The Tarot Lady Saw the Duke's Death and Would Not Leave novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The East Stair
She keeps him off the east stair at the ninth bell, it falls, and she lands in his arms with his cousin Hadrian smiling at the foot of it.
"Why not the east stair?" Bastien asked.
"Because it's about to fall down with you on it."
He set the tweezers on the desk and looked at her for a long moment.
"The east stair is stone," he said. "My great-grandfather built it. It has stood two hundred years."
"The Tower card doesn't care how old it is."
"A card is a drawing."
"Then come and watch the drawing."
He came.
He did not believe her, and she could see it in the set of his shoulders, but he came.
He walked her down the main stair, across the courtyard and into the cold stone passage at the foot of the east stair.
The captain followed three paces behind, looking worried.
Two pages were waiting at the bottom with the Duke's ledgers, as they did every morning.
"Go," Bastien told them. "Eat your breakfast."
"But the ledgers need to go up, Your Grace."
"Eat your breakfast."
They ran.
The passage was quiet and smelled of old stone and candle wax.
Far above them a bell began to ring, slow and heavy.
Liora counted the strokes under her breath.
One, two, three.
The Duke stood next to her with his arms folded, watching the stair.
"You are very sure," he said.
"No," said Liora. "I'm very scared."
Five, six, seven.
A boy came running across the courtyard behind them, small and out of breath, with a ledger clutched to his chest.
Another page, a third one, who hadn't heard the order.
He was heading straight for the stair.
"Not that way!" Liora shouted, and he didn't stop.
She ran.
She caught the boy by the back of his belt and hauled him backward off his feet.
He yelled in outrage, and the ledger flew out of his arms.
The ninth bell struck.
The sound above them was exactly the one she had heard in the vision, like a tree splitting down its whole length.
Then the stair came down.
The whole upper flight tore from the wall in a roar, and stone and timber crashed into the passage in a cloud of dust.
Liora felt an arm hook around her waist and haul her back.
She and the boy hit the Duke's chest together, and he took all of it without a sound.
Rubble bounced across the floor, and one thrown block skidded to a stop against her slipper.
Then it was quiet.
Dust drifted down, and she coughed.
She was breathing against the front of a man's coat, and his arm was still around her.
He smelled of cold air and woodsmoke and brass polish.
His heart was thumping hard, much harder than his face had shown.
"Lady Vennick," said Bastien.
She tilted her head back.
His eyes were an inch from hers, and they had gone wide and pale.
Neither of them moved.
"You are," he said quietly, "standing on my foot."
"Oh!" She jumped back so fast she nearly fell over the page.
The boy had started to cry.
The captain was at his shoulder in a heartbeat, hand on his sword, staring at the ruin.
"Sawn," the captain said, crouching by a splintered beam. "Look. The cut is clean on this side."
Fresh yellow sawdust lay in a drift on the flagstones where the dust hadn't covered it.
"Someone worked at this last night," the captain said. "Not long ago. Hours."
A door banged open at the courtyard end of the passage.
Hadrian came striding through it in a fur-collared coat, rosy-cheeked from the cold, with two servants behind him.
"Good heavens," he said. "Bastien! I heard the noise from the stables. Is everyone all right?"
He saw the stair and put a hand on his chest.
"What a mercy. You take that stair every morning at the ninth bell, cousin. Every single morning."
"I know," said Bastien.
"A terrible accident. Old stone, I always said."
Hadrian smiled at Liora, warm as a hearth.
"And you, my dear. What luck you had a feeling about it."
Liora felt the smile land on her.
Bastien said nothing.
He was looking at his cousin, and he did not look away for a long time.
Then he turned to Liora and brushed grey dust off her sleeve with the back of his hurt hand.
He said it quietly, so that only she could hear.
"Draw me another card."
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