The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(103)

Villar was back before dawn to collect his prizes, and neither Dinge nor Nym asked where he had gotten the hearts.

Turned out mir hearts worked better—at least for Villar. The human heart resulted in a vague, hazy, intermittent connection. The mir organs formed a clear coupling. The novice summoners speculated that the more similar the heart was to the individual conducting the ritual, the better the connection. Villar became responsible for obtaining hearts for Erasmus and Griswold as well. He spent one heart to gain two or three, four if he was lucky. The dark, twisted streets of the Rookery were ideal for killing the unobservant. Not only did hearts of the underclass work better, hunting them had another advantage: Few cared about the death of young mir, Calians, or dwarves. This point was driven home as more and more children died while the city guard did nothing. The poorly run investigations aided Villar’s efforts in provoking people to revolt. Witnesses, when there were any, were ignored or told tales related to the Morgan myth.

Villar glanced at the blue drape across the doorway of the old ruin. He could tell by the sunlight on the cloth that it was nearly midday. The feast would be starting soon. Erasmus was dead. If the foreigner was able to deliver the cow’s note to her husband, and if he agreed to changes, Griswold would sit the party out. So would the others. They didn’t have the courage of conviction that he had. The citywide uprising he’d hoped for wasn’t going to happen, but a single golem—the right golem—let loose at the right place and time could still do the job.

So, before he could crack the next box of remnants and set up his ritual, he needed to take care of one other thing. It was time to kill the Duchess of Rochelle.





Genny didn’t like the way Villar looked. She never had, but now he was worse. Something had happened, something bad. He had blood on his chest and a cold expression on his face that suggested he’d suffered more than a bad night’s sleep. Then he started tearing the place up, and she knew.

She’d guessed something wasn’t right the night before when he arrived alone. Villar had never before visited when Mercator was out, and it scared her. Never once did he call Mercator’s name. He knew she wasn’t there. Genny had almost asked about the letter, but kept her mouth shut. The sense that this isn’t right, that something had gone wrong, shoved her heart to her throat. Instead, she had watched as he opened a box and checked the contents: something the size of a shriveled apple, gravel, some leaves. To this, he added a few strands of his own hair. Then he closed the box and set the whole thing on the cook fire.

Villar took a seat on the floor and spread out a blanket as if he planned to take a nap. He waited for the box to burn, until it was mostly consumed. When the wood became ashen white, he lay down and started talking, chanting words Genny didn’t understand. A cloud belched forth from the smoldering box.

Villar’s eyes were closed as he continued, and she watched bright-white smoke snake up from the box, then stream out the doorway as if it had a mind of its own and places to go. Villar stopped muttering and appeared to fall asleep. Five minutes later she saw him jerk and twitch. His eyes remained closed, and it seemed like he was having a bad dream. He lay like that for some time, and then his eyes flew open, he gasped in shock, and lay panting.

“How?” he said, and then fell asleep.

She waited for a long time. Then curiosity overwhelmed her, and she took a chance and tried talking to him, but he didn’t hear.

That was when Genny knew she had to get busy. She took out the coins and the key and set to work. She didn’t know how long she had, so she worked with haste. She had tested the coins on single hairs, and they cut just fine, but when it came down to the wholesale hacking of locks, they proved a lot duller than she would have liked. Listening to the deep breaths of Villar just outside the door, she pulled out as many hairs as she cut.

She wanted to believe Mercator was alive, but the fact that Villar was here and Mercator wasn’t made that a hard sell. As long as Mercator acted as her jailor, Genny believed she might survive. Now that there had been a changing of the guard, it was time for her to execute her plan. Like all jailbreaks, it was an all-or-nothing shot. She would either escape or die. That kind of pressure made it hard to hold her fingers steady on the coins.

This isn’t going to work! This is crazy. What am I doing?

Something. I’m doing something, and something is oh so much better than nothing. I may die, but I’m not just going to sit here and give up. It’s a chance, damn it! So quit thinking and cut!

Turned out there was no rush. Villar slept through to the morning.

When he finally woke, he was in a bad mood. He washed, then began looking around, going through Mercator’s things, and Genny had a sinking feeling she knew what he searched for.





Villar came to the door of the cell. He grabbed the latch, but it wouldn’t move. Mercator had asked Griswold to make locks for the door and the collar. They opened with keys; keys he didn’t have.

No knife. No key. Mercator is dead and still causing me grief.

Villar turned over crates once more and threw aside folds of linen and wool. His frustration turned to anger, and he began smashing things in his search. He even kicked the suspended pot, knocking down the tripod of metal poles, which clanked and scraped across the stone.

Villar went through the barrels and shook out rags.

Why is this so hard? Did she keep the key with her, too? Why would she take it? Why not leave it in easy reach? Hang it on the wall—