Chapter 5: First Encounter with Aldric Crestborne

The passage Mira showed her on the second morning ran east from the administrative corridor, turned once beneath a low beam that had been reinforced with a newer timber at some point in the last decade, and emerged, through a door disguised as a section of wainscoting, into a narrow hallway she had not previously been able to place on her mental map of the Red Keep. It connected, Mira had explained in the measured way she offered all information — measured out like a careful apothecary, no more than what the prescription required — to the east tower by one route and, in the other direction, to a storeroom adjacent to the secondary kitchens.

What Mira had not said, but what Elizabeth had subsequently determined through her own cautious navigation on the following morning, was that the narrow hallway also ran, at its furthest point, within approximately forty feet of the corridor that served the Small Council's anteroom.

This was, she had told herself firmly, simply useful geography. Not a plan. Not yet an errand. Merely the kind of information that a woman in her position would be reckless not to possess.