Free Kings of the North by Elizabeth Moon

Marshal-General. “Maybe we can trap him. He might come back for it.”
    Dorrin felt a cold chill down her back. “Unless it’s a trap for us.”
    “What?”
    She nodded at it. “When I was a child, one of the times I was being punished, they hung such a mask on the cell wall and told me the priest could see me through the eyes of the mask. Maybe that was a tale to frighten a child, but it seemed that it talked to me. Were I you, I’d destroy it.”
    “That would explain one thing that cost two lives, back in winter,” Oktar said, and crumpled the mask in his fists. “Especially if it could also act as the priest’s remote ears. Well, not this one. Marshal-General, shall we see?”
    “Indeed.”
    Dorrin watched as all the Marshals prayed over the mask; it began to smoke and finally burst into flame, filling the chamber with the stench of burning leather. Dorrin felt a lessening of the pressure she associated with evil presence.
    “How did he get away?” she said when they had followed every passage to its end, explored every alcove and room. “We have found no exit.”
    “Could he have escaped upstairs, as you came in the front?”
    “Certainly,” Dorrin said. “It’s a large house—he might have climbed out onto the stable roof from one of the back windows, for all that.”
    “Or we haven’t yet found the entrance to Vérella’s underworld,” Oktar said. “He would have more than one way out, and the underground entrances to this house are the ones we must find before we rest. Though we tried to eliminate all the Liartian priests and theirfollowers, we knew that might not be possible. Marshal Veksin, you found several of those in that house over on Old Market Square, didn’t you?”
    “Yes—we’ll need to tap floors and walls both. Even the interior walls. There was one instance in which the interior cellar wall was more than an armspan thick and contained a hidden staircase.”
    Soon the cellar resounded with the tapping of staves and dagger pommels. Dorrin went upstairs briefly. In the front room, Jori’s body lay on the board, now resting between two chairs, swathed snugly in wrappings of white cloth except for his head. His eyes were closed under a blue strip of cloth; a blue pall lay over the white wrappings, and the older woman stood, staff in hand, at the foot. In the fireplace, a small pot smoked; the sharp fragrance of some herb competing with the faint stench of blood and death.
    “The others are in the stableyard, cleaning up,” the woman said.
    “Thank you for your service,” Dorrin said. “He deserves all honor.”
    “He died saving you?”
    “He died trying to serve—he was hasty, but I had not warned him—he rushed past us and fell.”
    “His wounds were deep. Whatever your rituals at home, by city rule he must be buried quickly to avoid disease.”
    “I understand,” Dorrin said. “Marshal Tamis offered to grant him a place in the grange burial ground.” She paused, then asked, “May I ask your name and those of your guild?”
    “I am Kosa,” the woman said. “And you will find Sef, Pedar, and Gath in your yard.”
    “I am Dorrin Verrakai,” Dorrin said. “And again, thank you.”
    On the way to the back of the house, she smelled the chickens in the oven and decided to let Efla back in the kitchen to finish preparing a meal. Out in the yard, the older man and younger ones from the burial guild were scrubbing at something in a bucket; laid out on a cloth on the cobbles were a few tools. Jaim squatted near the gate, looking sick; Efla stood by him. Perin had tied one of the horses in the yard and was brushing its tail.
    They all looked up when she came out; Perin looked grim but went on brushing. Efla had the blank look of someone not sure whatshe felt. Dorrin walked over to the yeomen, who had put aside their blue tabards and rolled up sleeves and trousers. “I came to thank you,” she said. “Which of you is Sef?”
    “I am,” the older man said, standing