Chapter Four
Diana Valentina stood in the great hall of the macabre snow castle, surrounded by underlings. Her relative youth — she was, Konrad thought, barely thirty — had not prevented her from rising to the very top of The Malykt’s Order, and no wonder. She was shrewd, highly intelligent, and had a razor-sharp focus Konrad envied. When she was around, things simply got done. Obstacles were of no moment whatsoever.
She did not turn to look as Konrad approached, but began speaking the moment he was within hearing. ‘We’ve been trying to draw them out,’ she told him. ‘I’ve brought all our best ghostspeakers down here, and they — well, for a while it seemed that nothing could do it. But then one of them spoke. That one.’ She pointed to Eino’s corpse.
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing very cohe
