When Demons Walk

9

Alone in the putrid-smelling room, Sham surveyed Lord Ven’s body. Filthy work this and nothing she relished, but it had to be done. She’d told Kerim she worked best alone, but the truth was she feared his grief would distract her. He tried to hide it, but in the short time that she’d known him, she had learned how to read deeper than his public presentation. She rubbed her eyes and put such thoughts aside.

The blood first, she decided after surveying the task before her.

She could clean up the old stuff, but couldn’t create new blood to replace it without exhausting her magic well before she’d finished. Creating matter was extremely inefficient, and true alchemy, changing one kind of material into another, was almost as fatiguing. Sham had briefly considered visiting the kitchens and bringing in the blood of a slaughtered pig or some such, but the risk of someone noticing her was too great.

She knelt at the edge of the dark stain, ignoring the faint queasiness resulting from the rancid smell. She pulled her dagger from her arm sheath, which she had donned with the rest of her thieving garb, and opened a shallow cut on her thumb. Three drops of fresh blood joined the old.

Sympathetic magic was one of the easiest kinds of spells to work: like called to like. Using blood, though, was very close to black magic. There were many mages who would call it that even if the blood she used was her own. Even Sham felt vaguely unclean doing it, but didn’t allow that to hinder her.

Bending near the floor, she blew gently on the fresh blood, then murmured a spell. Lord Ven’s blood began to change, slowly, to the pattern lent by hers. Sweat gathered irritatingly on Sham’s forehead as she fought to work the magic and watch the results at the same time. It was important that the blood not appear too fresh.

She stopped her spell while the edges of the largest pool were still dry. She cooled the blood to match the temperature of the room and surveyed the results. The smell of new blood added to the unpleasant mix of aromas already in the room. Rising somewhat unsteadily, Sham walked around the newly wet pool until she could view Lord Ven’s body.

She did not risk stepping in the mess; what she had done to the blood destroyed the traces where she, Kerim, and later Talbot and Dickon, had disturbed it. It would be disturbed again, but the mistress of the Reeve would have no business in the room with a corpse, and she wanted no questions about a woman’s footprint.

What she needed to do to Lord Ven’s body could be done from a distance, and she had no real desire to touch the corpse anyway. It was easier than the blood, since she only had to emulate the stiffness of joints rather than duplicate it.

When she was finished with her spell, she stepped away from the scene. Wiping her hands on her clean shirt as if they were stained—though she’d touched nothing with them—she turned and picked her way across the floor to the panel that opened into the passages and left the room.

The three men looked up when she entered the Reeve’s chambers.

“It is done,” she said, her voice sounding as raw to her ears as she felt, “but if his laying out takes too long, someone could discover that I’ve been meddling: Lord Ven’s rigor will not loosen for a week or more.”

Kerim nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

Talbot called in several men to travel to the Temple of Altis for priests to attend to Lord Ven. Until they arrived, Talbot guarded the hall door of Ven’s final resting place while Dickon stood watch at the panel.

Sham retreated to her room to change, carefully locking the trunk after she put her thieving clothes away. After an extensive search of the closet she found a dress she could don without help.

In her guise of the Reeve’s mistress, she rejoined Kerim in his room where they waited for the priests without speaking. Sham didn’t know what caused Kerim’s muteness, but she kept quiet because she was too tired to do otherwise. It would be a long day before the fatigue of her magic use would leave her.

Dickon entered the room and nodded at Kerim.

“Tell the priests to step in here a moment before carrying out their duties.” Kerim’s normal baritone had deepened to a bass rasp, either from exhaustion or from sorrow.

Dickon nodded, returning with five men in the brown robes of the lesser minions of Altis. Four of the robes were belted with blue ties and the fifth wore yellow.

Kerim addressed the man in yellow. “Blessings upon you, brothers.”

“Upon you also, Lord Kerim,” responded the yellow-belted one.

“The dead man is my brother.”

“So we were informed by Master Talbot.”

Kerim nodded impatiently. “My brother’s affianced wife is heavy with child, and already bears the death of her first husband this past year. I would spare her further grief, and Ven’s body is not fit for viewing in any case. It is my command that his body be shrouded immediately and a funeral pyre laid and ready for burning in the Castle courtyard at sunset.”

“It shall be done, Lord Kerim,” agreed the solemn-faced priest.

Kerim watched as they left the room. Sham turned her eyes away from the expression on his face. When she looked back he was sending Dickon to find some of the court pages to deliver messages.

He busied himself writing short notes at his desk. When Dickon returned with a small herd of young boys who looked as if they had been roused out of their sleep without a chance to do more than scramble into their clothes, the Reeve sent them to Lord Ven’s closest friends, to Lady Sky, and to his mother.

When the last messenger left, Dickon frowned at Kerim, “Shouldn’t you break the news to Lady Tirra yourself?”

Kerim shrugged. “Lord Ven is my brother, but he is also the latest in a number of bodies who are appearing among the courtiers. Sham may have been able to disguise the time of his death, but the mere fact of it will increase the city’s unrest. I need to meet with the Advisory Council immediately to forestall as many of the adverse effects as possible.”

Sham, watching forgotten from a seat in the far corner of the room, thought the Reeve was using the meeting as an excuse to avoid taking the news of his brother’s death to Lady Tirra. Not that she blamed him; she wouldn’t want to be the one to tell the Lady that her favorite son was dead either.

“Dickon, I need you to send messengers with the news that the Council has been called in the Meeting Room to the counselors who live outside the Castle walls. When you are finished, go to the rooms of those who live here and tell them the same.”

“Yes, sir.” Dickon slipped back out.

“Do you want me to go?” asked Sham.

Kerim shrugged tiredly, “It doesn’t matter. If you stay, you’ll reinforce your status. Be warned, it might make you a target for bribery or threats if the court believes you are close enough to me to influence my decisions.”

Sham smiled. “If you think that I haven’t been receiving bribes, you are sadly mistaken. Lord Halvok’s fledglings are skilled at interfering with the courtier’s attempts to corner me, but your nobles have become quite devious. Gifts and notes appear in my laundry, under my pillow, and on the food trays. I’ve gotten several very fine pieces of jewelry that way; they usually come with very subtle notes. My favorite was one implying that certain grateful parties would gift me generously if I would just slip an innocent-looking powder in your drink.”

“Poison?” questioned Kerim, though he didn’t seem alarmed.

Sham grinned. “No. Someone has access to a real wizard; it was a love-philter.”

“A what?”

Sham laughed at his outrage—outrage that had been absent when he thought it was poison. “Don’t worry. Love-philters are very temporary and are simple to resist—not that the person who sent it would necessarily know that. To be safe, if you find yourself suddenly lusting after someone, just wait a few days to approach the lady. If it persists, it isn’t magic.”

Kerim raised his eyebrows. “What did you do with the powder?”

Sham looked at him innocently and smiled.

“Shamera.”

“Calm yourself,” she advised. “I threw it in the fire, though I was tempted to find the biggest, nastiest man in your personal guards and give it to him. I thought finding out who you were supposed to fall in lust with could be useful, but Talbot wasn’t certain you would approve.”

Kerim brought one hand up to his face, and bowed his head, his shoulders shaking with weary laughter. “You would have, wouldn’t you. I can just see it. Karson, all fifteen stone of him, chasing after some noble’s daughter.”

“Is Karson the one missing his front teeth?”

“That’s he.”

“Nah,” Sham said, “I wouldn’t have picked him: he’s married. I talked to Talbot about the first few treasures that I found in my water glass.” She displayed the diamond solitaires in her ears. “He said to keep them, and eventually they’d give up. He said that’s what Dickon did, and Dickon’s long since ceased to receive gifts from anonymous sources.”

Kerim raised an eyebrow and asked again, “Have you had any threats?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I suspect it will come in due time.” When he looked worried, she laughed. “My lord Reeve, I have lived half my life in Purgatory. I assure you it is much more dangerous than court.” After a moment’s thought she added, “Even with a demon hunting here.”

When Dickon returned, he began sorting through Kerim’s wardrobe for clothing. When he brought them to the Reeve, Sham stopped him and examined each garment closely. When she was finished, she tossed the tunic into the fire.

“My lord,” protested Dickon. Kerim shook his head. “Find another tunic.” Dickon frowned, but he found a second tunic and presented it to Shamera with a bow. When she handed it back to him, he mutely pointed to the covered doorway. With a faint smile, Sham left while Dickon saw to the Reeve’s dressing.

Because the wheeled chair was in the fireplace, Talbot and Dickon carried Kerim to the meeting room next to his chambers. It was undignified, but only Sham was there to see. By the time the council members began to filter in, Kerim was settled in a high-back chair facing the door with Sham standing behind him.

Except for Halvok, the lone South woodsman counselor, the Advisory Council ignored Sham’s presence. It might have been because the rather plain cotton gown she wore was remarkable only for being ordinary. More probably the death of the Reeve’s brother was of more moment than his unorthodox mistress. Lord Halvok smiled when he saw her.

Kerim waited until all the counselors were seated before speaking. Tired and grieving, he was very much the Leopard.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “we have a problem. As you have already been informed, my brother’s body was discovered this evening. He was killed in much the same manner as Lord Abet and the other nobles these past months. As his body is in no fit state for viewing, I have ordered him shrouded, and set the pyre for sunset. I need your suggestions, my lords, as how to best stem the fear yet another such death will cause. To make sure you are all thoroughly aware of the entirety of the matter, Master Talbot will tell you what we know.”

Sham approved the smooth delivery that directed the inquiry away from the unseemly need for haste.

The Reeve nodded at Talbot who stood up and gave a brief summary of who had been killed by similar means and a partially fictitious account of what was being done to catch the murderer. By the time that a carefully worded eulogy and public announcement were drafted, to be delivered by the High Priest to the court at large, the skylights overhead were beginning to lighten.

After the others had left. Talbot and Dickon carried the Reeve to Dickon’s room for a few hours of sleep. Sham wouldn’t let him occupy his awn room until she had a chance to search it more carefully.

She retreated to her bed and dreamed fitfully of dead bodies and blood before she lapsed into a deeper slumber that lasted until just before dinner. Her sleeping schedule had never been particularly regular, and she woke up refreshed when Jenli knocked at the door. She hastily covered up the new bruises and old wounds with an illusion before she called out an invitation.

“I am sorry to disturb you, Lady,” said the maid, “but the Reeve sent me to make sure that you are ready for the state dinner that precedes Lord Ven’s pyre.”

Sham gave the woman a sharp glance. Exposure to Jenli’s uncle had given her a healthy respect for the intelligence that could be hidden under a bland facade. Jenli’s large, brown, cow-like eyes blinked back at her and Sham turned back to her wardrobe, shaking her head.

She rummaged, ignoring Jenli’s moans as she shoved dresses left and right, and pulled out another black gown. She hadn’t chosen it for mourning, but it would work well for that as well.

As Jenli began working on the myriad tiny buttons that closed the narrow sleeve, her brows twisted in puzzlement. “Lady,” she said hesitantly.

“Yes?” Sham preened before the mirror.

“This is a dress that my grandmother would find overly modest, Lady.”

Sham smiled slyly and said, “I think it will contrast nicely with the more daring gowns that have become the style recently, don’t you?”

Sham might have gotten a decent amount of sleep, but it required only a glance at the Reeve’s face when he welcomed her to the state dining area to tell her that he’d managed far less.

He brought her hand to his mouth and greeted her with the solemnness required on such an occasion. Someone had finished the new wheeled chair, though they hadn’t had enough time to stain it or cover the wheels with leather to provide traction—instead the metal had been crudely scored.

“Your timing is impeccable,” Kerim commented as she sat in the cushioned chair next to him. “You missed the vultures gathering for the bones.”

Sham nodded gracefully. “I have found timing to be an extremely useful skill in my work.”

His mouth quirked upward in something not quite a smile, “I expect you have.”

The time for personal conversation ended as Lady Tirra took up her post on Kerim’s other side. Her skin was too dark to be truly pale, and her features were composed, but she looked ten years older. Sham sat quietly in her seat, feeling no desire to antagonize the matriarch in her grief.

Around the room the buzz of gossip was loud enough to be deafening, but at the high table silence reigned.

At last, the High Priest stood before Kerim’s table, facing the rest of the room. When the roar died to a sullen murmur, he began to speak.

“High Ones, we come here to mourn the passing of a bright star. He leaves us one less light to steer by, and we are bereaved by his falling. Tonight we will witness the last, faint reflection of his light as his mortal form is reduced to ashes. Let us remember the illumination he brought to our dark world. Let us remember the untimely method by which he was stolen.”

Beside her, Kerim stiffened and muttered something nasty. Sham touched her rouged lips lightly in thought—this was not the speech he and his counselors had prepared.

“This is a dark and troubled time,” continued the High Priest, playing the crowd. “Lord Ven’s life is not the first of our brethren to be so rudely extinguished, yet they go unavenged and the killer still stalks among us.”

In tones that carried no further than Shamera’s ear, Kerim muttered, “If he keeps this up, we’ll have a riot, and my brother’s will not be the only body on the pyre.”

It was his grim tone that made Sham glance around the room and see the emotions that were rapidly increasing: flames of terror and outrage, fanned by the High Priest’s speech.

Sham did the first thing that came to mind. Though never formally taught, there were a few cantrips that every apprentice learned from an older one: simple tricks like making milk go sour, they didn’t require much magic, which was good as she was still tired from her earlier battles.

“... someone or something killing—” the High Priest’s eyes began to water and the beautifully trained voice faltered as Sham’s cantrip took effect.

He cleared his throat and began again, “Killing ...”

She added more power to the spell.

The High Priest began to cough. A brown-robed man ran up to him with a goblet of water. It seemed to help until the High Priest attempted to speak again.

Kerim frowned and glanced at Sham. Whatever he saw in her face made him relax slightly; he folded his hands loosely and rested them on the table.

When it was apparent the High Priest would not be able to complete his speech, the High Priest’s slender assistant, Fykall, took his place, head bowed as if with heavy mourning.

“High ones,” he began, “—we share our sorrow, and yet we must glory for him who has gone before us as so many others have done. It is the best part of being mortal that we may throw off the robes of this life for the next.” He too, diverted from the approved text, but even Sham, inexperienced as she was with demagoguery, saw it was necessary to control the people first.

The little priest raised his head and surveyed the crowd. Shamera could almost hear the High Priest grit his teeth as the Fykall continued. “This night we must put our fears aside; only by doing so can we properly mourn and celebrate the passing of Lord Ven. We are aided by the trust we hold for the wisdom of a man who has served Altis so well in the past. As the Prophet has spoken: What need we fear when the Leopard is on the field? Altis calls, and Lord Kerim answers with a roar to match victory out of the gaping maw of defeat. Let the murdering jackals howl as they will, when the battle is over, the Leopard of Altis will stand alone on the field of his enemies.”

Right now the Leopard of Altis was muttering under his breath about firepits and cooking pots, noted Sham with well-hidden amusement. He straightened, though, when the priest’s words were met with a roar of approval. As the people quieted the priest took a step back and to the side, clearly leaving the floor to Kerim.

The Reeve rolled his chair back slightly and used the table to lever himself to his feet; at this there was a second cheer.

“My brother has been taken from me,” he said, when the noise had quieted in a voice as carrying as the priests’ had been. He spoke slowly, so he could be heard by every person in the room, “I will find the one who has done this and force them to suffer justice if I must take him to the very throne of Altis myself to see it done.” He could not have said another word if he had wanted to, such was the response he won.

The priest’s blessing on the food was decidedly anticlimactic.

Sham waited until most of the room had turned their attention from the Reeve to their plates before saying softly, “Fykall did a good job of calming the waves.”

Kerim growled, but when he spoke it was equally soft. “I have worked to pull away from Altis’s priests since I became Reeve; some of the people have embraced Him, but none of the Southwood nobles. If they think I’ve become a puppet of the priests, they’ll run back to their estates and stay there until they rot. In one speech, Fykall ruined a decade’s work. I’ll be lucky if a third of the Southwood nobles I’ve managed to coax into Court are here tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” replied Sham, remembering Lord Halvok’s pleasure at discovering that the Reeve’s mistress was a Southwood native. “I suspect the need to believe you can help them will outweigh their distrust. You bring them hope: it will take more than a single speech to destroy it.”

He didn’t look reassured.

“In any case—” she said, taking a bite of fish, “—that boat has left the docks, and the tides will see its journey’s end.”

At dusk, Lord Ven’s body was lifted to the pyre and his soul given to Altis in an elaborate ceremony presided over by the High Priest. Kerim touched a torch to the base of the pyre, stepping back as the oil-soaked wood began eagerly to burn.

Long before the flames died down, most of the court retired, to leave only Lord Ven’s family to mourn him. Lady Sky would have been there, but she had taken the news of her betrothed’s death badly. The castle healer had confined her to bed for fear that she would lose her child. Sham waited until everyone else was gone before leaving the Reeve and his mother staring silently at the orange flames.

Early the next morning, Sham opened her trunk and took out her dagger. It was a moment’s work to pull the itching stitches out of her wounds and toss the pieces of thread into the fire.

She put her second-best working clothes on again. The baggy breeches and the black cotton shirt, patched roughly on the left sleeve where she had once caught her arm on a wooden casement, would serve her better than any of her dresses and she wouldn’t have to keep the illusion over the cut on her arm.

She caught up a candle and lit it with a breath of magic before pulling the tapestry aside and peering into Kerim’s room. With no reason to maintain the fire or to light candles and the sun on the wrong side of the sky to light Kerim’s windows, the room was hidden in shadows. Sham’s instincts told her there was no one in the room.

With a gesture, Sham lit every candle in the chamber as well as the wood laid in the fireplace. Setting her candlestick on a convenient table, she contemplated the wardrobe. It seemed a fit place to start looking for more of the demon’s runes.

When Dickon and the Reeve entered the room some time later, the fire was roaring merrily as it consumed the majority of the Reeve’s clothing, and Sham was tugging one of the large woven rugs across the floor with the obvious intention of sending it to join the clothing.

Dickon cleared his throat and spoke quickly, “Sir, that is a three-hundred-year-old rug, a bridal gift from the King of Reth to his sister on her wedding to the King of Southwood.”

Sham, straightened and gave both men an annoyed look as she wiped the sweat off the back of her neck. “It also contains one of the demon’s runes. I don’t have the strength to remove them all. If the Reeve would like to stay in that chair for the rest of his shortened lifespan, I’ll be glad to leave it here.”

“Sir,” Dickon’s voice was almost a moan. “... demon runes ... that rug is irreplaceable. There are ways of making one man look like another. To destroy such a rug on mere superstition ...”

“We could put the rug in a store room somewhere, if you like,” offered Sham. “If we get rid of the demon there’s no need to destroy it, and until then it will do no harm in storage.”

“But that has to go in the fire.” She nodded at a large, ornate bench sitting against one wall. “There’s more than one rune on it, and two of them I haven’t seen before.” They looked to her like the strange bits and pieces that had been on the binding rune she’d taken off Kerim. “—I’m not certain how to deal with it—it won’t fit in the hearth. You must be very important to this demon, Kerim. It has expended a tremendous amount of energy to ensure that you were vulnerable to it. I’ve found its runes on your shoes, your clothes, your armor—”

“What!” exclaimed Kerim, noticing the heavy war hauberk crumpled into a pile on the floor for the first time. It had taken a master armorer nearly a year to complete the shirt and ten years of battle to make it fit like a second skin.

Sham shook her head, “The metal is fine, it was on the leather padding. For some reason, none of the marks are on metal—maybe the nature of the demon’s magic.”

Dickon shook his head and muttered softly.

“Over a lifetime of dealing with difficult women, I have learned it is often better to give into their demands immediately,” said Kerim, approaching the bench Sham had condemned. “See if you can find my axe somewhere in this mess, Dickon, and I’ll follow my orders and reduce this defenseless work of art to kindling. Then track down a couple of strong men to cart the more valuable pieces to the nearest storeroom.”

Once Sham knew what she was looking for, she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t seen the magic that touched almost everything in the chamber. The fire roared higher and higher and the room began to look as if a mischievous giant had decided to toss furniture around.

At some point in time, Talbot entered the room to join the effort, and his help was invaluable as they moved several especially heavy items. Shamera suspected that the wardrobe in particular hadn’t been moved in several hundred years: judging by the effort required to shift the thing it wouldn’t be moved again for another hundred.

Once he’d resigned himself to the destruction, Kerim seemed surprisingly lighthearted. It struck Shamera he’d lost the air of quiet acceptance that had formerly characterized him. Not even the death of his half-brother tempered the energy with which he attacked the room.

He chopped not only the bench, but a room divider of six panels into pieces small enough to fit in the fire, as the divider bore one of the strange runes as well. He insisted on helping when Shamera directed the complete disassembly of the large state bed, the last place left untouched in the room. It was there she found the second of the demon’s focus runes.

The hall door opened quietly.

Sham, whose black trousers and shirt were the same grey as the dust that had been stirred up by the tumult, crouched where the center of the bed had been, muttering hoarsely in a long-dead language. Kerim watched her intently, immobilized because the various pieces of the bed were scattered helter-skelter around his chair. Talbot leaned with half-assumed weariness against one of the imposing bedposts that leaned in its turn against the wall. Dickon had left to see what could be done to replace the furnishings and rugs Sham relegated to storage. It wasn’t until the intruder spoke that anyone looked toward the door.

“It seems meet that, after ruining your brother’s funeral with political theatrics, you would spend the next day rearranging your room,” Lady Tirra’s tones could have frozen molten rock.

Although Sham registered the sound of Lady Tirra’s voice, she didn’t pause in her chanting. The mark she’d found on the floor under Kerim’s bed was older than the rest, and the demon had spent time since reinforcing the spell. As the option of burning the stone floor seemed as doubtful as removing it to storage. Sham had to unwork the spell. This was the third time she’d tried and it finally looked as if she might succeed—if she could concentrate on her work.

Tracing the rune backwards (or so she hoped, since like several others the demon used, this rune was somewhat different from the one she knew) and calling upon parts of several spells, Sham felt the rune fade, but not completely. As long as a portion remained, it could be reinvoked. She tried again, varying the pattern of the spells and feeling them begin to unravel the rune at last.

When she finally looked up from her task, the first thing she noticed was Talbot attempting to be invisible. For a man without the ability to call upon magic, he was doing a fair job at it.

“... could expect little more than that from you.”

“Mother, I am sorry that Lady Sky lost her child, but I don’t know how my actions could have altered that one way or the other.” Kerim faced his mother across the pile of boards and leather straps that had been his bed, his voice dangerously soft.

Lady Tirra ignored the warning tone and continued to attack him. “You could have broken the news more gently to her—a note delivered in the middle of the night is hardly considerate. If you had even arranged a proper laying out ... instead you had him burned with less dignity accorded the son of a gutter-thug.”

“I did as I thought best at the time. Since I am not responsible for Ven’s murder—whatever you may feel to the contrary—I was unable to choose a more convenient moment to announce his death. As for laying him out for public mourning: his body was not fit for viewing, certainly not by a lady in the advanced stages of pregnancy. I suppose I might have allowed my brother’s body to rot for a month or so to give Lady Sky time to have her child safely.” Kerim said the last sentence with bitter sarcasm reflecting, thought Sham, a fair portion of the hurt he was feeling.

“You have always resented him, haven’t you?” said Lady Tirra in the tone of soft discovery. “Why would you give him honor in death when you granted him none in life? We came here five years ago in the hope that you would find Ven an estate worthy of the Reeve’s brother, but instead you kept him here at your beck and call. You wouldn’t even make him heir to your office. Then, just when he might have come into wealth by marriage to Lady Sky, he is killed. I find it interesting that the other nobles killed by this ... unknown killer opposed your policies.”

Kerim had regained control of his temper, and there was only sadness in his voice when he replied. “Lady, almost all the Eastern noblemen oppose most of my policies regarding the Southwood Lords. It would be difficult to find one who didn’t.”

“With the wealth of Lady Sky’s dowry, Ven would have been a problem for you,” commented Lady Tirra icily.

Sham looked at the bitter woman and saw, unexpectedly, the same strength in Lady Tirra that characterized her son. It might have been the resemblance that made Sham stop her; it might have been the white-knuckled grip Kerim’s hands had on the arms of his chair.

“Lady Tirra.” Sham watched as the other woman hesitated, as if she wanted to ignore her son’s mistress.

Stiffly, Tirra turned to her. “I see you have continued in your attempt to win attention by the strangeness of your attire.”

Sham looked at the black shirt and pants, grey with dust and smiled, but when she spoke, it was not a reply to the lady’s challenge. “Kerim has reasons for his actions, Lady Tirra. He has chosen to keep them from the rest of the Court, but I think you have the right to know the whole,” or, Sham thought, as much of the whole as I choose to reveal.

Without giving Kerim the opportunity to stop her, she continued. “As you said, there have been a number of murders of which your son was but the most recent victim. My lord has been utilizing some of my—” she cleared her throat gently, “—unusual talents, to trap the killer. In the last several days, we have become convinced that the killer was not what he appeared. The discovery of Lord Ven’s body last night merely confirmed those suspicions.”

Sham carefully met Lady Tirra’s eyes. For some inexplicable reason, people always thought that meant you were being honest with them. “Lady, Lord Ven was not killed last night; he has been dead for several days.”

The Lady stiffened and her eyes flashed and when she spoke her voice shook with a repressed emotion Shamera couldn’t put a name to. “You are mistaken. I talked to my son yesterday.”

“As did we all, Lady,” agreed Shamera, not ungently. “But all of us in this room saw Lord Ven’s body when it was found last night. He had been dead for several days.”

The Lady’s hands clenched, but her face remained cold. “Master Talbot, saw you this as well?”

Talbot bowed. “Yes, Lady. It is as Lady Shamera has spoken. I am passably familiar with death.”

“How do you purport to explain this?” Lady Tirra asked, finally addressing her son. The flare of anger had dissolved, leaving only a very tired woman who was no longer young.

He rubbed his hands on the smooth-sanded armrests of his chair and said bluntly, “Demons.”

His mother stared silently at him.

“Lady Tirra,” said Sham, “I assure you that there are such; ask any Southwoodsman of your acquaintance—perhaps the magician who keeps shop on the Street of Bakers and supplies your maid with the cream she rubs into your hair. Demons live among people and prey upon them. We have reason to believe that this one is living among the courtiers, looking as human as you or I. It has killed more people than just your son, but we are hopeful that Lord Ven’s death may lead us to it.”

Lady Tirra whitened a touch further. “Just what are your special talents that Lord Kerim would call upon you for aid?”

“Magic,” said Sham softly, and, with a gesture, snuffed all the candles and the fire in the fireplace, bringing shadows to the room, now lit only by skylights.

She waited a long breath then raised her hand and pulled a ball of magelight out of the shadows. Small at first, she manipulated the ball of light until pale illumination seeped from an oval source as tall as she was and twice as wide.

From the items Sham had found littering Kerim’s mother’s private rooms when she’d searched them several days previously, Lady Tirra was fascinated by the possibilities of magic. If Sham was convincing enough, Lady Tirra would leave here with the belief that Ven had been killed by a demon and Kerim was doing his best to find it. For Kerim’s sake it was important that Lady Tirra didn’t think he had killed his brother.

“I have heard that there is no magic in the East,” she said softly, “but here there is magic aplenty, and other things beyond the common ken. Selkies dance in waves of the sea, howlaas wail in the northern winds, Uriah skulk in the Great Swamp and here, in this Castle a demon walks the night.” As she spoke, she caused the surface of her magelight to flatten and shimmer with illusions to illustrate her words.

Sham had never actually seen any of the creatures that she spoke of, except possibly the selkie, but she’d heard stories since she was a child. From these childish images she drew lifelike pictures that filled the illusionetic mirror. The demon was particularly impressive. Sham let its image hang in the air for a moment, allowing the full impact of silver-edged claws and six eerie yellow eyes before calling the illusion back into the simple magelight as big around as a man’s fist.

She waved, and the candles relit themselves. The fireplace was harder, as some of the fodder still contained remnants of magic and didn’t want to burn, but it caught finally and sputtered to life. Sham dismissed the magelight.

Kerim’s mother swayed and would have fallen, but for Talbot’s quick support. Kerim tried to push his chair over the mound of disassembled bed that trapped him, but one wheel caught in a hole and the chair tipped precariously.

“Talbot’s got her, plague it. If you don’t stop it, you and the chair are going to be on top of me,” grunted Sham as she grabbed at the corner of his chair and braced herself against it until it stabilized.

“She’s fine, Lord,” said Talbot promptly, as he earned his burden to the couch and arranged her comfortably. “She’s a delicate Lady, unlike some here. The sight of that demon was enough to cause a grown man to faint, much less a gentlewoman.”

Reassured, Kerim helped Sham back his chair into the cleared space.

“I’m sorry,” apologized Sham. “I guess I got carried away with the demon.”

“You were able to remove the rune beneath the bed?” asked Kerim, bending to heave one of the dark boards aside to clear a path through to the couch where his mother rested, deliberately refraining from commenting on her decision to tell Lady Tirra about the demon.

Sham nodded and took one end of a heavy bedpost and rolled it aside. “That should be the last of them. I’m afraid that it has left you rather short of clothing ...”

The Reeve grunted as he managed to collapse the rest of the boards into a relatively flat pile that he muscled the chair over. Sham winced at the scratches the sharp edges of the narrow metal wheels left in the finely polished wood.

Talbot stepped away from the couch as Kerim coifed near his mother and hovered over her, holding her hand. In a voice designed to carry no further than Sham’s ears, Talbot commented, “Considering the poison she’s always spewing at him, he’s very concerned with her well-being.”

Sham glanced at the Kerim near the prone figure of Lady Tirra. “She’s all the family he has,” she said finally and turned to begin the task of rebuilding the bed.

Without a word Talbot helped her to lift the heavy baseboard and shift it into position. The bed was an old one, slotted and carved so it was held together like one of the intricately carved puzzles that were sold in the fairs. Sweating and straining, the sailor and Sham managed to slide the first of the four heavy bedposts into position. Long before they were half-finished rebuilding the bed, Lady Tirra opened her eyes and struggled to sit up, pushing Kerim’s restraining hands away impatiently.

“You believe that demons killed my son?” Lady Tirra’s gaze was focused on the ground so that she might have been addressing anyone.

It was Kerim who chose to answer. “Yes, Mother. Furthermore, I believe that it is still here, waiting to kill someone else. I don’t know what it looks like, or how to destroy it—but it must be done before it kills again.”

Lady Tirra raised her dry eyes to meet Sham’s. “Why did you tell me this? I assume Kerim would have kept it to himself.”

Sham shrugged, falling back into her thief persona. “It was becoming clear that you held Lord Kerim responsible for Lord Ven’s death. I thought that was unnecessarily harsh for the both of you.”

Lady Tirra nodded and started to speak, but her voice was overridden by the sound of someone pounding frantically on the door. Talbot, who was the closest, opened it. Sham recognized the stableman who’d come to get Kerim before, but this time he had obviously been running.

“My Lord, there’s a man murdered in the stables. There’s a riot brewing with Elsic in the middle. The Stablemaster sent me to fetch you ’fore things get out of hand.”

Kerim nodded and started for the door, pausing briefly to snatch the war horn that hung on the wall. “Talbot, stay with Mother. When she feels well enough, escort her to her rooms and then join us in the stables. Shamera, come with me.”

She started after him then realized she still had her thieving garb on. Stepping to a mirror on the wall near the door, she set a brief spell, not really an illusion, since her talents didn’t run that way, but something akin to an invisibility spell—almost as good as Dickon’s don’t-look-at-me-I’m-only-a-servant demeanor.

She caught up with Kerim halfway down the corridor.