Chapter 576: Deep Inside the Palace
Otto Luoxi and Oro Tokat crouched behind a rockery in the palace garden of the City of Glow, Kingdom of Dawn, and waited.
They had not come in through a window. When they arrived at the palace, the guards had passed them without a second glance — the Luoxis and the Tokats had supported the Moya royal family through three generations, and everyone in the palace knew that these two young men were future ministers of the eldest prince’s court. No door closed to them except the truly forbidden ones.
The king’s bedchamber was a truly forbidden one.
“Are you certain about this?” Otto kept his voice low. He was already certain he was not.
The childhood escape route — the narrow underground channel behind the rockery, running from the garden to the back of the royal fireplace — had been their greatest secret for years. At ten years old, worst case was a scolding from His Majesty Moya. As grown men entering the king’s private quarters without authorization, the range of consequences was considerably wider.
“Three families agreed: we find out why Appen is acting strange.” Oro scanned the garden. “You want to go home?”
“I—” Otto stopped. He couldn’t argue.
“And you already made things worse by telling Quinn what Andrea has been doing lately. If you weren’t her childhood sweetheart, the old man would have had you for that.” His mouth twisted. “It’s now or nothing.”
Otto gritted his teeth and nodded.
What Earl Quinn had told them was not information you could unknow. Since His Majesty fell ill, Prince Appen had been meeting privately with an alchemist — some specialist whose potions could hold the king’s consciousness together for an hour or two each day, keeping him functional enough to receive visitors and issue instructions while the deeper decline continued underneath. As prime minister, Andrea’s father had access to the sick room. He had glimpsed the alchemist once: a young woman, face covered by a black veil, silver-grey eyes showing above the cloth.
Otto had thought of the church immediately. He would not have made that connection six months ago. Meeting Roland Wimbledon had changed the frame — the church’s concealed witches, their patient accumulation of influence in all four kingdoms, their long preparation for something that had no name yet. He had said nothing of this to Quinn. The implications were too large to hand to someone else’s judgment before he had verified his own.
Oro pried the stone cover from the rockery and produced a glass bottle of brownish liquid — iron-melting water from a master alchemist of Glow, ten gold royals per fist-sized vial. The first bottle shrank the lock catch by half. The second finished it. The steel bars came free in a smell of hot metal and sharp chemical smoke.
They bent through the opening, pulling the slate closed behind them. After ten steps the channel widened enough to walk upright. Otto found the oil lamp on its usual hook, flamed it with flint, and watched the familiar stone corridor materialize around him. The halfway lounge was still there — the soft chairs they had dragged here as children, the wine glasses they had never filled with anything worth drinking. Time had done nothing to this place.
The channel angled upward. They were inside the Dawn castle now.
The walls ran double-thick, the gap between layers honeycombed with hidden passages and secret chambers. They followed the route to its end: the back of the royal fireplace in the king’s bedchamber.
The mechanism opened from the other side only. But the gap in the trap door was enough to see through, and in silence, enough to hear.
Otto extinguished the lamp and pressed his eye to the gap.
The King of Dawn, Deegan Moya, lay in the bed facing the fire. His chest rose and fell with the shallow rhythm of long illness. Beside the bed, Prince Appen paced — the particular restlessness of a man waiting for something he cannot control.
They held position. An hour passed without a word.
Then movement. Two women entered the bedchamber.
One wore a black veil covering everything above the mouth, silver-grey eyes the only feature visible. The other was younger, golden-haired in loose curls, wearing a red-and-white cope, moving with the unhurried ease of someone who was not afraid of the room she had walked into.
“You’re late,” Appen said.
“We were delayed.” The blonde gave a slight bow. “An unexpected situation.”
“No need to explain.” The veiled woman’s voice was ice through silk. “What matters is waking the king. Early or late is irrelevant.”
“We still need His Highness’s cooperation.” The blonde produced a green porcelain bottle from her satchel. “Maintaining a harmonious relationship serves everyone.”
Appen moved toward them. The veiled woman blocked him with a gesture.
“Have you forgotten the agreement? This medicine must be administered by my hand. In exchange, you fulfill the requirements of His Holiness.”
His Holiness.
Otto’s stomach dropped. That honorific had only one referent in the four kingdoms.
The veiled woman administered the medicine mouth-to-mouth, bending over the king. When she lifted her head, she said: “He will recover in an hour, as before.”
“The next time we come, the border to Wolfheart must be fully closed,” the blonde said pleasantly. “Do not disappoint His Holiness.”
Appen’s fists tightened. He had not agreed to close the road without conditions, and Otto could hear the argument that followed through the gap — the prince citing thousands of refugees who would die of starvation if the crossing was sealed, the veiled woman dismissing this with a patience that never became compassion. Does that concern you? They abandoned their kingdom. Their fate belongs to them. Appen extracted a small concession: the main road within a week, with the proviso that mountain paths and wildland routes were beyond his authority to monitor.
They waged the war, Otto thought, with a burn of anger he held perfectly still. They displaced those people. Now they call it those people’s own fault for fleeing.
The two women turned to leave.
Then Appen’s voice stopped them. It had changed register — slower, deliberate, the voice of someone who had been building toward something for a long time.
“You’re witches.”
Both women went still.
“The medicine works only through your hand — no physical mechanism can explain that except ability. And no church hierarch would involve themselves in something this personal.” He raised his voice. “Come out.”
He was not speaking to Otto and Oro. Figures emerged from the closet and from under the bed — royal guards in light armor, God’s Stones at their belts, crossbows leveled. The two women stood surrounded.
“Oh,” said the blonde, with something that might have been admiration. “Reckless.”
“And pointless,” said the veiled woman. “We leave the church with a poor impression on you, it seems.”
“Don’t bluff me!” Appen’s voice cracked with weeks of accumulation. “Your God’s Punishment Warriors aren’t here. This palace holds more God’s Stones than you can count. You have no power in this room.”
The blonde tilted her head. “Were the witches you set up on the road your arrangement? The ones with the Magic Fire Stones?” A pause. “They weren’t real witches, were they — just tricks. So you’ve seen what we look like without our abilities. Without the Stones gone, we’re just women.” She almost smiled. “Hand over the elixir, or—”
“Stop.” The veiled woman cut her off. “Young man.” Her voice addressed Appen with a flatness that was not quite pity. “I advise you not to do this.”
“Take them!” Appen roared.
The guards moved.