She stepped over the bodies, pushed open the door, and headed through the maze of servants’ corridors for the stairs. A few turns on, she encountered the next body, a teenage maid with a single stab wound on the side of her head, just forward of the ear. A silver tea service lay where she’d dropped it, undisturbed.

A lunatic who knows what he’s doing. The young woman hadn’t even had a chance to scream. Sothe ghosted past the corpse, up the servants’ stairs to the third floor. Another pair of bodies, another maid and a groom, lay atop each other where they’d fallen in a tangle of limbs. The young man’s face showed nothing but blank surprise.

The “queen’s” chambers were on the fourth floor. Whoever the intruder was, he’d followed the direct route, making no attempt at stealth, and had simply silenced everyone who happened across his path. The door to the royal suite was kept locked, and Sothe was unsurprised to find the latch simply kicked out of the doorframe. Not subtle. But efficient, curiously efficient . . .

She crept up to the door, glad she’d been out on her rounds—and thus armed and dressed for stealth—rather than dressed up in her Head of Royal Household guise. Not a floorboard squeaked underfoot, and the deep carpet absorbed her cautious steps without a whisper. She pressed herself against the side of the door and listened.

Footsteps. The intruder was one room beyond, across the sitting room and in the queen’s bedchamber. The tone of his steps changed as he entered the washroom, boots clicking on marble, then changed back. Searching.

That the man had to die was now apparent. Sothe would dearly have loved to capture him and find out where he’d come from, but his evident skill was such that she couldn’t risk it. She had a half dozen throwing knives tucked into her well-fitted blacks, along with two longer fighting knives in greased sheaths at the small of her back. She drew one of the smaller blades, a carefully balanced steel needle only a little bigger than her palm. The footsteps were coming closer—the intruder was returning to the bedroom door. She heard the door creak, ever so slightly, as he pulled it open—

Without looking, she wound up and whipped the knife around the edge of the door. She aimed it squarely at where the center of an ordinary man’s chest would be—without looking, it was too risky trying for a fancy shot. It wouldn’t be fatal, but this was in the nature of opening remarks, rather than final arguments, and slowing him down would be helpful.