Levi and Priscilla were released at sundown. Sylvia had to stay — the feast meant dishes, and dishes meant the kitchen assistant stayed until they were done.
They took separate cars back to the hotel, which Priscilla had begun to find slightly paranoid and Levi had begun to find slightly insufficient.
Zarraz was in Levi's room, asleep, with the specific quality of someone who had been there for some time and intended to remain there for some time more. His snack bag was considerably emptier than it had been that morning.
Priscilla looked at him. "He slept all day while we infiltrated an emperor's palace."
"He has his own job," Levi said.
"His job involves sleeping?"
"His job involves waiting for us to do our job first." Levi set his bag down. "Go rest. I'll wake you when Sylvia gets back."
Priscilla went to her room. Levi showered, ordered something from room service, and sat on his bed with the palace layout in his head, going through what he'd observed. The garden backed against the east wing. The restricted rooms were on the second floor and above. If the dungeon entrance was in one of the three remaining restricted rooms — the Emperor's bedroom, the Empress's chamber, or the butler's room — the most likely candidate was the Emperor's bedroom. Historical precedent, access control, the specific logic of someone who wanted the dungeon under their direct authority.
He was still thinking when Sylvia arrived two hours later.
She came in, sat beside him on the bed, took a biscuit from his room service tray without asking, and ate it with the focused intensity of someone who had been on her feet for twelve hours and had opinions about this.
"How bad?" he asked.
"Prep, clean stations, serve the feast, wash every pot and dish by myself." She took another biscuit. "The kitchen is enormous. The dishes are enormous. There are a lot of them."
"Did you get anything useful?"
She was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice had dropped slightly — the register she used when something was serious.
"The Emperor was talking to his guests during the feast. Casually. Like it was nothing." She looked at Levi. "He said if King Gabriel doesn't pay by tomorrow, he's going to execute the ambassador publicly. On live television. The day after."
Levi set down his biscuit.
"Live television," he said.
"He was saying it to make a point. Not to Gabriel — to his guests. He wanted them to know what he was capable of." She paused. "He didn't sound uncertain about it. He sounded like someone who had already decided and was informing people."
The hotel room was quiet. Outside, the capital of Levatia was going about its evening.
"Then we have tomorrow," Levi said.
✦ ✦ ✦
They ordered food. Fried chicken, nachos, tacos, enchiladas — enough for four, which Priscilla noted was enough for six but had long since stopped arguing about.
The smell reached Zarraz apparently through the wall and two layers of sleep, because he appeared in the girls' doorway within five minutes of the delivery arriving. He looked at the spread on the table. He looked at the three of them.
He sat down and started eating.
"Excuse me," said Sylvia.
Zarraz reached for a taco.
"We worked all day," Sylvia said. "In an emperor's palace. Under cover. While you slept."
Zarraz ate the taco.
"I will throw you out of this room," Sylvia said.
Levi put a hand on her arm. "Sylvia."
"He—"
"Has a job that starts when ours finishes. Let him eat." Levi looked at Zarraz, who was already reaching for a second taco and maintaining eye contact with nobody. "We'll talk after."
Sylvia growled, quietly and with feeling, and went back to her food.
The meal passed in a silence that was technically awkward and practically functional — everyone eating, everyone present, the day's work sitting in the room between them as something that had been done and needed to be processed. Zarraz ate with the unhurried efficiency of someone who had skipped meals before and was not going to rush now that there were meals.
When the food was mostly gone, he looked at Levi.
"What did you find?" he asked.
"The ambassador is in the palace dungeon," Levi said. "We need to locate the entrance. There are three restricted rooms that are the most likely candidates — Emperor's bedroom, Empress's chamber, butler's room." He looked at Zarraz. "What do you need from us?"
"Tell me when you have the ambassador out and you're ready to leave," Zarraz said. "That's when I do my part."
"And if things go wrong before that?"
Zarraz was quiet for a moment. "Then I adapt."
He stood, took one more item from the table without ceremony, and went back to his room.
Sylvia watched him go. "I genuinely cannot tell if he's an asset or a liability."
"Neither," said Levi. "He's a parallel operation. We don't depend on him, he doesn't depend on us. We just have to make sure our timelines sync at the end."
"When did you become strategic about this?" Priscilla asked.
"I've been reading the situation since Graviton," said Levi. "I just wasn't saying it out loud."
✦ ✦ ✦
They cleared the food and sat properly — the three of them, the specific configuration of a planning session.
"Information," Levi said. "What do we each have?"
Priscilla went first. "Twenty-six rooms total. Six restricted. We ruled out the children's rooms — the Emperor wouldn't put a dungeon entrance there. That leaves three: his bedroom, the Empress's chamber, the butler's room." She paused. "The butler's room is ground floor near the service entrance. That's the most accessible for frequent use — no stairs, direct path from the service areas."
"But also the most exposed," Levi said. "Service areas have traffic. If there's a dungeon entrance, you'd want it somewhere you control access to." He thought about the palace layout he'd been building all day. "The Emperor's bedroom. Second floor, main staircase adjacent. Everything in that wing reports to him directly."
"I can get to the second floor," Priscilla said. "The west corridor runs past both the Empress's chamber and the main bedroom. During the day, the maids clean the accessible rooms in sequence — there's a window when the corridor is empty."
"How long?" Levi asked.
"Maybe four minutes before Mrs Glaive does her check round."
"Four minutes is enough." Levi looked at both of them. "Tomorrow, while you two are working, I'll slip away from the garden. I can be through the restricted rooms and back before anyone registers I'm gone. If the entrance is in one of those three rooms, I'll find it."
"And when you find it?" Sylvia asked.
"I come back, we finish our shifts, we wait for the palace to go quiet. Then we go in together."
Sylvia looked at him. "That's a lot of 'I'll figure it out when I get there.'"
"That's what the situation allows," said Levi. "We don't have enough information for a complete plan. We gather it tomorrow, we move tomorrow night. The deadline is the day after."
"One day," said Priscilla.
"One day," said Levi.
The room was quiet for a moment. Then Sylvia said: "What about Zarraz's thing?"
"His thing happens when we're ready to leave. Whatever he does — it creates a window, or a distraction, or both. Either way it helps us get out." Levi looked at the door to the other room. "I trust that part of it. I just don't know the details."
"You trust it," Sylvia said. "Based on what?"
"Based on seventeen," said Levi.
Sylvia and Priscilla looked at him.
"He's done this before," he said. "Seventeen times before. He knows what he's doing." He stood. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow's the real day."
—
He lay in the dark long after the lights went out.
Through the connecting door, he could hear the quiet sounds of the other room settling. Zarraz's breathing from the other bed was slow and even — the sleep of someone who had done this enough times that the night before wasn't a different kind of night.
Levi thought about the ambassador. Someone's face he hadn't seen, in a dungeon he hadn't found yet, under a palace run by a man who held hostages to make points.
He thought about the three days becoming two.
He thought about his mother working her way through a city under siege, moving toward every threat, moving toward the thing that needed doing.
He reached for the dagger handle in the dark. Held it.
Tomorrow.