Page 99 of City of Stone and Silence

Shiara visibly composes herself for a moment. “Probably. But are you sure about this? If they find out you broke in, you’ll never get them to trust you.”

“Have you made any progress on that front?”

“Not much,” she admits.

“We’re out of time to try things the subtle way.” I’m out of time. “So I’m going to roll the dice.”

“Okay.” She shakes her head, grimly. “Give me a moment.”

She throws a more substantial robe over her nightgown and gestures for me to follow her. We creep back to the main staircase. Shiara moves with the catlike tread of someone with long practice keeping silent, which is a surprise. We wait through another patrol, a lonely lantern spiraling up the stairs and out of sight, before descending to the level below Shiara’s quarters. She leads me through silent halls, and stops at a corner. I peek round and see a curtained doorway, with an Imperial man in archaic Cresos armor standing in front of it.

“Oh, good. Toshoda is on watch.” Shiara apparently recognizes the guard. “He’s not the brightest sort, and he’s had eyes for me since I got here.” She gestures to an empty doorway nearby. “Wait there until we go past. You’ll have a quarter of an hour at most, though.”

“Perfect.” I find myself looking at Shiara with new respect. “Thank you.”

“Thank me by not screwing this up,” she says.

I nod. She steps out, strategically loosening her robe a bit to show more of the sheer garment underneath, and runs toward the door. I hear Toshoda bark a challenge.

“I saw something awful!” Shiara says, a touch of simper entering her voice. “One of those monsters, on the stairs!”

“Here?” Toshoda says. “Impossible.”

“It was there!”

He goes with her, of course. If he’d been any guard of mine I would have reprimanded him for not asking questions like “what are you doing up in the middle of the night?” and “why didn’t you sound the alarm?” but I got the impression that his duties in the Cresos stronghold were more ceremonial than real. I hide in the shadows of the doorway as the two of them hurry past, Toshoda carrying a lantern, Shiara walking closer to his side than strictly necessary. She knows her business, that’s for certain.

When their footsteps fade, I creep out and pad to Catoria’s room. There’s no light leaking under the curtain, so I draw it carefully aside. Like the rest of the ziggurat, some effort has been made to make the chamber look like a proper Imperial bedroom, with a low table and a sleeping mat atop woven floor panels. Nothing can really disguise the fact that we’re inside a giant stone step-pyramid and not an airy, wooden-walled manor, though. By the faint light from the hall, I make out Catoria’s shape, a lump under the thin sheet.

I’m quiet, but apparently not quiet enough. When I’m halfway across the room, she sits up suddenly, long hair unbound and falling around her face. She’s almost invisible in the shadow, only two pinpricks of reflected light showing her eyes. I hear her draw a breath.

“Who’s there?” she says. But she says it quietly, which makes me think she’s already guessed.

“Isoka,” I say. “Please don’t scream.”

“Oh.” Her voice is small. “Are you here to kill me?”

“Nothing like that, I swear by the Blessed One. I just want to talk.”

“I was going to say that if you were here to kill me, I probably would scream, regardless.” She shuffles the sheet aside. “Do you mind if I light the lamp?”

“Go ahead.”

A fat spark of Myrkai fire jumps from Catoria’s finger, and the lamp brightens, illuminating the room with a wan glow. Catoria gets to her feet and holds it up to see me better.

“So you’re not here to kill me,” Catoria says. “If you’re willing to risk breaking in here, why not go straight to the access point? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I considered it,” I admit. “But I figured you would have people on watch, and I don’t want to kill anyone if I can help it.”

“I thought I had people on watch outside my room,” Catoria says. “But I take your point. You took an awful risk, though, just to talk. I thought we went over things this afternoon.”

“I would rather your uncle not be involved.”

“My uncle doesn’t make the decisions,” Catoria says, steel in her voice. “I do. If you think that I will change my mind just because he’s not here—”

“It’s not that.” I take a deep breath. “I have to show you something.”

Catoria arches her eyebrows.