Frustrations of a Self-Proclaimed Villain Lord

Chapter 87: The Grand Duke Visits a Conservatory (2)

"Our men found blood on the stone near the lower access."

"Adult or child?"

"Not enough to know."

"That isn’t the answer I prefer."

"No, Your Excellency." He looked toward the building. "The small tracks ended near the service door. We found signs of someone being dragged."

My father’s expression hardened. Abi’s violet eyes narrowed. I looked at the sealed front doors.

"Of course. They wanted us to choose the emotional route. Follow the child’s tracks. Enter through the service door. Descend where the blood led." A path written in concern. How manipulative. "We’re not using the service entrance," I said.

Arthur’s gaze shifted to me. "No?"

"No."

"The front is warded."

"Good."

"Good?"

"If they expect us through the side, the front is probably designed to repel investigators, not complete the ritual."

Abi smiled faintly. "And if you’re wrong?"

"Then we’ll be offended from the correct direction."

Father laughed softly, and Arthur looked like he wanted to argue but couldn’t find a tactical reason that sounded better than my arrogance. A satisfying silence.

"Abi," I said, "inspect the front ward."

He walked up the steps, robes sweeping behind him. The iron chain didn’t move, but the air around the door did, thin silver lines appearing across the wood, then red ones beneath them, forming a pattern that looked almost like a musical staff. At the center, a small bell symbol had been carved into the threshold.

Abi crouched. "This ward listens."

"For what?"

"Authority. Fear. Names."

"What does it dislike?"

He glanced back at me. "Rudeness."

Finally. Something I could work with.

I stepped onto the first stair. The ward flickered, and someone inside the building began singing. A child’s voice, soft, faint, almost relieved.

"Help me."

Arthur moved. Father caught his shoulder before he took a second step. The sound echoed from the side of the building, the service door. Of course. The trap was impolite enough to repeat itself.

I walked up the steps instead. The singing faltered.

Interesting.

"You’re very bad at this," I said toward the door.

Abi’s shoulders shook. Arthur stared at me. I continued, "If one wants to lure a Grand Duke, one should understand his personality first. I don’t follow sounds because they whimper. I follow insults, unpaid debts, and poor administrative decisions."

The red lines across the door shivered, and the child’s voice stopped. Then a different voice spoke, calm, male, amused. "Then enter, Grand Duke."

"There," I said. "Already better."

The door opened, not fully, just enough to show darkness beyond. My father drew his sword. Arthur did the same. Abi stood ready. I smiled politely.

"How kind of you to invite me."

Then we entered the Melverne Conservatory.

The entrance hall smelled of rotting wood, old smoke, and wax. The floor tiles had cracked in several places, but someone had recently swept a path through the dust, leading straight ahead toward the grand staircase and the main recital hall beyond.

Naturally. A terrible host always tried to guide guests too eagerly.

"Don’t step on the clean path," I said.

Arthur looked down, and the knights behind us shifted immediately, moving onto the dusty portions of the floor. Abi tilted his head. "Good eye."

"It was insulting me."

"The floor?"

"The trap."

Father examined one of the tiles. "Pressure lines beneath the polished section."

"See?"

"The floor was indeed insulting you," Abi said.

We moved along the wall instead. Every step made the old building creak, not loudly, just enough to remind us the Conservatory had been sitting alone for almost three decades, waiting for someone foolish enough to enter. The portraits along the walls had been covered with grey cloth. The cloth didn’t move, but I had the unpleasant impression the faces beneath were listening.

At the far end of the entrance hall, the main recital doors stood open. A soft golden light spilled from within, and music drifted out with it, not the three-note tune, something more complex, a melody with layers, each one entering a heartbeat after the other, as though an invisible choir were warming its throat.

I looked at Abi. He shook his head once. Not yet. Good.

We avoided the main doors. Instead, Father guided us through a smaller corridor to the left, where old practice rooms lined the wall, each with a narrow window and a piano slowly decaying beneath dust sheets. In the third room, we found a shoe, small, brown leather, recently lost. Arthur crouched and picked it up carefully with a cloth.

"Child sized," he said.

I looked at the floor. No blood. No drag marks. The shoe had been placed. Not dropped.

"Continue," I said.

The music from the recital hall grew louder, then stopped, and a thin voice came from the room ahead, not singing this time, speaking.

"Do not go to the stage."

We all froze. Arthur raised one fist, and the men behind us stopped moving at once. The voice came again.

"The floor remembers feet."

A child stood in the doorway of the next practice room, a girl, perhaps nine or ten, her hair chopped unevenly to her chin, her face dirty, one sleeve of her dress torn, a thin cut running along her cheek. She was barefoot, standing so lightly I almost wondered whether she was real.

Arthur took one step. She backed away at once. "No," she said.

He stopped. Good. He was improving.

I lowered my sword slightly. "What’s your name?" I asked.

Her eyes fixed on me, and she hesitated before answering. "Bell."

Not Bellen. Bell. One of the names. The small weight of it settled in my chest.

"Bell," I repeated.

Abi’s gaze sharpened at the sound, but no ward reacted. Perhaps not a true name. Or perhaps the child had learned not to give the part that mattered. Good. Very good.

"Are there others?" I asked.

Her lips pressed together. "Yes."

"How many?"

"Two awake. One asleep. One singing."

Arthur’s expression turned grim, and Father’s grip on his sword changed.

"And the one singing?" I asked.

Bell looked toward the recital hall. "He isn’t doing it because he wants to."

That mattered. It mattered a great deal.

"Can you lead us without crossing the stage?"

She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. "But the walls sing back," she said.

"Yes. I was told."

Her eyes widened slightly. "By who?"

"My son."

Bell stared, not because she understood, but because the word son had caught her attention the way it always seemed to catch the attention of children raised in orphanages, as if the existence of someone being claimed without being bought needed to be inspected carefully. She looked down.

"He should not come here," she said.

"He didn’t."

"Good."

She turned and slipped into the practice room. Arthur moved to follow, and I raised a hand. "Slowly." The child had survived long enough to warn us. We wouldn’t repay that by frightening her into another silence.

We followed Bell through the room, then into a narrow maintenance corridor hidden behind a broken cabinet. The passage smelled of dust and old cloth, clearly used recently, but by small bodies, not adults. Bell moved through it quickly, the knights forced to crouch. Abi didn’t, walking as though the space had politely rearranged itself for him. I disliked how useful that was.

At the end of the passage, Bell stopped beside a small grate. Beyond it, the main recital hall opened below. We could see the stage. We could see the trap. And on the stage, seated in a chair surrounded by red threads, was a boy with his eyes closed and his mouth open in song.

He looked twelve. Perhaps thirteen. Too thin. His wrists had been tied to the chair arms with white cloth, his feet not touching the floor. Above him hung seven bells. Only one was ringing. The red glass one.

How very annoying.

Bell whispered, "That’s Toma."

The singing boy’s voice trembled, not with fear, with exhaustion.

At the center of the recital hall stood a man in grey gloves. Not the Cantor. Not Father Edric. Not Vesren. Another piece. His face was ordinary enough to be forgettable, which meant it had probably been chosen that way. He wore an old conductor’s coat, black at the shoulders and smoke-stained near the hem, and in one hand held a thin baton made of pale bone.

Halwen Grey, perhaps. Or merely someone borrowing the gloves.

He lifted the baton. The boy on the stage gasped, and the note rose higher. Bell pressed both hands over her ears. My anger went quiet, which was often the most dangerous way for it to arrive.

Abi looked at me. "Brother."

"I know."

The recital hall wasn’t a chamber for performance. It was an array. The seats, stage, balcony, pipes, curtain ropes, old scorch marks, even the cracked chandelier above the hall all formed part of the structure. Anyone who entered through the main door and walked the clean path would stand directly within the listening circle. They wanted an audience. Not to watch. To be used.

How crude.

I looked at Bell. "Can the other children move?"

"One can. The sleeping one cannot. The one behind the curtain bites."

"Good for him."

She blinked. "You aren’t angry?"

"I am very angry."

"You don’t look angry."

"That’s because my mother raised me well."

She seemed to consider that, then nodded, as though this were a sensible answer. Children accepted the strangest things.

Father leaned close. "The conductor?"

"I want him alive."

"How alive?" Abi whispered.

"Enough to regret being alive."

His smile returned. A little. Good.

I studied the recital hall again, the red bell, the tied boy, the conductor, the floor array, the old audience seats waiting for bodies. The third instruction had begun. The third opens. But to open something, one needed pressure. Witnesses. Names. Sound. An audience to carry the door through.

A recital. How distasteful.

"Arthur," I said quietly.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"Take two men with Bell. Find the other children. No heroics. No running onto the stage."

He looked at the singing boy, his jaw tightening. "Yes, Your Excellency."

"Father."

He smiled faintly. "Yes?"

"We’re going to be offensive from the balcony."

"How nostalgic."

I stared at him. "What sort of childhood did you have?"

"The same as yours, but with fewer Jinn."

Abi looked offended. "I am an enhancement to the family."

"You are an event," I replied.

Bell stared between us as though trying to decide whether all nobles spoke this way during rescue operations.

No, child. Only the fortunate ones.

The conductor lifted his baton again. Toma’s voice shook. The red bell rang. And the stage floor began to glow.

I smiled. "Very well," I whispered. "Let us ruin the performance."