The royal decree arrived at the Wadee estate at the fourth bell of the afternoon.
Gorgina had been back from the court for two hours.
She had spent those two hours in her private office with the specific, methodical urgency of a woman who had received a problem and was applying every available resource to its resolution — the estate's property records, the rental agreements, the specific documentation of every piece of property the Wadee estate owned or held lease rights over within the capital city's territory.
There had to be something.
There had to be a property — a secondary residence, a rented mansion, an available town house, something that could be offered as the designated accommodation for the three delegates the court had assigned to the Wadee estate's care, that was not the Wadee estate itself, that would put Styrmir Bremen somewhere that was not under the same roof as her husband.
She went through the records.
She went through them with the comprehensive, determined attention of someone who was looking for something specific and was not going to accept the possibility that it wasn't there until she had checked everything.
She checked everything.
— — —
The Wadee estate's property holdings were extensive.
The estate had accumulated, over three generations of ducal administration, a portfolio of properties that reflected the specific, organic growth of a noble household that had been acquiring useful assets when they became available and managing them with the reliable competence of people who understood that property was a form of stability.
The capital city had eight Wadee-held properties.
The first was a townhouse in the noble district — currently under a twenty-year lease to Lord Revann, who was a reliable tenant and who was twelve years into his lease and had no interest in early termination and whose lease agreement contained, in the specific, careful language of a document that had been drafted by a thorough legal team, no provision for early termination by the lessor under any circumstances that could reasonably be described as the current ones.
The second was a commercial property on the main avenue. Leased.
The third was a residential block of four connected houses in the eastern quarter. All leased. All twenty-year agreements. All twelve to fifteen years remaining.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth were smaller holdings — a warehouse, a converted mill, a property that was technically residential but which had been leased to a guild for the specific, incompatible purpose of being a guild hall.
The seventh was a cottage at the northern edge of the city that was occupied by the estate gardener's family, who had been in it for three generations and whose presence was both conventional and practically non-removable.
The eighth.
Gorgina looked at the eighth.
She had not looked at the eighth in a long time.
The eighth was a villa at the estate's outskirts — not within the estate's main grounds, but adjacent to them, connected by the service road that had been built when the estate's original construction had included the villa as a guest facility.
The villa had been unused for years.
It had been unused, in the specific sense of actively unused, for twelve years — since Gorgina had made the specific, deliberate decision that it should be unused, and had ensured that the decision would be self-maintaining by encouraging, through the quiet, indirect channels available to a duke with local influence, certain stories about its current condition.
The stories had been effective.
The stories involved sounds at night and doors that opened without wind and the specific, cold-spot quality that old buildings sometimes had and which, when attributed to the right causes, were remarkably persuasive.
The villa had been haunted for twelve years.
Nobody went there.
The staff gave it a wide berth.
The children of the estate's village wouldn't play near it.
It was, structurally and reputationally, a perfectly functional building that had been successfully removed from all available housing options through the targeted application of local superstition.
She looked at it.
She thought: it is the only available property but I cannot put him there.
She thought about the tunnel.
The tunnel was the specific, private reason the villa had been made uninhabitable — not the only reason, but the primary one. The villa sat above a passage that had been constructed during the original estate's building, during a period when certain kinds of households valued the ability to move between buildings without being visible.
The tunnel connected the villa's basement to the Wadee estate's main building.
Not the public areas.
The private ones.
It had been designed for discreet movement and it had been maintained, over the years of Gorgina's ownership, with the specific, quiet attention of someone who valued the existence of an unmonitored route between the surface and the inside of a building that was under observation.
She thought about the Styrmir in the villa's basement.
She thought about the current Styrmir with his thorough approach to everything — discovering a door in the basement that connected to the Wadee estate's private corridor shall be a child's play.
She closed the property record.
The villa was not available.
She sat with the estate's full property documentation in front of her and arrived at the conclusion she had been avoiding since she left the court.
There was no available property.
Styrmir Voss was going to live in the Wadee estate.
In her house.
Under her roof.
With her husband.
She thought: the king has played this like a professional who has been at this game for thirty-one years and who identified, at some point between the banquet and the court session, exactly which pieces on the board could be moved and how.
She thought: the security of the delegates requires an official observer from the palace to visit every two weeks. Styrmir is not the same person who was in the dungeon eight years ago. He is a young man who has been in courts and who knows his rights and who would, if treated badly, have access to a palace observer every fourteen days. The king has put Styrmir in my house and made it impossible for me to do anything about it and there is nothing I can do.
She sat in her office for a long time.
Then she stood.
She went to find Orreth.
She said: "We are hosting three delegates from the Veldrathi delegation, by royal decree, effective within the week. Prepare the east wing guest rooms. Three separate rooms. I want them ready to the same standard as the formal guest suite."
Orreth looked at her.
"Yes, Your Grace," she said.
"And Orreth."
"Your Grace."
"The villa at the outskirts," Gorgina said. "Have it locked. Full locks, the exterior ones. The key stays with me."
Orreth looked at her for a moment.
"Yes, Your Grace," she said.
She went to prepare the east wing.
Gorgina went back to her office.
She sat at her desk.
She thought: six more days I will think of something.
But she could not think of anything.