Caldus’s throat worked as the seal began to stir. I watched it rather than him. It was ugly work, a lock built to turn fear into a weapon, one that didn’t care whether its bearer wanted to speak, only whether the truth tried to cross a line it wasn’t allowed to cross. I’d dealt with enough oaths in my life to recognize real cruelty when I saw it. A vow carried weight because someone chose it freely.

This wasn’t a vow. It was a trap wearing something sacred as a disguise.

"How long have you carried that seal?" I asked.

Caldus blinked, the question seeming to confuse him. "Since the rite."

"What rite?"

His lips parted, the seal pulsed, and Abi raised one hand. Violet light curled across the table and settled over Caldus’s throat like a thin veil, and the black marks flared once before stopping. Caldus gasped.

I waited. When he opened his eyes again, something in them had changed. He looked tired now, not merely frightened, but tired in the way of someone who’d spent years pretending they could survive whatever they’d helped build.

"The first hymn," he whispered.

The room seemed to grow colder around us.

"What was the first hymn?" I asked, keeping my voice level.

"The prince’s rite."

"I know that."

His eyes lifted to mine. "You don’t know enough."

"Then educate me."

He let out a broken breath. "It was never meant to be called a rite. Not in the beginning. It was supposed to be a containment method, a way to keep the Crown Prince alive after the illness began."

"The illness that began before his seventh year."

"Yes."

"And the auxiliary children?"

His fingers curled against the aura thread binding them. "They were meant to support the array. To carry excess pressure away from the vessel."

Children. Not vessels, not supports, not auxiliary lives. Children. I kept the correction to myself, not because it didn’t matter, but because Caldus was already giving me what I needed, and I wanted him to keep talking.

"Who told you that?" I asked.

"Lord Keeper Marcellus had the records. The old ones, from before the Empire was properly formed. He said the rite wasn’t perfect, but it was the only chance."

"Did you believe him?"

Caldus laughed once, and the sound came out wrong. "I was a junior priest. The Empress was crying. The prince was burning from the inside. His Majesty demanded answers, and Marcellus had an answer." He looked down. "When someone gives you an answer while a child is dying, you don’t always ask enough questions."

That wasn’t a defense. At least not a good one. But it was true, and truth didn’t become clean simply because it arrived late.

"What happened during the rite?" I asked.

"The prince survived."

"That isn’t what I asked."

His face tightened. "The children were brought into the lower chamber. Seven of them. They’d been selected through temple houses and noble charities, told they’d been chosen to pray for the future of the Empire."

Of course they were. People who did evil loved calling it a blessing. It made the victims so much easier to arrange.

"The prince was placed at the center," Caldus continued. "The children were positioned around him. We sang the old hymn. Marcellus read the invocation. The Empress held the prince’s hand." His voice shook. "Then something answered."

Abi went very still beside me. I didn’t look at him.

"What answered?" I asked.

Caldus swallowed hard. "A voice. No, not one voice. Many. It came from beneath the floor. It called the prince by name."

The warning from the vault came back to me unbidden. Do not answer when the dead call sweetly. The Crown Prince had been told to listen for a blessing. A child had been asked to answer a voice he didn’t understand. How very convenient for whoever wrote the ritual.

"Did he answer?" I asked.

"I don’t know." Caldus’s voice had gone hoarse. "He screamed. The lights went out. The children began crying. One of them tried to run, but the ward pulled him back. Then the Empress ordered us to stop."

"The Empress ended the rite?"

"Yes."

"Marcellus?"

"He said it was too late."

The black traces beneath Caldus’s jaw moved again, and Abi tightened the veil of light. I waited for the priest to steady himself before continuing.

"What happened to the seven children?" I asked.

"I was told they were returned to their sponsors."

"You believed that?"

"No."

At least he had enough shame left to answer honestly.

"Where did they go?"

"I don’t know."

"Try again."

He flinched. "I saw three names later," he whispered, "in a lower chapel ledger. They were listed as transferred to choir care."

"Choir care."

"Yes."

"Ansel. Neria. Bell."

Caldus went completely still, the last of his color draining from his face. "You know their names."

"I know enough names to become annoyed."

His eyes filled with something close to horror. "Then they’re alive?"

"I didn’t say that."

He lowered his head, and for a moment the silence between us stopped being tactical. It was simply heavy. I’d meant to ask him where the second hymn would begin. Instead my mind kept returning to Spiro’s uneven handwriting, to Mil asking whether Spiro had eaten before he’d finish his own bowl, to the two children in the west safehouse who hadn’t yet learned that a door could stay unlocked.

My next question came out quieter than I’d planned. "What did you think would happen to them?"

Caldus looked up, and I didn’t give him room to lie.

"You took part in a rite using children. You saw the aftermath. You watched names disappear from records. What did you think happened?"

His mouth opened. Nothing came out. Good. Some questions deserved to leave a person empty.

Abi glanced at me. I ignored it.

"The second hymn," I said after a moment. "What does it require?"

Caldus inhaled sharply. "The first hymn stabilized the vessel."

"The Crown Prince."

"Yes."

"The second?"

"It calls the answer."

"What answer?"

His eyes darted toward the wall, toward the blue sitting room somewhere on the other side of the estate. Toward Marcellus.

I smiled faintly. "Very well. It seems separate rooms have become inefficient."

Caldus’s face went white. "Your Excellency, please."

"Don’t worry. I’m not placing you in the same room." I stood. "I’m placing you where you can hear each other."

Abi’s expression brightened. The priest looked ill. At least one of us was having a pleasant morning.

The blue sitting room remained exactly as I’d left it. Marcellus sat near the hearth, his untouched tea gone cold beside him, his gloves and his composure both still perfectly in place, even his collar arranged without a wrinkle. I almost admired the effort.

Almost.

Caldus was placed in the adjoining room, separated only by a carved wooden partition dividing the sitting room from an old reading nook, thin enough for voices to carry at a normal pitch and thick enough that neither man could see the other. Arthur stationed two knights outside each door. Bernard arrived with papers in hand. William stood near the tea tray. Abi took his place by the window.

Everyone was ready. It was almost like hosting a family gathering.

I sat across from Marcellus. "Lord Keeper."

"Your Excellency."

"Father Caldus is nearby."

The first genuine crack showed in his expression, small, just a brief stiffness around the eyes, but it was there.

"Is that meant to concern me?" he asked.

"No. It’s meant to save time."

His gaze sharpened, and I leaned back.

"Caldus says you performed the first hymn." No answer. "Caldus says seven children were placed around the Crown Prince during his seventh year rite." Still nothing. "Caldus says the Empress ended the rite, and that you declared it too late."

Marcellus’s fingers tightened over one another. "Caldus is a frightened man."

"Yes."

"He’s been held below your estate for days."

"Yes."

"He’ll say anything to save himself."

"Possibly."

"And yet you believe him."

"I believe fear is often more useful than loyalty."

His face went colder. "You’re playing with matters beyond your understanding."

There it was. That exact phrase, the traditional language of people who’d done terrible things and were offended that someone had finally noticed.

I smiled. "Then help me understand."

"You think this is a matter of temple corruption. A few greedy priests, a noblewoman funding illegal transfers. It’s larger than that."

"I know."

"No, you don’t." His voice sharpened, and for the first time the controlled archivist slipped entirely, revealing a tired man underneath, frightened, perhaps guilty. "You don’t know what was beneath the palace before the first imperial stone was laid. You don’t know what the old builders found. You don’t know why the Crown Prince fell ill before he could walk through a full day without fever. You don’t know what the Empress was willing to do to keep her son alive."

I kept my expression mild. "Then tell me."

Marcellus looked toward the partition, where Caldus sat listening in silence.