"Tombs," Dorian said for the third time in an undertone, frowning in the general direction of the passage under the Avery, or rather, where the passage under the Avery let out. Lillian was no longer convinced anything in the passages lined up with the city and geography she'd known her whole life.
She was again collapsed on Dorian's bed, this time face down. Glory prowled the room, sniffing suspiciously at the shadows under Dorian's table, as she had continued to do since they turned up, grimy and spooked, several minutes ago. Instead of arguing with Lillian about the assassin business as she could tell they wanted to do Dorian and Chaol had heard her out, and then Chaol had gone to get tea and probably Philippa.
"Tombs or monuments or something," Lillian replied, muffled by the pillows. "I think you're ignoring the point."
"We say magic is gone because it functionally is," Dorian said. Lillian turned her head to see him looking down at her, arms crossed. "Plenty of people still talk about the Winter Queen up north, and it's still too cold to just walk up and investigate her castle."
"Nobody talks about her because if she's real it's bad luck," Lillian informed him. "It gets colder the farther north you go, Dorian, that doesn't have to be magic, excuse me for buying into what I've been told my whole life."
Dorian shrugged, sliding into the tone Lillian realized he used when what he was saying was terribly important to him but he didn't want to let people know. "She isn't bad luck in Terrasen."
"If she's so magical despite your father, why didn't she help Terrasen then?"
Dorian shrugged again. "People see ice apples all the time."
People have always seen ice apples, Lillian thought, but she didn't say it. "Why is this important to you?" she asked finally.
He made a face and sat next to her, drawing his legs up and holding them to his chest. He looked small like that, and Lillian wanted to hug him. She refrained.
"If Maeve can still do magic," he said, "then there's somebody more powerful than my father. That's comforting. I have some of my mother's letters, you know. She seemed confident in Maeve's power."
"Please stop saying the name," Lillian said. "If she's real you're going to bring early winter frost or something."
Dorian snickered. "You're not superstitious about anything else, Lillian, why M-" he rolled his eyes when Lillian held up a finger. "Why her?"
"I'm not willing to believe she's real and I'm not willing to take chances," Lillian said.
"You told me not to be ridiculous about the Valg."
"They died," Lillian retorted. "They were just as mortal as- "
A thought made her sit abruptly upright. The Valg, everybody said, like a collective.
"Dorian," she asked, "how many brothers did Elena have?"
He frowned. "I don't know," he admitted. "I know the one - Erawan. Her twin, I think? I don't know the others."
Lillian would bet Dorian's mother's necklace that Elena had had seven brothers. The surety did not improve her mood. And why would Elena the hero-queen be buried with them? Only not buried, because there were no remains.
"What happened to Elena's body?"
"Burned," Dorian said, giving her an odd look.
"You know that for a fact?"
"We're all burned," he said as Chaol returned. Glory let out one muted warning bark and subsided when she saw who it was. She promptly jumped on the bed and curled up on Dorian's feet.
"Philippa is talking to her people as we speak," Chaol told them, setting up a teapot, honey jar, and cups on the nightstand. "The dog should not be on the bed."
"Lillian already got it dirty," Dorian pointed out, scratching Glory behind the ears. "You're not going to kick Lillian out of bed, are you?"
Chaol sighed. Glory wagged her tail.
Lillian said, "The castle's haunted."
Chaol sighed again and sat at the foot of the bed. Glory immediately abandoned Dorian to lick Chaol's face all over, and he, defeated, flopped over against Lillian's legs and let her.
"The shadows are doing things, which shadows should not do," Lillian began to list off. "I don't mean just in the tomb. I thought it was my episode -"
Chaol patted her knee at the reminder despite Glory having settled cheerfully over his chest, wariness forgotten in favor of being allowed on the bed and having Chaol within licking distance..
"- but they flicker. One of the sarcophagi was opened by somebody other than me, I keep having these dreams…" she trailed off. Only the candles had to be magic. The rest of it could be anything from trapped gas to regular flame tricks to panic-induced hallucinations. Someone else could have opened a sarcophagus to steal presumed treasure. The place could have been walled off when that person was found.
"I'm willing to concede there's something wrong," Chaol said.
"Magic," Dorian said. "Someone's using it."
"Then why isn't it everywhere?" Chaol asked, craning his head to look up at Dorian.
Lillian ignored their debate. She knew someone - multiple someones - who would know more than Dorian and Chaol about magic, and they might know more about Elena and the Valg too. She had to get her staff back from Erick anyway.
She realized she was humming thetune from before, when they were comforting her in her panic attack, and stopped.
Someone knocked on the door to Dorian's main room and was let in. Chaol rolled off the bed and between it and the door immediately: Lillian drew a knife, though she kept it low and out of sight behind Dorian. Glory, catching the tension, stood. They needn't have worried.
"Roland withdrew," Philippa said as she entered. "He sees now the error of his ways, his beloved cousin will make a wonderful king, so on, so on. He hopes to hear of Dorian's engagement any day now, because Roland never gave up on anything without a last barb."
Chaol snorted and settled back on the bed, though this time he moved Glory gently away when she tried to lick him, and Lillian returned her knife to its sheath.
Philippa frowned at her. "I thought we were sending her home."
"I am home," Lillian said. She'd meant Rifthold, but as Dorian and Chaol hid smiles she realized she'd maybe meant this too.
"Lillian thinks the castle's haunted," Dorian said.
Philippa raised an eyebrow. "Magic's back. We don't need to borrow more trouble."
"Explain the missing bodies," Lillian said.
"Missing body," Philippa replied. "Singular. You didn't open the rest, unless Chaol left something out. And a missing body that was probably cremated doesn't mean much."
"You go look then," Lillian muttered, but she did it halfheartedly.
Philippa waved that off and pulled a chair over. "Roland's out of the running. Desmond's dead. That leaves Rickard and Hollin."
"Rickard doesn't have an assassin anymore," Lillian said.
Philippa didn't ask how she knew. "Lady Amerie caught me on the way up and told me Roland is taking his guard back to Meah with him, but she'll stay and assist as we require."
Chaol shot an accusing look at Lillian.
"She asked me to scare Roland out," Lillian said. "I don't just threaten people out of hand."
"It's comforting to know you only danced with him to threaten him," Chaol said.
"I stepped on his toes too," Lillian admitted. "Not as part of the threat, just because he was being rude."
"I encourage you to step on as many toes as you like," Dorian told her gravely.
"Erick Rompier also stopped me in the halls," Phililppa said.
"What did he do?" Lillian demanded, moving to get out of bed.
"He told me I looked nice and to say hello to Lillian for him," Philippa said. "Obviously it was a threat. He does work for the king."
"Technically," Lillian said, and now they all looked at her. "It's complicated. We could stick him in Elena's sarcophagus and close the lid, but Kaltain might be upset. I'll take care of it."
She wasn't at all sure that Kaltain could really control Erick, but Lillian didn't actually want to kill him unless he did more than issue oblique threats. He was, in his own terrible way, trying to keep Kaltain safe. Threatening Philippa - however obliquely - was still unacceptable, and Lillian planned to make that clear.
"Maybe you should just avoid him," Dorian suggested, which Lillian was sure he would not have done when he thought she was Celaena.
"Maybe I shouldn't," she retorted, rolling her shoulders and standing. "I'm going to take a bath, and then I'm going to have another conversation with Erick Rompier."
"Another?" Chaol asked.
"He took my staff and I want it back," she said, and left the room.
Erick's rooms were in another part of the palace from Kaltain's. Lillian thought it might be for the best. He opened the door when she knocked - he apparently didn't keep servants in his rooms either - and Lillian walked past without giving him the chance to say no.
"I could have stopped you," he said, closing the door. "I don't know why I didn't."
"You didn't want to make a scene with the prince's mistress in the hallway," Lillian replied, walking to the table and taking an apple from the bowl there. In her opinion the apple thing was edging into an obsession. She took a bite and said with her mouth full, "You'll get one in a very public place if you keep threatening my friends, by the way."
"But then his loving majesty would remember that Mistress Spindlehead exists," Erick said pleasantly.
Lillian hurled the apple. He caught it right in front of his nose one-handed, and by the time he lowered it to glare at her she was nibbling on another.
"Lillian," he said, still pleasantly, though he was watching her intently and he didn't seem to blink. Maybe it wasn't a fae thing, with Kaltain. Maybe it was just habit. "What do you imagine you can threaten me with? You've already said you want to keep her safe."
Lillian put the apple in her hand down on the table, bitten side facing Erick, and picked up another. It was softer than the other two when she bit into it, and she made a face, setting it down next to the other one. Part of her was aghast at the waste of food. The rest relished the there-and-gone-again expression of irritation on Erick's face.
"I'm not threatening you," she said. "I'm making a deal."
"A deal."
"Don't actively plot against Dorian or Nehemia or their people."
"That sounds more like an order."
"Look," Lillian said, picking up another apple. He outright glared at her. She tossed it up and down one-handed as she continued, "It just makes sense. You want people who give a damn on the throne, and Dorian doesn't want Terrasen."
"How does that matter to me?" he asked mildly, face melting into his usually pleasant expression. She heard a funny kind of squishing sound and looked down: he was crushing the apple in his hand without apparently noticing. Juice dripped over his fingers and to the floor. She looked back up: his expression remained mild, but his eyes had gone glazed.
Every hair on the back of Lillian's neck stood, and for a moment she said nothing. Then she made herself look away and start tossing the apple up and down again. "When Dorian is king, he'll make it right. When Nehemia is queen, she'll make sure of it. They need us to make it happen."
"How long do you suppose I should wait, Lillian?' Erick asked. He hadn't moved - Lillian knew, because she made sure she could see him from the corner of her eye at all times. "How long do you suppose this king will live?"
"Longer if you keep helping him," Lillian said. "Help us instead."
He smiled. It was not reassuring. "I should wait, what, ten years? Twenty? Thirty maybe? Terrasen suffers. My girl suffers. You think I should leave her here for decades because your lover will probably agree to release Terrasen when he rules? As if it should be left up to him? It isn't his decision."
Lillian winced. Erick had a point, and Lillian couldn't say, this way will save people. It demonstrably hadn't so far: Calaculla was proof of that. Terrasen could barely feed itself, and neither could Melisande even six years after Adarlan had finished with it. Fenharrow could feed itself but at what cost?
Just because waiting for Dorian might be easier for Lillian didn't make it right.
"I don't understand what you're doing," she said finally. "Taking care of Kaltain, yes. But you work for the king, and you're threatening us, and why? You have waited a decade. If you go back to Terrasen, will your people follow her?"
"Why do you think we're still here?" he asked. "She isn't-" The glazed look had retreated, and he looked down at the crushed apple.
"She isn't Hellan," he said finally. He didn't look at Lillian. He sounded lost. He sounded ashamed. "Hellan was somebody you wanted to follow, even when she was eleven. Even when she was a brat."
And Kaltain wanted to follow somebody else, Lillian filled in, thinking of Nehemia.
"Don't threaten Philippa," Lillian said into the silence. "Don't threaten my maids, or Nehemia, or my dog."
"We return the to question, or what?" he said, looking up with a wry twist to his lips.
"I tell Kaltain," Lillian said, "and we find out who she likes better."
If Erick had done his job as a father figure properly, she reflected as she left him standing in his rooms and staring blankly out the window, the threat wouldn't have worked. As it was, she took the apple with her.