The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(87)
Royce didn’t see the impact. The edge of the roof blocked the climax. He heard it: a loud crack. Screams and shouts followed. They were short-lived, the sort that came from the surprise of a falling stone, rather than the fear of a living golem.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Duke
The bronze doors of the Imperial Gallery—one with a massive hole torn in it—were open by the time Royce reached the street. A skittish crowd remained in the plaza, and given the way they scuttled back at his approach, they had watched his upper-story jiggery-pokery. That was most certainly what Evelyn would have made of his chase across the rooftops if she’d been in the crowd. Royce considered for a moment whether she’d been one of those people the gargoyle had injured in its murderous march across the plaza. No one would have fared well before the golem’s onslaught, but an old woman would lack any ability to get out of the way. His teeth clenched in anger. He didn’t know why. He hated that old woman.
He took a breath before entering the gallery, and then another. He’d just survived a race with a golem and felt he deserved to take a moment. His back was sore, and his wrist ached where the stone monster had held onto it, but at least it wasn’t broken. Not exactly Hadrian’s luck, but better than his normal lot.
Few spectators had found the courage to venture inside. Those who did hugged the wall nearest the exit. A handful of men dressed in the uniform of the duke’s city guard made a semicircle around the bloody mess in the middle of the rotunda. Most stood awkwardly, shifting their weight, unsure where to look or what to do. Three others pulled back the broken remains of the fallen dragon, revealing the extent of the gore. Everything within twenty feet of Mercator’s body wept blood. The remains bore as little resemblance to a once living person as did a slab of bacon. A young man in a crisp new set of clothing clapped both hands over his mouth; when that didn’t work, he ran for the door, brushing past Royce in his dash to the street.
As a general rule, Royce disliked everyone. Strangers began at a deficit that required they prove their worth just to be seen as neutral. Mercator had jumped that bar in record time.
And a mir to boot, he thought. How remarkable is that?
Royce couldn’t help feeling he’d blindly brushed past greatness. An opportunity had been lost, a treasure squandered. That was how he framed it in his head, as an abstract business failure. But looking at Mercator’s blood and the blue-stained lumps of meat that had once been the most remarkable mir he’d ever known, Royce clenched his fists.
A shriveled-up biddy and now a mir. I’m becoming soft. This is all Hadrian’s fault.
“You there!” one of the guards shouted. “Grab him!”
Not twice in one night, Royce thought as he took a step back, dipping into a crouch.
The guard wasn’t a fool. He recognized the body language, which must have looked like a badger raising its fur, teeth bared. The man didn’t rush him. Neither did anyone else. Instead, the guards fanned out.
Royce heard movement behind him. Turning, he found himself face-to-face with Roland Wyberg, just coming in through the torn bronze door. “Well, it’s about time,” Royce said. “C’mon, we gotta go.”
“Go? What are you talking about? Where’s Hadrian?” Roland asked, puzzled. He looked at the hole in the door then at the bloody mess in the center of the room. “What in Novron’s name happened here?”
“I saw this man running across the rooftops chased by . . .” The guard faltered.
“Chased by whom?” Roland asked. His stare extended to everyone in the room, finally settling on Royce.
“Not a who, a what,” Royce replied. “One of the stone gargoyles from the walls of Grom Galimus.”
“A gargoyle?” Roland asked, pronouncing the word with distinct incredulity.
Royce nodded. “A stone statue, normally content to sit on a ledge outside the cathedral, decided to climb down. It took a particular dislike to myself and”—his eyes tracked to the blood pool—“a mir named Mercator Sikara.”
Roland stared. He opened his mouth. It hung there for a moment, then he closed it again, his eyes shifting helplessly. “I—I don’t know what to make of that.”
“Luckily, I do,” Royce said. He pulled out two parchments. “Here, this one’s for you. It’s from Hadrian, explaining why you need to take me and Mercator to the duke and insist on an audience. Although now we’ll have to settle for just me.”
“And the other?” Roland pointed at the parchment but made no attempt to take it.
This guy is a lot smarter than I gave him credit for. And that’s good because whether either of us likes it or not, we’re about to become a team.
“This?” Royce held up the letter from Genny Winter. “If we’re lucky, it’s a weapon we can use to prevent a slaughter tomorrow.”
Roland continued to look puzzled; then realization dawned. “The Feast of Nobles?”
“Exactly. We need to see the duke. Right now.”
Governor’s Isle was an odd name for the ancestral residence of dukes, but Royce guessed it had something to do with all that gibberish Evelyn had blathered on about. The place didn’t look anything like a ducal castle. The Estate had the typical ugly wall surrounding the grounds, but it appeared out of place, newer and more slapdash than anything inside, all of which was extraordinarily precise. Brick paths wound through open lawns and alongside trimmed hedges. One led through a small orchard and garden to a stable, a coach house, barracks, and a kitchen built separate from the main structure, all constructed from a smooth rock with no visible mortar.