The wind coming off the border mistlands howled against the delicate crystal spires of the Glass Court, a raw, late-autumn gale that rattled the high panes and sent a shiver through the underglass colonnades. I pulled my dark wool cloak tighter around my shoulders, counting my steps in sets of seven to keep my mind anchored. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The rhythm was a comfort, a reliable structure in a palace built on fragile alliances and transparent lies.
I was here for the numbers. Only the numbers.
The last bell had rung an hour ago, signaling the end of the evening’s sanctioned court activities. The mirrored galleries were largely empty, save for the occasional patrol of Ashborn guards whose armored footfalls echoed like distant thunder. I moved like a shadow through the quiet corridors, a leather satchel heavy with blank ledgers and a wax-sealed writ swinging against my hip. My destination was Lord Cassian Vell’s lesser-house bathhouse, tucked away off the rear of the court. Eclipse-season audits were notoriously thorough, designed by the ember clergy to catch houses slipping in their tithes before the winter solstice.
Lord Vell was a man who preferred quiet corruption. Bribes, off-ledger favors, indulgent hospitality meant to soften the edges of the throne’s demands. I knew exactly what to expect from his strongroom: padded expenses, hidden safeboxes, and a subtle expectation that a weary auditor might overlook a discrepancy in exchange for a pouch of unmarked silver.
I reached the heavy bronze doors of the bathhouse gallery. The air here was already thick with the scent of eucalyptus and cooling steam. Two attendants, their linen robes damp and clinging, dozed on carved wooden benches near the entrance. They scrambled to their feet as I approached, their eyes wide with sudden apprehension.
“The baths are closed for the evening, my lady,” the taller one stammered, blocking the threshold with a nervous hand.
I reached into my cloak and produced the sealed writ, holding it up so the faint wardlight of the corridor could catch the Ashen throne’s crest. “I am Imani Whitaker, throne-tax auditor. By the authority of the crown, I am initiating the eclipse-season inspection of Lord Vell’s bathhouse strongroom and tithe-chests. Clear the gallery.”
The attendant stared at the seal, his throat bobbing. “Lord Vell did not inform us—”
“Lord Vell is not required to inform you of a surprise audit,” I said, keeping my voice perfectly level. “That is the nature of a surprise. You have three minutes to vacate the premises.”
They did not argue further. They gathered their cleaning supplies with frantic haste and scurried past me, leaving the heavy doors ajar. I stepped inside and pushed the doors shut, the heavy thud echoing through the vast, mist-shrouded chamber. I was officially on the record now. By presenting my writ and my name, I had bound myself to whatever I found within these walls. Any irregularity, any hidden coin, was now my responsibility to document and report to the throne.
The bathhouse was a sprawling cavern of marble pools and mosaic tiles, lit by the guttering glow of ember-braziers. Steam curled off the surface of the heated water, wrapping the stone pillars in thick, humid veils. I walked toward the rear of the gallery, where the strongroom was concealed behind a false wall of decorative tile.
I unclasped my satchel and laid my ledgers out on a marble table, straightening the corners until they formed perfect right angles. I uncapped my inkwell. I was prepared to be incorruptible tonight. I had to be.
As I unlocked the first tithe-chest with the master key provided by the treasury, my fingers brushed against a stack of parchment. The physical sensation—the rough texture of the paper, the sharp smell of iron gall ink—sent an unwanted memory rushing to the surface.
It was a famine year. I had been a junior clerk, working under a mentor who had taught me that numbers did not have to be cruel. I remembered the ledger of a struggling exile house. I remembered the way my hand had trembled as I altered the figures, rounding them in the house’s favor so their children would not starve. It had felt like a small, quiet mercy.
But the Glass Court wards had flagged the discrepancy. The ember clergy, precise and merciless, had seized the house’s youngest as debt-pledges. My mentor had taken the blame, accepting public disgrace and exile so I could remain untouched.
I closed my eyes, the humid air suddenly suffocating. I gripped the edge of the marble table until my knuckles turned white. The guilt was a physical weight in my chest, a constant reminder that my attempt at mercy had been twisted into ruin. I had learned my lesson. I had buried myself in procedure, refusing attachments, convinced I was safest as a neutral knife in the throne’s hand.
“Focus,” I whispered to the empty room.
I forced my eyes open and turned my attention to the chest. Inside lay rows of warded coin, the faint metallic scent of silver mingling with the damp heat of the baths. I began to count. Methodical, precise. I tallied the Safeboxes, the hidden ledger niches Lord Vell thought were so cleverly disguised behind the steam-pipes. For an hour, the only sound was the scratch of my quill and the soft lapping of water against marble.
Yet my nerves remained frayed. The silence of the gallery felt too heavy, the steam too thick. My senses, heightened by the lingering ghosts of the past, strained against the quiet.
I moved deeper into the mist-shrouded gallery, seeking the secondary tithe-chest located near the cold pools. The air grew significantly chillier here, the steam thinning into a fine, damp fog. The brazier light was weaker, casting long, wavering shadows across the mosaic floors.
I pushed open a lesser-used side door that led to an inner alcove. The scent of warded coin faded, replaced by something sharp, metallic, and undeniably raw.
Blood.
I froze, my breath catching in my throat. I scanned the dim alcove. By the lip of the cold marble pool, beneath the fogged high panes of the ceiling, a dark shape lay crumpled against the white stone.
I approached slowly, my pulse drumming a frantic rhythm against my ribs. As I drew closer, the shape resolved into a bird. A hunting falcon. It was collapsed on its side, its chest rising and falling in shallow, jagged breaths. Its magnificent dark feathers were matted with fresh blood, the crimson staining the pristine marble beneath it.
I knelt beside the creature. It let out a weak, rattling hiss, trying to drag itself backward, but it was too exhausted. Its leather jesses were tangled in a mess of knots around something heavy and metallic.
“Easy,” I breathed, reaching out with a trembling hand. The bird snapped its beak, but lacked the strength to strike. I carefully pinned its talons with the edge of my cloak and worked my fingers into the tangled leather.
As I pulled the knot loose, the heavy object clattered onto the mosaic tiles. I picked it up. It was an ornate signet ring, caked in dried blood and grime. I rubbed my thumb over the face of the ring, wiping away the gore to reveal the crest etched into the metal.
A stylized mountain peak pierced by a single arrow. The crest of House Hale.
My stomach plummeted. House Hale was a bitter rival to Lord Vell’s line. They were a border house, starved and squeezed by the Ashen Palace, heavily indebted to the ember clergy. Beck Hale, their heir, was a man who walked the razor’s edge of treason. What in the name of the Ashen throne was his signet ring doing attached to a bloodied falcon inside a sealed, warded strongroom belonging to his enemy?
My auditor’s mind raced through the implications. If I documented this—if I wrote in my ledger that an enemy signet had breached Lord Vell’s supposedly secure bathhouse—the resulting scandal would tear through the Glass Court like wildfire. The ember clergy would descend. Lord Vell would be accused of harboring treason, or House Hale would be accused of espionage. People would die. Debt-pledges would be taken.
The protocol was clear. I was required to summon the Ashborn guards immediately, to seal the room, to surrender the evidence to Severin Rhal and the clergy.
But I looked at the wounded bird, shivering on the cold stone. I looked at the ring in my palm, heavy with political death. If I surrendered this, I would be the spark that ignited the powder keg. I would be making a choice that hurt people.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced my practiced composure. I could not be the cause of another ruin. I could not hand this over to the clergy.
Torn between the rigid rules that kept me safe and the terrifying instinct to hide the truth, I made a choice I had sworn never to make again.
I shoved the Hale signet ring deep into the pocket of my skirt. I pulled the woolen cloak from my shoulders and gently, swiftly swaddled the bloodied falcon, pinning its wings so it could not thrash. The bird let out a muffled trill, but I held it firm. I hurried back to my workstation, emptied my satchel of its blank ledgers, and carefully stowed the wrapped falcon inside the leather bag.
It was treason. Simply possessing the ring and hiding the breach was a fiscal crime punishable by exile or worse. My hands shook as I buckled the satchel. I had to finish the audit. I had to make the numbers look perfect, leave the room exactly as I found it, and get the bird out of the palace.
I turned back toward the cold pool to scrub the blood from the marble. As I knelt with a damp cloth, a faint, high-pitched thrum vibrated through the stone.
It was a sound I knew well. The sound of ward-magic activating.
I snapped my head up. The sound was not coming from the strongroom chests. It was coming from above.
High on the bathhouse wall, directly over the cold pool, a single ward-pane was set into the stone to monitor the structural integrity of the alcove. Through the fogged glass, I could see a faint, unnatural ember-glow pulsing in time with the thrum.
I left the cloth on the floor and stood, my eyes fixed on the pane. Wards did not activate unless a bond had been breached or a new parameter had been introduced.
I realized my satchel was still on the table. The falcon was inside. But when I had found the bird, it had been lying directly beneath this pane.
Drawn by a terrible, sinking curiosity, I retrieved the satchel and pulled the swaddled falcon back out, cradling it against my chest. I stepped up onto the raised lip of the cold pool, bringing myself closer to the high pane. I lifted the bird toward the glass. The ward-thrum grew louder, the pitch sharpening until it hurt my teeth.
There was a smear of dried blood on the edge of the pane. The falcon must have struck the glass before it fell.
I reached out with my free hand. My fingertips hovered inches from the bloodstain. The magic in the glass reacted to the proximity of my own ward-marked skin—the skin of an auditor, bound to the throne’s ledgers.
The moment my aura brushed the pane, a sharp crack echoed through the alcove.
I gasped and stumbled back a step. A spiderweb fracture raced across the fogged glass, originating from the smear of falcon blood. But the glass did not shatter. Instead, the cracks filled with blinding, searing ember-light.
The light twisted and curled, forming jagged Ashen script. I stared in absolute horror as the magic translated the blood, the ring I held in my pocket, and my own presence into a formal, binding fiscal invocation.
The script burned bright against the dark stone:
IMANI WHITAKER
A glowing, jagged line connected my name to another.
BECK HALE
I stopped breathing. The ward-pane had registered the Hale blood on the bird, the signet ring, and my deliberate act of concealment. Because I was an auditor of the crown, my attempt to hide the evidence had been interpreted by the ancient, literal magic of the Glass Court as a secret, binding fiscal pact between myself and the head of House Hale.
It was an illegal invocation. A blood-bound contract forged in secret, bypassing the throne’s taxes.
The eclipse audit was at dawn. In less than six hours, the senior auditors and the ember clergy would sweep the outer wards. They would read the panes. They would see this fracture. They would see my name bound to Beck Hale’s in an act of high treason.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I reached up, desperately trying to wipe the script away, but the magic was fused into the core of the glass. The heat radiated against my palm, searing the reality of it into my skin.
Discovery meant execution. Not just for me, but for Beck Hale, and likely for anyone in my proximity. Severin Rhal would not hesitate to make an example of an incorruptible auditor who had secretly allied with a rebel house.
I had to leave. I had to think.
I scrambled down from the pool’s edge. I hastily tucked the swaddled falcon back into my satchel, ensuring the buckles were tight. I reached into my pocket and pressed my hand against my ribs, feeling the heavy, cold shape of the Hale signet through the fabric.
I grabbed my ledgers, my inkwell, and my writ, shoving them into the remaining space in the bag. I scrubbed the blood from the floor with frantic, violent motions until the marble was white again. I cast one last, terrified glance at the glowing pane. My name. His name. Burning in the dark.
I turned and fled the alcove.
I walked out through the main gallery, my steps measured and even, though my heart was tearing itself apart in my chest. I pushed the heavy bronze doors open and stepped back out into the underglass corridors of the Glass Court. The wind was still howling, but I could barely hear it over the rushing of blood in my ears.
Somewhere in the central spire, the great ward-chimes began to toll. Another increment of the night gone. Another step toward eclipse dawn.
The weight of the hidden signet pressed against my ribs like a blade. The memory of the bathhouse pane humming behind me felt like a living, breathing monster waiting to consume my life. I had spent years building a fortress of rules, and in a single moment of weakness, I had burned it to the ground.
I could not run. Running would only confirm my guilt, and the wards would track me. There was only one way to survive this. By the next bell, before the dawn light hit the crystal spires, I had to find a man I had never formally met.
I had to find Beck Hale, and I had to convince him to commit treason with me, before the glass named us both to the executioner.