Wizard's Masquerade, page 38
He smiled. “Will you come and watch?”
“Why not?” she said, and they entered the Great Hall together.
The table she usually occupied with Grace was empty. She wasn’t surprised to find her absent; Grace didn’t have an appetite of late.
She ate distractedly, barely registering Jester’s performance as she scanned the hall, hoping to spot Cornelius’ wavy, caramel hair.
“Leyna, there you are!” said her mother, arriving arm-in-arm with a young man she had ensnared. Introductions were made, and she did her best to be polite, but she wasn’t in the mood.
“It’s so lovely to meet you, Lord Alfred.” Leyna smiled warmly, but she was already pushing her chair out as she rose. “However, I’m afraid I need to go—”
“Leyna,” warned her mother, but Leyna was already hurrying away.
She cast one last look around the Great Hall for Cornelius, but he wasn’t there, and she left in the middle of Jester’s performance. He gave her a wave, and she almost returned it, until he followed up the gesture by blowing her a kiss. Heads turned towards her, and she felt a warm flush creep across her face as she scampered out, conscious of her limp nearly as much as the combined attentions of Jester and Lord Alfred.
Ever since the Court Massacre, Lady Saunders’ matchmaking efforts had intensified. The perceived threat of danger that overshadowed Rutherford Castle had made her more desperate than ever to see her daughter ‘settled and looked after’.
Deep down, Leyna understood that this was her mother’s way of dealing with the tragic events, having lost many of her friends and social connections after the Massacre. But no matter what her mother said about the importance of marriage, she could not disguise her fear that Leyna would suffer a fate similar to Tash.
Sympathetic to her mother’s hopes, Leyna did her best to bear the introductions to potential suitors with as much dignity as she could salvage—and there were many potential suitors. In normal circumstances, she should have met them all by now, but there were plenty of new faces at Rutherford Castle. Despite the devastation of the Massacre, the court had been quick to replenish its numbers, with newly arrived nobles crying crocodile tears as they hurried to occupy the best vacant suites.
The problem, therefore, was less to do with the variety of suitors and instead more to do with her own lack of interest. The Court Massacre had turned her world upside down, and life was too unstable, the pain of loss too fresh, for her to simper and make small talk as if everything was normal—as if the newly arrived Alfred inviting her to tea wasn’t occupying the suite where, only a few weeks ago, a young couple expecting their first child had lived, a fact that he’d been oblivious to when she asked.
With two hours left before her night shift, she headed for Captain Marton’s office, hoping to glean answers.
No one answered the office door, but she found him in the armoury with Huskarl Damian.
“You’re not wrong, Saunders,” said Captain Marton, looking dignified even as he admitted to the Royal Guard’s failures. “The huskarls should have been able to fend off the attack.”
“So, why couldn’t they?” she asked.
“Our investigation revealed that someone drugged the wine barrels that were served at the Baxton’s home.”
“You mean the Baxtons poisoned the king?”
The captain shook his head.
“No, no and no.” He ticked off a list with his broad fingers. “First, we do not think it was the Baxton’s. Second, it wasn’t poison. And third, the king would not have been served that slush—the Baxtons are a respectable noble family, and I am confident that they served him a much a finer vintage.”
Captain Marton puffed out his broad chest, as if the quality of wine that the deceased king had been served was amongst the more important details.
“The wine barrels were for the guards,” Damian explained. The blade had his legs propped up on a stool as he sharpened his knife with a whetstone. “It was all loaded up here at the castle so it could be served at the Baxtons’ welcome feast.”
“So, the Baxtons weren’t the ones who drugged the wine?” Leyna asked.
The captain shook his head.
“And it wasn’t poison,” added Damian. “It was some kind of magical potion. Anyone who drank the wine grew weak, both physically and magically. And everyone was drinking, apparently. Even the huskarls had a little something.”
“Yes, well…” Captain Marton was visibly uncomfortable that his guards had been drinking while on duty.
“What do you mean, ‘magically’ weak?” Leyna asked.
“The potion affected everyone, but they clearly intended it to disable our wizards.”
“Yeah,” said Damian, “to cripple ‘em, magically speaking. The blades were off-form, of course, but the wizards were the worst off—they lost their magical powers completely. And without magic, there was nothing they could do when the demons attacked. The guards all fell like flies—Firmin said it was a shit show.”
She frowned. Firmin had a lot to say about what had happened at the Baxton’s estate.
Leyna set down the wooden cup she’d been drinking from as if it, too, had been drugged. It would be horrible to find herself without magic or physical strength, unable to cast a spell or run away.
“Sir, I don’t quite understand. Why not just use poison?”
Captain Marton gave her an affronted look, and she hurried to clarify her meaning.
“That is, if the traitors wanted the guards dead, why wouldn’t they just use poison? Wouldn’t that have been easier if their intention was to slaughter everyone?”
It was Damian who answered.
“If you’ve ever been on a long road like that, Leyna, you’d know why.” He stopped sharpening his knife to laugh at her confused expression. “Let me put it like this: do you really think that none of the guards mighta slipped a swig or two during the journey?”
She looked at Damian questioningly. “You’re telling me that the guards helped themselves on the road?”
“Leyna, I don’t think that—I know. I mean, what would you do? The nights can get cold.”
“But it’s summer,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “The nights can get boring. Anyway, point is, had the wine been poisoned, you woulda had a couple of guards dropping dead on the road to the Baxton’s. Would’ve been kinda obvious, right?”
“Yes, but…it sounds like you think the wine was drugged at the castle. What makes you think that someone didn’t drug it at the Baxton’s estate?”
“Because then they definitely woulda used poison.” Damian winked. “As you suggested.”
The captain cleared his throat. “We don’t know anything for certain, but we suspect our enemies were using the feast as an opportunity to ensure that as many guards drank the wine as possible.”
Leyna nodded. It was a plausible explanation as to why the traitors hadn’t attacked the court en route to the estate. It would have been hard for anyone not to relax upon arrival after a long journey, especially amidst food, wine, and entertainment.
“What about the murder of Queen Claire?” she asked, looking between Damian and the captain. “I heard a rumour saying he killed her.”
“I’ll be on the trial panel, so I won’t comment,” said the captain, leaving the armoury.
Leyna looked at Damian.
“Well,” he said, “according to—”
“—to Maurice and Firmin,” she finished, unable to help herself. A lot seemed to ride on the testimony of the two guards.
Damian shrugged. “Yeah. Well, anyway, they say Quinn was a wolf for the entire journey. So maybe he did kill her, and maybe he didn’t. Who knows? Firmin and Maurice won’t say what was in their testimony. But Quinn didn’t deny it, did he? Went so far as to say he did it.”
She crossed her arms. “Do you really think he’d be capable of turning on his own?”
“Define ‘his own’. He’s Kormendian, ain’t he? He was born there.”
“That shouldn’t matter. He grew up here, in the castle.”
“Well, I reckon it matters a little, don’t you?”
“Maybe. But Quinn isn’t like that.” At least, Leyna hoped he wasn’t like that—would Quinn have betrayed Rosaria for his homeland? Did he even remember what Kormend was like?
Damian shrugged again and resumed honing his knife. The grey stone ground satisfyingly as it slid across the blade.
“And what do you think?” she asked, desperate to hear another opinion.
Damian raised his eyebrows at her. “What do I think? Leyna, I don’t get paid ter think. Listen, take my advice—if you want to enjoy a long, prosperous career as a huskarl, you better learn not ter look too closely, you follow me?”
“Yes,” she said, not voicing her disagreement as she left the armoury. Her heart ached at the horrors that the king and his court must have faced that night. She finally understood how the Rutherford soldiers had been overpowered; incapacitated by drugged alcohol, the king’s best and finest had been reduced to sitting ducks.
The new knowledge also shed light on Bancroft’s death. Up to this point, she had pictured the middle-aged huskarl dying valiantly during battle, blasting the enemy with powerful spells until the very end. She would never have imagined that he’d be left without magic.
Her chest grew tight and heavy. She was all too familiar with Bancroft’s mediocre swordsmanship—and that was assuming he’d been able to get his hands on one.
And Bancroft would never have run. With or without magic, he would have stood his ground and protected the king and queen with his last breath.
Bancroft was gone. Like so many others, she would never see him again. The flame of hope that he might still be alive, a hope she’d secretly protected, went out with a puff as if blown by a harsh wind.
Her heart skipped a beat as the jingle of bells attracted her attention, but it was only a white cat darting through the corridor, the bells jingling at its neck. For a moment, she’d thought it was Jester. Her heart fell in disappointment.
Why did she walk the corridors with a secret longing to see the court fool? What was it about him that made her senses tingle? And why didn’t she feel that for any of the suitors that her mother trotted out in front of her?
The sound of the jester bells had once annoyed her, serving as a warning of his imminent approach. But now, something had changed between them. There was a tension there that hadn’t existed before—it was new and untested.
Leyna stopped in the Foyer to sag against a pillar.
Was the jester—or whoever he really was—truly attracted to her? Despite his offer of courtship, she still had trouble believing that he was interested in her romantically. Hadn’t he once described her as being like Captain Marton? She herself could have thought of several choice words to describe the captain—honourable and dignified, to be sure. Stubborn was another, as was pompous. Were she and the captain really ‘two birds of a feather,’ as Jester had once said? She would much rather be compared to Bancroft—or just about anyone else.
The momentary happiness she’d felt in thinking of the king’s spy vanished, and she picked at the lacings of her clothes. What if the courtship was a ruse designed to distract her from something sinister? She wanted to trust him, but her conversation with the captain and Damian had breathed new life into her suspicions.
If someone had drugged the wine barrels before they left the castle, then Leyna knew who to suspect. After all, who else had a proven history of spiking drinks but the jester?
The image of a gleaming, jewelled goblet spinning through the air flashed through her mind. She could almost hear it bouncing and clattering across the tiled floor, scraping noisily before it came to a stop.
He could be dangerous. I need to be careful.
She glanced at the stairs, where the white cat was slinking around the balusters.
Jester had been near the Wizarding Guild at the showgrounds around the time of the book’s disappearance. If he was secretly a wizard, then it made him a suspect as well.
Leyna pursed her lips, thinking. There was no point in asking him—he held his cards close and would never answer her questions. There was an alternative, however, but it meant crossing a line.
She glanced at the doors to the Great Hall. Was he still performing? If so, she would have no better opportunity than to go right now.
Pushing herself off the pillar, she carefully stepped out of the furry circle that the slinking cat had formed around her feet, and made for the servant’s wing.
Her mind was made up.
She would search the jester’s room. If the Demon Book was there, she would find it.
Chapter twenty-seven
The Kitchens
Strangely, she wasn’t able to find the jester’s room.
Wandering through the servants’ quarters, she had half expected to find a fantastical, colourful door decorated with sequins and tassels—a gaudy entrance declaring itself the jester’s room. But the narrow corridor and blank doors only held nameplates. Stranger still, none of the servants knew where his room was.
A maid directed Leyna to the butler’s pantry, where she squeezed herself into a stuffed armchair that was wedged in between a large desk and a cupboard full of silver. The butler, a dignified man who knew the ins and outs of the castle, seemed flustered by both her question on how to find the jester.
Leyna was baffled. Even though the jester was just an identity, he still felt real—and now it was like he’d never existed.
As she made to leave the servants’ quarters, a familiar smell reached her nostrils, calling her back, and she followed her feet down a wide set of steps where the clamour of merrymaking filled her ears. She hadn’t visited the castle kitchens since before starting at the Guild, and the sights and smells brought on a wave of nostalgia that lightened her spirit. The large kitchen doubled as a dining room and was packed with servants and guards sitting at large wooden tables made of rough sawn pine. Simple circular chandeliers lit with waxy candles hung overhead, and though less elegant than the crystal light fixtures of the Great Hall, she instantly knew which ones she preferred.
Some folk were still eating, but most had turned to drink and entertainment. A lute was playing in a far corner, and several games of Ruffles and chess were in motion.
Despite having had dinner, she suddenly felt hungry. Grabbing a wooden trencher from the kitchen area, she joined a table of guards that she recognised from her unit. They greeted her jovially, and soon she was playing Ruffles with them, the ceramic tiles clicking as they were shuffled in a cloth bag to prepare for a new game.
The night wore on, and gradually, people filtered out of the room. The cooks had retired for the evening, and only a few kitchen hands remained to clear away the mess and prep food for the coming day.
Leyna had been so immersed in the game of Ruffles that she hadn’t noticed the time. Thanks to the house rules that her unit had made up, the game never seemed to end, and despite the ridiculousness of it, her table persisted, slapping tiles down and roaring with laughter until—finally—a flagon of beer was accidentally spilt across the table, washing away the small, ceramic tiles and ending the game.
The white cat, who had been sleeping on the chair beside her, hissed as the beer splattered its fur.
“See you in an hour,” a guard called to her, one of the last people to leave the room.
Soon, apart from a drunk draped over a nearby table, she was the only one left in the kitchens. With time to spare before the night shift, the wise thing to do might have been to have a nap. Her irregular pattern of sleep was catching up to her, and she would be lucky if she could stay on alert tonight.
Even so, she was reluctant to leave the kitchens. Something about the rustic setting’s cheeriness had put her at ease and temporarily made her forget her troubles. Beer had helped her relax, but it was mostly the easy camaraderie of the castle folk here, which was devoid of the pretence or stiff etiquette she usually experienced in the Great Hall.
The near-deserted kitchen had grown dim as the candles burnt low, the wax congealing as they grew short.
With a yawn, she folded her arms on the table and rested her head sleepily in the crook of her arm.
In a little over an hour’s time, there would be another mission, another arrest, just as there had been the other nights. Captain Marton was pleased that the Arrest Unit was making good progress through the list of traitors.
“Victory!” the captain had yelled amongst cheers last night. “Can you feel the triumph, men? It’s our people’s pride returning!”
But whilst the rest of her unit seemed to share the captain’s feelings of triumph, she had barely managed a smile. Locking people away in the dungeon, however necessary, was not something she wanted to celebrate. The horrid conditions of the cells only made her feel sorry for Quinn, who she hoped she’d be able to visit soon.
A voice broke through her thoughts.
“Boo.”
Leyna startled. She hadn’t heard footsteps approach, but she didn’t need to look up to know who it was.
“Jester,” she greeted cautiously, lifting her head to steal a glance at him. He was wearing an outfit of rich purples and golds with matching checked tights. Despite the bold colours, he looked more impressive than comical, and it made her hair stand on end. Even though she’d given up searching for his room, she still felt as if he’d caught her red-handed. If he knew that she’d been snooping about, he gave no sign. “It’s you.”
“Yes, it is I,” he announced. “May I join you?”
He didn’t wait for her to respond and sat down at the far end of the table. The distance between them was almost absurd, with each of them sitting at opposite heads of the long wooden tabletop that stretched between them.
“Scared everyone off, have you?” he asked, gesturing at the dim, almost-empty room. It was quiet except for the occasional crackle of the fires at the far side of the kitchen, which burnt low beneath large black pots that hung over them, simmering. The smell of meaty broth wafted around the room, hinting at tomorrow’s meal.
“Why not?” she said, and they entered the Great Hall together.
The table she usually occupied with Grace was empty. She wasn’t surprised to find her absent; Grace didn’t have an appetite of late.
She ate distractedly, barely registering Jester’s performance as she scanned the hall, hoping to spot Cornelius’ wavy, caramel hair.
“Leyna, there you are!” said her mother, arriving arm-in-arm with a young man she had ensnared. Introductions were made, and she did her best to be polite, but she wasn’t in the mood.
“It’s so lovely to meet you, Lord Alfred.” Leyna smiled warmly, but she was already pushing her chair out as she rose. “However, I’m afraid I need to go—”
“Leyna,” warned her mother, but Leyna was already hurrying away.
She cast one last look around the Great Hall for Cornelius, but he wasn’t there, and she left in the middle of Jester’s performance. He gave her a wave, and she almost returned it, until he followed up the gesture by blowing her a kiss. Heads turned towards her, and she felt a warm flush creep across her face as she scampered out, conscious of her limp nearly as much as the combined attentions of Jester and Lord Alfred.
Ever since the Court Massacre, Lady Saunders’ matchmaking efforts had intensified. The perceived threat of danger that overshadowed Rutherford Castle had made her more desperate than ever to see her daughter ‘settled and looked after’.
Deep down, Leyna understood that this was her mother’s way of dealing with the tragic events, having lost many of her friends and social connections after the Massacre. But no matter what her mother said about the importance of marriage, she could not disguise her fear that Leyna would suffer a fate similar to Tash.
Sympathetic to her mother’s hopes, Leyna did her best to bear the introductions to potential suitors with as much dignity as she could salvage—and there were many potential suitors. In normal circumstances, she should have met them all by now, but there were plenty of new faces at Rutherford Castle. Despite the devastation of the Massacre, the court had been quick to replenish its numbers, with newly arrived nobles crying crocodile tears as they hurried to occupy the best vacant suites.
The problem, therefore, was less to do with the variety of suitors and instead more to do with her own lack of interest. The Court Massacre had turned her world upside down, and life was too unstable, the pain of loss too fresh, for her to simper and make small talk as if everything was normal—as if the newly arrived Alfred inviting her to tea wasn’t occupying the suite where, only a few weeks ago, a young couple expecting their first child had lived, a fact that he’d been oblivious to when she asked.
With two hours left before her night shift, she headed for Captain Marton’s office, hoping to glean answers.
No one answered the office door, but she found him in the armoury with Huskarl Damian.
“You’re not wrong, Saunders,” said Captain Marton, looking dignified even as he admitted to the Royal Guard’s failures. “The huskarls should have been able to fend off the attack.”
“So, why couldn’t they?” she asked.
“Our investigation revealed that someone drugged the wine barrels that were served at the Baxton’s home.”
“You mean the Baxtons poisoned the king?”
The captain shook his head.
“No, no and no.” He ticked off a list with his broad fingers. “First, we do not think it was the Baxton’s. Second, it wasn’t poison. And third, the king would not have been served that slush—the Baxtons are a respectable noble family, and I am confident that they served him a much a finer vintage.”
Captain Marton puffed out his broad chest, as if the quality of wine that the deceased king had been served was amongst the more important details.
“The wine barrels were for the guards,” Damian explained. The blade had his legs propped up on a stool as he sharpened his knife with a whetstone. “It was all loaded up here at the castle so it could be served at the Baxtons’ welcome feast.”
“So, the Baxtons weren’t the ones who drugged the wine?” Leyna asked.
The captain shook his head.
“And it wasn’t poison,” added Damian. “It was some kind of magical potion. Anyone who drank the wine grew weak, both physically and magically. And everyone was drinking, apparently. Even the huskarls had a little something.”
“Yes, well…” Captain Marton was visibly uncomfortable that his guards had been drinking while on duty.
“What do you mean, ‘magically’ weak?” Leyna asked.
“The potion affected everyone, but they clearly intended it to disable our wizards.”
“Yeah,” said Damian, “to cripple ‘em, magically speaking. The blades were off-form, of course, but the wizards were the worst off—they lost their magical powers completely. And without magic, there was nothing they could do when the demons attacked. The guards all fell like flies—Firmin said it was a shit show.”
She frowned. Firmin had a lot to say about what had happened at the Baxton’s estate.
Leyna set down the wooden cup she’d been drinking from as if it, too, had been drugged. It would be horrible to find herself without magic or physical strength, unable to cast a spell or run away.
“Sir, I don’t quite understand. Why not just use poison?”
Captain Marton gave her an affronted look, and she hurried to clarify her meaning.
“That is, if the traitors wanted the guards dead, why wouldn’t they just use poison? Wouldn’t that have been easier if their intention was to slaughter everyone?”
It was Damian who answered.
“If you’ve ever been on a long road like that, Leyna, you’d know why.” He stopped sharpening his knife to laugh at her confused expression. “Let me put it like this: do you really think that none of the guards mighta slipped a swig or two during the journey?”
She looked at Damian questioningly. “You’re telling me that the guards helped themselves on the road?”
“Leyna, I don’t think that—I know. I mean, what would you do? The nights can get cold.”
“But it’s summer,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “The nights can get boring. Anyway, point is, had the wine been poisoned, you woulda had a couple of guards dropping dead on the road to the Baxton’s. Would’ve been kinda obvious, right?”
“Yes, but…it sounds like you think the wine was drugged at the castle. What makes you think that someone didn’t drug it at the Baxton’s estate?”
“Because then they definitely woulda used poison.” Damian winked. “As you suggested.”
The captain cleared his throat. “We don’t know anything for certain, but we suspect our enemies were using the feast as an opportunity to ensure that as many guards drank the wine as possible.”
Leyna nodded. It was a plausible explanation as to why the traitors hadn’t attacked the court en route to the estate. It would have been hard for anyone not to relax upon arrival after a long journey, especially amidst food, wine, and entertainment.
“What about the murder of Queen Claire?” she asked, looking between Damian and the captain. “I heard a rumour saying he killed her.”
“I’ll be on the trial panel, so I won’t comment,” said the captain, leaving the armoury.
Leyna looked at Damian.
“Well,” he said, “according to—”
“—to Maurice and Firmin,” she finished, unable to help herself. A lot seemed to ride on the testimony of the two guards.
Damian shrugged. “Yeah. Well, anyway, they say Quinn was a wolf for the entire journey. So maybe he did kill her, and maybe he didn’t. Who knows? Firmin and Maurice won’t say what was in their testimony. But Quinn didn’t deny it, did he? Went so far as to say he did it.”
She crossed her arms. “Do you really think he’d be capable of turning on his own?”
“Define ‘his own’. He’s Kormendian, ain’t he? He was born there.”
“That shouldn’t matter. He grew up here, in the castle.”
“Well, I reckon it matters a little, don’t you?”
“Maybe. But Quinn isn’t like that.” At least, Leyna hoped he wasn’t like that—would Quinn have betrayed Rosaria for his homeland? Did he even remember what Kormend was like?
Damian shrugged again and resumed honing his knife. The grey stone ground satisfyingly as it slid across the blade.
“And what do you think?” she asked, desperate to hear another opinion.
Damian raised his eyebrows at her. “What do I think? Leyna, I don’t get paid ter think. Listen, take my advice—if you want to enjoy a long, prosperous career as a huskarl, you better learn not ter look too closely, you follow me?”
“Yes,” she said, not voicing her disagreement as she left the armoury. Her heart ached at the horrors that the king and his court must have faced that night. She finally understood how the Rutherford soldiers had been overpowered; incapacitated by drugged alcohol, the king’s best and finest had been reduced to sitting ducks.
The new knowledge also shed light on Bancroft’s death. Up to this point, she had pictured the middle-aged huskarl dying valiantly during battle, blasting the enemy with powerful spells until the very end. She would never have imagined that he’d be left without magic.
Her chest grew tight and heavy. She was all too familiar with Bancroft’s mediocre swordsmanship—and that was assuming he’d been able to get his hands on one.
And Bancroft would never have run. With or without magic, he would have stood his ground and protected the king and queen with his last breath.
Bancroft was gone. Like so many others, she would never see him again. The flame of hope that he might still be alive, a hope she’d secretly protected, went out with a puff as if blown by a harsh wind.
Her heart skipped a beat as the jingle of bells attracted her attention, but it was only a white cat darting through the corridor, the bells jingling at its neck. For a moment, she’d thought it was Jester. Her heart fell in disappointment.
Why did she walk the corridors with a secret longing to see the court fool? What was it about him that made her senses tingle? And why didn’t she feel that for any of the suitors that her mother trotted out in front of her?
The sound of the jester bells had once annoyed her, serving as a warning of his imminent approach. But now, something had changed between them. There was a tension there that hadn’t existed before—it was new and untested.
Leyna stopped in the Foyer to sag against a pillar.
Was the jester—or whoever he really was—truly attracted to her? Despite his offer of courtship, she still had trouble believing that he was interested in her romantically. Hadn’t he once described her as being like Captain Marton? She herself could have thought of several choice words to describe the captain—honourable and dignified, to be sure. Stubborn was another, as was pompous. Were she and the captain really ‘two birds of a feather,’ as Jester had once said? She would much rather be compared to Bancroft—or just about anyone else.
The momentary happiness she’d felt in thinking of the king’s spy vanished, and she picked at the lacings of her clothes. What if the courtship was a ruse designed to distract her from something sinister? She wanted to trust him, but her conversation with the captain and Damian had breathed new life into her suspicions.
If someone had drugged the wine barrels before they left the castle, then Leyna knew who to suspect. After all, who else had a proven history of spiking drinks but the jester?
The image of a gleaming, jewelled goblet spinning through the air flashed through her mind. She could almost hear it bouncing and clattering across the tiled floor, scraping noisily before it came to a stop.
He could be dangerous. I need to be careful.
She glanced at the stairs, where the white cat was slinking around the balusters.
Jester had been near the Wizarding Guild at the showgrounds around the time of the book’s disappearance. If he was secretly a wizard, then it made him a suspect as well.
Leyna pursed her lips, thinking. There was no point in asking him—he held his cards close and would never answer her questions. There was an alternative, however, but it meant crossing a line.
She glanced at the doors to the Great Hall. Was he still performing? If so, she would have no better opportunity than to go right now.
Pushing herself off the pillar, she carefully stepped out of the furry circle that the slinking cat had formed around her feet, and made for the servant’s wing.
Her mind was made up.
She would search the jester’s room. If the Demon Book was there, she would find it.
Chapter twenty-seven
The Kitchens
Strangely, she wasn’t able to find the jester’s room.
Wandering through the servants’ quarters, she had half expected to find a fantastical, colourful door decorated with sequins and tassels—a gaudy entrance declaring itself the jester’s room. But the narrow corridor and blank doors only held nameplates. Stranger still, none of the servants knew where his room was.
A maid directed Leyna to the butler’s pantry, where she squeezed herself into a stuffed armchair that was wedged in between a large desk and a cupboard full of silver. The butler, a dignified man who knew the ins and outs of the castle, seemed flustered by both her question on how to find the jester.
Leyna was baffled. Even though the jester was just an identity, he still felt real—and now it was like he’d never existed.
As she made to leave the servants’ quarters, a familiar smell reached her nostrils, calling her back, and she followed her feet down a wide set of steps where the clamour of merrymaking filled her ears. She hadn’t visited the castle kitchens since before starting at the Guild, and the sights and smells brought on a wave of nostalgia that lightened her spirit. The large kitchen doubled as a dining room and was packed with servants and guards sitting at large wooden tables made of rough sawn pine. Simple circular chandeliers lit with waxy candles hung overhead, and though less elegant than the crystal light fixtures of the Great Hall, she instantly knew which ones she preferred.
Some folk were still eating, but most had turned to drink and entertainment. A lute was playing in a far corner, and several games of Ruffles and chess were in motion.
Despite having had dinner, she suddenly felt hungry. Grabbing a wooden trencher from the kitchen area, she joined a table of guards that she recognised from her unit. They greeted her jovially, and soon she was playing Ruffles with them, the ceramic tiles clicking as they were shuffled in a cloth bag to prepare for a new game.
The night wore on, and gradually, people filtered out of the room. The cooks had retired for the evening, and only a few kitchen hands remained to clear away the mess and prep food for the coming day.
Leyna had been so immersed in the game of Ruffles that she hadn’t noticed the time. Thanks to the house rules that her unit had made up, the game never seemed to end, and despite the ridiculousness of it, her table persisted, slapping tiles down and roaring with laughter until—finally—a flagon of beer was accidentally spilt across the table, washing away the small, ceramic tiles and ending the game.
The white cat, who had been sleeping on the chair beside her, hissed as the beer splattered its fur.
“See you in an hour,” a guard called to her, one of the last people to leave the room.
Soon, apart from a drunk draped over a nearby table, she was the only one left in the kitchens. With time to spare before the night shift, the wise thing to do might have been to have a nap. Her irregular pattern of sleep was catching up to her, and she would be lucky if she could stay on alert tonight.
Even so, she was reluctant to leave the kitchens. Something about the rustic setting’s cheeriness had put her at ease and temporarily made her forget her troubles. Beer had helped her relax, but it was mostly the easy camaraderie of the castle folk here, which was devoid of the pretence or stiff etiquette she usually experienced in the Great Hall.
The near-deserted kitchen had grown dim as the candles burnt low, the wax congealing as they grew short.
With a yawn, she folded her arms on the table and rested her head sleepily in the crook of her arm.
In a little over an hour’s time, there would be another mission, another arrest, just as there had been the other nights. Captain Marton was pleased that the Arrest Unit was making good progress through the list of traitors.
“Victory!” the captain had yelled amongst cheers last night. “Can you feel the triumph, men? It’s our people’s pride returning!”
But whilst the rest of her unit seemed to share the captain’s feelings of triumph, she had barely managed a smile. Locking people away in the dungeon, however necessary, was not something she wanted to celebrate. The horrid conditions of the cells only made her feel sorry for Quinn, who she hoped she’d be able to visit soon.
A voice broke through her thoughts.
“Boo.”
Leyna startled. She hadn’t heard footsteps approach, but she didn’t need to look up to know who it was.
“Jester,” she greeted cautiously, lifting her head to steal a glance at him. He was wearing an outfit of rich purples and golds with matching checked tights. Despite the bold colours, he looked more impressive than comical, and it made her hair stand on end. Even though she’d given up searching for his room, she still felt as if he’d caught her red-handed. If he knew that she’d been snooping about, he gave no sign. “It’s you.”
“Yes, it is I,” he announced. “May I join you?”
He didn’t wait for her to respond and sat down at the far end of the table. The distance between them was almost absurd, with each of them sitting at opposite heads of the long wooden tabletop that stretched between them.
“Scared everyone off, have you?” he asked, gesturing at the dim, almost-empty room. It was quiet except for the occasional crackle of the fires at the far side of the kitchen, which burnt low beneath large black pots that hung over them, simmering. The smell of meaty broth wafted around the room, hinting at tomorrow’s meal.
