Chapter 17: The Truth About Aldric and Lord Vane

The door had not been left unlatched by accident.

Elizabeth had established this much in the first three seconds of standing in the servants' passage with the smell of tallow and stone dust in her nose and the sound of voices carrying through the gap with the particular clarity of a room that believed itself sealed. Someone had left that door a quarter-inch shy of its frame with the same careful carelessness she had spent weeks practicing herself, which meant either she had an ally she did not know about or she had walked into something arranged specifically for her. She filed both possibilities in equal columns and stayed where she was, breathing through her mouth, and listened.

There were four voices. She recognized three.