He lifted his head where he had bowed it and looked up at her with dark eyes. ‘Anything, Elder Steward.’
‘I have no shieldmate,’ she said. ‘My vow was to your father, and he is dead. I ask you to take his place.’ Will saw Cyprian’s face go white as he realised what she was asking. ‘Do what he cannot. Let me go into the night in peace and rest. For I am all but shadow now.’
It was Grace who stepped forward with the knife.
It was plain-handled, with a straight blade. Cyprian stood and took it from her. He had never shirked his duty.
The Elder Steward looked up at him one last time.
They seemed to share something in that moment: past and future; Steward and novitiate; part of a tradition that was passing from the world.
Cheeks wet with tears, Cyprian lifted the knife and brought it down, and that was the end; she was still, and the light in her eyes had gone out.
It was Cyprian who said, ‘We burn the bodies and refortify the gates.’ He said it with the same strapped-down resolution that he’d had when he lifted the knife.
They were huddled in the Elder Steward’s small rooms. The immense citadel with its gruesome contents loomed around them, a reality no one wanted to face. The candle at the centre of the oak table was flickering. A silence opened up full of the terrors of the darkened Hall.
Cyprian had not spoken since he killed the Elder Steward. He had blood on his white tunic, though whether it was the Elder Steward’s or from brushing against what remained in the halls was uncertain. Earlier, he had gone grimly to check the vaults.
The Elder Steward lay in a room through a door to the left. Grace and Sarah had covered her in a shroud, folding the sides of a white linen sheet over her, preparing her to go to her rest.
‘We can’t burn them.’ Sarah said it in a dull voice. ‘There are too many bodies.’ Her hands were covered in white and red semicircles where her nails had pressed into her skin.
‘We ought to at least count them,’ said Violet. ‘If we count the dead … maybe someone survived, maybe they were outside the Hall when the attack happened …’
‘That was you,’ said Sarah, and her words shut everyone up again.
Will looked at each of their faces. Horrific practicalities awaited them. Burn the bodies … how would they even gather them? Many of them were people they knew.
Yet what was the alternative? Close up the Hall like a tomb and leave it to the rotting dead? Let the walls fall to silence and ruin, let the marsh creep in, let the passage of time take this last piece of the ancient world?
No one wanted to be the one to give up on the Hall, to end centuries of tradition, to admit that the Stewards’ long watch was at its end.
Alongside practicality was fear. Will thought of the creature that had seemed to flicker under the Elder Steward’s skin, and he understood why the Stewards burned their dead. He drew in a breath.
‘Cyprian’s right,’ said Will. ‘It’s almost dawn. If we work hard, we can be done by nightfall. One day’s work.’ They deserved that much. ‘We use that time to decide what to do.’
If Simon has the Shadow Stone, there isn’t anything we can do. He didn’t give voice to the cold reality that faced them. If a single shadow could do all this, then what chance do we have against the Shadow Kings? Looking at the devastation of the Hall, it was hard to believe that Simon now held a greater force in his hands. But Marcus was as nothing to the terrible power of the Shadow Kings.
With sudden fierceness he missed the Elder Steward. She had always been there to guide him. She would know what to do. He missed her wisdom and her strength, her kindness, her caring. He missed her trust in him when he didn’t trust himself, and hadn’t since the night his mother had died. Promise.
‘The vault is empty,’ said Cyprian. ‘It was cleaned out. Simon’s men … following after Marcus.’ His voice was thick with the desecration of outsiders ransacking the Hall. Simon’s men … Branded men, thought Will. Marcus must have let them through the wards. The thought that they couldn’t return was no comfort. The violation had been done. ‘The Shadow Stone. The Horn of Truth … sacred relics of the Order, kept from harm for centuries. All of it’s gone.’
‘Not all of it,’ said Grace.
There was a pause.
Will could see Grace and Sarah communicating something wordlessly. After a moment, Sarah nodded, once, though her hands were taut in her lap.
‘We did manage to save one thing,’ said Grace, and she drew a shapeless bundle from her tunic, a lumpen object wrapped in soft white cloth.