The Man in the Glass
By morning, the mark in Mara’s palm had not faded.
It lay beneath the skin like a thin vein of soot, curved from the base of her thumb toward the center of her hand. Neither painful nor raised. Beside Pask’s sketch, its curve resembled a came in the queen-window’s lower border. Resembled, not matched; Mara copied both before closing her hand.
The hollow-glass sliver from Pask’s tool chest lay on the felt before her, wrapped and unwrapped three times since dawn. Under the loupe she found a tiny O.P. scratched along its flattened edge, beside a scoring hitch repeated on his test strips. Near those scratches the dark thread forked and stayed fixed while the rest stirred. A trace of making, perhaps; nothing here established that the fragment held Pask himself. She copied mark and hitch before laying it back on the felt. By lamplight, it looked almost ordinary: a splinter of clear glass with a dark thread sealed inside. At intervals, when Mara brought her marked palm too close, the thread stirred.
Not much.
Enough.
A knock came at the workroom door.
Mara covered the glass sliver with one sheet of paper and reached for her knife.
“Enter.”
The door opened.
Not Soren.
A young maid stood in the threshold carrying a tray. She had a narrow, pleasant face and the exhausted look of someone who had been ordered to approach a dangerous animal with breakfast. A clear glass bead was sewn at her left shoulder. Her eyes went to Mara’s hands, because apparently that was the national greeting.
“Your morning meal, mistress.”
Tea, bread, butter, soft cheese, and preserved cherries. The napkin was embroidered with a thorned crown.
“How luxurious,” she said. “Has the king decided I may live?”
The maid’s eyes widened.
That was unfair. Mara knew it before the girl’s knuckles whitened around the tray.
She stood and cleared a space on the table. “Here.”
The maid set down the tray with careful hands.
“What is your name?” Mara asked.
The girl froze.
“Els,” the girl whispered.
“Els. Did anyone tell you not to speak to me?”
Els looked toward the hallway.
“Several people, then.”
A flush rose in her cheeks.
Mara lifted the teapot and poured. The steam smelled of black leaves and some mountain herb, bitter and clean.
“I am not asking you about the chapel,” Mara said.
Els’s relief was so quick it confirmed that the chapel was exactly what she had been told not to discuss.
Mara buttered a piece of bread. “I am asking whether there is a laundry.”
The maid blinked. “Laundry, mistress? There is.”
“Good. I need clean linen strips, undyed, no scent, tightly woven if possible. Also warmed vinegar, charcoal powder, and fine ash.”
Els stared at her.
“For cleaning glass,” Mara said.
“Oh.” The girl nodded rapidly. “Yes, mistress.”
“And if anyone asks why I need them, tell them I was rude and unclear.”
The girl’s mouth twitched before she caught herself.
The maid glanced toward the chapel beyond the open curtains.
Els swallowed. “You came out.”
Mara set down the bread.
Els looked at Mara with a child’s confused mixture of terror and reverence. She was young, perhaps sixteen, and already practiced in not saying what she meant.
Mara softened her voice by one degree. “Do people usually not?”
“No, mistress.”
“Do they not come out, or do they not go in?”
Els’s face closed.
Too fast.
Too trained.
She stepped back and curtsied. “I will bring the linen, mistress.”
She fled.
Mara watched the door shut.
Then she returned to her cold breakfast and wrote:
Servants aware of survival anomaly. Common belief: entry after moonrise has expected fatal or transformative outcome.
She added:
Ask no one directly unless prepared to cause harm.
By midmorning, the palace sent her a scaffold, three assistants, two carpenters, and Lady Vesta.
The scaffold came in sections, beautifully made and entirely unsuitable.
Mara stood in the chapel garden with her arms crossed while the carpenters unloaded polished walnut supports from a handcart as if presenting altar furniture.
“No,” she said.
The older carpenter stared at her.
Lady Vesta, wrapped in a gray cloak trimmed with white fur, stood at the garden gate as if the snow itself had been arranged for her displeasure. “Explain.”
Mara pointed at the scaffold pieces. “It is decorative.”
“It was used during the restoration of the west façade.”
Mara crouched and rapped one knuckle against a support beam. “Too heavy, too rigid, too wide at the base, and these feet will bruise the floor unless padded. The chapel aisle is narrow. I need height without lateral stress. I need adjustable bracing that does not transfer weight into compromised stone. I need a working platform that can be moved by four people and locked by one.”
The older carpenter’s face stiffened. “This is palace joinery.”
The three assistants had introduced themselves as Tavin, Brusk, and Orren. Tavin was broad, freckled, and visibly devout. Brusk had the heavy shoulders of a man used to carrying things more expensive than himself and the wary eyes of someone who counted exits. Orren was the youngest, fine-boned and pale, with ink stains on his fingers. He had corrected Mara’s pronunciation of a local glasshouse village within thirty seconds of meeting her, which meant he was either useful or doomed.
The older carpenter drew himself up. “We can build what you require if given proper plans.”
Mara took a charcoal stick from her satchel, crouched in the snow, and began drawing on the back of a crate.
“Good.”
Lady Vesta watched.
The carpenters watched.
The assistants watched.
Mara drew quickly: base width, padded feet, angled braces, removable side rail, tool shelf, ladder position, pulley point. She marked measurements and weight distribution. Her fingers numbed in the cold, but her hand did not shake. The black mark in her palm remained hidden inside her glove.
“This,” she said. “Pine or ash. No walnut. Nothing polished. Nothing waxed. No iron feet. All contact points padded with wool and leather. If it sways, I will know before I climb it, and so will your wages.”
The younger carpenter leaned closer despite himself. “That upper brace should turn.”
“Yes.”
“Pegged?”
“Pegged and wedged. Not nailed. I may need to adjust it inside.”
He nodded slowly. “We can make this.”
“How quickly?”
“With men pulled from the gate repair, today.”
Lady Vesta said, “The gate repair is for the coronation procession.”
Mara stood. “The coronation procession will have to endure the indignity of a gate less adored than the chapel.”
Lady Vesta’s eyes went to the drawing.
“Today,” she told the carpenter.
He bowed.
The chapel door remained locked through all of this. Father Caldus had not appeared to open the garden gate. Soren had not appeared either. The two guards from the night before were absent, replaced by older men with blank faces and no split lips.
Mara disliked that.
She looked up at the east window.
Lady Vesta moved to stand beside her.
“You will not enter after sunset,” she said.
“The king’s written authorization gives me authority over emergency stabilization.”
“Your scaffold will arrive before sunset.”
“Then I will use it.”
Lady Vesta turned toward her. The little glass saints on her chain clicked softly beneath her cloak.
“What did you see last night?”
Mara kept her eyes on the window.
“You are too vain to pretend nothing startled you,” Vesta said.
“You did not ask what happened,” Mara said. “You asked what I saw. You already know what can happen. You want to know which version happened to me.”
Lady Vesta’s mouth thinned.
Mara stepped closer.
“Has the queen-window shown men before?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
“Princes?”
Lady Vesta’s eyes hardened. “You were warned.”
“You think this is discovery?” Lady Vesta’s voice dropped. “You think the chapel is some stubborn old object whose secrets will yield if scraped correctly? It is not a puzzle box. It is a wound made holy by necessity.”
“Then stop wrapping it in court language and show me the infection.”
For a moment, Mara thought Lady Vesta might strike her.
Instead, the older woman smiled with genuine chill.
“I see why the bishop hated you.”
“He lacked your imagination.”
“No. He had your measure. He knew you could not resist a concealed mechanism. He only failed to understand that your vanity could be turned against you.”
Mara felt the words land because they had weight.
Lady Vesta leaned slightly closer.
“The chapel has eaten better minds than yours, Mara Vey.”
Mara hated the use of her full name in that mouth.
The first replacement records arrived after noon.
Not the chapel logs. Of course not. But better than candle inventories.
Soren brought them himself, entering after knocking and waiting for her answer.
He came in with a leather document case under one arm. He looked better than he had after the chapel, which was to say the visible signs of alarm had been buried, washed, dressed, and replaced with office.
Mara had spent the intervening hours cleaning test strips of glass, inspecting Pask’s sliver under magnification, and pretending not to look at the chapel window every time a cloud shifted.
Soren placed the case on the table. “Glasshouse records. Partial. And the most recent structural report.”
She opened the case.
“Not Pask’s logs.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Lady Vesta claims they are in ritual custody.”
Mara looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“I believe it means she has them and is deciding how much trouble it would cause to deny that.”
“Finally, useful translation.”
He inclined his head.
Mara lifted the structural report and flipped through it.
“Bad,” she said within a minute. “Look here. East wall deviation: zero. Buttress settlement: negligible. Tracery displacement: negligible. Mortar loss: mild. Every number is rounded, softened, or praying.”
She turned another page.
“Here. No mention of the crack at the lower shoulder. No mention of water patching. No mention of stress at the queen-window. This is not a structural report. This is a lullaby with diagrams.”
Soren leaned over the table.
He stood close enough that she caught the scent of ink and cold wool.
Mara moved the report between them.
She pointed with a charcoal-stained finger. “A real survey tells you where the building complains. This tells you where the surveyor wanted the king to stop asking questions.”
“The surveyor is dead.”
“Fever,” Soren said.
Mara noted the stated cause in the margin.
Mara turned the page again and stopped.
Below the formal signature, someone had penciled a shape almost identical to the mark in her palm. She copied it onto a scrap.
She closed her hand reflexively.
Soren noticed.
“What?”
“A similar mark,” Mara said. She closed the copied scrap beneath the report.
His face tightened. “If the mark worsens—”
“It has not.”
“If it does—”
“You will what? Fetch Lady Vesta to classify my hand as ritual custody?”
He absorbed that.
Then he surprised her by stepping back.
“I would fetch no one without your permission.”
Mara looked up.
A simple statement. Direct. No polish.
Suspicious.
“Why?”
“Because I helped them do it. I was a page. I carried orders without asking where they led.”
The room went quieter.
Mara remembered Soren’s grip on her wrist in the chapel, his order to leave, the red light striking stone by his boot. She remembered the man in the glass shaping words like a threat.
Take your hand off her.
Possessive, she had thought.
Protective.
Both were dangerous.
“Who were you to him?” she asked.
Soren’s expression closed.
Too late.
The question had struck.
“To whom?”
“Do not insult us both.”
He walked to the window.
Mara watched him in reflection.
Outside, the carpenters worked under a lean-to erected at the garden edge. The chapel stood behind them, quiet as a saint with a knife hidden in its robes.
Soren said, “I was fourteen when Prince Ren died.”
Not an answer.
A beginning.
Mara did not interrupt.
“My father served in the outer household. My mother kept accounts for the west archive. I was a page in the prince’s hall.”
“Ren’s?”
“No. Kael’s. My loyalty started there. Afterward I made it into office because office was all that remained.”
“He was difficult,” Soren said.
“That is what people call me when they mean inconvenient.”
That earned a brief glance.
“Then yes,” Soren said. “He was difficult.”
“And dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“People who bored him. People who lied badly. He thought being a prince entitled him to decide for them.”
Mara’s marked palm tingled.
She ignored it.
“His brother?” she asked.
Soren looked back at the chapel.
“He loved Ren.”
“That does not answer whether he killed him.”
“No.”
“Did he?”
Soren closed his eyes briefly. “I saw him come out of the chapel covered in blood.”
“You saw?”
“Yes.”
“And Ren?”
His jaw tightened. “No.”
“What did you see after?”
“Enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I was fourteen, and the court knows how to make children forget the order of events.”
Mara said nothing.
Soren turned from the window.
“I am not your enemy,” he said.
“Noted.”
“That does not mean I am free to be your ally.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
A knock came before either could say more.
Without waiting for an answer, the door opened and Prince Dorian entered carrying a green apple and wearing a coat so immaculate it seemed intended to offend every working surface in the room.
“Mistress Vey,” he said. “Secretary. How industrious. One of you is even useful.”
Soren’s expression went from cracked to sealed.
“Your Highness.”
Dorian bit into the apple and sauntered toward the table. “I heard there was a moonlight catastrophe.”
Mara reached out and moved the hollow-glass sliver under a sheet before he could look too closely.
Dorian saw the movement.
Naturally.
“Was there?” she asked.
“I suppose catastrophe is a matter of scale. Vesta wore black at breakfast.”
“She wore gray yesterday.”
“Exactly. Escalation.”
Soren said, “His Majesty asked that you remain with the coronation tutors until afternoon.”
“Yes, but then they began speaking about ceremonial taxation authority, and I discovered a sudden appetite for glass restoration.”
Dorian leaned over the structural report.
“Ah. The official survey.”
“You know it?” Mara asked.
“I know it exists, which is usually enough for official documents.”
“It is false.”
“How invigorating.”
Neither of them smiled. He looked down at the false measurements. “No. That was cheap. What did they omit?”
Soren said, “Dorian.”
The prince’s eyes flicked toward him.
A small smile touched his mouth, but it did not reach his eyes.
“It is still Highness in front of tradespeople, Secretary.”
Mara looked between them.
There was history there.
Not affectionate. Not simple.
Soren bowed his head. “Your Highness.”
Dorian’s smile sharpened, then vanished as if he had bored himself with his own cruelty.
Mara disliked the deliberate humiliation.
He took another bite of apple and looked toward the window.
The chapel reflected in his eyes, small and pale.
“What did it show you?” he asked.
Soren stiffened.
Mara said, “Bad glass.”
Dorian laughed.
Then he stopped.
“Oh,” he said. “You are serious. That is much better.”
“Did it show you something?” Mara asked.
His face altered.
Not enough for most people.
Enough.
He tossed the apple from one hand to the other. “The chapel shows everyone something eventually.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
“It sounds like court folklore.”
“Does court folklore split lips for speaking too plainly?”
Dorian’s gaze snapped to hers.
For the first time since entering, all playfulness left him.
Soren said, sharply, “Mara.”
She ignored him.
“A guard said something last night,” she continued. “Another guard struck him for it.”
Dorian’s fingers tightened around the apple until the skin split.
Juice ran over his knuckles.
“What did he say?” Dorian asked.
“Highness,” Soren warned.
“What did he say?”
Mara held his gaze.
“He said it sounded like His Highness.”
Dorian went still.
Then he smiled.
Not his court smile. Not his charming smile. This was a broken thing, fastened badly.
“How flattering,” he said. “I have always wanted to be mistaken for a chapel noise.”
He turned toward the door.
“Prince Dorian,” Mara said.
He stopped.
“Are you afraid of the coronation?”
Soren inhaled.
Dorian did not turn.
For a moment, Mara thought he would leave.
Then he looked back over his shoulder.
“Yes,” he said.
No humor.
No ornament.
Just the word.
Then he opened the door and walked out.
The silence he left behind was worse than his chatter.
Soren looked at Mara with something like fury. “You cannot do that.”
“Ask questions?”
“Force answers from people who cannot afford them.”
Mara flinched inwardly, which was inconvenient because he was right.
She covered it with irritation. “He came here voluntarily.”
“He comes everywhere voluntarily. It is one of the few freedoms he has left.”
That landed harder than expected.
The scaffold was ready an hour before sunset.
It arrived not polished, not ceremonial, and not trying to be furniture. The carpenters had worked well. Mara inspected every joint, made them redo two wedges, accepted the third revision, and had the whole structure carried into the chapel under Lady Vesta’s supervision.
Father Caldus unlocked the garden gate from the outside. He was pale, sweating despite the cold, and would not meet Mara’s eyes.
“You heard about last night,” she said.
He whispered the entry prayer instead of answering.
Mara let him.
Inside the chapel, daylight had begun to fail.
The scaffold fit the nave with six inches to spare on either side. The padded feet rested cleanly on the black stone floor. The upper platform could reach the lower half of the queen-window; for the highest pieces, she would need an extension. But it would serve for the first ascent.
Soren remained near the center aisle. Dorian had not appeared. The three assistants waited with the bright-eyed dread of men who had been paid extra and now understood why.
Mara climbed the scaffold.
It held.
Good.
She climbed higher.
The queen-window approached in pieces: first robes, then hands, spindle, key, roses, throat, broken chin, smoky mouth, fractured cheek, wrong eyes. The higher she climbed, the more the chapel fell away beneath her. The altar became a pale block. Soren a black figure beside it. Lady Vesta a gray blade near the door.
Mara reached the working platform and hooked the safety rail into place.
Now she could see.
The queen’s face was worse than she had thought.
Daylight concealed the phenomenon from below, but at close range the replacement work was grotesque. Old lead had been cut and reopened multiple times. The original glass around the face was under stress from ill-fitted substitute pieces. Several joins had been packed with a dark compound she did not recognize. It looked like resin, but the surface had a faint metallic sheen. Blood mixed with mineral ash, perhaps, if one were determined to be unpleasant.
She leaned closer.
A hairline gap ran between the clear fragment at Seraphine’s mouth and the smoky cheek piece.
Through that gap came a thread of cold.
Not air.
Cold.
A narrow breath from inside the glass.
Mara’s fingers tightened around the rail.
Below, Lady Vesta said, “What do you see?”
“Consequences,” Mara said.
She took out the silver scraper.
Soren moved. “No removal.”
“I am not removing. I am testing the packing compound.”
“No bare skin,” Lady Vesta said.
Mara held up her gloved hand without looking down.
The glove hid the mark in her palm. It did not stop the mark from tingling as she brought the scraper near the queen’s mouth.
The glass changed.
Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone below to see.
But from where Mara stood, the smoky fragment at the mouth cleared by a shade.
Behind it, something moved.
Mara stopped.
A shadow leaned toward the gap.
Her heart did something foolish.
The man was not fully visible by daylight. Only an outline, dark behind layered glass. A cheekbone. A hand. The suggestion of an eye watching through a place where no thickness should exist.
His mouth formed one word.
Alone.
Mara glanced down.
Soren was watching her, face set.
Lady Vesta watched the window.
The assistants watched the door.
She returned the scraper to the glass.
“Packing compound is unstable,” she announced. “I need a closer light.”
Soren lifted a lantern.
“No,” Mara said. “From behind the face if possible.”
Lady Vesta’s head snapped up. “Impossible.”
“Then the side oculus. The angle may help.”
“That requires lowering the outer screen.”
“Then lower it.”
“No.”
Mara looked down from the scaffold.
“Lady Vesta, I can either inspect the queen’s face properly or admire it from a respectful distance while your coronation window continues failing. Choose one.”
Lady Vesta looked toward Soren.
Soren looked toward the east window.
Then, quietly, he said, “Lower the side screen.”
Lady Vesta turned on him. “You do not have authority over chapel screens.”
“No,” he said. “Mistress Vey does. By the king’s written order.”
Mara made a mental note to keep the written order within reach. Soren had used it well.
Lady Vesta’s face became very still.
Then she ordered Brusk and Tavin to lower the south oculus screen.
The process required tools, a ladder, and several minutes of muttered terror. It also required Lady Vesta and Soren to move to the side aisle, leaving the altar space below Mara temporarily empty.
Not alone.
But less observed.
The shadow behind the queen’s mouth sharpened.
Mara kept her eyes on the packing compound.
“You have one minute,” she whispered.
The glass cooled before her.
Then, impossibly, sound threaded through the hairline gap.
Not clear. Not loud. Not a voice anyone below could catch over the scrape of the screen mechanism.
But enough.
“You came back.”
Mara did not look at him.
“You said run.”
“From that. Not—” He stopped, gathering breath that could not reach her. “Not from the work.”
“Vey.”
“Do not use my name as if you own it.”
The shadow shifted.
“I know.”
“Then remember it when Soren is beside me. I choose who touches me. You do not punish anyone for it.”
His outline contracted behind the pane.
“I saw his hand. Thought—”
“That is not permission.”
“No.” The word came thinly, without a smile.
Mara angled the scraper and removed a grain of dark compound from the join. The window trembled.
The man hissed.
She stopped.
“Did that hurt?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
Good. Information.
Mara placed the grain of compound into a folded scrap of paper.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
Below, Lady Vesta snapped at Tavin to mind the hinge.
The oculus screen lowered another inch, letting pale late light strike the queen’s throat.
Behind the mouth glass, the shadow became a face.
Not whole.
Not stable.
But real enough that Mara forgot, for one breath, to be irritated.
He looked worse than the night had allowed her to see.
Beautiful, yes, in the careless way courts bred their predators beautiful, but hollowed at the edges. His face had the sharpness of a man starved on something worse than hunger. There were shadows beneath his eyes. His mouth was cracked as if he had been speaking in silence for years. A thin scar crossed his lower lip. His dark hair fell loose around his face, longer than fashion, as if no hand had cut it since the world ended.
His eyes fixed on hers through the narrow clear fragment.
“Kael,” he said.
The name entered Mara without passing through the room.
Her grip tightened around the scraper.
Below, Soren looked up sharply.
He had not heard.
Had he?
Mara kept her face still.
“Prince Kael,” she whispered.
His mouth twisted. “Not prince. Not anymore.”
“You are dead.”
“So I am told.”
“You murdered your brother.”
His eyes changed.
There it was.
Not guilt, not innocence. A wound with teeth.
“I tried to save him.”
“From whom?”
The glass darkened suddenly.
Kael looked over her shoulder, though there was nothing there but chapel air and the descending evening.
“Not here.”
His gaze snapped back.
“Do not finish the window. Her mouth is a door. They hired you to seal it.”
The mark in Mara’s palm burned.
She clenched her hand around the scraper and forced herself not to react.
Below, Soren said, “Mara?”
Too sharp.
He knew something was happening.
Kael’s eyes shifted toward him.
“Ilvath,” he whispered.
The name carried an unexpected weight.
Not mockery.
Not warmth.
Recognition.
Pain.
Mara looked down. Soren stood at the foot of the scaffold now, staring up at her with controlled dread.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “This repair is worse than expected.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“It is the answer you can use.”
Something moved over Soren’s face.
Understanding, perhaps.
Or suspicion.
Lady Vesta turned from the oculus. “Mistress Vey?”
Mara scraped another tiny sample, ignoring Kael’s flinch because he had information and she had very little time.
“What is the compound?” she whispered.
“Blood ash. Silver. Bone lime.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Whose blood?”
His smile was terrible.
“Royal, if they followed tradition.”
“And if they did not?”
“Who screamed most conveniently.”
Mara folded the second sample into paper.
“I will test it.”
He nodded, then lost the movement in a shiver.
Below, the lowered oculus screen caught. The assistants cursed softly. Lady Vesta turned away to correct them.
Kael leaned closer to the inside of the glass.
“Mara Vey,” he said.
This time she did not correct him.
“The king will flatter you. Vesta—she knows. Dorian is afraid. Soren still thinks he can lie people safe.”
Mara’s mouth dried.
“You know a great deal for a man in a window.”
“I have had time to listen.”
“Seven years?”
The answer was in his silence.
Mara looked into his ruined, furious face and understood that part, at least, was true.
Seven years in glass.
Seven years visible only when moonlight touched the right wound.
Seven years with the royal dead whispering from every wall.
If he was lying, he had chosen a very thorough misery to support it.
“You broke the queen’s face,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To stop the coronation.”
“Whose?”
“My brother’s vigil.”
Not coronation.
Vigil.
Mara stored the distinction.
“What happened to Ren?”
Kael’s expression closed.
There was the prince, then. Not the prisoner. Not the wounded man. A court creature with gates of his own.
His hand struck the inner glass, not hard enough to ring it.
“Ren is dead because our father put him beneath this window and called it duty.”
Mara heard the hinge of something vast and ugly.
Below, Lady Vesta turned back.
The oculus screen dropped fully open.
A shaft of cold daylight struck the queen’s mouth.
Kael vanished.
Not faded.
Vanished.
The smoky glass returned. The clear fragment dulled. The hairline gap became only a flaw in repair.
Mara stood on the scaffold, one hand braced on the rail, the other closed around paper packets of blood ash and lies.
Lady Vesta looked up. “Well?”
Mara forced herself to breathe normally.
“The mouth repair is contaminated.”
Lady Vesta’s face hardened. “Contaminated?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
Mara looked down at her.
Then at Soren.
His face was pale. His eyes searched hers as if he could read the forbidden name from the set of her mouth.
Mara smiled slightly.
“History,” she said.
No one liked that answer.
Good.
The inspection ended at sunset because Lady Vesta had enough authority left to insist and not enough courage to extend it. The chapel was locked. The scaffold remained inside. Mara’s measuring rule from the previous night was recovered beneath the altar rail, cold but otherwise undamaged. No one mentioned that it had been placed neatly parallel to the rail, though Mara knew perfectly well she had dropped it crooked near the door.
Back in the workroom, she tested the compound.
Not fully. She lacked proper reagents, proper glasshouse equipment, and the sort of privacy that did not come with royal spies in the curtains. But she had enough craft tests to establish the obvious.
The dark packing compound contained ash.
Metal.
And blood.
Old blood, dried and worked into the material like pigment.
Mara sat very still after the final test.
Els had brought the linen and ash. The girl had also brought a second pot of tea and a folded note she claimed had been with the tray when she received it.
Mara had waited until Els left to open it.
The paper was expensive.
The hand was elegant, impatient, and unsigned.
If the chapel speaks, never answer with pity. If it shows you a prince, ask what he wants from your hands. If it says my name, burn this.
Dorian, then.
Probably.
Mara held the note over the lamp.
She did not burn it.
Instead, she copied it from memory, then hid the original beneath the false bottom of her tool case.
After that, she locked the workroom door, wedged a chair under the handle, drew the curtains over the chapel-facing window, and laid out everything she knew.
One: the court had lied about the condition of the chapel.
Two: the queen-window had been repaired with material containing blood.
Three: the man in the glass knew her name, Soren’s, Dorian’s fears, Lady Vesta’s methods, and the king’s charm.
Four: the man claimed to be Kael Avaric.
Five: Kael claimed he tried to save his brother.
Six: Kael told her not to finish the window.
Seven: every warning she had received, from priest, prince, secretary, ghost, or glass, contradicted another warning.
This was why Mara preferred windows.
Damage had direction. Heat cracks, impact cracks, stress cracks, bad annealing, warped support, water expansion, lead fatigue. Each left evidence. Each told the story of force entering matter.
People lied so extensively they began to think confusion was depth.
She took out the hollow-glass sliver and placed it beside the sample of blood compound.
The thread inside the sliver curved toward the compound.
Then toward her marked palm.
Then toward the covered window.
Mara had drawn the curtains.
It did not matter.
A shape appeared in the dark fabric.
Not fully. Not a face. Only the pressure of light behind woven cloth, as if moonlight had found the chapel glass and was trying to pass through anything that stood between.
Mara stood.
The shape sharpened.
A hand.
Long-fingered.
Palm outward.
Pressed from the other side.
She should have called for Soren.
She should have opened the door.
She should have blown out every lamp and slept with her knife under her pillow like a sensible woman losing a fight with reason.
Instead, Mara crossed to the curtain and stopped one step away.
“No,” she said.
The hand remained.
“I am not speaking to glass in my bedroom like a penitent in a bad shrine.”
The hand slowly lowered.
Then letters appeared in the curtain’s shadow, formed not by ink but by absence where the lamplight failed.
NOT BEDROOM. WORKROOM.
Mara stared.
Then, despite everything, she laughed.
Once.
Very quietly.
The shadow letters vanished.
The hand returned, flatter now, impatient.
Mara folded her arms.
“You can write.”
The curtain darkened again.
BADLY.
“Good. That will reduce the temptation.”
A pause.
Then:
VESTA HAS PASK LOGS.
Mara’s amusement died.
“Where?”
The letters took longer this time, as if the answer had to be dragged through layers.
RELIC OFFICE. LOWER VAULT. BLACK CABINET. SAINT ALIS PANEL.
She memorized it.
“Why tell me?”
The hand pressed hard enough that the curtain stirred without wind.
NEED YOU.
Mara’s marked palm burned.
“That is not reassuring.”
The next words appeared slowly.
NO.
She looked at them for a long moment.
At least he knew that.
Before she asked what he was, Mara glanced back at the table. A cleaned test strip lay beside a damaged scrap she had brought from the south. She had kept it for years, though it was worth nothing.
“What is the blue piece?” he asked.
She looked at the curtain. “You can see my table?”
“Parts. When the lamp—yes. That one.”
“A fish. From a cooper’s kitchen window. My grandmother painted it.”
He was silent long enough that she thought the effort had cost him the question.
“Why keep the broken half?”
“Because the whole fish was dreadful. She let me paint the tail when I was seven. I put three fins on it.”
A faint movement altered his shadow.
“Fast fish.”
“Anatomically expensive.”
She turned the scrap so the faded tail caught the lamp. There was no response from the mark in her hand.
“Did she teach you?”
“To cut. And to mend. She replaced anything troublesome. I wanted to find how it had failed before deciding.”
“Even then?”
“Especially then. A neighbor paid me in pears to mend a cracked door pane. I broke it worse and worked three mornings carrying his water.”
Kael made no useful answer. After a while he asked, “Did you tell him?”
“I had to. The door no longer had a window.”
“No. That you broke it.”
“Yes.”
“I might not have.”
She liked that he had asked about the work before the disgrace, and that he had not turned her childhood mistake into a compliment. He was attending to something she had made badly, not only to the hands he needed now.
“Not much blue left,” he said.
“No. I keep it covered.”
She set the scrap aside. Neither of them asked for a trade.
“What are you?”
No answer.
“What are you?” she repeated.
The hand vanished.
For several breaths, nothing moved.
Then the curtain filled with a shape larger than before. The suggestion of a man standing just beyond it, divided from her by fabric, glass, garden, chapel, moonlight, and whatever cruelty had turned a prince into an apparition.
When the words came, they were not written.
They were spoken.
Faintly.
Close enough to raise the hair on her arms.
“I am what they did instead of burying me.”
The lamps shivered.
Mara did not move.
“Did you kill your brother?” she asked.
The silence that followed was long enough to become an answer, then too long to remain one.
At last, the voice came again.
“I broke the glass.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No.”
“Did you kill him?”
The curtain stirred inward, as if something on the other side had bowed its head against it.
“I do not know anymore.”
Mara went cold.
Not because it sounded like a lie.
Because it did not.
The workroom door handle rattled.
The curtain went slack.
Mara spun toward the door, snatching up the hollow-glass sliver and shoving it into her pocket.
The handle rattled again, harder.
“Mara?” Soren’s voice. “Open the door.”
She took one second to look at the curtain.
Nothing.
Only dark fabric. Only lamplight. Only her own shadow cast where his had been.
She moved the chair and opened the door.
Soren stood outside with two guards behind him and a drawn expression that made the question unnecessary.
“What happened?” she asked.
He looked past her into the room.
“Lady Vesta has ordered the chapel sealed until coronation.”
Mara’s hand closed around the glass sliver in her pocket.
It was warm.
“Has she?”
“Yes.”
“And the king?”
“Resting.”
“Convenient.”
“She claims the restoration can continue from existing notes and daylight exterior assessment.”
“That is idiotic.”
“I know.”
The admission came too quickly.
Mara studied him.
Soren looked tired in a way no sleep would mend.
“Why are you telling me?” she asked.
His eyes met hers.
“Because you asked for Pask’s logs.”
Mara went still.
Soren reached into his coat and withdrew a small iron key blackened with age.
He held it out.
“This opens the lower relic vault.”
Behind him, one of the guards shifted in alarm.
Soren did not look away from Mara.
“I can give you twenty minutes,” he said.
Mara looked at the key.
Then at Soren.
Then at the dark window behind her, hidden beneath the curtain where a dead-enough prince had just written directions in shadow.
She took the key.
“Twenty minutes,” she said, “is a theatrical insult.”
“It is what I can steal.”
That, she thought, was honest.
“Fine,” Mara said, reaching for her satchel. “Then steal quietly.”