. Sharing the addictive mugginess of the bed was Grace, curled up on her side and breathing deeply in sleep. The fire had burned to ruby embers in the hearth and the room was full of shadows.

But there weren't just shadows.

Shadows would not have woken her.

It took her sleep-sodden mind a few frustrating attempts to focus on the itchy feeling of something out of place nearby. Her eyes were no better off for the embers' light, so she relied on her magic sense to probe the room. There was no one in it except them.

Grace muttered and fidgeted, one hot hand falling on Nova's hip. She almost gave in then and sank back into sleep, but she caught a flicker of something at the last second. There was somebody nearby. They weren't inside the room, but outside. She trained her eyes on where she knew the window to be. Was that a shimmer of movement, a shadow within a shadow, or was her mind playing tricks on her? She focused her senses, tried to probe further. She came up against a wall. Not a physical wall, nor the cold absence of an aura. Someone was blocking her. If they could block her, they could probe in the other direction. She schooled her aura to a blankness that was a physical effort to hold onto. Something cold had settled somewhere around her bowels. Few people could block her, and those that could she had no desire to run into.

She slid from the bed and pattered to the hearth. She threw a small handful of kindling on the dying fire and stoked it to a crackle, but it didn't warm her at all. She scrambled around the floor for her shift and pulled it on, all the while monitoring for movement with her senses.

There was nothing in the room she could use as a weapon if needed, unless she planned to get close enough to throttle with her chain. Even then that was gambling on strength she wasn't sure she had. It was a poor substitute, but she picked up a needle from Grace's bedside and tucked it between her fingers.

"Nova?" Grace mumbled, stirring.

"Stay in bed," Nova instructed softly, and something in her voice must have given the severity of the situation away, because Grace did what she was told. She sat up, hair tousled around her face, and pulled the sheet up over her chest.

Nova crept to the window, needle clenched between her fingers. She secured herself in her studied blankness, and then drew back the curtain.

The darkness of the night was relentless. This side of the castle faced the mountains, and it was pouring with rain outside. Firelight glinted off the water on the window pane, but everything beyond was a mystery. Thin winks of green occasionally made themselves known – the current was returning to the mountains, but was still dim yet – but the mountains themselves had melted into the sky.

"Do you need a torch?" Grace asked from the bed. She was pulling her dress back on under the sheets. Then she slid out and went back to her drawer, pulling out a small black contraption that looked like a strange matchbox. Nova watched in consternation as Grace pulled up a little lever and cranked the contraption with a sound like a dying cat. Then a click sounded, and bright blue-tinged light filled the room.

"What in Vestra's holy name is that?" Nova hissed, blinking in the harshness of it.

"It's a torch, like I said. It's charged through kinetic energy, so it didn't die when we got here. Endless battery."

In her surprise at the bizarre little thing, Nova had fallen out of her blank state. She sensed someone notice. She held a hand out, squeezing her eyes half-shut against the glare. "Give it here."

She couldn't contain a superstitious shudder as Grace handed her the strange excuse for a torch; she would much rather have had a brazier. You could shove one of those in someone's face if needed. She directed the beam outside, and it fell across the lawns and the cobbled paths that ran through them. Rain fell like sparks in the light. She ran it across the scene, grudgingly impressed by the reach of the beam. Grace hovered at her shoulder, her fingers dancing at the slope of Nova's neck and proving very distracting.

"I must have..." Nova trailed off in confusion. She was sure she had sensed someone, and she was equally sure she could still feel them somewhere. In a flash of inspiration she turned the light very suddenly to the bottom corner of the window. Grace let out a gasp of surprise that matched the violence of Nova's sudden intake of breath.

There had been a face, just before the person had turned and vanished back into the night. Nova tried to follow them with the torchlight, but either they moved too fast or she was looking in the wrong place. Either way, she felt their presence recede until only a trace of it lingered.

She rocked back on her heels and let the curtain fall across the window, feeling sick.

"Are they gone?" Grace whispered. Nova could only find the energy to nod dully.

"I need to go..." she said after a moment, and then stopped. Where would she go? Whoever it had been had already seen them together, so there was no point in her dashing back off to the kitchens. No point in surrendering a warm bed and company when their spy was already long gone. She sighed, and crossed the room to sink slowly onto the bed and lie down. Grace had no apparent intention to settle back down. She sat on the edge of the bed playing with the strap on the torch, her face very white and her lips pressed together in a thin line.

"Do you think it was Harkenn sending someone to spy on us?" she said, throwing the torch to the bed as if it suddenly annoyed her. "Or someone who's looking to get dirt on us?"

Nova forced her mouth to move, even though the cold fear in the pit of her stomach made her want to crawl under the bed and never come out.

"No to the first one," she muttered, "and I would wager that you're half-right on the second one. I think someone was trying to get dirt. On me."

Grace frowned. "How are you so sure?"

"You didn't see?"

"I saw a face," Grace replied. When Nova didn't say anything she nudged her with her knee. "Nova?"

"They had wings," Nova said hoarsely. "They were Caelumese. And by the way they blocked me out, I'm guessing that they were employed by the palace."

"Your uncle sent them?"

Nova lay unblinking. It was too subtle for Lucifer; he would have sent spies crashing through the window to haul her away."My uncle could have." She ground her teeth, and then added, "But I'm betting it was my sister."