Free The Lost Heiress #2 by Catherine Fisher Page A

never felt so useless—as if she were some rat in a maze, going around and around and getting nowhere. Calm down, she told herself furiously. Think! The tower worked on everyone like this; already she’d seen how the people who tried to find out anything in it went away hopeless, baffled, dulled into despair.
    But it wouldn’t happen to her!
    For the next two days she read files, pored over reports, waded through endless, useless paper. Next she tried to get into the Overpalace. The first set of guards turned her back, despite arguments and passes and bribes. As a last resort she explored restlessly, walking for hours deep into quarters she’d not seen, once into a district not even on the map, a deep warren of disused kitchens and sculleries, down so many stairs they were probably underground. It was dark and empty, and it was down there, at one turn in a corridor, that she stopped, listening, the crossbow in her hands.
    A distant, eerie howl had risen out of the floor, from far beneath. Silent, absolutely still, she waited, and at last it came again, indefinably closer, but muffled, as if layers of stone—rooms, dungeons, cellars—were between her and it. Not human. She crouched down with her ear to the stone slabs. Somewhere down there, unguessable levels below, something prowled. Tucking her hair back, she cradled the bow, her skin prickling with the menace of that wail. Whatever it was sounded hungry, and ferocious. After a while she stood up and walked on, the bow racked and loaded. Maybe Braylwin had been telling the truth after all.
    Once more she thought she heard a similar thing, very faintly under the Corridor of Combs, but no one else there spoke about it, or even seemed to notice, hurrying past her with their arms full of papers.
    Finally, she went back to her room late on the third afternoon, in despair, but Braylwin’s snoring and the overflowing bucket in her room were too much. Furious, she flung the water out of the window and spun around, glaring at Tamor’s bright eyes.
    “What are you staring at?” she hissed. “Can’t you do something! Galen would say you could. Well, do it!”
    Storming out, she leaned over a balcony in the Room of the Blue Rose and kicked the ornate balustrade. Crowds milled around her. No one spoke. In all this filthy anthill, no one cared about her—no one even knew her. Even Braylwin had given up having her followed. She wished, suddenly and fiercely, that Raffi were there, so she could talk to him, laugh with him. She’d forgotten the last time she’d laughed.
    Then, just below her, she saw the clerk, Harnor. He crossed the room quickly, a file under one arm, and she called him, but he didn’t hear. Suddenly she wanted to talk to him, to talk to anybody. She darted down the steps in time to see him vanish through a doorway, and she ran after him, pushing through the crowd.
    Harnor was in a hurry. He was walking quickly, and she couldn’t catch him until he’d crossed the Walk of the Graves and two courtyards.
    By then she knew he didn’t want to be seen.
    He was going somewhere, and he was uneasy. He looked around too often and, passing the guard-posts, he seemed scared and alert. Carys kept back, interested. She began to trail him, using all the cunning of her training.
    He went down a long corridor and through the third door. Opening it gently, she saw this was some kind of store area—great cupboards and shelves overflowing with unsorted papers. There was no one in here. At the end of the room was a smaller door; through that she found steps, leading down into a damp passageway with a dead rat in the middle of it. Water dripped somewhere near.
    Ahead, in the dimness, Harnor’s thin shape padded.
    She was intrigued. What was down here? And why was he so nervous about it? Twice she had to wait, breathless, as he stopped and stared back. At the end of the stone passage was a turning, then another. He walked quickly; he knew the way well. And then, as she peered