Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
I climbed out, got the knife I used as a bookmark, and wedged it between the lid and the rim. The lid closed, leaving a half-inch gap. I checked it from my desk. It didn’t look suspicious. You would have to really pay attention to notice the lid.
I got into the chest, stuffed some linens into it to make a cushion, and closed the lid. Good enough. Comfortable even.
I settled in to wait. Sunshine flooded the study. The sounds of Reynald and the Magnar brothers sparring floated through the open window.
When we were in high school, Cheyenne had planned on being a high-powered business executive with cutting-edge fashion sense and an office in a skyscraper. She’d listen to this business guru motivational speaker who talked about “ideating” and thirty-thousand-foot views. One of his favorite mantras was “Stop. Look around. Take a deep dive and understand that your choices brought you where you are.”
I was sitting in a wooden chest in a house once owned by slavers in the middle of a magical city watching a plate with a chunk of meat because someone kept leaving fish on my desk. Which of my choices had landed me here, exactly?
I hadn’t thought about home once since I saw the body in the Dog Market. Guilt landed on me like a brick.
So much had happened.
Back home, having a stressful day had meant a customer got annoyed or one of the food delivery apps sneezed, so I had to hustle to make up the money. Here a stressful day meant trying to stop a serial killer and bargaining with a mercenary for the lives of your friends.
Were the Magnars my friends? I didn’t even know.
Sitting in the chest wasn’t good for my mental health. I dealt with anxiety by doing something: making soap, writing down scenes from the books, plotting, sneakily cleaning my room, reading the books in my study. Derog had a remarkably varied library.
There was nothing to do in the chest but contemplate the confrontation with the Butcher. I just sat here and marinated in apprehension.
A faint creak announced my door swinging open.
Here we go.
Kaiden walked into the study. He moved completely silently, walking on his toes. He hadn’t knocked and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry, so he wasn’t looking for me. He was sneaking in. Why? Everybody else was in the courtyard.
The boy glanced at the bedroom. He seemed to be looking straight at me.
I held my breath.
Kaiden turned away and went to my desk. He looked at the plate, tilted his head, looked at the not-ham from the side, frowned, and moved on. His hand glided over the desktop. He picked up something, looked at it, and walked out the same way he came, silent like a ghost.
Well then.
I gave it five seconds, climbed out of the chest, and checked my desk. My favorite reed pen, the one that didn’t scratch the paper, was gone.
I slipped my shoes off and padded down the hallway toward Kaiden’s room barefoot. His door was cracked open. He must’ve thought he was completely alone up here, so he hadn’t bothered locking it. I pushed it with my fingertips, revealing a simply furnished room: a bed sitting against the wall, a desk with a chair, and some shelves Will had installed. They were mostly bare except for a single book and a weird rock. Several locks waited on the desk with the lock-picking tools Gort had made neatly arranged in the lower right corner.
Kaiden sat on his bed with my reed pen in his fingers. A large chest stood open by his feet.
He looked up. Panic shivered in his eyes. He stared at me like a frightened rabbit.
I kept my voice soft. “Want to tell me about it?”
He sighed and pushed the chest toward me. I came over and looked. An assortment of items lay inside: a worn knife sheath, a random lock I’d found in the study, a whetstone, a shaving brush, an arrowhead, one of Shana’s wooden spoons, a wooden hairpin I’d seen Clover use . . .
I pointed at the sheath. “Is that Reynald’s?”
He nodded.
“And the shaving brush? Will’s?”
He nodded again.
Shana had a small basket in the kitchen where Clover put the week’s grocery budget. The coins were in plain view, but he hadn’t taken any. None of this stuff was valuable. They were just small mundane objects we had handled.
We looked at the collection some more.
“Kaiden, how did your parents die?”
He looked down at his feet. “Mom got sick. She came home and her skin was burning up. She went to bed. In the morning there were circles of welts on her face and her breath whistled.”
Ring fever. Highly infectious and hard to cure. Sometimes it came into the city on ships, usually from the south, and burned entire city blocks before they caught it.