A Sword from Red Ice

And saw four wood poles and a pair of feet. The feet were sandaled and pointed away from her. They were a man's feet; there was no doubt about that. They were large and covered with coarse black hairs. The right little toenail was crusty with fungus. Realizing she would see more if she altered her perspective, Raina lowered her head. The singed and ragged hem of Stannig Beade's ceremonial robe slid into view. It was hiked up to shin height. He was sitting, she decided. That explained the four wooden poles: chair legs. And now that she could see further, she understood that he was sitting behind the Chiefs Cairn, the big chunk of iron gray granite that Hail chiefs used as a worktable. As she watched, tendons in his ankles relaxed and his heels rose up from the soles of his sandals. Scratching sounds followed, and Raina guessed Stannig was leaning forward to write.

Raina used the opportunity to breathe. The opening was probably a drainage conduit, cut to prevent flooding in the chiefs chamber. Excess water would drain down the ramp. Had Effie crouched here, she wondered, watching Dagro's feet as they moved back and forth across the chamber? It was a bewildering thought. Raina remembered herself as an eight-year-old girl: men's feet had not figured in her interests.

Suddenly tendons in Beade's ankles sprung to life. His heels came down and his robe hem dropped to his ankles. He was standing. Swiftly, he moved across the chamber. The farther away he walked, the more Raina could see of him. Soon she could see as high as his waist. His hands were at his sides. Big, scarred, and covered in the same coarse hairs as his feet, they twitched as he moved. Abruptly he passed out of sight, screened off by a corner of the Chiefs Cairn. Sounds followed; rustling and soft thuds. Two slaps were followed by a ripe-sounding fart.

And then the lamp was snuffed. Of course, he sleeps here now.

Raina's nostrils flared as she drew breath down constricted airways. She waited and did not move. Time passed. Dust settled. Little tingles of pain racked her knees. Mice scurried on the ramps below her; busy, aware. The roundhouse groaned as it cooled, shifting and shrinking through the night. All was quiet in the chiefs chamber. Beade slept as soundly as a man with no one to fear.

When a mouse streaked across her legs, Raina didn't make a sound. Instead, she began to rise. The mice no longer knew she was here. It was time.

The transition from kneeling to standing took minutes as she allowed her body the opportunity to adjust to its change in state. Once upright, she padded across the ramp to the ledge. This was her darkness now. She could smell it and taste it. Her pupils felt as large as wells.

The ledge was two and a half feet wide. A drop of varying depth lay below it. Raina had some fear of it—it was not as harmless as mice, after all—but she did not let it slow her. She had found a way of moving, a rhythm, that propelled her forward without sound.

The ledge turned a perfectly square corner and ended twelve feet later. No openings here, nothing that could be peered through and used to gather intelligence. Raina did not need it. She knew the chiefs chamber well, knew exactly where the end of the ledge stood in relation to the interior space. Close to the door, and opposite Beade's sleeping mat. Raising both palms to the wall, she searched for a mechanism that would allow entry to the chamber. She did not know what to expect. There was nothing on the interior of this wall that gave ati||j thing away—certainly not a panel of tile that slid on a track. Tiny pills of mortar crumbled as she touched them. She had started the search at chest height and now moved higher. Fingertips ghosting across stone, she walked the length of the ledge. Nothing. She searched higher, raising her hands over her head. More nothing. Why hadn't she thought to ask Effie for details? Because she had been appalled at the thought of spying on her husband; that was why. Virtuous Raina scuttling herself yet again.

Raina continued searching. Effie, Effie, Effie. Such a strange and endearing girl. What mischief had brought her here and kept her coming back? It was not slyness—Effie Sevrance was not that sort of girl—so it must have been curiosity. She was a child who liked to know things.

Lifting her hands away from the wall, Raina stopped in her tracks. A child. Effie had been five when she'd found this secret entrance. A wee little thing, barely three feet high. She probably hadn't been looking for anything—just trailing her hand across the wall. Raina crouched, approximating a height of three feet. Bending her arm to shorten its length and letting her fingers idly bounce over the stone, she walked along the ledge once more. No luck. Raina deepened her crouch, and let her hand drop all the way to the base of the wall.