Kira Pelmont's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

By morning Kira had a name for her rival, or half of one. The whisper in the hall pointed to a cousin's house whose lord had ridden south the week before the butterfly came. She could not send guards after him. The three lesser lords were already counting her mistakes on their fingers, and a duchess who chased a peer with armed men would prove every doubt they had. She needed a hand that did not look like her hand. She sat at her desk and made a list of everyone in the keep who owed her a private debt. The list was short. She crossed out the steward, who had gone pale once and would go pale again. She crossed out her captain, who could not enter a room without his sword announcing him. At the bottom she wrote the name of a woman who had come to her two winters ago asking for her brother's sentence to be lightened. Kira had lightened it. The woman now kept the linens and moved through every room in the keep without being seen. Kira called her up under the excuse of a torn hem. She shut the door and spoke plainly. She wanted to know who in the household had handled paper for the cousin's house in the last month, who had left the keep on errands without a written pass, and who had been seen near the west window on the morning the butterfly arrived. She wanted it in a week. She wanted it spoken, not written. In return she would sign a release for the woman's brother before the winter council sat. The linen keeper listened, asked one question about how much silence was expected of her, and agreed. She left through the servants' stair with the torn hem folded over her arm. Kira sat a long while after the door closed. She had a hunter now, and no one in the hall would see the hunt. But she had also put her name on a promise she would have to keep in writing, and a written promise from a duchess under question was a paper her enemies would pay well to hold. She opened the drawer where she had swept the ashes of the emerald-winged insect and closed it again. The trade was made. She would learn to live with the cost.