Well, that was bitter. And bitterness was a gall that would eat out a woman’s heart. Where was the cool acceptance of loneliness that Leilis had striven so hard to win? Tonight that coolness of mind and spirit seemed as distant as the child she had once been, who had entertained such dreams… At the moment, even a large fire would likely be inadequate to warm her chamber. But at least Leilis could have the fire.
Though that thought was not amusing tonight. Tonight, Leilis was in no mood to find amusement in anything.
Entering her own chamber, Leilis shut the door firmly behind her, as though she might shut out both the crowded galleries of Cloisonné House and her own bitter mood.
An insistent hand on her shoulder shook Leilis out of drowned sleep far too soon. A voice said urgently, “Leilis! Leilis!”
For a long blurry moment Leilis thought she must have overslept and someone had been sent to rouse her, but the urgency in the voice meant there was something else, some trouble—some trouble someone thought she ought to deal with, instead of Mother or Terah or anyone more official. A deisa or servant had got into trouble, somehow, probably, and now wanted Leilis to help her get out of it again.
Leilis hauled herself up to sitting, rubbing her face hard to try and wake up. There was a low red glow from the smoldering coals in her own fireplace, and a very faint pearly light glimmering around the edges of the closed shutters. Not enough light from either source to make out who had woken her.
“Are you awake?” asked the voice anxiously.
Leilis placed it at last. “Rue,” she said. And, not gently, “Rue, it’s barely dawn. Do you know what time I went to bed last night? What can possibly be so important?”
The keiso ignored this. “Karah’s missing.”
“What?” Leilis woke up the rest of the way. “Tell me.”
“She was asleep when I came in, but then I woke up and she was gone. I thought she’d just stepped out to the necessity, but she didn’t come back, and, Leilis, I was afraid to wait.”
Because she’d thought at once of Lily, yes. Leilis could think of several things Lily might have done. Persuaded the girl to go outside, trying to make it look as though she’d gone out to meet a lover—that was an old deisa trick. Had Rue warned her about that?
“I looked outside,” Rue said anxiously. “She’s not right outside any of the doors, and anyway I showed her how to get back in if she should be locked out. No little sister of mine is going to be caught that way! I looked in the kitchens, in case she’d just wanted something to eat, but she wasn’t there, either. Then I didn’t know where to look.”
Leilis nodded, stood up, felt her way over to the fireplace, and lit a candle from the coals there. Then, thoughtfully, another. It would be some time before the gray dawn brightened enough to be useful, and much of the House was unlit at night.
“If Lily set this up, Karah will be somewhere she wouldn’t want to be found,” she said. “If she’s in the House, she’ll be somewhere she could be locked in, to make sure she’s found there. What places in the House lock?”
Not many. Rue and Leilis started at the top of the House and checked the attics, which were sometimes used for storing expensive things. Lily might have lured the girl up to the attics, if she meant to make it seem that Karah had been trying to steal from the House. But Karah was not in the attics.
Leilis and Rue worked their way with increasing grimness down through the House. “She can’t be in any of the gallery chambers,” Leilis decided. Those chambers didn’t lock. “Nor in any of the banquet chambers or other public areas of the house.” She rubbed her face hard with the tips of her fingers, trying to think. “We should skip from here down to the servant’s areas. The laundry…” Light dawned, as though the rising sun had brought inspiration with it. “You checked the kitchens, Rue. But did you check the cellars?”
Rue stopped. “Oh. Even Lily wouldn’t have…”
They both knew she certainly would have. “Last night was a late one for the cook and all the kitchen girls, too,” Leilis said grimly. “It will be hours yet before anyone opens the cellar doors.” She stalked past Rue, heading for the stairs. But the dancer passed her, took the stairs three at a time with an assured grace Leilis couldn’t match, and reached the kitchens first.
The bar was indeed across the cellar doors, as it always was—sometimes some of the kitchen girls slept in the kitchens, and without discussing the matter the doors were barred. No one was comfortable sleeping with the cellar doors unbarred.