Page 38 of Beneath the Haunting Sea
Until Lyna appeared on the stairs with a basket of linens. “What are you doing here, Miss Dahl-Saida?” she inquired, far too loudly.
Ahned watched her suspiciously from the kitchen doorway, his arms folded across his chest.
She used anotherexcuse: “I tore a seam in my gown—I didn’t know if it could be mended, or …?”
Lyna frowned over the linens. “You have plenty of other gowns to wear.”
“Oh. Well, yes, of course.” She tried to accentuate how flustered she was. “I just didn’t want it to show up unexplained in the laundry—”
Ahned shook his head as Lyna swept past her with the basket, her frown deepening. “It’s nearly time for breakfast,Miss Dahl-Saida. You needn’t worry about a ripped seam.”
Talia gave her a relieved smile and went up to the dining room, hoping Ahned wouldn’t need his keys again for a while.
She ate breakfast alone. Caiden was dining with the Baron, Ro told her, and Wen was working in the music room. “He often skips meals,” said the dark-headed maid as she poured tea. “Gets so lost in his music, he forgetswhat day it is.”
Talia kept herself from rudely remarking that Wen was perfectly free to go to Od any day he chose to pursue his dratted music. “Will the Baron and Caiden be long?”
“Oh yes, Miss. They’re likely to remain upstairs until dinner.” Ro gave her a bright smile and took her tray away.
Talia thought with a pang about Caiden’s riding invitation. Had he forgotten? As an engaged womanit wasn’t exactly appropriate for her to be alone with him for any length of time, but she doubted very much if the Baron would enforce those kinds of rules. Her conscience told her it was probably better this way—although her mental image of Ayah’s laughing face disagreed.
When she’d eaten, she slipped once more down into the servants’ domain, where she spotted Ro and Lyna busy in the laundry,and Ahned and Dairon chatting as they polished a mountain of silver. None of them saw her. She stepped into the kitchen, heart thundering, and opened the china cabinet.
There were the keys, still hanging on their hook.
She grabbed them, and hid the bundle of cold metal in the folds of her skirt.
Chapter Sixteen
TALIA CLIMBED THE STAIRS TO THE TOWER,her fingers sweaty around the key ring. She passed the door to the Baronesses’ suite, and kept climbing up to the landing with the Tree and Stars in the stained glass window, and the locked door.
She tried the keys one by one. Some fit the lock, but didn’t turn. Some didn’t fit at all. She was halfway through the ring when she found the rightone—it fit, turned, clicked.
She twisted the handle and opened the door.
She stepped into a round chamber bathed in gray light, dust motes rising from the floor. An oriel window on the far end of the room looked north; she could see the ocean down below, crashing white upon the unyielding sand. A few erratic raindrops blew against the glass.
A fireplace lay to her left, ashes scattered on thestones. The remaining wall space was covered—floor to ceiling—in bookshelves, built into the curvature of the room.
The whole place was in complete disarray.
Books were strewn across the floor, smashed ink bottles ground into the carpet, broken teacups and bits of charred paper scattered everywhere. Many of the shelves were empty, and Talia’s eyes went back to the fireplace; the ashes were mixedwith fragments of burned pages.
The room enveloped her in strangeness. It smelled of dust and books, fire and flowers, and gave her a feeling similar to the one she’d had outside the stone temple—a sensation of power, bursting just below the surface. But she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
She circled the chamber, tilting her head to read the titles of the books and brushing her fingersacross their cracked leather spines.
There were books of history and politics. A few of poetry. Science and mapmaking and shipbuilding. She didn’t understand why they were locked up here. What harm could be found in books?
But midway through the shelves, she began to understand.
Only half a dozen volumes remained in this section, all with titles likeThe Binding of the StarsandThe Death of DiaandThe Coming of Man.Books of myths—Ayah would be delighted.
She bent down and started scooping up books from the floor:The Halls of Huen, Myths and Prophecies, The Words of the Gods.Mixed with the many books of myths were even more volumesaboutthe myths: scholarly criticisms, theories, and dissertations, one with the pompous titleThe Key to the Mythologies.
This had to be what theBaron was hiding.
But why? They were just stories.
