The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)

He took a breath before entering the gallery, and then another. He’d just survived a race with a golem and felt he deserved to take a moment. His back was sore, and his wrist ached where the stone monster had held onto it, but at least it wasn’t broken. Not exactly Hadrian’s luck, but better than his normal lot.

Few spectators had found the courage to venture inside. Those who did hugged the wall nearest the exit. A handful of men dressed in the uniform of the duke’s city guard made a semicircle around the bloody mess in the middle of the rotunda. Most stood awkwardly, shifting their weight, unsure where to look or what to do. Three others pulled back the broken remains of the fallen dragon, revealing the extent of the gore. Everything within twenty feet of Mercator’s body wept blood. The remains bore as little resemblance to a once living person as did a slab of bacon. A young man in a crisp new set of clothing clapped both hands over his mouth; when that didn’t work, he ran for the door, brushing past Royce in his dash to the street.

As a general rule, Royce disliked everyone. Strangers began at a deficit that required they prove their worth just to be seen as neutral. Mercator had jumped that bar in record time.

And a mir to boot, he thought. How remarkable is that?

Royce couldn’t help feeling he’d blindly brushed past greatness. An opportunity had been lost, a treasure squandered. That was how he framed it in his head, as an abstract business failure. But looking at Mercator’s blood and the blue-stained lumps of meat that had once been the most remarkable mir he’d ever known, Royce clenched his fists.

A shriveled-up biddy and now a mir. I’m becoming soft. This is all Hadrian’s fault.

“You there!” one of the guards shouted. “Grab him!”

Not twice in one night, Royce thought as he took a step back, dipping into a crouch.

The guard wasn’t a fool. He recognized the body language, which must have looked like a badger raising its fur, teeth bared. The man didn’t rush him. Neither did anyone else. Instead, the guards fanned out.

Royce heard movement behind him. Turning, he found himself face-to-face with Roland Wyberg, just coming in through the torn bronze door. “Well, it’s about time,” Royce said. “C’mon, we gotta go.”

“Go? What are you talking about? Where’s Hadrian?” Roland asked, puzzled. He looked at the hole in the door then at the bloody mess in the center of the room. “What in Novron’s name happened here?”

“I saw this man running across the rooftops chased by . . .” The guard faltered.

“Chased by whom?” Roland asked. His stare extended to everyone in the room, finally settling on Royce.

“Not a who, a what,” Royce replied. “One of the stone gargoyles from the walls of Grom Galimus.”

“A gargoyle?” Roland asked, pronouncing the word with distinct incredulity.

Royce nodded. “A stone statue, normally content to sit on a ledge outside the cathedral, decided to climb down. It took a particular dislike to myself and”—his eyes tracked to the blood pool—“a mir named Mercator Sikara.”

Roland stared. He opened his mouth. It hung there for a moment, then he closed it again, his eyes shifting helplessly. “I—I don’t know what to make of that.”

“Luckily, I do,” Royce said. He pulled out two parchments. “Here, this one’s for you. It’s from Hadrian, explaining why you need to take me and Mercator to the duke and insist on an audience. Although now we’ll have to settle for just me.”

“And the other?” Roland pointed at the parchment but made no attempt to take it.

This guy is a lot smarter than I gave him credit for. And that’s good because whether either of us likes it or not, we’re about to become a team.

“This?” Royce held up the letter from Genny Winter. “If we’re lucky, it’s a weapon we can use to prevent a slaughter tomorrow.”

Roland continued to look puzzled; then realization dawned. “The Feast of Nobles?”

“Exactly. We need to see the duke. Right now.”





Governor’s Isle was an odd name for the ancestral residence of dukes, but Royce guessed it had something to do with all that gibberish Evelyn had blathered on about. The place didn’t look anything like a ducal castle. The Estate had the typical ugly wall surrounding the grounds, but it appeared out of place, newer and more slapdash than anything inside, all of which was extraordinarily precise. Brick paths wound through open lawns and alongside trimmed hedges. One led through a small orchard and garden to a stable, a coach house, barracks, and a kitchen built separate from the main structure, all constructed from a smooth rock with no visible mortar.

The Estate itself was a rambling country home built of the same precisely cut stone—something the elite of Colnora might have referred to as a grand villa. The house was three stories high with gables and a centered portico complete with stone pillars. Royce counted five chimneys and twenty-nine glass windows facing front, including a round one set at the portico’s peak. At the very top, the ducal flag flew just below the colors of Alburn. The entry path formed a circle before the front doors, and fine gravel lined a neatly edged lawn, well-trimmed hedges, and early purple flowers that Royce couldn’t identify. The style was relaxed, opulent, and open, nothing like the homes of western nobles, which skewed toward the dull and solid—with an emphasis on solid. In places like Warric and Melengar, a duke’s residence was barely discernible from a stronghold. Even successful knights lived in gray stone citadels with narrow, glassless openings. But this place . . .

If the wall was a relatively recent addition, Royce struggled to imagine how the Dukes of Rochelle could have lived in an open, defenseless house. The idea was both incredible and unfathomable. The lack of walls suggests an absence of enemies, but no ruler fits that description. Had the ancient governors been so ruthless that sheer terror replaced the need for walls? Perhaps in place of stone battlements they had encircled the island with posts laden with corpses. Or . . . An odd, alien thought popped into Royce’s head, one that was as unlikely as his walking alongside the captain of the guard into a ducal estate. Could there have been no need for walls because it was a more virtuous world? The sort of place where Hadrian would have fit in? Royce pondered all this as he walked past the yellow-flowering forsythia bushes, listening to his feet crush the gravel. Hadrian is one of those people born too late, and I? Am I born too early?

Royce wasn’t surprised that obtaining an audience in the dead of night was difficult even for the captain of the duke’s guard. Wyberg had to browbeat the soldiers at the gate, who complained about his lack of an appointment. At the front doors, Roland had to remind the pair of men about his rank in order to gain entry to the foyer.

Looking up, Royce spotted an open third-story window. He could have already entered the duke’s bedroom by then, though the meeting might not have been as cordial with that approach.

Inside, the Estate continued to impress. The duke’s foyer was ballroom-sized and decorated with sculptures and paintings instead of swords and shields, the normal ornaments for any serious lord intent on projecting a sense of power. Royce was genuinely impressed by some of the art. When he’d visited such places in the past, the homes were always dark, and he was in too much of a hurry to notice the furnishings. The place was elegant, but he wouldn’t want to live there. The residences of the rich always felt cold.

“Duke Leopold does not meet with his soldiers in the middle of the night,” said the duke’s chamberlain, a portly, balding man who displayed a well-worn frown beneath a neat mustache. While unarmed and unimposing, he was proving to be a worthier adversary than the gate or door guards. With thumbs hooked on the breast of his robe, chest thrust out, he stood blocking the way. “We have a hierarchy to handle problems.”

“Exactly, and I’m captain of the guard,” Wyberg declared.

“But did His Grace request an audience?”