Counting Shadows (Duplicity)

vision. Farren said he’d see me in two days, but he visits me weekly. He probably just misspoke.
    The remnant of the fire catches my eye as it casts shadows over the room. First on the mantel, then the couch, then the chair, quickly flickering and slowly fading. It reminds me of Ashe’s wings, how they used to shimmer in the sunlight. I watch the fire until it dies, leaving one last shadow strewn across the entire room.

Four
    The man you seek lies in the Royal Prison. Third floor, seventh cell.
    The decoded letter was so simple that my heart stopped beating. But now I walk down a dungeon corridor, my heart hammering to make up for those long seconds it stopped. The air up here is thick and reeks of sewage, and my chest is tight with anxiety as I struggle to breathe.
    The Royal Prison sits high on the top of a cliff, with the ocean surrounding it on three sides. It’s an ancient building, four stories high and made of stone-work sealed with Mage magic. It’s also bitingly cold, and I keep my jaw clamped shut to stop my teeth from chattering. My footsteps echo off the stone walls, mixing with the steps of the guard escorting me. This guard—Hirard, he told me when I demanded his name—will probably be fired for taking me up here, but that doesn’t matter now.
    I reach one finger up the sleeve of my dress, stroking the dagger handle pressed against my forearm.
    “Now, ya’re sure the king wants ya in here?” Hirard asks. He has a drawl that sounds just as stupid as he is.
    “Of course I’m sure.” I smile up at him and move the letter in my hand closer to him. “You see? It’s all written here.”
    In my finest royal handwriting, the letter says: ‘
It’s truly a pity you never learned to read. Your mother would be ashamed.’
    Hirard nods agreeably and hands the letter back to me. It’s the third time he’s pretended to read it. “King’s orders, eh?”
    “Yes.” My cheeks are starting to ache from keeping up this smile, but I can’t give up my act now. “He wishes for me to complete a quality investigation.”
    It’s my own little joke, although it doesn’t make the smile any more bearable. Father has never cared about the well-being of criminals or prisoners; he lets the Grand Judge deal out ruthless punishments, and has never bothered to improve the conditions of Irrador’s prisons.
    Especially this one.
    “Well,” Hirard replies, after pausing for a second, “I ‘spose it’s better to check now than never.” Then he stops and squints at me. “But why’d His Majesty send a
girl
?”
    I do my best to puff out and look offended, which isn’t that easy, since my lungs have stopped working. “I’m the assistant of the Grand Judge,” I say, reciting my already-prepared lie. “It’s been a position my family has held for years. And you’d do best to respect it, unless you wish to be trapped in here for good.”
    His eyes grow wide. “Yes, ma’am.”
    He hurries forward a little faster, me trailing along beside him. For a second, I wish I’d given my real identity when I arrived at the prison. Then maybe I wouldn’t be stuck with such an incompetent guard. But I quickly rethink this, realizing that I’d probably be dead if any of the guards knew who I was.
    The corridor we walk down is empty, except for our footsteps and the light seeping in through the barred windows. Hirard decided it would be best to take a back way to the third floor. According to him, it would be “scarring” to lead me past the rows of cells and prisoners that line the main pathway.
    He obviously has no idea what kind of company I keep during my nightly walks.
    “Now what cell did ya need to see?” Hirard asks. “The seventeenth?”
    “The seventh,” I correct.
    He lets out a long sigh. “Hmm. That’s awfully specific.”
    “It’s part of the quality testing,” I say. “I have to check a random cell, to ensure you can’t cheat on the test.”
    He bobs his head vigorously. “’Spose that’s only fair.”
    We pass six doorways, each an entrance to winding corridors that lead deeper into the dungeon. I’ve never been in here before, but I know exactly where each corridor would go. The visions of this place—of it’s outlay, its eerie silence, its reeking stench— bombarded me as I approached the prison. Now that I’ve arrived, the visions have faded to soft whispers in the back of my mind, but the nausea stays firmly planted in the pit of my stomach.
    “Well, here we are,” Hirard