Eight. Why would a house for the Dark Priest who had only one daughter have a table with eight chairs? Unless there was more to this house than . . .

Something touched his elbow, and his heart climbed into his throat in a single beat.

Johnis whirled around. The girl Karas stood behind him, dressed in a white nightdress. White dress, white skin, white eyes—she looked like a spirit from the night.

She lifted a single finger to her lips, took his hand, and led him down the hall toward a fifth door he hadn’t seen. A wooden door, this one. He didn’t know if she was leading him to his death or not, but he did see that the sky outside was lighter.

Speed and boldness. They were running out of time!

He gave her a nudge, and she doubled her pace, down steps into a black space with several oil lamps on the walls to guide the way.

“You’re a fool,” she whispered, hurrying forward.

She was right. “And now I have a fool’s company,” he said.

“You think I’m helping you?”

“Are you?”

She didn’t answer. The curtain at the end of the passage opened into a room lit by two torches that licked with orange flames at open holes above. Oily smoke rose into the exhausts and vented somewhere outside.

Reclining cushions covered in colored silk cloth ringed a thick table. On the table sat brass candlesticks fashioned to look like winged serpents. The far wall was covered with a dozen examples of Horde weaponry, some of which Johnis had never seen: maces with spiked balls at the end of chains, leather shields like the ones the Forest Guard used, swords of all kinds.

A hundred or more books of history lined shelves on the near wall. A trunk sat on the floor beneath the largest of several serpent idols. A lavishly decorated room by Horde standards, he thought.

“There are guards above next to my room,” Karas said, stepping past him. “They will kill you this time.”

“Have you ever seen books similar to these but with red twine binding them shut?”

She just looked at him, lost.

“Never mind. You have to help me, please. You yourself said that your father was wicked. He forced you to help Jackov trick me, right? Because of that, he’s going to kill my mother.”

She stared at him for a several long seconds. Her own mother was dead—he wondered how she felt about it.

“When the sun comes up, they’ll know that I came here. Please, I beg you, Karas.”

“Did you know the priest killed my mother? That’s why I hate him. He cut her throat with a knife when I was a child.”