Chapter 334 --334
Now it was Elara’s turn.
At five minutes to midnight, she walked out of the palace.
She had not changed clothes — she was still in the formal court dress from the day, which was not ideal for walking through an old cemetery in the dark, but she was not going to give anyone the satisfaction of watching her prepare for this as though it was something she needed to prepare for. She walked at her normal pace, which was the pace of someone who had somewhere to be and a reasonable expectation of getting there.
The path to the cemetery gate was lined, on both sides, with — she did a quick count — approximately sixty people who were not, technically, watching, but who had all coincidentally found reasons to be standing in this general area at this specific time. Servants. Guards. Several nobles who had not bothered to pretend they weren’t watching, which she respected more than the servants who were pretending to adjust their uniforms.
She walked past all of them without adjusting her pace.
The cemetery gate was iron, old, and opened with a sound that was doing its absolute best to be ominous. She pushed it open, walked through, and let it close behind her.
The dark was immediate and total.
She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. The moon was present but thin — enough to silver the edges of things without actually illuminating them. The tombs arranged themselves slowly out of the darkness as her vision calibrated: large shapes, then specific shapes, then the individual characters of each structure. This dynasty’s dead arranged in chronological order along a path that wound between old trees, leading toward the central tomb where the oldest of them rested.
She began to walk.
She was perhaps fifteen steps from the gate when the doll landed.
It came from the left — from behind one of the larger tombs — and it hit the ground beside her foot with a soft, specific thump that was designed to be startling. She looked down at it. A cloth doll, roughly made, wool hair, button eyes staring up at the dark sky. Someone had put some craft into it — it was recognizably a person, vaguely robed, which was either a commentary on her specifically or just the easiest doll shape to make quickly.
She looked at it for one second.