The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 23: The Cursewright's Confession, Part 4

 The rooms and halls stood sadly empty, tapestries and paintings of his ancestors long gone, tables and chaises and bookshelves carried off to who knew where. Ammas wondered how much of it had been sold to the Kerrells, or now adorned Bluestead House up on the bluffs over the city. (Carala, who was quite familiar with the sort of stolen treasures that were stored in the Maathinhold, could have told him the fate of many of these things, but she held her tongue.) What they had come for was in the cellar, but when Ammas roamed toward the grand stairway to the second floor that dominated the entry hall, Carala did not object. 

The airy spirit's light rose up those stairs in great glowing rays, dust wafting through their illumination like thin smoke. Dust lay thick over everything in the house, and the smell of mold was almost overwhelming. Ammas supposed if the place were ever to be habitable again it would require a monumental cleaning.

"Would you come upstairs with me?" He hadn't expected his voice to shake like this. "There's something I'd like to check."

That bitter aroma had intensified painfully. Carala nodded, lightly touching his elbow as she followed him into the gloom of the upper stories. Ammas said nothing, but he found himself immensely relieved at that simple gesture. The climb upward was long and laborious, though he remembered bounding up and down these stairs quite easily both as a child and a young man. By the time he reached the second floor he was soaked in sweat. The airy spirit's light wavered, and he realized his hands were trembling.

A thin laugh rose from his lips. He wondered how close he was to the verge of hysteria. Things, very unpleasant things, were rising in his memory and imagination the deeper he roamed into this place. Fumbling a little he shifted the caged spirit from one hand to the other, only to stop when Carala laid a slim hand on his.

"Are you sure you want me with you, Ammas?" she said softly. The wolf was heavy in her eyes, but beneath that he saw a well of concern he never expected to see in anyone named Deyn.

"I do," he said more firmly. "This shouldn't take long. Come."

Although Mourthia House stood three stories tall, at one time the second floor had also been the top floor, and so a ramshackle mansard roof remained over a considerable portion of these upper rooms. The largest room under that roof partly comprised his father's study, and it was here he found the only piece of furniture he had yet seen in the place.

"They built it right here in this room," he murmured to Carala as the light danced along its mahogany edges. "I suppose they couldn't get it out without destroying it."

The desk looked to Carala almost as big as a carriage, dozens of drawers tugged out and spilled on the floor in the vast space between its wings, all its various pigeonholes and cubbies laying open and revealed. Not so much as a scrap of paper or a single broken quill was to be seen on it. Ammas recalled it being piled high with ponderous legal texts and dozens of rolls of parchment detailing the numerous cases his father was overseeing at any given time. 

Lightly he ran a hand along its edge, remembering the times he had spent in this room, being quizzed by Senrich on his lessons or taking lunch with his father when he was not busy at the Grand Curia. Renelle had been an infrequent visitor here, but always welcome, his father rising from his desk to sweep her into the room like a palace courtier whenever she deigned to set foot in his kingdom.

"It's such a large house," Carala murmured. "You really grew up here alone?"

Ammas nodded. "My mother was sickly in her youth, and she had trouble carrying a child to full growth. I might have had a few siblings, had they lived." A smile lit his face. "My cousin Jan loved this house, though he wasn't here much. But I had come of age by the time he was born. Uncle Gratham was too busy for children as a younger man, though I suppose if he had lived he would have made up for it. He liked to say so to my father, anyway. My mother was always thrilled to see Jan. I remember how sad she seemed whenever he went back to Shattercrown."