Gold, page 45
It would be just as austere as the newer building if it weren’t for all the damage. The stones are singed and scraped in some areas, the roof looks like it’s caving in, and all the windows have been boarded up. Even the ground around it looks like there used to be an old drive here, but they left the grass to take over.
“Two manors?” I ask curiously.
Lerana nods and fixes a few stray hairs, tucking them back into her braid. “Yes, he built a newer one but kept the old. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea. He has his peculiarities just like every noble I’ve ever met.”
At the back of the main, newer manor, there’s an overhang with a short wall that hides a narrow back door. It’s tucked halfway into the ground by a set of shallow steps. “Servant’s entrance,” Lerana says as she leads us toward it. “Now, I’m going to get you working in here for the day, but once you’re inside, you’ll be on your own. Just keep your head down but your eyes peeled. Like Wick said, this is about gathering information only, got it?” she asks sharply.
“Got it,” Emonie and I both murmur.
“There you are!”
I jump at the voice spilling out from the tiny window notched into the servant’s door. It swings open a second later, revealing a plump fae female with red cheeks and frizzy gray hair pulled back in a bun. “You were supposed to send them at dawn!” she hisses at Lerana as we approach.
“Apologies, Velida,” Lerana replies, her voice now much softer, her expression turned timid—nothing like how she was with us before. “My lord would not allow us to leave before luncheon was set. We came as quickly as we could.”
The fae takes the lie easily. “Nothing for it now,” she says before letting out a blustery sigh, onyx eyes skimming over Emonie and me. “These are your two best workers? They look a bit green.”
“They’ll serve you very well today, I assure you.”
“Fine,” she says, waving us forward. “Don’t have time to waste. Lord Cull is on his way back.”
Lerana goes utterly still. Emonie has stiffened too. My eyes dart around, like I expect him to suddenly pop up in front of me.
“Oh…” Lerana recovers. “Already? I thought he wasn’t due to return for a few more days?”
She shrugs and swipes a hand on the front of her apron. “We received word that he’ll be here for supper. That’s why we need the extra hands today. Half our other staff are…otherwise occupied.”
Occupied with the new Oreans perhaps?
Wick would be out of his mind if he knew Cull was returning, but it’s too late for us to back out now. It would look too suspicious. Lerana realizes this too, because after the slightest hesitation, she steps aside. “Of course,” she says with a nod. “My lord will just need them sent back for supper.”
“Yes, fine,” Velida says impatiently.
Lerana turns around, a grave expression tinting her gaze. “Work well,” she says quietly before she starts walking away.
Emonie and I share a look.
Then we follow behind Velida as she turns and descends the steps to the servant’s door. When we go through, we enter a washroom. The space is uncomfortably hot, with a massive iron stove to our left that’s stuffed full of glowing coals in its belly and has pipes leading up from it to the ceiling. Steam and smoke plug the air that instantly makes me flush with heat.
Along the far wall, there’s a huge sink where two fae are furiously scrubbing plates and stacking them on a rack above. Neither of them turn around as we walk through, passing another long sink to our right. Velida takes us into the adjoining room, which is a huge kitchen. It’s somewhat cooler inside, though not much.
Despite its size, the room manages to feel cramped because of all the counters and stoves eating up the space. There are two cooks, one of whom doesn’t bother to pay us any attention from where he’s chopping through a pile of vegetables. The other glances up absently for a second and then gets back to stirring a big pot, but I notice with a jolt that she has blunted ears.
Both of them do. Cull’s Orean servants.
I find myself stepping closer to them. “Hello,” I greet.
They look at me in surprise, but they stay silent, their eyes quickly darting away.
“Don’t speak to them. They can’t speak back,” Velida says, and I can’t tell if that’s pity in her tone or something else.
But it seems Lerana was right about their tongues.
Velida goes to a large cabinet on the wall beside the cutlery shelves and yanks it open, revealing stacks of linens inside. “Now, there’s much to be done. The regular staff have been occupied with other duties, and with Lord Cull’s return, it’s important the estate be in perfect condition.” She snatches up different linens and starts piling them into Emonie’s arms. “It displeases him if anything is in disarray.”
When the stack is up to Emonie’s eyebrows, Velida slams the cabinet shut and bustles over to a small sink, turning on the tap to fill up a bucket. I steal a glance over my shoulder at the cooks again. I know the mission is to find out where the new Oreans are, but I wonder if these two need help as well?
My train of thought is cut off when Velida abruptly shoves a bucket full of soapy water at me. Attention jerking back, I barely manage to grip the handle in time before she lets go, and then she plunks a scrub brush into it, making water splash up into my face.
I blink through the drips, a few strands of my glamoured black hair now stuck to my forehead. Emonie laughs but manages to turn it into a cough.
Velida glares at me, as if daring me to complain. I just plaster on a water-logged smile. “Thank you.”
She humphs and spins around. “Come on. I don’t have all day. And pay attention,” she snaps over her shoulder. “I won’t be repeating myself to you.”
Wow, okay. Velida is kind of a jerk.
Emonie covers her mouth to suppress more laughter, while I wipe the water off my face. Bright side—at least it cooled me down.
We walk through a claustrophobic corridor, up narrow stairs, and into a dining room, which we enter from the back. The door is hidden behind a thick drapery, and Velida pulls it aside as we follow her.
Inside, the floors are black marble with red smears in the stone that make it look like a bloody body was dragged across it. At the center sits the dining table, the dark gray wood filled with knots. There’s a chandelier made up of what looks like giant talons. Bigger even than the ones on a timberwing’s feet. They’re smooth and black and hooked down toward the table, like some invisible creature ready to snatch up whoever might be seated below, while cold candles are held in its grasp.
A stray drop of water drips from my chin to the floor with an audible splat. Velida’s onyx eyes flick down to it with obvious irritation. “You scrub the floors,” she says to me pointedly before turning to Emonie. “You prepare the linens for dinner service. I’ll be back to check on you later. Be sure that you don’t screw anything up.” She centers her attention on me again. “Especially you.”
With that lovely send-off, she turns and walks away, leaving us alone in the otherwise empty room.
As soon as she’s gone, Emonie giggles under her breath, magma eyes practically lighting up with glee.
“I don’t think she likes me.” I frown as I look down at the bucket, and then eye her pile versus mine. “Why do you get table linen duty and I get floor scrubbing duty?”
“It’s my superior paying-attention skills and sparkling personality.”
“Probably.” I look around again to make sure we’re alone before I lower my voice. “Those cooks were Oreans—do you think they need our help?”
“I don’t know,” she says, nibbling on her bottom lip. “But we’ll report it to Wick and see what he thinks.”
“Okay. Let’s take advantage of the fact we’re alone right now.”
She nods. “Let’s do the linens first and then start scrubbing? It’ll be the perfect excuse to go through the other rooms.”
“Good plan.”
Together, the two of us tackle the long table. The linens include about fifty little napkin squares of all different sizes that we have to do…something with.
I just start folding them diagonally. Emonie starts making some weird flowers out of hers.
“I’m not sure Lord Cull is the type of person to appreciate flower napkins.”
“Why not?” she replies, folding the fabric into swoops of quick petals.
“The talon chandelier kind of sets an anti-flower tone, don’t you think?”
Her eyes flick up. “Hmm. Yeah, you’re right.” She blows out a breath and shakes out her flower and starts folding it into a half-star instead. “Lord Cull doesn’t deserve flower napkins anyway.”
Very true.
We quickly place all the napkins around the plates and then adorn the table with a deep red runner that goes down the middle. When we’re finished, we hurry to scrub the floors. Emonie sneaks back into the washroom to grab an extra bucket and scrub brush, and together, we move quickly across the dining room.
When we finish, we enter a large hall, with the same bloodied marble swirling across the floor. This grand room is full of sculptures that line the walls like pillars, with more in rows throughout the middle. None of them are simple busts, either. They’re all at least my height, if not taller, casting long shadows.
One is a sculpture of an entire castle, each turret and window chiseled into white stone enough to cast its own shadow. There’s a dragon sculpture that looks vicious, mouth gaping with rows of razor-sharp teeth. A rabid wolf with its teeth bared. A bow and arrow pointed right at me, ready to pierce me through. A huge spotted feline, its maw bared in a snarl. A woman with blunt ears and tears streaming down her face. A shrouded demon with horns.
And fae. Sculpture after sculpture of terrorizing fae.
One of them is particularly disturbing. The male has a grotesque grimace frozen on his face, and from his back, there’s another fae tearing free, dagger clutched in his hand like he used it to slash his way past the fae’s spine and out through his skin.
“The lovely decorating extends to this room, I see,” I mutter before glancing over at Emonie. I notice the drawn look on her face, the sweat beaded on her brow. “Hey, are you okay?”
She blinks over at me, trying to hide her strain with a smile. “Oh, yes.”
“The glamour. It’s draining you,” I say, worry lacing my tone. If she’s already strained, then how will she be able to keep it up?
“I’ll be fine,” she says dismissively before swiping at the sweat from her hairline. “How about we split up? I can search the rooms on that side, and you take those doorways down there? We can act like we’ve already washed in here while we search these other rooms.”
“Emonie, if you can’t hold the magic…”
“I can hold it,” she promises as determination settles over her features.
“If you need to drop it, you have to tell me, okay? I don’t want you draining yourself, and if my glamour falls away, it could be bad for both of us.”
“I know,” she says, meeting my gaze. “I promise, I’ve got you.”
“But—”
She cuts me off. “If it becomes too much, I’ll tell you.”
I study her features. “Okay,” I say hesitantly. “Just…don’t put yourself at risk. If we need to go, we’ll go.”
“I’m the seasoned Vulmi,” she says with a teasing smile. “I’m supposed to take care of you, not the other way around.”
I shake my head. “Friends take care of each other.”
Her expression turns softer, more genuine, and she gives me a real smile. “Yeah. They do.” Then she takes a breath and tucks her short hair behind her ears. “Okay, come on. The sooner we gather information, the sooner we can get out of here. And we really do need to leave.”
“Because of your magic, or because Cull is coming back?”
“Neither. I meant just to get away from the interior decorating,” she muses before giving a headless sculpture a disdainful once-over. “It’s really awful.”
I snort, and Emonie trots off before I can say anything else to her about her magic. So I haul my bucket to the other end of the hall, my nerves wound tighter with the need to rush so she doesn’t weaken herself too much.
Going through the first doorway, I find nothing but an empty library, and really, there are more pictures of maps on the walls than actual books inside. Then I enter another room, but it has absolutely nothing useful inside—except maybe the bar full of alcohol.
When I walk back out again, I see Emonie leaving the room across from me. We both shrug, and then turn to look at the stairwell at the same time.
Time to stretch our search.
We make our way toward it, meeting at the bottom steps. The staircase is wide enough for me to lie across, with forged iron handrails in elaborate filigree.
I stare up at its length, heart beating a little faster with trepidation. I hope no one comes to question us.
We’re careful not to slosh water everywhere as we ascend with quick but light steps. When we reach the landing, we glance at the corridors on either side of us.
“I’ll take the left, you take the right?” I whisper, and Emonie quickly nods.
Both of us haul our heavy buckets room to room, searching for something—anything—that might help us figure out where the Oreans are being kept. Every time I open a door, my heart is in my throat, but I keep finding empty bedrooms.
Oddly, despite the size of this manor, I only see one other servant, and she pays me no mind whatsoever as she hurries out of one of the bedchambers with a pail full of ash and a chimney brush in hand.
I desperately want to find the Oreans, want to succeed in this mission, but even though I search every room, I come up with nothing. Frustration twists through me.
I backtrack when I’m done, meeting up with Emonie again at the landing.
She shakes her head when she sees me, disappointment evident in her expression too. “We’re not going to find anything up here. Maybe we can try chatting up one of the servants? Get them to talk?”
The thought of trying to chat up Velida almost gives me shivers.
“I think we need to check the older manor,” I tell her. It’s been a niggling thought in the back of my head since I saw it. “Think about it. Cull seems very particular. This whole manor is spotless. Why would someone like him keep that old crumbling manor? There’s something off about it.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “You’re right.”
“How’s your magic?”
“Fine. Honestly,” she tells me. “I can hold it for at least another hour. Probably two. I don’t want to give up yet.”
Her gaze reflects a persistence that I also feel.
“Okay.” I pivot toward the stairs. “We’ll need to get outside. Then we can hurry and—”
“What are you two doing up there?”
I nearly jump out of my skin at Velida’s voice that cracks across the main hall below. Her expression is lined with irritation as she looks up at us through the designs in the iron railing, her fists poised on her hips.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath before Emonie and I hurry back downstairs.
“You’re supposed to clean the dining room, not be up on the second floor!” Velida hisses at us.
“Apologies,” Emonie says breathlessly as we stop in front of her.
I barely manage not to spill water over myself in our hurry. “We finished the dining room and the hall. We just went upstairs to see if any of the rooms up there needed scrubbing,” I tell her.
“I didn’t tell you to do that,” she snaps before eyeing the floor, as if she’s hoping to find a speck of dirt so she can prove that we lied. When she finds none, she says to Emonie, “You’ll come back with me. We have curtains that need dusting.” Then her gaze pounces on me. “And you. You’ll go back to the washroom. There’s a load of chamber pots that need washing.”
A gurgle of horror gets strangled in my throat, but I bob my head. “Of course.”
She yanks the bucket out of Emonie’s hand and pushes it toward me and then whisks her out of the room. Emonie sends me an apologetic look over her shoulder before she disappears from view.
With a sigh, I make my way back to the washroom, my steps slow so I don’t spill water all over the floors, my arms shaking from the weight. As I pass through the kitchen, I pause when I see one of the Orean cooks at the stove.
I look around to ensure the coast is clear before venturing over. “Hi there,” I say with a smile.
She’s wearing a lace cap on her head, keeping her hair out of the way, and she has pale eyebrows and freckles over the bridge of her nose. She stops mid-cut, knife caught in a slab of meat as she looks at me with wariness.
I hesitate, debating what to say.
“Have you worked here long?”
She nods slowly.
“I couldn’t help but notice that you’re Orean.”
The woman goes still, and the knife in her hand clatters against the countertop as she lets go and starts to back away.
I take a step forward, horrified that my simple comment instigated such terror in her. “No, it’s okay! I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to—”
She darts out of the room before I can finish my sentence. Buckets in hand, I try to hurry as fast as I can and follow her, but when I get to the washroom where the other two fae workers are still elbow-deep in soap suds, the Orean isn’t there.
Dammit.
I hope she didn’t run off to Velida or someone else, but I’m even more worried at how fearful she was at just my acknowledgement of her being Orean.
No wonder Wick wanted to take this mission.
I glance around through the steam and the smoke glugging up the air. This room feels even hotter than before. I set the buckets down and my hands scream in relief, while little angry marks are left behind on my cramped fingers. The fae look over at me, both of them pausing their frenzied scrubbing.
I clear my throat, forcing my tone to stay casual. “Did you happen to see one of the other servants come through here?”
They look at me blankly, letting a pause drag out, and then the one nearest me says, “No.”
