Sir Roland Brightshield's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The gate thudded shut behind them. Roland lowered the hood a finger's width and looked up. The trunk rose through three landings he could see and more he could not. Doors ringed each level. Ladders climbed between them. He had no idea which door held the child, and a robed priest wandering every hall would be a dead priest before the hour was out. He turned the prayer wheel once to keep his hands moving and thought. A steward in a green sash crossed the lower platform and bowed to the robe. He asked if the father would bless the household roster before the solstice rite. Roland nodded without speaking. The steward led them to a side room where a book sat on a stand, bound in dark boards and wrapped in chain. He unlocked the chain, opened the book to a marked page, and stepped back with his head down. Roland looked at the open page. Names. Rooms. A guard rotation written in a tight hand. Lucien leaned in as if to steady the wheel at his master's belt. His eyes moved down the page. "Third landing," he said under his breath. "East door. Two guards, one inside. The line above it says nurse." He did not point. He did not linger. He stepped back and folded his hands. Roland traced a slow cross above the book and murmured a blessing he half remembered from a chapel years ago. The steward bowed again. Theodora, waiting in the doorway with her drum tucked under one arm, asked the steward where a dancer might warm up before the rite. The steward's eyes went to her, then away, then back. He offered to show her the hall himself. Before she followed him out, she leaned past the stand and turned two pages back. Her finger stopped on a line. Her face did not change. She closed the book, let the chain fall across the cover, and walked out with the steward at her shoulder. Roland waited until their steps faded. He turned the book back to the roster page and read the third landing entry twice, then a third time, until the room numbers sat in his head like drills he had run since boyhood. East door. Nurse. Two out, one in. He closed the book. His hands were steady for the first time in three nights. Lucien watched him. "You know where he is," the boy said. It was not a question. Roland nodded once. Above them a bell rang for the solstice, and boots began to move on the landings overhead — the guard rotation the book had just named, shifting exactly on the hour. Roland had the room. He also had a fortress full of armed men about to change posts on every stair between him and the door he needed.