Dova Vellantis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Dova Vellantis had killed three men on the dance floor, and no one had ever found a mark. Tonight the fourth lay dead in a side room, and a magistrate was already asking for her by name. She stood near the ballroom window and pressed a hand flat against her silk sleeve. Inside it, a slim knife still waited in its stitched sheath. She had built her whole plan around these sleeves. Now they would hang her. Her raven landed on the sill beside her. Its sapphire eyes caught the candlelight, sharp and calm. She let it settle and thought fast. The magistrate would order a search. First the room. Then her. Dova walked to the dead man before anyone else claimed the body. He had been a poor dancer and a worse gossip. She knelt as if grieving. From her bodice she drew a handkerchief she had carried all night for this. It bore the crest of a rival house, red and blue on white. She tucked it half under his collar, where a careful eye would find it and think itself clever. Then she stood and faced the harder problem. The knife. The sleeves. A servant girl passed with a tray. Dova stopped her with a smile and a coin. "I spilled wine," she said. "I need the retiring room, and I need it now." Inside, she worked quickly. She stripped the silk gown to the waist and slit the sheath threads with her own blade. The knife she pushed deep into the soil of a potted vine by the mirror, a climbing thing with pale glowing blossoms. She buried the second knife beside it and smoothed the dirt over both. Then she pulled on the gown she had left hanging there hours ago, planning for exactly this hour. White silk, off the shoulder, bright with blue stones. No sleeves at all. Nothing to hide. Nothing to search. She was fastening the last clasp when the knock came. The magistrate did not wait. He entered with two guards and eyes that moved over her arms, her waist, her bare shoulders. "Lady Vellantis. A man is dead." "I heard," Dova said. She held out both arms, palms up, wrists turned to the light. "Search me if you must. I have nothing to give you but grief." He looked. He found skin and stones and no place for a blade. One guard checked the discarded gown and shook his head. Then the other returned from the body, holding the rival crest between two fingers. The magistrate's face changed. He bowed, stiff and quick. "Forgive the intrusion." He left to chase the house whose mark she had planted. Dova exhaled. The raven tapped the window. She had bought herself one night and pointed the blame at a rival. But that rival would soon come asking who had framed them, and now she owned a secret only a trained sisterhood could keep.