Kira Pelmont's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The next morning Kira woke to the problem she had left on her desk. She had a hunter in the halls, but no safe way for the linen keeper to bring word back. A spoken report meant a private meeting, and private meetings between a duchess and a servant would be noticed within the week. A written report was worse. Any scrap of paper the linen keeper carried could be lifted from an apron pocket by a bribed maid or a curious steward. The three lesser lords were watching every door she opened. She needed a channel that looked like nothing at all. She walked to the mews before the household stirred. Her father had kept a working woodpecker there, a black bird with a red cap, trained to tap at a shuttered window when it was loosed from a certain perch. The falconer had died two winters ago and no one had touched the bird since. Kira lifted the hood herself. The woodpecker eyed her and did not flinch. She carried it back to her rooms in a covered basket and set the perch inside her dressing closet, where only her body servant went, and only when called. Then she sent for the linen keeper on the excuse of a stained cuff. She showed her the bird. One tap at the closet shutter meant the linen keeper had a name to give. Two taps meant danger. No paper would cross between them. The linen keeper watched the red crown bob against the perch and nodded once. She left with the cuff over her arm. Kira latched the closet and stood a moment with her hand on the wood. The channel was open. No ink, no seal, no courier to bribe. She had solved the thing she had sat down to solve. At dusk her body servant brought a folded square of linen from the wash. Inside lay a dead butterfly, emerald wings dulled, the gold spot on each hindwing gone dark. It was the twin of the one Kira had burned in her grate. There was no letter with it, and none was needed. Someone in her own household knew she had destroyed the first and had chosen to send a second through her own laundry. The linen keeper had not yet tapped the shutter. Whoever had placed the butterfly in the wash had moved faster than her hunter. Kira closed the linen over the small green body and sat down. She had built her private channel in time. She had built it a day too late.