Free The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) by Emily June Street Page A

fair young man in livery, bowing.
    “Yes?”
    “I have a message for you,” the servant said. Instead of looking at me, his gaze darted over my shoulder and around the room, as if scanning for eavesdroppers or gossipers looking our way. A flower emblem with many slender petals, embroidered in gold, sparkled on the left shoulder of his grey coat. The Galatien sigil.
    “Yes?” I repeated.
    The servant angled his head to the side, inviting me into a shadowed nook that hid between the wall and a drape. I ducked into the strip of darkness with him, but he did not linger, only pressing a small paper square into my hand and nodding as he moved back towards the center of the festivities.
    I peered at the card he’d left in my hand, an envelope of cream-colored paper with a gilded edge. Stepping towards the nearest magelight orb to get enough light for reading, I broke the seal—white wax with gold flakes, pressed with the same flower sigil of House Galatien.
    Miss Lili,

    I wished to speak to you further yesterday over breakfast, but Ghilene interfered, as I imagine she must often do. Won’t you meet me after the party tonight? Can you get away? I have a secret place where we can have all the privacy we might desire. Only send me a sign by the usual method that you can meet, and I will make sure someone brings you there.

    Yours, CG
    CG? I stared at the note, written in a spikey, upright hand without an error on the page. Costas Galatien—who else could it be? But what could he possibly wish to speak of? And what did he mean, the usual method? How did a Lethemian send a clandestine sign to a fellow guest at a party? I shoved the card back into the envelope and tucked them down the front of my dress along with the charms I still wore on my leather twine. I searched through the ballroom to find Costas Galatien. He stood in a group of men and women, one hand resting on Stesichore Ricknagel’s arm in a proprietary way.
    What did he want? My natural curiosity wanted to know so badly I would agreed to his plan in a heartbeat, had I only known how to signal my intent.
    I found Ghilene beside a sidebar laden with glasses of sparkling wine; she had not one but two flutes, one clutched in each hand. Tiercel had warned me that Lady Entila permitted Ghilene too many freedoms, including drink. She raised one of the flutes and drained it before setting it back on the table.
    “There you are, Lili. I thought you’d been blessedly struck down by a headache and decided not to come.”
    With a welcome like this, I hardly wanted to ask her my question, but Ghilene represented my only option. I inched closer to the table, careful to avoid touching Ghilene’s skirts.
    “If someone wanted to send a message, secretly, at a party like this, how would it be done?” I brazened, though I half-expected Ghilene to dismiss me just for asking.
    Ghilene’s eyes narrowed as she set down another emptied flute. “What kind of message?”
    “I—I don’t know. It’s nothing. I overheard a conversation, that’s all.”
    Ghilene gripped my arm. “A conversation? What about?”
    I had rarely attempted to lie—deceit ran counter to my Gantean sensibilities—but the words came naturally, perhaps because they held a slice of truth. “I heard Stesichore Ricknagel talking about sending a secret message to Costas Galatien, but I did not understand how she meant to do it.”
    Ghilene’s brows pulled together into one dark slash. “Stesichore Ricknagel! A secret message to Costas Galatien? Do you mean—why, do you mean by women’s knife? But it’s only the first night! Surely he hasn’t given her a knife yet? No it must be her own.” Ghilene stalked at surprising speed away from the table.
    “What’s a women’s knife?” I asked, trailing in the wake of her swishing lavender skirts.
    Ghilene faced me, reaching up her lace-edged sleeve. “This.” She pulled out a thin metal blade the length of her hand that looked rather like the tool Tiercel