CHAPTER 752: THE CONSORT’S DISAPPEARANCE (1)

"Where—" Elowen began.

"I lost him." Serelith did not look up. Her voice was steady, but the corners of her mouth were too tight. "It isn’t death. The thread slid sideways. The auxiliary tether—dark. My familiar can’t lock. It’s like—" Her wrist flicked, a rude little gesture in the air, as if to show two glued pages. "Elsewhere."

Elsewhere where? Whose elsewhere?

Elowen stepped one pace into the room and stopped at the chalk rim. The ink-and-azurite circles breathed a faint cold. Her eyes went to the thread-map hanging in the air. Presence lines hummed at slightly different pitches—some bright like wire, some faint like hair in water. One strand near the center was simply not there. Not snapped. Not frayed. Absent in a way that made the eye want to blink.

"What do you mean by sideways," she asked. Her tone was clean, almost flat. Inside, her pulse made a dumb argument against her training.

Serelith tilted two fingers through the star-map. The threads quivered and settled. "Translation." She bit the word. "Not up or down, not along the simple axis. Think of a house with a closet you never open. He is not outside the house. He is in the closet the architect refuses to admit he built."

Elowen’s gaze dropped to the salt jar on the floor. The spoon had fallen in at an odd angle. She fixed it with her eyes and did not touch it. "Show me what kept, and what failed."

Serelith’s shoulders rolled back a little. She liked explanations, even when they hurt. "The main thread—his presence—was holding." She lifted her right hand. "Then a field pressed through the palace wards, but not like an attack. It read as permission from somewhere old. The tether I kept to Rodion cut at the knot, not the line." She pinched her fingers together, then opened them. "Rodion’s echo signature went to zero as if told to cease in a language I do not speak."

"Not death," Elowen repeated, and tasted the word to make sure it was true.

"Not death," Serelith said. Her chin lowered. "I would know that taste."

A footfall hit the corridor like a stamp. Then two more, close and quick. Cerys came first, sword already bare, armor throat strap unfastened so she could breathe. She did not point the blade at anything in the room. She held it low, mouth tight, eyes cataloguing exits and hazards. She leaned a hair away from the rosemary bundle, as if the smell annoyed an old memory.

Lira was half a step behind, hair in a perfect black line down her back, breathing fast through her nose. Only her hands betrayed her—white knuckles where the fingers gripped each other. She stopped just inside and bowed the smallest bow that meant I am here, not I am ceremony.

"Rodion cut out; I ran," Lira said. No apology for speaking first. She did not waste breath on "your Majesty." Her eyes went once to Elowen’s face, took in what they needed, and returned to the room.

"Barracks on alert," Cerys said. "I want a corridor lock and a silent muster."

Elowen let herself look at each of them in turn. Serelith—light buzzing under the skin, hands ready to burn a hole in a wall if it gave her a number. Cerys—knife mind, stillness coiled into legs, eyes already drawing a map. Lira—spine straight as a sword sheath, voice calm because she refused any other option.

"Silent lockdown," Elowen said. "Inner gates held. No horns." She pointed with two fingers at Lira. "Witness-sap desk in the west hall—start logging rumor now. I want the bowl to eat lies before they learn legs. Nothing reaches the nobles without my seal."

"Yes, my Queen," Lira said. She turned that single phrase into three promises. "I will need three bowls, two scribes who can write and not listen, and permission to draft the nurse-captain for the stare."

"Take her," Elowen said. "And her stare."

Cerys shifted her weight. "We shut the march bells in the yards," she said. "Footmen rotate on odd counts. Kitchen shifts staggered. No drums in the lower market. If someone sings, I will have their breath counted before they can reach a chorus."

Serelith finally looked up. Her eyes were bright and a little wrong from the strain. "Do not make rhythm," she said softly. "If this ties to his rules, I don’t want the city to feed it."

Elowen felt that click inside—the place where a decision finds its shape. Who? Why? The questions scratched. She let them. My city will not become their drum.

"What else do you know," she asked Serelith. "How long since the cut. What it smells like. Whether the palace wards bowed or were tricked."

Serelith’s mouth softened by a breath. She enjoyed being used like a tool. "Eight minutes since the clean silence," she said. "Maybe nine now. The scent—cold iron, old stone, not our earth. The wards bowed, not broke. There is a clause in the old script that allows a shove like this if the signature matches a... crown-bond." She grimaced at the word crown. "It was invoked from outside the palace. It felt... legal. In the way a very old law feels legal and nobody remembers signing it."

"Old law," Elowen said. The words were a plate she put down gently so nothing would fall. She had walked those archives until her feet knew the grain of the shelves. She did not remember a banishment clause. That did not mean it wasn’t there. Old law is very clever at hiding.

Lira stepped closer to the circle line and stopped with care. "I felt the change in the linen halls," she said. "The air got thin. The sound of folding cloth lost its tail. Then—nothing. I checked three mirrors and a peg. They were like dry wells. I came here. I did not tell the lower maids anything. I made them polish brass and complain about onions."

Elowen almost smiled. Not now. The urge surprised her; she welcomed it and put it away. "Good."

Cerys’s blade angled, just a fraction, to keep from catching the light and sending a flash to the courtyard. Habit lived in that. "I want stillness captains at the east and north gates," she said. "Women who can turn a crowd cold with a look. If someone tries to start a clap, they will meet eyes instead of echo."

"Choose them and do not call them captains," Elowen said. "Call them vendors or cousins or nothing."

Serelith returned her hands to the map and pulled a line through empty air. The threads shivered. "I can push a tracer," she said. "Slow and boring. It will not alert whatever watched him go. But it will take hours. I will need quiet and a line of candles, and nobody slamming doors."

"Take the quiet," Elowen said. "Steal it from me if you must."

Serelith’s lashes lowered. "Gladly."

A small silence sat in the center of the room like a careful animal. Elowen put her palms together and pressed them once. "What we will not do," she said, voice low. "We will not panic the city. We will not make noise. We will not move in patterns. We will not feed an echo with our fear."

Lira took a breath through her nose. "I will pull the musicians from the west court," she said. "I will tell them the Queen requests a day of rest for the strings. I will sprinkle the rumor that the Queen hates applause this week. It will travel faster than sense."

"She always hates applause," Serelith muttered. It held a little love. Elowen let it pass.

"Cerys," Elowen said, "how fast can you seal the lower barracks bells and the market drums without making a scene?"

"Fifteen minutes for the bells," Cerys said. "An hour for the drums. The drum-men will complain with their hands. My second will confiscate the sticks, not the drums. They can keep the skins as cushions."

"Do it," Elowen said. "No papers. Only faces."

Cerys nodded once. Her eyes flicked to Elowen’s hands. The queen’s fingers had drawn small crescents in her own palm. Elowen noticed the sting and flattened her hands against her skirt.

Serelith’s fingers ghosted to her mouth. She tasted the air like a cat. "There is still a breath of him," she said. "Faint. Proud." She laughed once under her breath and winced at herself. "Stupid word. But it fits. It is not a plea. It is a line that says I am."

Elowen let her own breath go out and back in. "Good," she said. She did not say hold it. She did not say please.

Footsteps changed in the corridor—runners beginning to move, the rhythm already staggered because the guard had learned. Elowen felt the palace start to change shape without moving a brick. The way a house rearranges its breath when one person leaves a room.

"Tell me what breaks your tracer," Elowen said.

Serelith’s eyes flicked left, counting her own conditions. "Horns. Clapping. Marching. Doors slammed in a three-count. Bells. Chanting. Someone reading a law too fast in a full voice. Drums, obviously. And I will need my own mouth to stop being clever," she added, softer, embarrassed by her own habits.

"Stop being clever then," Lira said, crisp. "Be useful."

Serelith blinked and then smiled, like a girl who got exactly what she wanted from a teacher she adored. "Yes, Lira."

Cerys stepped to the window, not for the view but to look down at angles, to see who might be looking up. The city roofs lay like tidy tiles of bread. Light lay flat on slate. Far below, a cart turned a corner too neatly. She filed the face of the driver in that dark place where she kept possible problems.

"Do we tell Aeren now or later," she asked.

"Now," Elowen said. "But in numbers only. He will understand the weight of numbers without needing the story."

Lira smoothed a wrinkle that did not exist on her skirt. "I will handle the witness-sap desk," she said. "Two lines. One for people who want to talk. One for people who don’t know they want to talk yet. We will catch the rumor with kindness before it grows teeth."

Elowen looked at her. There was a moment, brief and private, where a queen and a maid stood in a room that smelled of copper and rosemary and old chalk. "Be careful," Elowen said.

"I am always careful," Lira said, and made it sound almost funny. "It is my curse."

Serelith lifted a candle from the floor with two fingers and set it on a brass saucer. "One more thing," she said. "I want the minstrels in the taverns to play off-beat tonight. Pay them if you have to. If anyone starts a clap, I want the music to trip them."

"Done," Elowen said. "Pay them from my purse. Tell the tavern masters the Queen wants a strange evening. They will love to complain."

Cerys sheathed her sword with a little slide that made almost no sound. "My second is already sending the plain-clothes," she said. "He knows the doorways where trouble likes to hide. He will sit on them like a stone with eyes."

"Good," Elowen said. The word felt like a small coin. Too light, and yet all she had for this breath.

Serelith’s shoulders lowered. The faint crackle in her hair eased. "I don’t know what happened," she said, each word careful. "He isn’t dead. The line didn’t snap. It just... went nowhere. It feels like he was swallowed by the world. I can still feel a trace—very light, here and gone. I’m trying to catch it with my magic, but it slips. I need quiet, and time."

Elowen dipped her head once. "You have both."

Cerys pivoted away from the window. "Orders?"

Elowen crossed to the casement. The city lay under late light, its lines and squares steady. The tower horns stayed silent by her command. Pennants barely moved in the breeze—nothing that could turn into a beat.

She set her hand on the stone. When she spoke, the room obeyed.

"Move."