The Fifth Door

By sunset, Ada had learned three things about being a princess. People apologized when they stepped on your hem. They did not apologize when they asked about your marriage. And someone always stood close enough to notice if your face started to slide.

She dismissed her attendants with a headache that required no invention and locked the bedroom door.

The likeness plate loosened under a warmed cloth. Her own face emerged slowly in the mirror, pale where the adhesive had protected it and red along the jaw. Twenty-seven years of familiar flaws. She had never been so glad to see them.

On the dressing table stood a second mirror, taller than her arm, in a frame of braided silver.

Ada covered it with a towel.

Old silver could retain images. She had no intention of leaving the regent a record of his cousin peeling off her own cheekbones.

She laid the plate on cotton and examined it through her loupe. A hairline flaw ran from the temple to the ear. Heat damage, probably from the reception chamber. Three more days of this treatment might destroy it.

Three days were all she had asked for.

She mixed resin with powdered flint, filled the crack, and counted a hundred steady breaths while the repair cooled. Then she opened her case's false bottom.

The municipal furnace diagram remained dry. So did the charcoal rubbing of the Hearth Prism's mount. Every measurement matched the central piece of the crown. If she could remove it intact, the hospital furnaces could draw stored heat again.

If she removed it badly, the palace vault might discharge a summer's warmth through her hands.

Someone knocked.

“Your Highness. The collection examiner.”

Ada's pulse made a foolish jump. Fear, she told herself. Mostly.

“I am indisposed.”

“Then I will leave this outside.”

A soft click. Footsteps withdrawing.

She waited, reapplied the plate with shaking care, and opened the door a hand's width.

On the carpet sat the broken goblet, both halves wrapped in a clean cloth. Beneath it lay a card.

The western winter garden is empty after the seventh bell. Bring the glass if you would like an explanation. Come with company if you prefer.

No signature.

Ada stared at the last sentence. A threat would have been easier to classify.

She considered sending Orielle. Then she remembered the duchess's careful distinction between identifying the prism and removing it. Everyone in this palace had left themselves an exit except her.

She put the goblet in her case and took her diamond point.

The winter garden smelled of orange peel and damp soil. Heat pipes ran beneath its marble benches. Ada counted four doors, two opening onto balconies, before she looked for Lucan.

He stood beside a lemon tree with his hands in view.

“You counted the doors,” he said.

“I like architecture.”

“You missed one behind the trellis.”

She glanced toward it. “Does it open?”

“From both sides.”

“Then I like it especially.”

His mouth moved. Not quite a smile, but close enough that she felt an answering impulse and resented the timing.

She set the goblet on a bench. “Explain.”

“The mark belongs to a contracting house. Someone wanted it found if the glass broke.”

“To announce an assassination?”

“To suggest one. The fracture would cut a hand, perhaps an artery if you gripped it badly. An uncertain method for anyone competent.”

“You sound difficult to please.”

“In this particular field.”

Ada stayed beside the open balcony door. “And what is your field, exactly?”

He looked at the case under her hand.

“Not examining collections.”

“We are both having an educational evening.”

“I was hired to kill Princess Celine.”

The heat in the room seemed to recede. Ada kept her grip on the diamond point below the edge of the case.

Lucan remained where he was.

“My contract claimed she ordered a furnace fire that killed six people,” he said. “I came to verify that claim before acting. The documents I found were forged.”

“So you want your payment back?”

“I want the person who hired me.”

“And the princess?”

“Is not standing in front of me.”

Ada thought of running. Five doors. He had told her about the fifth. That did not mean he would let her reach it.

As if he heard the thought, he moved farther from the nearest exit.

“No one outside this room has heard that conclusion from me.”

“How?”

“Celine broke her right wrist when she was fourteen. It healed with a twist. She cannot carry a full goblet in that hand without pain.”

Ada closed her eyes for half a second. All those portraits, all those rehearsed signatures. Not one medical history.

“You could leave tonight,” he said. “The western stair reaches the carriage court. I will keep this conversation private.”

“Would you follow?”

“No.”

She studied him. “Why should I believe you?”

“You shouldn't decide quickly.”

That was the first useful thing anyone had said to her all day.

She opened the goblet's cloth. “Whoever reheated this used powdered cobalt to conceal the bruise. Not much. Enough to stain the fracture.”

Lucan bent to look, stopping short of her shoulder. Close enough for her to notice a faint scent of cedar on his coat. She hated that her body had found room for that observation.

“Can you identify the workshop?” he asked.

“With a sample from the palace glazing room.”

“I can arrange access.”

“I can arrange my own access. Apparently I'm a princess.”

This time he did smile. It changed his face enough to irritate her further.

“Apparently.”

She wrapped the pieces again. “I will examine the cobalt. After that, we discuss whether there is anything else to discuss.”

“Agreed.”

A hiss came from beneath the bench.

Ada looked down. The heat pipe's ceramic collar had developed a line of white dust. Fresh dust. She crouched, careful to keep Lucan in view, and pressed the back of her fingers near the joint.

Too hot.

“Step away from the tree,” she said.

He moved immediately.

She seized a watering can and poured a thin stream over the collar. Steam burst upward. Lucan held his coat between her face and the spray without touching her.

The pipe stopped hissing.

“That was deliberately scored,” she said.

“For us?”

“Perhaps not a trap.” Ada turned the collar with her diamond point. “Someone loosened this and fitted it badly afterward.” Scratched beneath it, protected from the heat, were seven cramped words.

I am alive. Do not trust Halvern.

Below them waited the princess's private seal.