The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(102)
Villar rolled to his feet and moved to one of the pots of clean water. He sniffed it to be sure. Grabbing the corner of a large blanket, he soaked it and gingerly scrubbed at the wound while he gritted his teeth. Most of the blood wiped off easily enough, but around the cut, it had hardened, and he didn’t feel like messing with it.
Turning, Villar looked at the door to the little cell.
He had forgotten all about the duchess. The woman had been quiet. She hadn’t even greeted him with one of her usual insipid quips. Usually, the duchess just couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and it was such a large, loud mouth. She was their prisoner, their captive, but she failed to act her part. A helpless, captive woman was supposed to be quiet, tearfully sobbing in the corner, or begging for life, praying to her god. But not this one.
He had wanted to kill her the night before. The ritual required concentration, and he couldn’t afford any interference from her; nor could he risk her giving away his secret should anyone come looking.
Villar had planned on killing her for months. Now with Mercator’s death and the feast imminent, he’d finally get his chance. He couldn’t rely on her staying quiet again. Villar looked for a knife, turning over crates of wool and throwing aside mounds of linen. He went through barrels that stank of vinegar and shook out rags. Nothing.
Seriously, Mercator? How did you work without a knife?
Then Villar remembered she’d had it with her at the gallery when the golem . . .
No, not the golem, it was me, and I do regret what happened.
Her death was a loss; the mir needed to rise to the greatness the past proclaimed them to be, and after the feast, there would be so many seats left unfilled. As duke, he would have campaigned for her to be appointed Duchess of Rise. She might be a mongrel, but she was still the descendant of the famed Sikar. Villar liked the idea of making Alburn a mir kingdom just as Merredydd had been. She could have had a part to play in the restoration of their heritage; her death was a waste.
Villar took one last look around. Seeing no sign of a knife, he clapped his arms against his sides in resignation.
I’ll just have to strangle the bitch.
As a golem, he’d killed dozens. That’s how he got the hearts, those hard-to-obtain ingredients. At first, he’d tried without success to use animal hearts.
Then Ferrol smiled on him and intervened, reversing his fortune.
It had happened on the last hot day of autumn. Villar had watched six children playing at the storm drain where the Rookery and Little Gur Em butted up to the city harbor. Villar had gone there to watch the ships load—or so he’d told himself. What he was really doing was searching for a victim, some new immigrant without family or friends. Someone small, weak, and bewildered by the big city. A youth whom he could easily overpower.
The sky was cloudy as the evening heat invited late-day thunderheads to form. The kids had pulled back the heavy metal lid of the cistern and were taking turns jumping into the stone reservoir, using a rope to climb out. They obviously had done this all summer. The rope was bleached, and its edges frayed where it rubbed against the sharp side of the cistern wall. The children didn’t notice, nor did they appear to care, about the rain clouds blanketing the sky. Villar considered chasing them away for their own good, but one thing stopped him. The group of kids was a mixed lot: two Calians, one dwarf, one mir, and two humans. If it had been simply a group of mir, he would have ordered them out. Even if dwarves and Calians had been with them, he might have said something. But the presence of the humans enraged him. Villar couldn’t bring himself to warn them off.
As the sky darkened, one of the humans left, as did the dwarf and the two Calians. The other human and, much to his dismay, the mir lingered. The two continued to play as if there was nothing wrong with their twisted friendship. Revolted, Villar was driven to leave. He was walking away when the rope snapped. Screams followed by cries for help echoed up.
No one else heard.
“By Mar! Thank Novron!” the human said as Villar peered over the edge. “Can you lower more rope?”
Can you lower more rope? Villar could still hear that voice in his head. The kid didn’t say sir, he didn’t say please, just can you lower more rope? A common human child, ordering him to obey with the same sense of disregard and entitlement as a noble. The little brat expected Villar to do as he was told. Why wouldn’t he? How many times had the kid seen adults do the same? How many times had he seen grown mir smile and bow as they surrendered their dignity.
The two children were treading water in the cistern below. Without the rope, the interior sides—sheer and slick with algae—made the site a death trap.
“You really shouldn’t be playing in here,” Villar said. “It’s dangerous. That’s why there’s a cover over this. And it’s about to rain. This thing fills up fast in a downpour.”
“It’s okay.” The little human smiled at him. He had red fleshy cheeks, the sort mir never had, the kind gained from an abundance of everything. In that smile, a sickening confidence bloomed, an absolute assurance that the world would always take care of him. He hadn’t the slightest fear, not the hint of a doubt that Villar would save them. “If it rains, the water will lift us up and we can just climb out.”
He was right. Even without the rope the two might survive—if it rained hard enough.
They thought he was joking when he closed the lid. The laughs stopped when he secured it with the metal rod the kids had originally removed. With the top closed and the growing roar of rain, no one heard them. Villar regretted that one was a mir, but that was what came from associating with the wrong crowd.