Tangled Webs

said.
    “Guess it does,” Rainier replied. “I’ll take point. You watch our backs.”
    “Done.”

    They didn’t get to see the first big surprise. No matter. There would be plenty of opportunities for them to meet that one. And now that they were climbing the stairs to the second floor, they were finally starting the interesting part of the adventure.

FOURTEEN
     
     
    U sing Craft, Daemon flung open the Hall’s front door, almost hitting the footman, who scrambled out of his way. Beale, wary but determined, stood in the center of the great hall. A prudent position, Daemon thought as he strode toward the man. He couldn’t avoid noticing the butler’s presence and yet the man wasn’t in his direct path.
    “Lord Khardeen has been waiting to see you,” Beale said.
    “Not now,” Daemon growled as he headed toward his study. He needed a few minutes to settle himself before he went to Halaway—and also take care of the other worry that had occurred to him on his way back to the Hall.
    Hell’s fire! He hoped that message reached Lucivar in time. He could have contacted Yaslana on a psychic thread before leaving the landen village—he was strong enough to reach the Ebon-gray from any part of Dhemlan when his brother was at home—but they didn’t use that kind of communication for casual matters at that distance. Sensing that something was wrong, Lucivar would have ignored the words and responded in typical Eyrien fashion: he would have headed for the location from which the message had been sent—and he would have ended up at that damn house. Sending a written message had been a gamble, one Daemon hoped he wouldn’t regret.
    Before he reached the study, Khardeen stepped out of the informal reception room.
    “We need to talk,” Khary said.
    “I don’t have time, Warlord,” Daemon said as he opened the study door. “Beale, I need to get a message to the Keep. Find the fastest messenger within easy reach.”
    “Make time,” Khary said.
    He choked on the instinctive desire to lash out at any Warlord insolent enough to use that tone of voice when addressing a Warlord Prince. But because this was Khardeen, Warlord of Maghre and husband to the Queen of Scelt, he held on to his temper with all the slippery self-control he could command at that moment.
    Last year when Jaenelle was secretly building the webs of power that would cleanse Hekatah’s and Dorothea’s taint from the Blood, he had stood as a wall between her and her First Circle—and had broken the trust of every other male who served her. It had been Khary’s willingness to accept him again that had persuaded the other men in Jaenelle’s First Circle to give him another chance. The friendships were still tentative, but they wouldn’t exist at all if Khary hadn’t made that first gesture. So he looked back at the man who still had a powerful influence with the rest of the dominant Warlords and Warlord Princes in Kaeleer.
    “Give me five minutes, and I’ll deliver your message myself,” Khary said.
    Khary wore the Sapphire Jewel. Except for Beale, who wore Red, there was no one at the Hall who could get a message to the Keep faster. And there was one advantage to sending this particular Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord instead of a Red-Jeweled butler—Beale would have to talk to the High Lord, but Khary could talk to “Uncle Saetan.”
    “Five minutes,” Daemon said as he walked into the study.
    He hurried to his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. By the time Khary walked into the study, he’d scribbled his message and was sealing the folded paper with wax.
    “If this is about the spooky house…,” Daemon began as he pressed the SaDiablo seal into the wax.
    “In a way, but mostly it’s about Jarvis Jenkell and the other spooky house. The one I don’t think is meant as an entertainment for children.”
    Daemon froze for a moment. Then he wrote a name on the front side of the message before saying, “What do you know about the other spooky house? And why would a landen mystery writer be involved?”
    “Maybe because the writer was raised as a landen but is actually Blood.”
    Daemon straightened up and watched Khary pour two glasses of brandy from the decanter on the corner of the desk.
    Khary handed a glass to him, then took a sip from the other and shrugged. “It happens. Not all the Blood live the way you do. Or the way I do, for that matter.”
    “And how do I live, Lord Khardeen?” Daemon asked a little too