CHAPTER 16: WHO BROUGHT SILENCE?

Joanna exhaled once.

"Then let me offer this: whoever is paying the Hollow Veil is not just buying knives. They’re buying silence in the Sanctum. And silence in the Sanctum is never cheap."

Serenya tilted her head. "You speak like you’ve paid for it."

"I’ve watched the entire scene play out," Joanna said. She turned to Kaelen. "We have reason to believe an old pact linked to your bloodline is being enforced from behind the Sanctum’s curtains. It favors stability over truth. Stability over uncertainty."

Tiara’s eyes cooled. "The Silent Seat."

Joanna didn’t blink. "You said it, not me." She reached into her cloak slowly and drew out a folded square of linen. On it, water had dried in a pattern that looked like a lily circled by moons. "This was lifted from the glove of a Sanctum courier. Three days ago."

Kaelen stared at the mark, then at Joanna. "Why bring it here?"

"Because the corridors below the Sanctum are very clean," Joanna said. "And clean corridors hide blood well. I thought you might prefer your blood above ground." She tipped her head toward Tiara. "Your mentor knows where to stand when the floor shifts."

Tiara’s mouth thinned. "We do prefer that."

Joanna turned to go. "One more thing," she said over her shoulder. "House Soltair pushes for your protection because it profits from your existence. House Marrowind pushes for your containment because it profits from your disappearance. Both are hunting for profit. Choose neither as a banner. Choose a function and you might be safe ." She paused at the arch. "And sleep with your back to a wall that isn’t warded by your enemies."

After she’d gone, Serenya huffed. "Charming isn’t she!"

"She told the truth," Tiara said.

"She told a truth barely a fraction of it," Serenya corrected.

Kaelen rubbed his shoulder where the bandage tugged. "She saw the attack."

"She watches the way water watches," Tiara said. "She’ll be useful. If she doesn’t drown trying."

Serenya tapped the rail twice. "I’ll keep an eye on her."

"Keep an eye on the drains," Tiara said. "I’m going to the Low Warrens."

"You just got here," Kaelen said.

"And you just agreed not to die," Tiara replied. "I’ll find who bought those coins. I’ll find which hymn the Silent Seat hums while the knives dance."

"When?" Kaelen asked.

"Now," she said. "Before they wipe them out."

Serenya straightened. "I can have a squad, I could lend you a hand"

"I don’t need a squad," Tiara said. "I need a wind in the right ear."

She stepped close to Kaelen, pressed two fingers to the inside of his wrist. "Hold your threads low. If the wards feel like hands, don’t push back. Let them think they’re winning."

"Training?" he said.

"Survival," she said. "Be still. Be calm. Feel the energy around you." Her eyes softened for half a heartbeat, then cooled. "And if Lyren comes at you, do not break his bones in this courtyard. Find a room without witnesses."

Serenya grinned. "Or invite me."

Tiara vanished into the house’s darker corridors, a whisper of leather and a scent like storm.

Kaelen didn’t make it as far as his rooms before Lyren stepped out from an alcove, alone, a dull-red practice blade in his hand.

"You collect interesting visitors," Lyren said. "Water girls with secrets. Hedge-witches with opinions. Guards who think you’re a story."

"Go to bed, Lyren," Kaelen said.

Lyren’s smile was small then it became hardened.

"You come back from exile and think the house will bend to your control. It doesn’t bend, It only burns with rejection. And it burns for me."

He lifted the blade, pointed it at Kaelen’s throat. "Leave in the morning. While you can still choose."

Echo moved. Lyren didn’t flinch. "Call your dog off," he said softly. "Or I’ll sear away the part of him that knows his name."

Kaelen didn’t look away. "You’ll have to land a flame before you can aim it."

Lyren’s eyes flashed. For a breath, heat glittered against the warded air, the faintest shimmer that smelled like cinders and pride. Then it died. The ward had sipped it. So had something else, something that lived in the quiet between breaths.

Lyren saw it, and his jaw tightened. "That trick will fail one day," he said. "And I’ll be there when it does."

"Then try not to blink," Kaelen said.

Lady Valerius’s voice floated down the corridor, cultured and cold. "If you are going to fight, do it outside my linen closets."

Lyren lowered the blade, eyes on Kaelen. "Morning," he said. "Training yard. If you’re still here."

He was gone in a rustle of impatient silk and heat.

Lady Valerius appeared at the corridor’s end, a single candle throwing her face into clean planes of light and shadow. "Boys," she said. "Sharpening each other like knives in the dark."

"We learned from excellent examples," Kaelen said.

She studied him. "Your visitor. The one who smells of rain."

"Joanna," he said.

"Be careful boy," Lady Valerius said. "Water erodes stone when stone thinks it cannot be moved."

"And wind finds every crack," Kaelen said.

Her mouth curved the slightest degree. "Then we understand each other." She turned away, voice drifting back: "If you insist on sleeping here, try not to dream loudly. It disquiets the wards."

In the deep watches of the night, Tiara moved through the Low Warrens like someone who had been poor and had stayed angry. She traded three words to a knife-mender, a silence to a runner with a split lip, a memory to a woman who held debt like rosary beads. An hour later, she turned a corner and found a door with no handle and a smell like old coins.

She put her palm to the wood. Whispered a name the wind had taught her when it still liked her. The door opened.

Inside, men and women without banners rolled dice made from bone and glass. A black cloth covered the center table; on it lay hollow coins polished to mirrors. The mark in the center was absent.

Tiara stepped to the edge of the cloth. "Who pays you to carve hollows?"

A man with careful hands and eyes like cold oil looked up. "A customer with no face," he said. "Brings lilies on parchment. Pays in favors that never run out."

"The Silent Seat," Tiara said.

He shrugged. "A seat that doesn’t sit. A lily that doesn’t wilt. Who can say?"

Tiara lifted one coin; it was so light it felt like a lie. "Who delivers the lilies?"

"Runners," he said. "Orpan Boys without home."

"From the Sanctum?" she asked.

"From the alleys behind it," he said. "That’s where the clean feet get dirty."

Tiara set the coin down. "If a runner were to forget the route?"

"He wouldn’t," the man said. "Because his route is all he is." He tilted his head. "But if a wind took his candle..."

Tiara smiled without humor. "I’ve been known to blow."

She left with the city’s smell on her skin and a map in her head no sane person had drawn. Above her, the Sanctum’s white spires cut the sky. Below them, a door without hinges waited in a wall that pretended to be part of a bakery.

"Good," she whispered to the night. "Hide in flour. I know where ovens burn."

Dawn stained the eastern eaves of the House when Kaelen finally reached the west wing. Echo circled twice and lay down against the door. Kaelen paused, hand on the latch.

Soft steps approached. He didn’t turn. "If you’re here to stab me, at least let me sleep first."

Serenya leaned her shoulder to the opposite wall. "Tempting," she said. "But I brought news instead."

"What kind?"

"The messy kind." She tossed him a thin slip of parchment, folded small. "Your water visitor left this with the gate captain. For you."

He unfolded it. A single line in a clean hand: There is a tunnel beneath the Sanctum choir. The water remembers. J

Serenya arched her brow. "You collect the interesting ones."

"So I’ve been told," Kaelen said.

"Sleep," Serenya said. "Then wake and make your brother regret speaking at breakfast."

He nodded. "Try not to let anyone in who smiles too much."

"I don’t let anyone in who smiles at all," she said, and pushed off the wall.

Kaelen went inside. The wards flared once, then settled like a cat that had decided not to scratch for now. Echo’s breath was steady. The House’s bones hummed their old, relentless song.

Somewhere outside the walls, Tiara followed a runner’s candle toward a door that shouldn’t exist. Somewhere under the Sanctum, water pressed patiently against stone. And someplace high in the Conclave Tower, someone who never wore a crest counted hollow coins and thought about lilies.

Morning would come. Training would begin. Family would sharpen itself on family. And the enemy whoever had learned to purchase silence would learn the one thing silence cannot buy forever.

A voice from long ago drifted where sleep gathers.

"Be still. Be calm. Feel the energy around you."

He let the threads settle.

And he did.