He dubbed himself the Rat King when he foresaw the rodents crawling on his corpse, weaving in and out of his garments like a sensation, like a disease. Now he waits for them down in the ornate sewer home he fashioned. It is a fickle thing, the premo...
Something has happened, something that Slyv he was not told. Inquiring to the king is a last resort—to directly challenge his lack of knowledge might lead to undesirable questions. No, better to take the side avenue, to attack the knowledge line before reaching the source.
The first avenue, the most blatant, is his dear friend the Head Inquisitor. A quick drop in to pay a visit has left the High Chancellor with no new information and his colleague with an unfortunate nosebleed.
The second is the king's chamber servants, who too profess no strange activities on the king's behalf. After the High Chancellor left the king had not rang until he arose that morning.
The third—an unlikely source—is Gobbes, who unsurprisingly gives no coherent response that the High Chancellor can utilize.
The fourth—an extreme measure—is to confront the one other with the king's confidence. With a particularly loud crack of stone beneath his cane, he limps down to the cellar.
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The bag scuttled across the floor and when the hand said "subsisto" it stopped. This is what she knows. Logically, the word must be Latin, as "subsisto" is Latin for "stop." But she does not know why.
He would know. He knows answers to what she asks and, according to grimy fingers and shuffling feet, he knows something of magic. And even if his mind cannot relent such knowledge there is his cabinet of books. She sometimes imagines grasping a tome in her hand, pulling it out from the dust and cradling it in her lap. She opens it, and that is as far as the dream goes. She cannot imagine further what might possibly lurk in those aged sleeves. No one touches the books. Not even him.
But they stare at her every time she enters the room, rows of quiet judgment that silently speak of knowledge she cannot know. They breathe with the mirror's drapes and sometimes whisper with the voices from behind those curtains.
She wants to ask him. She once held her hand out in front of her, aimed at a dot scurrying across the Grande Hall, the word filling her closed mouth, but she was too afraid to say it. What would he have surmised from that?
Her toes are gripped firmly on the crevice of one tile when the lulling shuffle of servants subsides from a steady drum. She listens for a time, the rhythmic beats echoing the dull pulse of her own heart. When it becomes undeniably sharp she realizes what the source of that thump is and scurries toward the dark graft between the wall and the wooden frame of the wine case.
"Girl, come out. I can see your feet."
She does not and her heart skips a beat when a weathered face appears in front of her.
"What happened last night?" it asks and she averts her gaze. "Why has the king banished the ambassadors? 'A fairy comes to my bed one night and whispers in my ear their truth.' I am not a fool. What did you tell him? " He suddenly seizes her arms and shakes them. The nails dig into her skin and she hunches over, curling her knees to her chest so that he must support her weight. With a curse he drops her.
