Chapter 9: The Vault

I got Ismene to her feet and gave her my napkin for her mouth.

"Go to your mother," I said. "Don't go to him tonight."

"Where else would I go?"

She pushed past me and was gone down the corridor, holding the napkin to her lip.

I went back to the banquet and sat down beside my husband.

He took one look at my face and put down his bread.

"Chains," I said, low, under the noise. "Under the Sun Hall."

Theron didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then he stood up, bowed to the head of the table with perfect manners, and held out his arm to me.

"My wife is tired," he told the room.

Phaedon raised his cup to us with a split knuckle.

The Sun House was the King's own wing of the Sun Hall, joined to the throne room by a long gallery of lamps.

Two guards stood at the great doors.

They looked at Theron, and then at each other, and decided to study the ceiling.

The throne stood on its dais at the far end, gold on gold.

Behind it, in the shadow of a tapestry of the first sunrise, there was a narrow door.

I had been carried through it once, kicking, with a sack over my head.

I didn't tell him that.

I took a lamp off the wall and lifted the tapestry.

I found the latch, and the door swung in on a stone stair going down into the dark.

Cold air came up it, smelling of wet stone.

"Stay here," I said. "If anyone comes, cough."

"No."

I turned.

Theron was standing at the top of the stair, and his face had gone a strange grey color.

His knuckles were white on the door frame.

"You're not going down there alone," he said.

"It's a cellar."

"I know what it is."

"Then you know it's just a cellar," I said. "Are you sick?"

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