Grimacing, she pulled the rags of the portrait free of its frame, realizing as she did that it had been painted on thin leather, not fabric. The frame itself stank of dark magery; she pulled that, too, free, and one side broke open. Instead of solid carved and painted wood, she found it was plaster, molded and painted to look like wood, over a core of bones and bone fragments … of what she did not know and did not want to imagine. On the wall itself, a door, carved with the Verrakai crest and a warning. Dorrin didn’t touch it physically, but once more said, “Tangat Verrakai.”

The door opened, revealing a small vault. Inside, the shattered remains of an urn with a little brownish red powder that vanished as she looked at it, what looked like a wooden box with inlaid patterns, a discolored scroll, and something beyond wrapped in pale leather. Dorrin left the vault open and walked back, nearer the study door.

“Did you see that?” she asked the sergeant.

“No, my lord. Like you said, you walked through a wall of books, it looked like.”

“The room extends beyond. There was magery, and I defeated it.” The man looked pale enough already; she did not want to panic him completely. “There’s a vault in the wall, with an urn, a scroll, various other items. I do not wish to remove these things at the moment, because Sir Valthan really needs the information in the family birth records, and I haven’t found that yet.”

“The scroll?”

“Too old. And it should be a book with pages; I saw it as a child.” She looked around that end of the office, trying to remember the size and color of the volume. As a child, she had thought it huge, but how large was it really? She found two other record books, one with the breeding records of the Verrakai stud and one with a record of harvests for the past twenty-two years, before she found the one she wanted.

Her family had seemed vast when she lived here, but from the records Haron’s plan had been to concentrate power in the family as well as without. Only one of her sisters had survived, and both her brothers had been killed in duels with Haron’s sons. Her father had died of a hunting accident; there was a mark beside his name she did not know. Relief flooded her: he was dead; she did not have to worry about seeing that face ever again. In her own generation, cousin had married cousin—to strengthen the magery, no doubt. Stillbirths … infant deaths … childhood accidents … half these listings marked like her father’s name, whatever it meant. So the gaggle of children upstairs really were all … she’d expected fifty or more.

Yet something about the record book felt wrong. She could easily imagine dishonesty—but why here, in the list of family members, births, marriages, deaths, titles? Was there another record book, hidden somewhere? Or was something hidden here, in this book?