House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(67)

A night bird screams and the sound is followed by the yowl of fighting cats. A dog launches into a volley of echoing barks, determined to drown out the sound of the cats. I pause, my hands shaking. It’s no guard dog from House Eline; I’m still too far from the Manor. I take a large pinch of scriv and inhale it like snuff, the way Hobs in the tea-shops take their ‘ink sometimes. It slams into the back of my head, tearing into my mind like a sea-storm through fishing boats. I gasp and grab onto the seat to steady myself. After a moment, I am almost used to the so-long-denied sensation. Working quickly, I tie the pouch closed, and with a deep breath to centre my magic, I wrap myself in silence and exit my coach.

There. And now to shift the way light refracts off me. It has been so long, So long, but I slip back into my magic with the ease of a fish returned to water.

Silenced, I am a thing of shadows. How many other War-Singers have done this in their time? No one mentions it, but I cannot have been the first to think to use my power for something so underhanded. It would make a House extremely rich, were they to know every secret of their enemies.

The front door of the manor house looms in the darkness, and I make my way up the low steps. No lights are lit in the front windows, and the servants are relaxing in this respite from their masters. The glass lock presents little problem. It takes a moment’s probing with the air at tiny cogs and wheels, and then the gears click and the door swings open silently in welcome.

I almost laugh. I forgot how easy everything is when I have scriv in me. It makes me feel invincible. The rooms and hallways are shadowed, and I can hear, just faintly, the sounds of talk in the kitchens and rooms below. There must be a stair leading downward. I follow the hum of conversations and find a small back stairwell, grimy and narrow, that leads to the servants’ areas. While I doubt that this is the stair Garret takes to his personal torture chamber, it will do.

The steps are worn in the centre, dipped like cupped palms. The boards creak, but the sound is kept in my little bubble of space. Even so I tread cautiously, always watching for the servants and holding my silence all around me. I pass the kitchen. It’s warmly lit. Servants are drinking tea and laughing and talking, playing at a mockery of their lord and lady, freed from the need to run at the beck and call of their masters for the next few hours.

They cannot see me. I am nothing more than a passing darkness.

The stairs go farther down, to the sub-basements and the wine stores. With my chest thrumming from the scriv, I open door after door, leading through cold stores and pantries. Of the vampires, there is no sign. Nothing catches at my heart, pulling me where I need to go. It worries me. I know Jannik can keep himself locked up in this house-thing, but this feels blacker, colder and dead. Like someone scooped out a part of my brain, but I’m still walking around and talking, only vaguely aware that something is missing.

“Damn it all, Jannik. Where are you?” I whisper, pausing at the end of a room filled with musty crates covered with tarps. From the earth-sharp smell, there must be potatoes under the coverings. I sit precariously on the corner of one of the crates and close my eyes. The little room that is my safe space inside my mind is still standing, but it’s of no use to me now. I want access to Jannik. I feel for him, breathe slower and slower, hoping that something will echo inside me.

Nothing.

And then a flicker, like a memory of my own heartbeat. He’s close.

I push myself up from the crate. My eyes are tight and watery. “You’re not going to cry now,” I say. “You’re going to find him.” How long before Harun’s dinner runs dry and his unwelcome guests depart? And surely Garret will realize it is no coincidence that he has been invited to the Guyin home only days after he has claimed ownership of Isidro.

I haven’t all night to sit here in the dark wishing for the door to show itself. The time has come for destruction. Grimly, I take another pinch of scriv. It’s more than enough to send my head spinning and I wince. It hurts to take this much, especially now that I’m unused to the drug. Gathering my silence, I spread my little bubble, pushing it wider and wider until it encompasses as much space as I can manage. I hope it will be enough. Unfortunately, I can do nothing to keep in all the noise of my next act. Here’s hoping the servants will think it nothing more than a collapsing mine tunnel. After all, my poor dead Riona didn’t so much as blink an eyelid when the ground shook beneath her feet.

With a fist of air harder than Mekekana iron, I slam a hole through the wall ahead of me. The room reverberates from the blow, shaking old dirt and cobwebs from the ceiling. It rains down, sliding over the bubble of my magic to patter in a circle of debris around where I stand.

The old plaster of the wall is cracked around the crumbled bricks. The dust clears to reveal a hole the size of my head. I rub the powder from my eyes and blink away itchy tears. “Jannik?” I say into the murkiness beyond the cellar wall.

I am answered by an ululating shriek, more terrifying than the occasional howling of the silver-backed jackals around Pelimburg. The sound tears into my eardrums, rises higher and higher before I think to snap my bubble of silence wider. Now the screaming is all around me, echoed and doubled.

I can only hope the servants didn’t hear it. My heart remembers to beat again. Jannik or Isidro in pain – and I need to stop it.

“Alerion’s tits, can you get the f*cking thing to shut up,” Isidro hisses out of the darkness. He’s alive, then.