Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Sixty Seven: Manipulations

Nova was startled by the panic she felt as Yddris and Nika led her back inside the castle. She had been away for two days; that wasn't long enough to get used to living elsewhere, and yet the sight of the vast entrance filled her with dread. She put it down to knowing that the Caelumese were still inside, and that she would be expected to confront them this time; that Grace wasn't here with her, nor in easy reach. Grace was across the city, staying at the Demon's Brew with her brother, so that the innkeeper could keep an eye on them both while she and the Unspoken attended the meeting.

What she wouldn't have given to stay behind as well, to help organise the cellar alongside the Haverfords and Kedrick's children. But that was only an option for free folk, and she wasn't one of them. She was actively tightening her own manacles by agreeing to come to this meeting. The thought had occurred to her, while she huddled in the warmth of a real wool blanket pressed against Grace's back that morning, that there was a good chance Harkenn would never be able to enforce her presence in the state he was in. He might not even notice she was gone.

Not that she could get it past Yddris. For some unfathomable reason the lord mattered too much to the Unspoken for him to allow her to leave Harkenn to his fate.

They entered the foyer unremarked; with the exception of the housekeeper, Jan, it was unlikely that anyone had noticed her absence. She tightened her mental walls as a Caelumese valet hurried past with a stack of linens, but she might as well have been part of the furniture for all the mind he paid her.

She braced herself as they ascended the stairs. There would be a short meeting with Harkenn ahead of the one with all the Heads of Houses, which would be held in the Assembly Hall. The pretence for this early meeting was that the guard needed updating on their orders, but in reality it was a ploy to get the Heads inside the Hall before Cael got any say in it. He wouldn't make any moves in front of them all. She wondered if he suspected that his ruse had been discovered, and concluded that he probably did. Whether it forced him to change tactics depended entirely on how confident he was in his poison. Considering a physician as skilled as Nika was stymied by it, he likely had good cause to be.

She hoped Yddris had a better plan than just endlessly repeating this charade. The stalemate had to fold eventually, and it was better to be the one making the first move.

Inside the study, the three leaders of the Caelumese contingent waited for them. Harkenn sat behind his desk, but for the first time in her recollection he looked as though he needed the chair more than chose to use it. The tremor in his hands was pronounced enough now to show even when he was at rest. It was an alarming development for only a couple of days. Keeping her walls tight, she looked at Cael out of the corner of her eye. His face was carefully neutral, save for the slightest hint of a smirk at one side of his mouth, and she suppressed a shudder of disgust. She hated Harkenn, but she had always despised those who found cruelty amusing. It was a topic that veered very close to her personal experience.

Cael's smirk faded a little when he saw her, but the avaricious glint in his gaze that replaced it wasn't much better. Evangeline on his left looked nervous, but Varron, the military leader, was as stoic as ever. He nodded an acknowledgement to her when she entered which she returned with the barest inclination of her head, then turned her attention to the others in the room. To her surprise, Brillan was present. She hadn't noticed him initially as he was seated in a wheeled chair, the only person in the room in a worse state than Harkenn. A web of scarring occupied one side of his head where he had been knocked out with a pan during the demon siege months before, and he was skeletal in stature, looking more his age than he ever had before. Beside Brillan stood Jeorge, grim-faced.

Harkenn's gaze, which had been fixed on some point in the middle distance, sharpened at her entrance. Using techniques she had painstakingly practiced over the weeks guarding Grace – at the cost of sleepless nights and pounding headaches – she focused her own protective walls to include Harkenn's aura as well. As she did so, she was able to see it again, and see how pale and mist-like it had become. On the arms of the chair Harkenn's trembling slowed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Cael flinch. Suspicions confirmed, then – whenever the Angel was present, he had his claws in Harkenn's aura. No doubt this was the turning point; now she had revealed her capabilities, he would double down on his efforts to keep her out of the way. Until Harkenn's poison was discovered and treated, the delegation could wreak city-wide havoc if they made a move without the lord in full control of his senses. Especially if they had Orthan and the Devils on side. As Yddris had outlined so strenuously, until they knew how deep and how wide the web was, any rash action could result in a trap they wouldn't come back from; but while she stood in the way and gave Harkenn the ability to make rational choices, the Caelumese would struggle to take control entirely. She might as well have painted a bullseye on her own back.