The halls of the House of Hoar were still.
Sonder pressed her back against a wall, letting her eyes adjust to the deeper, colder shade of light.
Like the seat of House Nesh, the walls were grown more than built, curling upward in ribbed spirals.
But where Nesh's halls felt hot, sunlit, and open, Hoar's felt close and claustrophobic.
The building seemed mostly empty.
Her soft steps echoed faintly, a sound so slight she barely heard it herself. Every so often, a voice drifted from some unseen passage; a few clipped words, rough and textured, not yet as gravelly as the Thole themselves but imitating their speech.
When she heard voices, she didn't retreat. Instead, she called softly for the sand again. It came willingly this time, as though eager for her mana. The grains lifted from the cracks in the floor - dust along the walls, even the motes drifting in the air.
They climbed over her and clung to everything. She closed her eyes, and for a heartbeat, she was the wall.
Two voices passed close by. They weren't alarmed. They were just talking. She let the grains pull tighter, her shape melting into the architecture.
Only when the voices faded fully did she breathe again and let the sand slide back to the ground. It scattered like a flock of tiny birds.
Sonder didn't like this; not the sneaking, not the crawling through another house's shadows.
She didn't dislike House Hoar, their politics, their dealings, or whatever they did, except for the accusation of kidnapping. But she didn't like playing housebreaker in someone else's home, either.
She told herself that it was for Thiliel's brother, Thalael, and his son, Vhereli.
But that wasn't truly why she was here. She needed Grimalkin. Nesh had offered her an exchange: service for access.
It was a bargain, not a vow of righteousness.
Thiliel and Thalael's description of Vhereli had been exact, but not very useful to Sonder.
Pale red skin, dark mohawk, narrow face, narrow eyes.
It might have been any one of the Thole Sonder had seen in Gloam.
They all shared a kind of sculpted sameness, a uniform height and shape.
Thiliel had mentioned a scar near his right temple, but scars could be hidden, and that wouldn't help her find him anyway.
So she had to rely on what she did best: listening, sensing, and keeping out of sight.
She crouched at the end of the hall, fingers brushing the floor, calling once more to the sand.