The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(97)
“We are,” Hadrian said. “We didn’t actually come for breakfast.”
She watched him chew a huge mouthful. “No?”
“We need to ask you about Rochelle,” Royce said. “We’re looking for any special places, ancient churches or something that might be considered deeply sacred.”
“Grom Galimus,” she replied instantly.
“Besides that,” Hadrian managed to say after he swallowed.
Evelyn thought a moment. “Well, there is supposed to be an ancient burial ground up in Littleton. Dates back to the early imperial age. I’ve never been there. Littleton, or ‘Little Town’ as it was once called, is the dwarven ghetto. Not a safe neighborhood, you understand.”
“We’ve been there,” Royce said. “But that’s not it, either. There has to be another place, maybe something related to mir?”
Evelyn pondered while pouring tea for herself. Royce and Hadrian watched as she deposited two cubes of sugar and stirred. “I’m sorry. I can’t think of anyplace else like that. Of course, you could visit the gallery. That’s what I’d do.”
“Already been there, twice,” Royce said.
“And from what I’ve heard, I shouldn’t send you a third time lest the entire place be destroyed, but there are old maps. One in particular hangs on the third-floor wall. It’s very big and believed to have been drawn by the original surveyors who laid out Rochelle. You might find what you’re looking for on it.”
Royce and Hadrian pushed away from the table.
“Good luck, gentlemen,” Evelyn said.
Royce stopped and looked back. He reminded himself he hated this strict, authoritarian, erudite woman, but with no success. Had life seen fit to give him a mother, Royce suspected she really would have been something like Evelyn. Anything less would have been useless. “You might want to leave,” he told her.
“Leave?” Evelyn said. “Leave what?”
“Get out of the city.”
“Are you suggesting I flee?” She signaled her indignation with a raised eyebrow.
“Look, Villar harbors a good deal of resentment against those he feels suppressed his people. You’re pretty much the face of that fellowship. Everyone knows about your hatred for mir, and if you’re—”
“I do not!” she snapped. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because we learned about your room for rent from one.”
Hadrian nodded his support. “A young mother living on the street just a block down from here with her child. Said she could knock on your door all day, but you’d never take her in.”
“I can assure you, she never came here. I don’t see how she could conclude such a thing if she never bothered to so much as knock.”
“When the Dirty Tankard refuses to let you a room,” Royce said, “it doesn’t seem too likely that the wealthy widow on Mill Street is going to invite you into her parlor.”
Evelyn looked at the rug with a thoughtful frown.
“Would you have let her a room?” Hadrian asked. “A mir with a child in her arms?”
Evelyn hesitated. “I let you two in, didn’t I?”
Royce nodded. “And what does it tell you when you compare two shifty foreign men to a homeless mother and her child? I’m just saying, if we can’t stop Villar, there’s a good chance he might seek vengeance in places like Mill Street. Leave. Stay. It’s your choice, but if I were you, I’d disappear for a while.”
Evelyn folded her arms with her normal self-righteous indignation. “Well, I think we can be quite thankful that I’m not you. Now get out of here.”
Royce picked up his cloak and a pastry. Hadrian grabbed his sword belt, strapping it on as they headed for the door.
“Wait!” she called to them as they started down the hill toward the gallery.
“What?” Royce asked.
Evelyn once again hesitated as she stood on the stoop, then said, “Don’t be late for breakfast again, or I really will throw you out.” With that, she stepped back inside and slammed the door shut.
No one stopped Royce and Hadrian from entering the Imperial Gallery. The two didn’t draw attention even when they climbed the steps and slipped through the bent gap in the bronze doors. Inside, the grand hall was a mess, debris everywhere. What looked to Hadrian to be a giant scaffold lay strewn across the floor. The snapped wooden beams were splintered and wrapped in cloth that had been ripped and torn. The thing had a papier-maché head like an alligator and huge leathery bat wings. Little more than thin material stretched over bowed sticks, it reminded Hadrian of toys he’d watched kids play with in Mandalin. They would run with playthings tethered to strings until the wind blew the toys into the sky. Maybe that’s what this is, a giant wind toy.
Under the ripped cloth and broken timber were shards of broken vases, the remains of chalky, white busts of dignified people, and toppled pedestals. Tears of blood, dried drips on statues and paintings, had yet to be addressed. He surmised this was where Mercator had been killed—torn apart, Erasmus Nym’s widow had said. There had been an uncharacteristic look of revulsion on Royce’s face, but such sights weren’t unfamiliar to Hadrian. In Calis, men were ripped apart by bulls or torn to shreds by lions, both in the name of entertainment, and while arenas always had sand-covered courtyards that could be raked, the walls were dyed a ruddy brown from the layers of splatter. Gore on a grand scale was one more love letter addressed to Hadrian from an unwanted past. They were stacking up.