Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1 - Chapter 51: Chapter 51

Nova awoke to yelling. At first she couldn't make sense of it; she'd only just fallen into an uneasy sleep. Since the Unspoken murder case went cold, Faellian had stopped banishing her to the kitchens at night, instead forcing her to sleep in front of the hearth in his room, chained to the wall. She had never slept well in here, and it was annoying that she'd been disturbed. She expected to look up and find Faellian jumping out of bed to give whoever was yelling a hiding, but the bed was empty.
Then she realised Faellian was the one yelling.
"What do you mean, he's dead?" he shouted, and his voice echoed in a way that suggested he was very far away, and whoever he was yelling at would be rendered somewhat deaf for the next few hours. She shifted as close to the door as her chain allowed her to try and catch a response, but couldn't hear anything.
Faellian fell quiet for a while too, leaving Nova to stew in her own curiosity. She hoped it wasn't another Unspoken, though Faellian would hardly sound so deranged over that unless it was Yddris, which she was sure wouldn't be the case. She'd seen Yddris fight. Magic or no magic, nobody would get under Yddris's guard.
But then who was it?
She backed away from the door as she heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Grace burst through the door. Her face was pale, and she was shaking. Her aura was coloured with fear.
"Eril's dead," she said.
Nova blinked. "What?"
"Eril's dead," Grace said again. "I don't know what's going on but it sounds really bad. The lord's steaming. I think he's going to summon you soon, so I brought this."
She held up a fresh shift and a warm robe Nova was certain she wasn't meant to have, but she couldn't concentrate on that. She tried to process what Grace had said. Faellian was yelling again, but had moved too far away for her to make out words.
"The guards found him with his throat cut on the privy behind the Orthanian temple," Grace said. She shook out the shift and gathered it up, gesturing at Nova to stand so it could go over her head. She did, automatically. The head of House Orthan couldn't be dead. He'd only just left the castle. "It's such a horrible way to go."
"Did they catch who did it?"
"I don't think so," Grace murmured. She wrapped the robe around Nova's shoulders, and then produced the key to her chain from an apron pocket.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Brillan." She handed Nova her chain. "He said the lord wouldn't wait long after summoning you before getting angry again, so you've got to be ready when he does."
Someone came to the door, a maid. It took Nova a minute to remember her as one who didn't like her, and curled her lip. The maid's expression made it clear the feeling was mutual.
"Lord Harkenn commands your presence in his study."
"I'm coming."
The maid narrowed her eyes at Grace. "And yours."
"M-me?" Grace said. "What does he need me for?"
The girl gave an insolent shrug and vanished. Nova and Grace looked at one another and then followed.
Shouting grew louder as they walked down the stairs and along the corridor to Faellian's closed study door. Grace stuck close to her, and Nova didn't mind for once; it felt like the floor had been taken out from underneath her. She had no great fondness for Shadow's Reach, but for better or worse she was stuck in it, and she'd rather be stuck in it without Ethred on the second most powerful seat in Nictaven.
The study was chaos; it seemed everyone in it had been roused from their beds and transported to the castle at the last minute for an emergency meeting. Only Callan from House Nict had not turned up in his nightclothes.
Faellian leaned on the desk when they entered, still wearing a burgundy dressing robe, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. Nobody noticed them enter. The lady Kerrin detached herself from her disagreement with the head of the Merchants' Guild and crossed the room to Faellian. Nova edged closer along the wall, trying not to draw attention to herself, but Grace hung back by the doorway, eyes huge in her pale face.
"...Ethred should be here," Kerrin was saying to Faellian.
"I've summoned the misbegotten sluggard," Faellian snapped back, a vein going in his temple. "He just hasn't had the decency to show up."
"You'd think he'd be a little more prompt, considering he's in line to take Eril's place."
"Oh, I'm sure he's just polishing off the chain of office before he leaves," Faellian said sourly, and finally noticed Nova hovering nearby. He scowled and beckoned her. "You're going to inspect the murder scene, the body and the weapons."
Joy. "Yes, my lord."
"Do you believe that cretin in my cells will have anything to add?" he asked.
Nova's lip curled of its own accord, but she wasn't stupid enough to rule Jeorge out automatically. The Angel had brought news to the Reach that was true to the best of his knowledge, and Eril's death had brought all the possibilities he'd threatened one step closer. If Ethred really was bargaining with both the Devils and Caelum, he had to be taken off the house seat as soon as possible.
Much as she hated to say it, she needed Jeorge alive to back her up.
"Possibly," she began, and was interrupted by Ethred's fussy entrance.
The silence was sudden and startling. Kerrin's mouth swung open, the most inelegant Nova had ever seen her.
"Sacrilege," Ula from Varthi muttered. "Filthy desecration."
The reason for Ethred's delay was apparent. Though almost all the prominent figures of Nictavian leadership had arrived promptly, no matter what state of disarray they were in at the time, Ethred had turned up in full robes of office. Eril wasn't even cold on the slab, and his successor was already wearing the house chain.
"Ethred." Faellian's voice was coldly furious, but still controlled. "I sent for you an hour ago. This is a state emergency, not a fashion show, you fool."
Ethred's expression didn't change, but Nova was pleased to see a thread of fear and doubt in his aura. An indiscretion of this scale could backfire on him terribly.
"Of course," Ethred replied. "But I did not wish to alarm my people by hurrying up here in my nightshirt."
"The nerve," Kerrin hissed. Faellian gently touched her on the arm. His own face was carved from stone.
"There has been no ceremony," he said. "The transition is not officiated, and I will not do so until Lord Eril has been appropriately sent off. That chain is not yours to wear and you will remove it immediately."
"It's my right..."
"No, it isn't," the lord barked. Everyone in the room recoiled, all except Callan, who watched the proceedings with mild curiosity. "Remove it, and do so before I decide that Eril's death means our household contracts and agreements are void."
"You wouldn't dare," Ethred said, with a confidence his aura didn't back up. By way of a reply, Faellian shrugged away from the desk and crossed to the back of the room, where several locked bookcases lined a recess next to the fireplace. He unlocked the largest one and pulled down a ledger. It was huge and old, and released a cloud of dust when pulled out of place. The lord took it to the hearth and stood next to the fire, eyes reflecting malevolent flames.
"Would I not?"
Ethred removed the chain and laid it on the desk. Faellian returned the ledger to the bookcase and locked it again, and the baron retreated to a corner of the study to lurk like an overdressed, sulky child.
Nova shrank at the weight of the atmosphere in the room after the altercation, even more oppressively heavy than it had been before. Grace had edged closer to her to avoid Ethred, but she didn't dare try and touch Nova while there were so many people here. Instead, they passed a look between them. Nova had tried her best to explain to Grace what it meant to understand how people were feeling all the time, how oppressive it could be; Grace had no hope of understanding, but Nova hadn't felt able to confide in anyone for years. The look that went between them told her that Grace was trying to understand, though, and somehow that was almost as good.
"Much as I agree with you, my Lord," someone said, and they all turned to look. The head of the royal guard had been silent up until this point, almost invisible against the far wall of the study. "We will have to think about the order of ceremony. We can't hold a mass memorial or a coronation during the dark season. The guard post reports are counting in twice as many demon carcasses as they did at the same time in the last five years. The Unspoken are running double on their patrols. It's simply too dangerous to have any crowds out there."
"Nor can we have one of the largest religious houses without a leader for the most trying season of the year," Medra of the Heretical Orders added. Nova blinked. Medra never contributed anything; the Heretical Orders were such a strange, cobbled-together house that she was mostly there for ceremony. Even Medra herself looked surprised that she'd said something.
"We'll have to officiate privately," Faellian said after a moment. "But the news must go out before it spreads on its own. Send the district criers, make sure it gets to everyone by the end of tomorrow."
"Yes, sir," the head of the guard clicked his heels together, "very good."
"Send for Yddris. I need to speak with him about starting an investigation."
The soldier nodded and hurried out. The study door banged shut, loud and echoing.
"The funeral will go first," Faellian continued, shooting a dirty look at Ethred. "As per Orthanian tradition, Eril will be cremated under officiation and stored in a consecrated vault, and when the dark season lifts there will be a public interment. Only after the cremation will we consider the inauguration."
"And my people?" Ethred demanded, feigning obliviousness to the hostility in the room. "They will not wish to stay in the temple after a breach of this magnitude, they won't feel safe."
"I will double the temple guard at my own expense," Faellian replied. "There was no damage to the building itself, therefore it is suitable for occupation. I would suggest to any new management that the temple also avails itself of a builder and installs some indoor privies with better locks."
Under any other circumstances it would have been met with mirth, but instead a collective wince made its way around the room.
"There's going to be chaos." Kerrin spoke almost as if to herself, but the silence that followed showed that everyone else was thinking it, as well.
"But who did it?" Ula demanded, as if someone in the room knew and hadn't said so yet. "Who would do it?"
"Considering your own followers regularly depose their own leaders in barbaric manners, I'm surprised you grasp the severity," Ethred sneered.
Nova corrected her thought that Faellian was the person she hated most in the world; Ethred was fast becoming a strong contender. He sensed her glare and offered a mocking smirk, before moulding his expression back into one of practiced indifference.
"We do not meddle in city affairs. Our conflicts are our own," Ula growled, amber eyes flashing. "We rule the farmlands and the wilds when no one else will. We also keep our hands out of everybody else's money vaults."
"You dare," Ethred said mildly, but his own gaze was steel. "You're not here often enough to make judgements, and far too dense to understand what they mean."
"Do not leave the house without its successor, as well," Ula said. "It would be a great shame to find him in an alley with a pickaxe buried in his skull."
"There is a reason I did not call this meeting in a nursery," Faellian snapped. The argument ended straight away. "Don't embarrass yourselves, night take me."
A knock on the study door; Yddris stepped inside without waiting for permission. He was breathing hard.
"You called for me, my lord?" he asked. Faellian's glance at Ethred was rather pointed.
"How many Unspoken are out tonight?"
"Twenty including myself, sir."
"That doesn't seem like many."
"My apprentice has had to go home, my lord."
"Is he ill?"
Yddris hesitated. Nova felt Grace tense. Her fingers brushed against Nova's hand before she remembered herself, putting it quickly into her apron pocket instead.
Ethred's gaze on the back of Nova's head burned.
"It was a misjudgement on my part, my lord," the Unspoken said with a short bow of apology, "He doesn't have enough control for patrols just yet."
"I see." Faellian frowned, but seemed to dismiss it for the moment. "I would like you first to secure the temple if necessary, in case there has been any breach of the net..."
"Already done, sir," Yddris said quietly. "I just came from the temple."
Faellian nodded. "Good. In that case, I want both of you to come and look at the body." He pointed at Nova, and then at Yddris. Grace quietly cleared her throat. It looked as though the lord had completely forgotten she was there, if he had ever noticed her to start with.
"Oh. Kerrin? This is the girl you were after."
The lady of House Kiel stepped forward with a strained smile and ushered Grace back out of the study. Grace passed a desperate look to Nova, like she would be able to do anything. Of all the people in the room, though, Kerrin was least likely to have bad intentions for the girl. Nova almost felt relieved that for once Grace would not be in harm's way.
She swallowed. That thought had been so unlike her that she was almost convinced it had been planted there by someone else.
She and Yddris followed Faellian from the study. The lord walked at a brisk pace and didn't seem to care whether they kept up or not. Nova didn't say anything, in case he decided to take his frustration out on her; it had happened enough times for her to learn when to keep her mouth shut. He hadn't pushed her down the stairs or tied her hands and ankles together for hours in a while, and she wasn't going to remind him.
All the same, she was dying to ask Yddris what he had seen at the temple. She was owed some kind of warning if she was to spend the small hours poking at a very important corpse.
Nova had inspected many murder cases over the years for the Harkenn household, but she hadn't anticipated how much worse it would be if she knew the victim. She and Eril had been far from close – he had barely seen her as a person – but there was something about staring into the grey face of someone she had seen alive so many times that set her gut churning.
The bodies of the non-magical dead weren't as terrible to her as the dead Unspoken had been. The magic that kept everyone in Nictaven alive had never run through their veins, so that awful hollowness wasn't there. All the same, the atmosphere was oppressively heavy, and she immediately felt cold.
"My immediate impression was that this was inexpertly done," Faellian said brusquely. Nova gave no indication that she'd heard the waver in his voice, but she stored the information away for later.
Yddris stepped forward and leaned over the congealed gash in Eril's neck. "Aye. Whoever did it was inexperienced or incredibly nervous. Probably both. This wasn't clean."
Nova averted her eyes and clenched her fists. She didn't want to imagine it, but her brain was bringing it up unbidden; her own fear of dying a slow death, one she could feel. She didn't fear death itself, but she wanted to go on her own terms, and she wanted to go a free woman and as painlessly as possible. It was a tall order in a place like Nictaven, but after the life she'd had she felt she'd earned a dignified exit.
"Devils?" the lord asked, after a long pause as they all tried to stomach the revelation.
"Almost definitely." The Unspoken straightened. "It would be more helpful to know who paid them to do it."
Nova steeled herself. She was going to get a beating for holding back information, but she could take that over letting Jeorge's horrific vision come to pass.
"Nerahardt seems to think it was Caelum," she said.
Both men stared at her. Yddris was thinking. Faellian already looked murderous.
"Were you going to mention this?" he hissed. "I sent you down there to report everything he had to say!" He took a step closer. "Or are your loyalties still with the people who abandoned you, is that it?"
"I hate Nerahardt's guts," Nova said. She kept her voice flat, tried not to think about the flogging in store for her. "I hate the Caelumese even more. But while Jeorge didn't think he was lying, I found his theories hard to believe." It was untrue – she could believe it all too horribly well – but perhaps she'd save herself a few lashes by not saying so. "I wanted to see if they had any credence first, before I made any allegations that might get us all in trouble."
That gave the lord pause. He gestured for her to continue.
"Nerahardt's theory was that Caelum is agitating for a second Annexe War."
"They lost the last one. They took much more damage than they dealt. Why would they want another so soon?"
"Because they have allies this time."
Nova didn't have to say who she thought it was; it was clear from his face that Faellian had had suspicions about Ethred for a long time, though she didn't think they had been as severe as this.
"He also claimed that Caelum is bankrolling weaponry that render the Unspoken vulnerable," Nova continued, talking mostly to Yddris. "He claimed that Caelum was almost certainly behind the murder, even if they used agents from the Reach to do it. He thinks that he will not be the last."
Subtly, Yddris steadied himself on the table where Eril lay. "Why?"
"Because you're loyal to this household. And your guild is the biggest obstacle between Lucifer and the Harkenn throne."
"He can't rule without us."
"I don't think he wants to eliminate you," Nova said. "I think that's his last resort. He wants you to stand aside under the threat of losing more of your brethren."
Faellian made a wordless cry of fury and paced to the back of the room, hands buried in his hair. He reached the wall and then wheeled round to pace back to them.
"There's no evidence," he said. His fingers rapped on the table. "Night take me, I need evidence for those kinds of claims." He snarled, and then turned to Yddris. "Have Brillan fetch the parasitic little sack of shit up here, will you? Looks like I'm not getting to hang him, after all."