Chapter Text
I was just barely not whistling as I opened the door to my former private study, a paper loosely in hand. I was cheerful enough to wait a bit longer to whistle, hum, or sing any of my known songs and scandalize the court. Because after this I would join Kip and our belongings on the skyship, and leave. I was already retired.
One day, I thought, this would be a song. This good mood. This farewell. This smiling casual wave to Ingo and Aizurvenne, who were guarding the inside door of the public study but had not entered with me and would not exit with me. Somehow this felt more like freedom than when I had left on my quest. (That had felt more like an escape, and one that might not last. Or that I might not be ready for.)
I stepped across the threshold and collapsed to my knees, the Schooled magic of Astandalas the Golden rising up around me in a nauseating miasma, fighting my wild magic as it never had when I’d been bound as Marwn (and never needed to when I was bound as Emperor, my magic most tightly bound of all). I managed not to retch or worse, partly by will but mostly by breathing fast and shallow in a panic. Because the magic around me said I was not in my former private study.
After a moment the magic snapped back and settled around me, still present, but apparently recognizing me as who and what I was - or rather, who and what I had been. I blinked my eyes and looked around, to find I was in…a small storage room. Quite possibly the same room I had intended to enter, but not in my time. It had the right window, albeit mostly blocked off by shelving and boxes, and the right dimensions. It was a lucky thing I had dropped so close to the door; I had not collided with the shelves or the big chest. Either would have hurt, and probably made noise.
That wouldn’t make as much difference as I’d like. When the magic had rebelled against me, any of the top two or three ranks in the Ouranatha who were within the Palace should have felt it. It was entirely possible that some of the magic monitors available to the guard commander would have reacted as well, but they probably didn’t have a signal for “wild mage in this specific store room”...just somewhere in the Palace or the apartments.
The magic had figured out who I was, which implied that the heartstone knew my blood and my name. That meant it was either during my uncle’s reign or my own. If it was my own, my Emperor-self might save me, or he might not have the influence or power to feel he could. If it was my uncle’s, I would be killed soon after being caught, assuming I didn’t die from renewed horror at having to see all the things he had in the apartments when they were his.
More importantly, at best there were guards two rooms away from me - the outer door guards for the apartments. At worst, there might be guards in the study, either if the Emperor was there or if other people were coming and going via the public paths from deeper in the apartments.
If I waited, they might come searching and find me. If I didn’t wait, I would probably walk right into them. I glanced up at the window. If I could open it, I was sure I could squeeze past the shelf as a crow and fly away. But I didn’t see how I could open it without moving the one set of shelves, which would have been a task better suited for Ludvic and Masseo to take on together - after removing the boxes. I could probably do it, but I wasn’t sure I could do it without hurting myself and I was very very sure that I could not do it quietly. The wall of silence could solve the noise, but provide an ongoing spell for anyone searching to trace instead.
On the other hand, the light at the window was dim. Not dark, but dim. I thought back to my days in the study in Astandalas. This didn’t look like dawn-light; it looked like dusk-light, with the section of visible sky shaded differently. If I waited a little while, I risked being found in a search, but I also increased the chance that no one would be in the study when I exited the storeroom. The Emperor’s rooms were not full of courtiers between bedtime and near dawn, because the guards wanted their sleeping charge secure.
I stood up from the floor carefully, and wished I had my Bag with me. But it was, of course, being loaded aboard a skyship when I came to quickly drop off a copy of Dora’s picture. I glanced at the door, finally realizing I had opened it to enter, but apparently I had opened my door. This one was firmly shut. I straightened my back and shoulders, breathed from my center, and felt the serenity settling over me. Well. It was the only way I knew to be calm in this place and time, as it happened.
One soft step back to the door and I placed my ear against the door. I heard nothing, but that didn’t mean no one was there, only that they weren’t speaking above a whisper. A pair of guards with no one else in the room would be standing still and silent, after all.
I sat and waited for midnight, anyway.
I pulled the door open the barest crack, pleased to find that whenever it was, the hinges moved as smoothly and silently as I remembered. I peered through and saw no one. The study was empty of people, even guards, and of course there was no terrace door. The decor told me it was Eritanyr’s study, unfortunately. I grimaced, because disgust was a better reaction than the fear that wanted to rise. I would have been safer if I’d managed to land in the narrow window of time between my uncle’s death and the Empire’s.
It was enough for me to breathe again, however, that the room was empty. And that breath distracted me entirely from the time or the “art” in the room. The air smelled of smoke, physical smoke such as you got when you burned something - not wood, this was far too tainted and mixed for only woodsmoke - something oily and unpleasant was mixed in. I have been around many fires, but most of them were wood and I was usually too busy to study what smells were caused by different things burning in the cases where it was more than wood.
It smelled of physical smoke, and it smelled of the heat-and-metaphorical smoke that was my magic. If my magic had brought me here, it could have been that, but I didn’t remember smelling it before I opened the door. I had definitely not been using my magic further since arriving. Much as I would like to do so, I didn’t need to make it easier for anyone trying to find the unknown magic user in the Palace.
I hesitated a beat, but really from here there were only two options - deeper in, or out. Out would have guards on it at all hours, protecting the Apartments themselves. Inward might work. I’d need to avoid the bedchambers, plus whatever rooms had anyone still awake in them, servant or noble or Emperor. Which would be easier if I knew where they were.
If it was now as late as I thought, and the Emperor had gone to bed, the main rooms gave me a better chance than the servants’ paths. They would have people in them only if they were tending to the rooms to have them ready for tomorrow, whereas the servants’ rooms would also have people waiting, resting, or traveling through them to get to other parts of the apartments. Unless all but those standing ready had also gone to bed, the public rooms would be safer. Until they were not.
I eased my way deeper into the apartments, listening at every door, peeking cautiously through. I needed to avoid the rooms most likely to be in use at night, and I needed to make it to one of the entrances to the secret passageways. The one in the bedroom was a complete non-starter, but Rhodin had shown me others. There was the library - Eritanyr was not known for his love of books, and it had been a library (stocked with books at least a half-century old, which told me how much he valued it) since before my reign - which had a smaller exit into the passages.
The smoke smells, both of them, were growing stronger as I worked my way deeper in, and I had neither seen nor heard anyone on my journey. Except for the smoke this was going ominously well. Add the smoke and it was simply going ominously. I didn’t make it to my goal before the mixture of dread and curiosity I felt got too large to tolerate, and I began moving toward the smoke, rather than toward the library.
I had passed the bed-chamber, but I was moving deeper, toward…toward the main ritual chamber. That was almost the only significant thing still in this direction, past rooms used by the priest-wizards to prepare for rituals that required the Emperor. Oh, this was not good. I could learn a lot without going to the source if I dared to trance, but trancing in the Imperial Apartments in the Palace of Stars in the days of Astandalas when I was not the Emperor or even the real (local?) me was an idea too reckless for even my most naive days.
Of course, if the ritual were recent enough, I was going to run into the acolytes cleaning up after it. Which would be an entirely different path to the same disaster of an end. I moved with utter caution, silently - Damian would have been proud - through the empty rooms. Most were empty as they normally were, but the last couple had scattered tools and herbs on side tables where they would have been handy if needed. Normally I’d assume the ritual was still in progress, except that one table was knocked over on its side and had been left that way. It had fallen away from the ritual chamber, as though someone had been running from there and not stopped to right the table.
I listened at the door to the ritual chamber, and heard only silence. It took longer than it should have for me to actually move to push the door open slightly to peek in. Or rather, that was my plan. What hit me first was the smell. Still smoke, but now I could smell cooked meat along with two or three especially fragrant herbs and a few other things I couldn’t place. And my magic, my magic woven through and part of all the stink. There wasn’t an ongoing fire here - the only light was from low-level magelights - but there had been. And it had been my other-self who started it, I thought.
Why would I, in any universe, have done that? Lighting a room on fire (And people? It smelled like meat and I was direly sure that meant people, here) would never be something I would do on purpose. But by the time I was dragged to Astandalas in my history, I would like to think I had enough control - and had been bound enough by magics placed en route - that I wouldn’t have lashed out in a panic.
What I could see and hear showed no people, and I shoved the door the rest of the way open and stepped in. The magelights, while dim, were sufficient to see that the space was empty of people. Also empty of the elegant wooden tables that were placed when needed for the rituals, but they could have been stored. I made a small gesture with my hand, letting the Schooled magics of the room bring the lights up brighter; that was less likely to draw attention than bringing up another light.
The walls and floor had looked grey before, which I had ascribed to the low light level. They still looked mostly grey now, but it was more visibly ash. There was one white human-shaped outline on the floor, and some darker streaks and smears in various places that might have been people or furniture or…I hoped they were furniture. They were too indistinct to identify.
I took a moment to look for any further hint, and then I backed out of the room before my lurching stomach could add to the mess. I closed the door as quickly as I could without slamming it, cutting off some of the scent.
I retreated to the library almost without thought - and somehow without encountering anyone, although I was being far less careful in my haste to put that room farther away - and opened the entrance to the secret passage and stepped inside.
When I had closed it behind me, I leaned back against a rough and dusty stone wall. I was smelling the dust and stone of the undisturbed passages, instead of - of what I’d left behind. I waited there while I tried to work out what had happened; I still didn’t dare trance. I should have looked while I was in the room; I wouldn’t have needed the trance for that, not when I was physically there. But I had the feeling it wouldn’t have shown me anything but heavy traceries of my own magic, and I already knew that, and more besides.
Driven by a hunch - and curiosity, always curiosity, even when I dread what it will find me - I followed the passages as much as I could around the apartments, peeking out at the few openings that allowed this. I saw no one. The rooms I could check were empty of people. The openings I could only listen at were silent. It was far from a comprehensive check; the passages were primarily designed for secure entrance and exit, not for spying on the occupant(s) of the apartments. Most of the doors had a mechanism or space that afforded a view without opening them, however, in case someone was returning. It would have been very awkward to open a secret door and startle half-a-dozen footmen, of course.