Sussena sighed. “Nothing,” she replied. “If there ever had been, they were forgotten years ago. The lost fortune was such a sore spot with my grandfather that he refused to speak of it at all.”

Perry and Abi exchanged a look of resignation. “All right, then,” Abi sighed. “Let’s start with the dairy.”

They passed through the kitchen, where Hansa was bent over a pot of soup, and went straight out the open door into the kitchen yard. A half-hearted attempt to clean the yard of weeds had resulted mostly in keeping them to no more than ankle height. Hens clucked and pecked contentedly as they passed across to the building that was obviously the dairy.

Like the main house, the dairy had been built of good, stout stone, with a thatched roof. Unlike the main house, the roof had been allowed to go completely to pieces, so that entire sections of the thatch were missing, exposing the rafters, which now were likely compromised. “Damned shame,” Perry said, as they surveyed the interior. Abi nodded. In order to keep the dairy cool in summer the walls had been built triply thick; the floor was smooth slate, the countertops where pans of milk would sit for the cream to rise, and where butter would be worked, were built of polished granite. Even the racks for storing cheese as it ripened had been made well. Now those racks were piles of sticks, and it was obvious from the gaps where racks no longer stood that those sticks were being taken to use as kindling on a regular basis. Obviously no one had any hope that the dairy would ever serve its old function again.

“Still, look at those walls,” Abi continued. “Plenty of room to hide a fortune in them.”

She closed her eyes, and waited for her Gift to start working.

The last two days she had been practicing on the Palace and the buildings around it, realizing that although there were no hidden places within their walls, there were things like hidden places: ornamental niches, fireplaces, even serving hatches. These were all things built into walls that had similar characteristics as voids. And it turned out that if she “looked” deeper than the surface—and she could—she was able to see the stress forces flowing around those areas. Perry had helped her test this by taking her into a room blindfolded and challenging her to find such places.

But in a triple-thick wall, and one in which the beams of the structure might be compromised, this wasn’t going to be easy.