Kiggs knew the castle inside and out. It was riddled with hidden passages, but they weren’t contiguous. We couldn’t get all the way to Glisselda’s suite without crossing empty rooms or, worse, public corridors. I followed Kiggs, hushing when he signaled, removing my boots and carrying them. We sneaked through the boudoirs of sleeping courtiers, and one room where they weren’t sleeping but were eminently distracted.
We finally reached a narrow passage that ran the length of the royal family’s quarters. Kiggs touched a panel door wistfully as he passed, and I wondered whether that led to his own rooms. About twenty yards along, he paused at another door and pressed a finger to his lips. I nodded understanding. He beckoned me closer and whispered, “She will be surprised to see you, of course. Try to wake her gently. There will be a bodyguard in the antechamber and two more guards in the hallway.”
Kiggs released the spring latch mechanism, but the door did not swing inward. He handed me his lantern to hold and tried the latch again. He gave up on mechanical finesse and pushed the door with both hands, then with his back and legs. It wouldn’t budge.
“There’s something in the way of this door,” he said, no longer whispering. “A trunk, or a bookcase. Something heavy, as if she’s deliberately blocked it.” He gave it one last exasperated shove. “So much for speaking with her tonight, before Jannoula knows you’re here.”
“Could I go in through a window?” I said. His expression told me this was impossible. “How about the front door?” The impossibility in his expression deepened, which perversely amused me. “You’ve seen me bluff guards before. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“They arrest you and throw you in the donjon.”
“Which would bring me to Glisselda’s attention,” I said. “Not the entrance I planned, but I’ll work with whatever I get.”
He sighed, poor, long-suffering prince, but led me through the door we’d passed earlier and into a well-furnished suite. He didn’t confirm that these were his rooms, and there weren’t enough books for me to say with certainty—but then, his workspace was up in the East Tower. He wouldn’t have done much here but sleep.
At the door to the main corridor, he took the lanterns back and whispered, “The corridor does a dogleg, so they won’t see you emerge from this room. Peek around and choose your moment. You’ve got your thnik?”
I jabbed a finger at him. This one was a ring.
“I noticed you left the dagger behind,” he said quietly. “I considered bringing it, but decided you were making a principled choice. I hope we don’t regret that.”
I swiftly kissed the edge of his beard. That probably didn’t assuage his worry, but it raised my courage. I stepped outside, and he silently closed the door behind me.
I crept up on Glisselda’s guards, who sat facing each other on stools, engrossed in a card game. They did not see me until I was directly in front of her door. “Hoy, maidy, how’d you get up here?” said the taller guard, craning his neck to peer down the corridor, as if there might be more of me coming.
“I’m one of the ityasaari,” I said, raising my doublet sleeve enough to show a couple of scales. “St. Jannoula sent me with a message for the Queen.”
“It couldn’t wait till morning?” said the other guard, older but shorter, with a helmet like an overturned basin. He folded and unfolded his hand of cards. “Her Majesty is very particular about her sleep. Hand it over and we’ll see she gets it in the morning.”
“I’m to tell her in person,” I said. “It’s important.”
The men looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “St. Jannoula herself, by the Queen’s order, don’t see her in person after hours,” said the taller guard, stretching his legs forward so they were blocking the door. “Even if we let you by, which we won’t, you’d still have to talk your way past her bodyguard, Alberdt. There’s no doing that.”
“Why not?” I drew myself up as if I were equal to any Alberdt under the sun.
“Because he’s deaf,” said the older guard, reordering his cards by suit. “Only responds to finger signs. Dunno about you, but I only know this one.”
His gesture asked me, unsubtly, to leave. I gave meager courtesy, turned on my heel, and walked up the hallway with what dignity I could muster. Once past the dogleg, I ducked quickly into Kiggs’s suite and bolted the door—and none too soon. I heard them stomp past once, twice, thrice, trying doors, trying to work out where I’d gone.
“I take it that didn’t work,” whispered Kiggs. “Now what?”
It occurred to me that we might stay in this suite until morning; I suspect it occurred to Kiggs as well. If so, we each rejected the notion on our own, without any discussion. He led me back to the secret passage.
“It will be harder to move around undetected during the day,” Kiggs whispered as we left his rooms. “I think we should get down to the council chamber while we can, and wait for the morning council meeting. Would that suit you as an arena for your return?”
It was as good as anything I could think of. Kiggs led the way, sticking to hidden passages as much as possible, watching for guards in the open hallways.
We reached the council chamber without incident; it was shaped like the quire of a cathedral, with rows of tiered seats facing each other across a central aisle. At the head of the room was a dais with a throne for the Queen. Beyond it, green and violet banners draped the wall behind a large wooden crest of our national emblem, the prancing Pau-Henoa. Kiggs counted off curtains and behind the third from the left found a notch in the wall, which proved to be a door. He worked the trick latch, and we slipped through into a narrow room, furnished only with a long wooden bench.
“In the old days, when the council consisted of unruly knights and warlords, our queens kept armed men concealed here, just in case,” said Kiggs, setting down his lantern. “Now it’s a forgotten space.”
We tried the bench, found it uncomfortably narrow, and resituated ourselves on the floor, with our backs to the council chamber wall.
“Sleep if you can,” said Kiggs. “You’ll need all your wits if you mean to spring out at the council in the morning.”
He sat so close that his arm was touching mine; I was wide awake. Cautiously, I tilted my head until it rested on his shoulder, expecting him to shrug me away. He didn’t.
He leaned his head against mine.
“You haven’t mentioned Orma once since you returned,” Kiggs said softly. “I haven’t wanted to ask, for fear of upsetting you.”
“He wasn’t at Lab Four.” My voice creaked as I spoke. I inhaled sharply through my nose, trying to hold down my feelings; I didn’t want to cry, not now. “I don’t know the state of his mind. The Censors sent him here, at Jannoula’s request, so I presume she knows where he is. I mean to ask her.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Kiggs, his voice like sunlight. “How awful not to know.”
I closed my eyes. “I try not to think about it much.”
There was a long pause; the sound of his breathing soothed me somewhat. “Do you know what some theologians believe about that story I told you? The inside-out house?” he said at last.
“I thought it was a pagan tale, predating the Saints,” I said.
“Yes, but some religious thinkers—the ones I like best—believe the pagan ancients were wise, that they caught glimpses of greater truths. They take Dowl’s house, the emptiness surrounding the fullness of the universe, as a metaphor for the Infernum. Hell is nothingness.”
I frowned. “According to your earlier analogy, that’s my mind, friend.”
He chuckled into my hair, enjoying this. I loved him terribly just then, how he puzzled through obscure scholarship and reveled in ideas, never mind that he’d called my mind hell. The idea was the thing; he would entertain all comers.
“So if the Infernum is an empty interior, what’s Heaven in their conception?” I asked, nudging him.
“A second inside-out house, inside—or rather, ‘outside’—the first,” he said. “If you cross its threshold, you realize our world, for all its wonder, has been but a shadow, another kind of emptiness. Heaven is more than this.”
I snorted, unable to contain the urge to argue. “Might there not be another inside-out house in Heaven, and on and on in infinite regression?”
He laughed. “I can barely get my head around one,” he admitted. “In any case, it’s just a metaphor.”
I smiled in the darkness. There was nothing “just” about metaphors, I was beginning to think; they followed me everywhere, illuminating and failing and illuminating again.
“I have missed you so much,” I said, overcome. “I could spend eternity here at your shoulder, listening to you muse about whatever takes your fancy.”
He kissed my forehead, and then he kissed my mouth. I kissed him back with an unanticipated urgency, thirsty for him, dizzy with him, filled with light. One of his hands lost itself in my hair; the other found itself at the hem of my doublet, fingering the linen shirt at my waist.
Alas, I was a dragon at my center, encircled in silver scales. That touch started me thinking, and thinking was the beginning of the end.
I spoke into the space between kisses—“Kiggs”—but then another kiss pulled me under. I wanted nothing but to forget all my promises and drown in him, but I couldn’t let myself. “Lucian,” I said more determinedly, taking his face in my hands.
“Sweet Heavenly Home,” he gasped. He opened his deep brown eyes and leaned his forehead against mine. His breath was warm. “I’m sorry, I know, we can’t.”
“Not like this,” I said, my heart still racing. “Not without discussing or deciding.”
Kiggs wrapped his arms around me, as if to still my trembling, or anchor me to the earth; I buried my face in his shoulder. I could have wept. I hurt all over like one suffering terrible insomnia, when the body aches with longing for sleep.
Somehow we both did find our portion of sleep there in each other’s arms.