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Authors: Cindy Lynn Speer
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really. Maybe his family will be waiting.”
She reached through the cell bars and took his hands. The bells continued to clang.
“They’ve set the date for your trial, haven’t they?” She felt terribly under-prepared.
“My trial starts soon. My father read the investigation report this morning.” The bells stopped abruptly. “They have no other suspects. The report says it is very likely that the bells will toll for me in two days time.”
Chapter 10
Ferou tenth, Sapphire Moon Quarter 1788
Dear William,
Here, at last, is the amulet I promised you. I beg you to wear it well. A thing you should know about amulets is that iron can harm them. Try not to leave it in direct co n tact with such metal. Copper, brass, gold and silver seem all to be fine.
Yours, e ventually,
Tasmin
She couldn’t sleep. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. They wouldn’t give her a c cess to the records, and neither Andrew nor William had been allowed to read them. Apparently they were delivered to the head of the house; the delivery boy waited and watched to make sure nothing was done to the record, even though it was just a copy, and then took it away.
The lawyer, too, had been allowed to see them, and he seemed fairly grim.
She tried to reconstruct the matter in her head. Bishop Kingsley was a man with whom William had had a good working relationship but no personal dealings. She’d asked William questions from all angles, and he’d answered them patiently enough. She realized he was thinking, too, trying to make sense of the whole lot.
The sprites were in rare form, chasing each other around the room. At one point William’s writing quills exploded out of the green glass jar he kept them in, and now the sprites were running through the curtains, the fabric giving a little jump as the hard puffs of air hit them. “Please, please, would you go play somewhere else?” she moaned and covered her head. They were often affected by her emotions, and she rea l ized they were feeling chaotic, as was she.
So, William was not the killer. But someone wanted to blame him for it. Who wanted to see William hang? If she could figure out who the two men (she refused to use the word victim in connection to William) knew in common, then maybe she could create a pool of suspects from which to draw.
How could she possibly do that in two days? Both the Bishop and William had grown up here. William had traveled the world for trade, the Bishop had completed many tours for diplomacy. Two years would not give her the time to track down every possible connection.
Well, maybe she was being a little pessimistic; after all, the person had to have been here to commit the murder, right? And it had to have been someone who really hated the Bishop, or William, or both.
She leapt out of bed, drew on her dressing robe, and went below. The sprites were playing their favorite game of “let’s open this door and see what’s inside”, which meant that nearly every door in the kitchen was hanging open. One to her left was wiggling as a sprite worked the lock, and it flew open, revealing nothing but the smell of cocoa. There was a coo of disappointment at the empty cupboard. She hummed in consolation, but did not shut the cupboards, knowing they would when they were done, and if they were not in the mood to, well, she could do it just as well in the morning rather than having to repeat the job twice tonight.
She heated a little milk and added the last of her private stock of cacao powder to it, stirring carefully, and then setting it out for them to drink. “Poor babies,” she said. “I know it’s hard for you, here. Come and have a drink, sweethearts.”
She felt invisible hands clinging to her, petting her hair before diving down to drink from the wide, low saucer. Someone squealed something, a long, drawn out howl she could have sworn sounded like “wait!” and a door in the stone wall next to her
She reached through the cell bars and took his hands. The bells continued to clang.
“They’ve set the date for your trial, haven’t they?” She felt terribly under-prepared.
“My trial starts soon. My father read the investigation report this morning.” The bells stopped abruptly. “They have no other suspects. The report says it is very likely that the bells will toll for me in two days time.”
Chapter 10
Ferou tenth, Sapphire Moon Quarter 1788
Dear William,
Here, at last, is the amulet I promised you. I beg you to wear it well. A thing you should know about amulets is that iron can harm them. Try not to leave it in direct co n tact with such metal. Copper, brass, gold and silver seem all to be fine.
Yours, e ventually,
Tasmin
She couldn’t sleep. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. They wouldn’t give her a c cess to the records, and neither Andrew nor William had been allowed to read them. Apparently they were delivered to the head of the house; the delivery boy waited and watched to make sure nothing was done to the record, even though it was just a copy, and then took it away.
The lawyer, too, had been allowed to see them, and he seemed fairly grim.
She tried to reconstruct the matter in her head. Bishop Kingsley was a man with whom William had had a good working relationship but no personal dealings. She’d asked William questions from all angles, and he’d answered them patiently enough. She realized he was thinking, too, trying to make sense of the whole lot.
The sprites were in rare form, chasing each other around the room. At one point William’s writing quills exploded out of the green glass jar he kept them in, and now the sprites were running through the curtains, the fabric giving a little jump as the hard puffs of air hit them. “Please, please, would you go play somewhere else?” she moaned and covered her head. They were often affected by her emotions, and she rea l ized they were feeling chaotic, as was she.
So, William was not the killer. But someone wanted to blame him for it. Who wanted to see William hang? If she could figure out who the two men (she refused to use the word victim in connection to William) knew in common, then maybe she could create a pool of suspects from which to draw.
How could she possibly do that in two days? Both the Bishop and William had grown up here. William had traveled the world for trade, the Bishop had completed many tours for diplomacy. Two years would not give her the time to track down every possible connection.
Well, maybe she was being a little pessimistic; after all, the person had to have been here to commit the murder, right? And it had to have been someone who really hated the Bishop, or William, or both.
She leapt out of bed, drew on her dressing robe, and went below. The sprites were playing their favorite game of “let’s open this door and see what’s inside”, which meant that nearly every door in the kitchen was hanging open. One to her left was wiggling as a sprite worked the lock, and it flew open, revealing nothing but the smell of cocoa. There was a coo of disappointment at the empty cupboard. She hummed in consolation, but did not shut the cupboards, knowing they would when they were done, and if they were not in the mood to, well, she could do it just as well in the morning rather than having to repeat the job twice tonight.
She heated a little milk and added the last of her private stock of cacao powder to it, stirring carefully, and then setting it out for them to drink. “Poor babies,” she said. “I know it’s hard for you, here. Come and have a drink, sweethearts.”
She felt invisible hands clinging to her, petting her hair before diving down to drink from the wide, low saucer. Someone squealed something, a long, drawn out howl she could have sworn sounded like “wait!” and a door in the stone wall next to her
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