Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(43)
“Can we go now?” Zan said, sounding snippy.
Kate had already grabbed a broom. “Would you, please? It looks like I have some work to do.”
* * *
“Were all those drawings really yours?” I asked as Zan helped me down into the culvert. “You don’t look like an artist.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “You don’t look like a blood mage, and yet . . .” Inside the passage now, Zan was setting the pace, which could only be called a meander. “I got very sick when I was a child, had to spend a lot of time indoors; my mother started me drawing to stave off boredom. But I got sicker. Even lost my eyesight for a while. Shortly after that, I lost my mother.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was she sick too?”
“Sick of caring for me, maybe.” He paused, trying to be delicate, but I knew what he was trying to say. “I was ill constantly. It took a toll. Don’t look at me like that. It was a long time ago.” He waved me forward at the fork. “This way now.”
Instead of taking the turn out toward the tower, we continued straight, up a slightly ascending slope. He maintained his unhurried pace.
“You don’t have to go so slow for me today,” I said. “I heal very quickly.” I put a hand to my injured side. “I hardly feel it anymore.”
“Who said I was going slow for you?” he asked.
The new alley came to an abrupt end beneath a square drawn in dim light. A trapdoor. Zan gave it a tug, and the hatch swung down, a frayed rope ladder along with it. He went up first and then steadied me as I climbed after him.
I wanted to ask him more about his drawings, but he put his finger to his lips as a warning to keep quiet while he reset the door and the ladder. We were in a cellar, surrounded on all sides by barrels of ale and shelves lined with bottles of wine. Outside the cellar room, sad cries echoed around the stone chambers. “The dungeon is that way,” he said quietly, lips close to my ear. “It always sounds like this on Petitioner’s Day.” He cast his eyes around the corner. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”
The grandiosity of the castle did not end at its fa?ade; the interior was just as intricately decorated, if not more. Polished timber buttresses soared into vaulted ceilings decorated with intricate floral reliefs. Everything was painstakingly carved and painted with rich, heady colors. Gold, burgundy, lapis, purple . . . it was hard to tear my eyes away.
There was a distant rumble of voices and music from somewhere in the heart of the castle—?the Petitioner’s Day banquet was being prepared, Zan said—?but the halls were largely empty. When a servant, on his way to some task or another, did hasten past, Zan ducked into a pocket of shadows and pulled me in with him before we could be seen. “Why are you sneaking around?” I hissed. “Isn’t this your home?”
When the coast was clear, he replied, “I find it advantageous to keep my comings and goings to myself; there are too many people who think they know better than I how I should use my time.”
I understood that notion all too well. I’d spent my whole life doing the same.
The library, when we finally came to it, was an enormous circular room, two stories high, with a sweeping balcony on the top level. The tiles beneath our feet were black-and-white marble, and dangling from the pinnacle of the ceiling was a chandelier of crystal stars that clinked and turned in a slow orbit around a shimmering blown-glass moon.
And there were books. Everywhere, books.
“Blood of the Founder,” I breathed. “This is incredible.”
“You don’t have libraries in Renalt?”
“Not like this,” I said. “There’s only one book they want us to worry about: the Founder’s Book of Commands.”
“Explains why Prince Conrad loves this room so much. He spends much of his free time here. Drags his sister with him, too. This afternoon I wasn’t sure they’d leave in time for me to bring you today.”
“Oh?” I said, trying not to sound overly interested. “And what books did he want to look at?”
“Books on pirates, treasure hunts. Things like that.”
My feelings were all mixed up: I wasn’t sure if I should be happy that Conrad was reading about pirates and that Lisette was taking good care of him or jealous that she was doing so at my expense. “You were with them?”
“Some of the afternoon, before they were called away to watch the Petitioner’s Day spectacle. I know you’re wary of Aurelia, Emilie, and I respect your decision to keep your presence here a secret, but I don’t think you have anything to fear. She seems lovely.”
I immediately imagined him drawing her with those decisive charcoal strokes, to commit her beauty to his memory. I’m ashamed to say that the rush of renewed distaste I had for Lisette at that moment had little to do with Conrad. “I’m sure it looks that way,” I said curtly, “but looks can be deceiving, can’t they?”
“You tell me,” he said, but before I could ask him what he meant, he turned lazily on his heel and I had no choice but to follow him. He led me to a sheltered corner of the library, where a cushioned window seat beckoned, a pile of books beside it.
“I made good use of my time this morning.”
Vitesio’s Compendium de Magia. Wilstine’s Essays on Blood Magic Theory. There was even an anthology on the uses of feral magic for increasing crop yields—?soybeans included—?alongside dozens of other texts and histories, all in pristine condition.