Ch. 33: Witnesses and Ch. 34: What She Left

Chapter 33: Witnesses

Edrin put down the cloth.

“The connection answered.”

The Commander turned from the door. “To what?”

“An examination of the residue, most likely.” Edrin looked at Marielle’s arm. “Shadow affinity.”

Serali.

Marielle kept her face still.

It might not be Serali. It might be something else. She knew very little about blood magic except that she strongly preferred not to contain it.

“Can they follow?” the Commander asked.

“Not from that response alone. I will damp it.”

“How long?”

“Several minutes without interruption.”

The Commander nodded. “Vaelis, the street. Tairn, stay with her.”

Vaelis crossed to the door. Tairn remained in his chair, watching Marielle.

Not the room.

Her.

She looked down at her hands.

The rope was good. She had tested it enough to be certain of that. No conveniently slipping knot. No forgotten knife. No tools in the pockets they had removed with her skirt.

Above her shoulder, the window frame stood away from the wall.

Tools did not have to begin as tools.

Edrin crouched beside her.

He held her elbow and placed two fingers against the bandage.

Marielle’s breath caught.

Tairn shifted forward.

“Do not let her touch it,” Edrin said.

“I have her hands.”

He did. One firm grip around the rope between her wrists, holding them in her lap.

Edrin pushed lightly on the bandage and Marielle’s arm jerked. “Keep the arm still please.”

Marielle stared at the floor until the pain narrowed to something she could breathe around.

“Can you not ask it politely?” she said.

Neither man answered.

Edrin worked without looking at her face. Once, he made Tairn change the angle of her wrists. Once, he stopped and listened to something Marielle could not hear.

“Better,” he said.

“For whom?”

He checked the edge of the dressing. “Do not disturb it.”

Tairn released her hands and returned to the chair.

Marielle settled against the plaster. The frame’s lower corner pressed into her back.

She shifted an inch to the side.

A narrow strip of timber lay between frame and masonry. Packing, added when someone had fitted a square frame into an opening that had ceased to be square.

The exposed end was splintered. A gap ran behind it, wide enough for her fingers.

She looked back at Tairn.

His eyes moved to her hands.

Marielle left them in her lap and leaned back against the wall, breathing shallowly. Her injured arm had gone half-numb below the elbow. That was probably bad. Lia would have opinions.

Daravan would have worse ones.

Do not think about Daravan.

It was unhelpful, and irritating.

Very irritating man. Standing in offices, saying things like “I will protect you” and then pretending the sentence had merely tripped and fallen out of his mouth. Sending guards. Watching her arm. Nearly smiling.

No.

She could think about that later, if she was alive and had time to be unreasonable.

Vaelis returned with dust on her boots and no improvement in her expression.

“The search is moving through the dye lanes,” she told the Commander. “They are checking rear courts.”

“This street?”

“Not yet.”

He considered, then pointed toward the hearth. “Check the lower exit. We stay until Edrin clears the transport.”

Vaelis looked at Marielle. “She should be gagged.”

“She needs water first,” Tairn said.

Marielle had not realized how much she wanted water until he said it.

Vaelis’s gaze moved to him. “Does she?”

“She has been bleeding.”

“That was her decision.”

Marielle looked at the woman’s face.

There was no misunderstanding in it. Vaelis knew exactly what had happened in Aurrel’s shop.

She simply preferred that description.

“An interesting allocation of responsibility,” Marielle said.

Vaelis crossed to her.

Tairn stood, but did not intervene when the woman caught Marielle’s chin.

“You have a great deal to say.” Vaelis’s thumb pressed into the sore place beside her mouth. “We could improve that.”

Marielle tried to turn away.

The grip tightened.

Her heart began to pound.

“Do you know what happens to Avalusians who fall into Lyehiran hands?” Vaelis asked.

Marielle looked at the hand holding her face. She had read accounts. Some had included names she knew.

“I am beginning to form an impression.”

Vaelis studied her. “Most noblewomen would have learned to beg by now.”

Marielle’s hands were shaking against her skirt. She wanted the woman to step away. She wanted water, and Corren alive, and to go home.

“That is not a useful comparison.”

The words were out before she had considered whether they should be.

Vaelis’s thumb pressed harder. “You think you are different?”

“No.” Her voice shook. She wished it had not. “I think you mistake being frightened for agreeing with you.”

“Then perhaps you should show a little more sense.”

Marielle meant to stop. She could feel the pressure of Vaelis’s fingers against her jaw.

“You needed four agents, prepared magic, and a spell already in my arm.” She had to pause for breath. “Congratulations on winning with an overwhelming advantage.”

Vaelis’s smile faded.

She released Marielle’s chin and caught her left wrist.

Marielle drew back against the wall. There was nowhere farther to go.

Vaelis pulled the arm away from her body and began turning it. Pain caught at the wound. Marielle’s bound right hand followed helplessly.

“Stop.”

“Is that how you ask?”

Marielle tried to move with the pressure. Her shoulder struck the projecting frame.

“I need her responsive,” Edrin said sharply. “Release that arm. I have just stabilized the anchor.”

Vaelis held it a moment longer. “There is another arm.”

“Vaelis,” the Commander said.

She released Marielle and stood.

“The exit.”

Vaelis went.

Marielle kept her hands in her lap until her breathing steadied.

Edrin had objected.

For one moment, she had almost been grateful.

Then she remembered his fingers on her arm and the word responsive.

Tairn brought a cup and crouched beside her.

Marielle lifted her bound hands. Pain caught in her left arm, and she lowered them again.

He held the rim to her mouth.

She disliked needing him to do that. She drank anyway.

When she had finished, he took the cup away. Her eyes followed it. Earthenware. Breakable.

He set it beyond her reach.

“Sit still,” he said.

She watched him return to the chair.

He had remembered the cup. No one had remembered the gag.

Marielle kept her mouth closed while she considered that.

Behind her hip, the split end of the timber pressed through her blouse.

Marielle did not need freedom.

She needed the street to know she was here.

Freedom required getting past four armed people, finding a route she could follow, and remaining upright long enough to use it.

A witness required an opening and breath.

Smaller problem.

Still a very bad one.

She kept her hands where Tairn could see them and studied the frame above her shoulder.

The packing strip had split around its lowest fixing. Pulling straight would leave it trapped beneath the frame. Sideways pressure might tear the damaged end clear.

Might.

She would not have time to try twice.

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Marielle would have preferred proper tools.

Vaelis lifted a small hatch beside the hearth and descended out of sight. The Commander spoke quietly to Edrin over the marked cloth.

Tairn kept watching.

The timber was long enough. Narrow enough. One end crushed thin by the weight of the frame.

The lower hinge had been fixed into wood that had split around the nails. She did not need to break iron.

Only finish what damp and neglect had started.

Vaelis called from below.

Tairn turned his head toward the hatch.

Marielle moved.

She hooked her fingers behind the split end, braced her shoulder against the wall, and shoved sideways with both bound hands.

The timber cracked.

Tairn turned back.

Marielle wrenched the broken length outward and rose onto her knees in the same movement.

“Stop.” Tairn was already out of the chair.

She drove the crushed end beneath the hinge plate and threw her weight against it.

Her left arm gave a sharp, sickening pull.

The hinge held.

Tairn reached for her.

Marielle pushed harder.

One nail tore loose.

Then another.

The shutter dropped crookedly, and daylight cut across her face.

“WATCH!”

Tairn caught her shoulder.

She shoved the shutter outward with her right forearm.

“LADY MARIELLE! WATCH—”

A hand closed over her mouth.

The Commander pulled her back from the opening. Marielle bit the edge of his hand before he changed his grip, fingers hard against her jaw.

Tairn took the timber.

That quickly.

All that work, and they had her again in seconds.

Then someone outside shouted. “There! The window!”

Marielle stopped struggling for half a breath.

Someone had heard.

Vaelis came up through the hatch. Marielle kicked as the woman reached her, catching her leg.

Vaelis stumbled. Her face changed.

She drove a fist into Marielle’s stomach. Marielle folded against the Commander’s grip, unable to draw breath.

Vaelis caught her right hand.

“I warned you.”

“Release it,” the Commander said.

For a moment, Marielle felt the pressure increase.

Then Vaelis let go.

The Commander looked at her. “Secure the possessions. We move.”

No raised voice. No uncertainty.

Outside, a second voice called for the Watch.

Tairn tried to close the shutter. It sagged against the frame, leaving a bright gap.

“Another translation risks tearing the anchor,” Edrin said.

The Commander turned toward him, still holding Marielle. “Can you reduce the risk?”

“With preparation. Not eliminate it.”

Footsteps sounded outside. Someone knocked at a neighboring door.

The Commander listened. “Use the lower circle. Do what you can.”

Edrin gathered his materials.

That was the whole discussion.

Marielle tried to speak beneath the hand over her mouth.

No one asked what she thought of the risk.

Tairn took her by the uninjured arm. The Commander released her jaw only when Vaelis had a strip of cloth ready.

Marielle turned her face away.

Vaelis caught her hair and tied the gag. Tight.

“Enough,” Edrin said, looking up. “She must breathe.”

Vaelis loosened it just enough.

Tairn guided Marielle toward the hatch. She braced her feet against the stone.

He lifted her.

“I am not luggage,” she managed around the cloth.

“You are bait,” Vaelis snapped.

The Commander descended first. Tairn turned her toward the ladder and guided her onto it, keeping hold of her uninjured arm. With her wrists bound, she could not grip the rungs.

The descent was not dignified. It was also not quiet.

Marielle dragged her heel against the wall. Limewash broke away. At the bottom, she stamped against a loose metal fitting beside the ladder.

The clang went through the cellar.

Tairn caught her boot before she could do it again. “Enough.”

She looked at him.

He held her gaze, then turned her toward the passage.

Low brick ceiling. A narrow opening to daylight on the right.

Voices beyond it.

Marielle drove her heel against its wooden slats as they passed.

One cracked.

“Below!” someone shouted outside.

Tairn tightened his hold and carried her clear of the opening.

She could not smile around the gag.

She wanted to.

Edrin waited in a cellar room beyond, kneeling beside a prepared circle. Vaelis arrived carrying the bundled coat, skirt, and tools. She shut the door behind them and dropped a bar into its brackets.

Marielle saw the circle light.

Her brief satisfaction disappeared. Not again. She remembered the pressure closing around her arm, the moment when there had been nothing beneath her. Edrin had said another transport could tear the anchor. They were putting her through it anyway.

Edrin caught her elbow and adjusted the bandage. “Hold her here.”

Tairn obeyed.

Marielle shook her head.

Edrin pressed two fingers beside the wound. Light moved under her skin.

She made a sound into the cloth.

He watched the light. “Keep the shoulder level,” he said.

Tairn changed his grip.

She threw herself sideways and kicked, trying to get a foot beyond the lines. Tairn caught her before she could turn. She jerked back against him, scarcely aware of where Edrin stood.

Not for witnesses now.

Against the circle. Against the hands keeping her inside it. Against whatever had begun opening in her arm.

The Commander caught her legs. Tairn held her shoulders.

Edrin spoke.

The pull caught beneath the wound and would not let go.

Marielle tried to breathe.

The first transport had taken the floor away.

This one seemed to take her apart with it.

She could feel her arm. Too much of it. Every place the pain passed through, every place it caught.

She heard herself screaming through the gag. She had meant to call for help at the window. Now she could not stop the sound. Then even that seemed far away.

Through the sound in her ears came a crash beyond the barred door.

Someone shouting.

Close.

The circle vanished.

Stone struck her hip. For a moment she thought they had dropped her beside the circle and she could still get away. She tried to push herself backward. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her hand, though nothing around her moved.

Marielle could not make her lungs work.

A hand turned her onto her side and pulled the gag clear.

“Breathe,” Edrin said.

As though she had overlooked it.

She dragged in a little air. Then more. Her eyes would not settle on anything. The barrel in front of her was unfamiliar, and the door was on the wrong side. They had moved her again. She pressed her right palm against the stone and waited until she could feel it staying still.

Edrin examined her arm while she shook against the floor. Across the room, Vaelis was being sick. Tairn leaned against a barrel, eyes closed, still holding the strip they had used to gag her.

The Commander stood beside the circle. His bitten hand was bleeding.

Marielle held on to that while the room returned.

Stone cellar. No window. Heavy door.

A support post bolted securely into the floor.

“Another transport?” the Commander asked.

“Not today,” Edrin said. “The anchor held. Barely.”

“Then stabilize it.”

Edrin nodded.

The Commander crouched beside Marielle.

She tried to draw her knees farther from him. They did not move properly.

“You have cost yourself considerably,” he said.

Her mouth hurt. Her arm hurt. She could not tell whether the shaking came from pain or fear.

“Your first safe house,” she whispered, “was structurally indefensible.”

He looked at her for a moment.

Then stood. “Secure her to the post. Check everything within reach.”

Tairn did.

Vaelis wiped her mouth and began checking the room.

Edrin prepared another dressing.

No window. No loose timber. Less room to move.

Marielle let her head rest against the post.

They had heard her.

She had to keep that separate from what it had cost.

Someone had seen the opening. Someone had shouted for the Watch. Somewhere behind her, the shutter would not close, and a broken slat marked the passage below.

Daravan would have something to find.

She closed her eyes for one breath.

Then opened them and began looking at the new room.

Chapter 34: What She Left

The Watch runner reached the shop as Serali and Lia’s carriage pulled away.

Daravan saw him speak to Harrek. Saw the Commander’s attention change.

He crossed the lane before either man called him.

“A woman shouted from a house in the lower dye district,” Harrek said. “Watch. Lady Marielle.”

Daravan looked at the runner. “Those words?”

“Two witnesses agree on the name, Captain. The first patrol followed noise into the cellar. There was a barred door.”

“Was?”

“They forced it. Empty room beyond. Spell marks on the floor.”

Alive when she shouted.

That was the fact to take with him.

“Address,” Harrek said.

The runner gave it.

Harrek turned to the district officer beside the shop entrance. “Keep this scene secured. Continue the statements. Nothing from the transport mark goes into general storage.”

Daravan called his guard over.

“Follow Lady Serali and Mistress Lia to the palace. Tell them we have a second scene and will send records. The Watch heard Lady Marielle calling for help.”

The guard repeated it correctly.

Daravan went for his horse.

The house stood between a laundering yard and a store selling lamp oil.

Too many people for privacy once someone began shouting. Enough ordinary traffic to conceal arrivals before that.

A place to wait briefly.

Harrek’s officers had cleared the doorway. Neighbors remained across the street, watching a shutter that hung crookedly from its frame.

Daravan stopped beneath it.

One hinge plate had pulled away from the wood. The shutter moved whenever the wind caught it, tapping against the remaining fixing.

Someone had tried to close it.

Someone else had made that difficult.

A lieutenant met Harrek at the door.

“Building checked. No one left inside. Two officers at the cellar passage, another pair checking the adjoining access.”

“Who forced the door?” Harrek asked.

The lieutenant indicated an officer beside the wall. Plaster dust marked his coat.

“Report.”

“We heard movement below as we entered,” the officer said. “A man in the alley directed us to the opening. One slat had been broken. We found the passage from the hatch.”

“How far behind?”

“Close enough to hear them beyond the door.”

Daravan kept his hands still.

“What did you hear?” he asked.

“A woman. Could not make out words. A man giving instructions. Then light beneath the door.”

“You saw no one leave?” Harrek asked.

“No, Commander. We broke the bar. By then there was no one there.”

Harrek nodded. “Give the clerk the sequence while it is fresh. Keep what you heard separate from what you concluded.”

The officer straightened and went.

Daravan looked through the doorway.

Close enough to hear her.

He entered.

The front room was small.

Stone floor. Damp plaster. A table against one wall, a chair nearer the door. Beside the hearth, a hatch stood open.

A length of broken timber lay beneath the window. Thin at one end, splintered at the other. The gap beside the frame matched its width.

He crouched without touching it.

Freshly exposed wood showed where the packing had been torn free. The crushed end bore another mark, a narrow impression edged with rust.

Daravan looked up at the hinge plate.

There.

Harrek joined him. “Not a weapon?”

“A lever.”

He indicated the mark, then the torn fixing. “She took it from the frame.”

“You think she opened the shutter herself.”

Daravan nodded and stood. Dust had been rubbed from the wall beneath the window. A heel had scraped the stone. Blood marked the edge of the sill, though he could not tell whose.

She had been here.

The table held a cup, a used scrap of bandage, and something dark near the far edge.

Daravan stopped.

It was cloth, not much of it.

A narrow seam remained along one side. The other had torn unevenly, threads pulled into a fringe.

He knew the fabric.

He had seen the gap it belonged to.

Mael’s right cuff, beside the hand that kept reaching after there was no one left to hold.

Daravan moved closer.

“What?” Harrek asked.

“Palace uniform.”

Harrek looked at the scrap. “One of your men?”

“Mael’s cuff was torn. He held her wrist while the spell took her.”

Daravan could still hear him.

I had her.

He had thought the missing cloth another detail of the fight. A hand forced open. Fabric caught and torn.

But she had brought it with her.

His hand moved toward the table.

Stopped.

Harrek waited.

“Record it where it lies,” Daravan said. “We can compare the tear with Mael’s coat.”

“And then?”

“Seal it.”

Harrek called the clerk over.

Daravan stepped aside and let him work.

The woman from across the street gave her statement first.

Edda Marrin. She worked in the laundering yard and had been bringing a basket out when the shutter broke.

Harrek asked her to begin before the shout.

“Wood cracked,” she said. “I looked up. The shutter fell sideways.”

“Then?”

“A woman pushed it open. Called for the Watch. Said Lady Marielle.”

“Can you describe her?”

“White hair. Pale blouse. The sleeve was torn on this side.” Edda touched her left arm. “Her hands were together.”

Daravan looked toward the window.

“Together how?” Harrek asked.

“At the wrists. I thought tied, but I could not see the rope.”

“You saw her push the shutter?”

“Yes. There was a man reaching for her. Then another pulled her back.”

“Faces?”

Edda shook her head. “Too quick.”

“What did you do?”

“Shouted. There were people farther along the street. One went for the patrol.”

Harrek let her finish. Asked what she had heard afterward, what she had seen, what others had told her.

At the end, Edda looked at him. “It was her?”

“The description fits Lady Marielle,” he said.

“They have her?”

“We are looking for her.”

Edda pressed her lips together. “She was trying very hard.”

Daravan’s throat tightened. “Yes.”

Harrek thanked her and sent an officer to take any further details.

The delivery man from the alley had heard the first shout without seeing the window. He saw a boot strike the slatted opening below, then someone pulled it away.

“That was when I called down to the others,” he said. “Told them where the noise was.”

No glimpse of a face. No reliable count of the people inside.

Useful anyway.

When the man left, Daravan returned to the window.

The broken timber would have made a poor weapon against four people.

But it was an adequate lever against rotten wood.

She had used what she could reach to make an opening she did not need to climb through.

“Witnesses,” he said.

Harrek looked at him.

“She was getting the street’s attention.”

“Rather than trying to get out?”

“Perhaps both. But this worked.”

He glanced at the clerk recording the cuff. “She gave us a place to look.”

Harrek’s voice lowered. “She bought us a house.”

Daravan nodded once.

Limewash had scraped away beside the ladder.

A metal fitting at its foot bore a fresh mark. Farther along the passage, the broken slat hung toward the alley.

Daravan stopped beside it.

He could see the street through the gap. People moving. Watch uniforms. Ordinary daylight, close enough to hear and impossible to reach from where she had been held.

She had kicked it anyway.

An officer lifted a lantern.

Harrek indicated the ladder and opening. “Sketch the route. Record the marks before anyone else moves through. Statements from the people who heard the noise go with it.”

They continued to the barred door.

Its brackets had torn partly from the masonry. The broken bar lay inside.

Daravan crossed the threshold carefully.

Barrels. A covered well. Prepared marks on stone, surrounded now by a boundary the Watch had laid down.

No route continuing from this room.

They had not simply fled beneath the adjoining buildings.

Harrek studied the floor. “Another transport.”

“Consistent with the first,” Daravan said. “Serali needs to confirm it.”

The residue looked different from the marks in Aurrel’s shop. Darker in places. Uneven along an edge.

He wanted it to mean something useful.

A distance. A direction. A limit on what the mage could do next.

He had none of those answers.

“Separate samples,” he said. “Lia will need the blood kept apart from the spell material.”

Harrek nodded to the lieutenant. “Have the scene examiner prepare them. Nothing taken from the center until it is fully recorded. Copies and samples to the palace under escort.”

Daravan looked back through the doorway.

First Sun. Aurrel’s shop. This house.

At each place, they had prepared something before the Crown knew where to look.

“They had a fallback here,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And somewhere ready to receive them.”

“Probably.”

Harrek met his eyes. “We pursue the preparation.”

Daravan nodded. That they could do.

Back upstairs, the lieutenant had a first account of the property.

The lamp-oil seller knew who collected rent for the owner. A neighbor had seen provisions delivered, but could not yet say which cart brought them.

No names worth treating as identities.

Two people worth questioning.

Harrek sent officers for both.

“Payment records. Keys. Who arranged access to the cellar,” he said. “And check whether this passage has another entrance. I want the property account compared with the rental inquiries already underway.”

The lieutenant went.

“I will have the palace records office assist with the ownership chain,” Daravan said. “Verya can establish what authority is needed for the next searches.”

“And Yvander may know the factor.”

“Or someone who does.”

Harrek looked toward the empty table. “They took what mattered to them.”

Daravan thought of the single scrap left behind. “Not everything.”

A palace guard waited at the door with paper for the report.

Daravan dictated what they could support. Marielle’s current location remained unknown.

“Mistress Lia and Lady Serali receive the scene records and samples,” he finished. “Her Majesty receives this report through the duty officer.”

The guard read back the report.

Daravan corrected one word.

Outside, the shutter struck its frame again.

Daravan looked at the timber, the hinge, the narrow gap to daylight.

He knew how much pain that arm had caused her before anyone dragged her into this room.

She had used it anyway.

Harrek returned from the doorway. “The rent collector is being brought in. I am going to speak to him.”

“I will get the records moving.”

They stepped into the street.

Marielle had made herself heard.

Now they had work to do with what she had given them.