The cracked basin of the abandoned kitchen inside was covered in leaves and dirt, as if a season’s detritus had blown in from outside. There were no signs of food or supplies. But in one corner, there was a pitiful bundle of twigs, gathered recently enough that they had not been scattered by the wind. Will pointed to it, and Violet and Cyprian silently drew their swords.
The place was too quiet. As they lifted the catch to the hallway, a wood pigeon flew up and out of a hole in the ceiling, and they all froze for long moments. Through the first door on the left, Will saw a small, bare room with a half-missing glass window. Empty. Through the second he saw a stained pallet, spilling straw—
—a dead girl lay on the pallet, her eyes staring upward. Someone had thrown a wrinkled coverlet over her body. Cyprian went still at the sight of her, newly dead, the coverlet recent. There were footsteps in the dust.
Will barely had time to react before a sound at the end of the hall jerked his attention forward.
Whoever was here was through that door.
He thought of the horse outside. The high black gloss of its coat. He turned to the others – Cyprian’s pinched face, Violet’s hands tight on her sword – and they moved forward slowly, quietly, towards the sound, until they reached the end of the hall.
He saw everything all at once. The half-open doorway. A decrepit room with litter scattered over the floor, and rotted boarding showing through the broken plaster walls. An old man in a chair, with filmy blind eyes. Will’s hand shot out to keep the others back.
Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.
Through the doorway, strolling in elegantly over the trash, was James.
He had clearly spent the night in good lodgings. Perhaps he had returned to Simon after escaping the Hall, or perhaps he had taken rooms nearby. His torn, bloodstained shirt had been replaced by fresh linen and an elegant riding jacket along with the kind of shiny boots that a rider might tap their whip against.
James wasn’t making any effort to be quiet. He toured the room, his eyes passing over all the signs of decay before returning to the old man. Sunken in his chair with blankets over his lap, he had a grey, shrivelled look, like he was part of the decaying house. His head had lifted jerkily towards James at the first sound, seeming confused that someone was with him. ‘Sophie?’
‘It’s not Sophie,’ said James, with a thin smile the man couldn’t see. ‘Sophie’s dead.’
The girl on the pallet. Had she been a servant? She had worn the clothing of a girl used to hard work on a farm. The old man stared at James blindly.
‘Who are you?’ he said, clutching the blanket in his lap to himself. ‘What are you doing in my house?’
He looked frightened. He didn’t seem to know what was happening. He didn’t even seem to have a firm grasp of where James was standing, his eyes staring past him.
‘You know, I thought I’d recognise you,’ James remarked, as if the old man hadn’t spoken. ‘But I don’t. You’re just a blind, pathetic old man.’
The old man kept turning his head to follow the sounds of James as he moved around the room, as if trying to locate him. ‘If you’re here to rob me, you’re too late. I don’t have anything.’
‘That’s not quite true, is it, Gauthier,’ said James, and there was a moment when the old man’s face changed, in terrible new recognition.
‘Who are you?’ said Gauthier. ‘How do you know my name?’
He was breathing shallowly. James ignored him and continued to stroll the room, lifting a scattering of papers, pulling a rotted piece of wood from the wall. His boot heel crunched on a broken shard of porcelain.
‘Where is it?’ said James, and Will felt his heart rate spike. They were closing in on why they had come.
Gauthier’s hands tightened on the blankets. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Will looked over at Violet and Cyprian, who realised it too. They were speaking of the object that they had come here to find. The object Simon wanted, that he’d sent James here to get.
‘Where is it?’ James repeated. He had stopped at the old mantelpiece, resting a shoulder against it as he coolly looked back at Gauthier, whose hands quivered.
‘It was stolen. Years ago. I was glad to see it go. I wish I’d thrown it away myself.’
This time a silence stretched out after the answer, stretched to a breaking point as the quiver increased.
‘Where is it?’ said James, in the same voice, but it felt different.