“The last few princes didn’t feel the need to keep up the full army,” Marguerite said. “Which left them with a fortress full of empty rooms. The grandfather of the current prince started inviting his friends over in the summer, and then a few more friends, and so forth. But it gets expensive to host that kind of party—nobles cost almost as much as armies—so the next Prince graciously allowed people to curry favor with him by footing the bill, and the Court of Smoke was born.”
“So we would be subject to the judgment of this prince in the event of an incident?” asked Shane.
“Define incident.”
“Somebody takes an axe to the face,” offered Wren.
“The guards would frown on that, yes,” said Marguerite. “Both the Prince and the hosting lords prefer that things run as smoothly and as…ah… incident-free as possible.” She glanced from one paladin to the other. “There aren’t going to be any lawyers or trials here. The nobility resolves things with sanctioned dueling. People like us are either thrown in a cell or evicted from the fortress.”
“So no axes?”
“Not unless you can do it without being caught.”
The footpath turned and the shadow of the mountain fell over them. The temperature instantly dropped. Shane tilted his head back to try to estimate the height of the violet fortress. and gave up somewhere at really quite tall.
“This is gonna be a lot of stairs,” muttered Wren.
“No, no. There’s a lift. They don’t make nobility climb like pilgrims.”
“Oh,” said Wren glumly, “joy.”
Shane winced internally. Wren was fearless about virtually everything, but she did not have a terribly good head for heights. It was probably too much to hope for that the lift was enclosed. He bumped her shoulder in wordless support.
“I’ll be fine,” she muttered. “It’s fine as long as I’m not actually looking down.”
Despite the brave words, she turned a bit green at the sight of the lift, which was a fragile-looking confection of wicker, though large enough to hold a dozen people. From the ropes and pulleys overhead, Shane guessed that it functioned the same way as any other lift. Somewhere inside, there was probably a donkey on a treadmill supplying the power.
The attendant waved them inside and closed the little half-door, latching it. “Don’t lean out of the windows,” he recited in a bored monotone. “Don’t try to climb anything. Don’t light any fires, not to cook, not to warm up, not at all.”
“Do people actually try to cook in this thing?” asked Shane, aghast.
“Sir,” said the attendant, “I have seen people do things that you cannot possibly imagine.” He grabbed a pull-rope and tugged, and a moment later, the lift swung aloft.
“Hooooooo boy,” said Wren, retreating to the side closest to the wall and closing her eyes.
Shane took her hand. She gave him a wan smile, not opening her eyes. Marguerite stood at the window opposite, looking across the view with interest, but didn’t say anything.
The trip up only took about five minutes, but Shane suspected that for Wren, it seemed like a lot longer. The ascent would run smoothly for a few moments, then there would be a series of short, jerky motions, then it would settle down again. At one point a gust of wind set the basket swaying and Wren turned fishbelly white.
“It’s fine,” said Shane, using the paladin’s voice. “All will be well. We’re nearly there and we don’t need to come back down again unless you decide to go horseback riding.”
“Not unless they bring the horse up to me.”
“I suspect that attendant has seen it happen before.”
Marguerite caught Shane’s eye and glanced at Wren, lifting one eyebrow. He shook his head at her. Wren would be fine once she was back on solid ground, he knew, and having Marguerite appear to notice would only deepen her future embarrassment.
At last the basket jerked to a halt. Another attendant opened the door and motioned them out.
“We’re here,” Shane said, tugging on Wren’s hand.
“Right,” she said, taking a deep breath. She stepped out of the lift, eyes straight ahead. Marguerite followed, with Shane bringing up the rear.
They stepped through an archway into an unexpectedly broad courtyard, the fortress rising on all four sides around it. The courtyard was a hive of activity, porters moving trunks and servants in a dozen different shades of livery running on errands of their own. None of them seemed bothered by the fact that they were so far up, not even when the wind came whistling through the archway behind them, cutting through Shane’s surcoat like a knife and tugging Marguerite’s cloak loose from her shoulders.
“Ack!” Marguerite fumbled and nearly dropped her bag. Shane caught the cloak as it slid and tugged it back up her shoulders, re-fastening the pin. Marguerite looked up at him with a rueful smile.
“I need an extra set of hands.”
“Don’t we all,” he said automatically, but what he truly noticed was that when his fingertips accidentally brushed the side of her throat, she shivered. Just a little. Hardly noticeable, unless it was your job to watch someone for the smallest sign.
If he had been the paladin that he was supposed to be, he would have thought nothing of it. It’s the cold, nothing more. But he was twice a failure, and so he smoothed the edge of the cloak down and let the back of his knuckles trace the barest line against her skin.
Almost imperceptibly, he felt her shiver again.
Marguerite’s eyes met his with a faint, puzzled smile. Something dark and hot flared inside him.
Something hungry. He wanted to stroke his finger along the line of her jaw and see if his touch truly had the power to make her tremble.
And who are you to even think such things? Are you that eager to add her name to your long list of failures?
He was not the paladin that he was supposed to be, but neither was he completely lost. He stepped back, gave her a little bow, and turned away.
Probably it was just the cold anyway.
THIRTEEN
THEIR ROOMS WERE VERY SMALL. Shane did not know if that was a reflection of their group’s lack of standing or if the Court of Smoke only had so many rooms. The suite had a short entryway, barely large enough for the door to swing inward, with two narrow doorways on either side. The main door led onto a room with a large fireplace, a desk, and a dining table, which led to two further bedrooms, no larger than Shane’s at the Temple of the Rat.
The two doors in the entry hall opened onto what looked like closets. “Servant quarters,” said Marguerite.
“Do they dislike servants here?” asked Shane dryly. “Or just employ the double-jointed?”
“That was very close to a joke.” She peered around him into the narrow space. “These are for a maid-of-all-work and a footman. They assume your valet or your lady’s maid will stay in your room with you.”
Shane digested this. “I fear that I would make a poor lady’s maid. I will stay in one of these.”
Marguerite’s lips twitched. “They didn’t teach you to style hair at the temple?”
He was fairly certain that this was also a joke, but he had an actual answer. “I can braid hair in several ways,” he said. “It is useful for tucking under a helmet so that the enemy cannot grab your hair and use it as a handle.”