She hadn’t explored this part of the city yet, but she could guess at her location from the position of the black tower. She followed the man through the streets until he turned into the courtyard of a beautiful estate occupying half an entire city block. The wall around it was painted white and stood only four feet high. The gardens within were well cared for and the house itself was ornate and ancient, yet looked to be in pristine condition.
Wren climbed over the wall, keeping a bush between her and the man, darting to another bush that was closer still. He was chatting with a guard at the main door.
“Good talking with you, Captain Erato,” the guard said just before the man entered the house, clapping the guard on the shoulder.
Wren skirted the main entrance, slipping past the lone guard, using the ample foliage for cover on her way to the kitchen entrance. She was familiar with the inner workings of a kitchen and knew how to blend into the background. The staff didn’t even seem to notice her, especially after she scooped up a tray of food and slipped out of the kitchen into the hall, where she stopped, looking this way and that until she saw a guard at the end of the hallway sitting lazily in a chair.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, looking down timidly. “I’m new to this house and I can’t remember the way to the princess’s quarters. Would you help me, please?”
“Take the service stairs up two flights … it’s the door at the end of the hall,” he said, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes before he even finished speaking.
Wren raced up the stairs, slowing to a fast walk once she came to the top floor, nodding respectfully to an elderly cleaning lady she passed in the hall, while watching Captain Erato enter the princess’s quarters and close the door.
Wren wasn’t sure what she was going to do once she reached the room, but she found herself setting the tray down on a small table along the wall and slipping her knife out of her boot, flipping it around in her hand so the blade ran up against her wrist, just the way Commander P’Tal had shown her back in Blackstone Keep.
She opened the door a crack.
“Where is the box?” Erato said, quietly but threateningly.
“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” a beautiful woman with fair skin and strawberry-blond hair said, backing away from him. “When Prince Phane finds out about this …”
“He’ll never know,” Erato interrupted.
Wren slipped into the room on her tiptoes, carefully closing the door behind her and turning her knife back around in her hand.
The woman looked past the man, frowning in confusion. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Nice try, Princess,” Erato said. “We’re all alone here and I can kill you long before any help will arrive.”
Wren put her finger over her lips, holding Lacy’s eyes urgently, drawing closer with each passing moment, sacrificing speed for silence. Commander P’Tal’s voice played over and over in her mind: If you have to stab a man in the back, aim just above the belt and to the side of the spine. Wren picked her target, focusing her mind, trying to remember every detail of her brief knife-fighting instruction.
“Tell me where the box is and I’ll make this quick and painless,” Erato said.
Lacy shook her head. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Who’s going to stop me?” he asked, mockingly.
Wren lunged, stabbing with all her strength through Erato’s leather armor, the blade of her knife thin and sharp. Her target was standing still and unaware, then he stiffened in shock, unable to utter a single word, frozen on the end of her blade.
“She is,” Lacy said, drawing her dagger.
Wren pulled the knife sideways, just like Commander P’Tal had taught her, slicing through the side of the man’s back. He toppled over into a growing pool of blood.
Everything caught up with Wren in that moment. She slumped to her knees, dropping the knife in a clatter and burying her face in her hands, crying uncontrollably. All of the bottled-up fear came pouring forth, overwhelming her deliberately self-imposed courage and reducing her to wracking sobs.
“Hush, it’s all right,” Lacy said, laying her trembling hands on Wren’s head. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” She knelt next to Wren for several minutes until her crying subsided and she looked up, sniffling and wiping the tears from her face.
“I’m Wren,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I’m Lacy. I don’t know how I can ever thank you. He would have killed me if it weren’t for you.”
Wren sat up, frowning first in confusion and then in growing realization. “Wait, you’re Princess Lacy? Lacy Fellenden?”
Lacy frowned back. “How do you know my name?”
Wren shrugged. “Sometimes the adults talk about important things while I’m in the room. They’ve been trying to find you. They said you’re in danger and that you may hold the key to something called the Nether Gate.”
Lacy grabbed her by the shoulders. “You know about the Nether Gate? Who are your friends? Where are they?”
Wren blinked, somewhat taken aback by Lacy’s sudden intensity.
“My friends are Isabel and Abigail. Isabel is here in the city; Phane’s holding her prisoner. Abigail is on Fellenden, fighting Zuhl’s army.”
“Abigail-Phane’s cousin Abigail?” Lacy said, letting Wren go and frowning in confusion. “Phane said he sent her to protect my people against Zuhl’s aggression.”
“What?” Wren said. “Phane didn’t send Abigail to Fellenden, Alexander did-her brother, Lord Reishi.”
Lacy put her hands on her head. “I’m so confused. Phane showed me Abigail in his magic mirror-tall, silvery blond hair, blue eyes.”
“That’s her, but she would kill Phane in a heartbeat. She hates him.”
“But … he’s been nothing but kind to me. He healed my broken hand and saved me from Zuhl’s men.”
Wren stopped, blinking again, her mind racing. She didn’t know what to think, didn’t know if she should trust Lacy or not, didn’t know if Lacy would betray her to Phane.
“I should go,” Wren said, getting to her feet and backing away.
“Wait, I won’t hurt you. You saved my life,” Lacy said, looking down at Erato’s corpse. “I don’t even know why he attacked me. He was supposed to be the captain of my guard detail.”
“I saw him talking with something in the sewers,” Wren said, “something that wasn’t human … something evil. He called her Lady Druja. She told him to kill you and take the box. You’re not safe here, Princess Lacy. Don’t trust anyone.”
She turned to go.
“Wait … I don’t know what to believe.”
“Please don’t tell Phane I was here,” Wren said before she opened the door, then she turned back as if remembering something urgent. “If you open the box, the world will die,” she said, then slipped out the door.
Lacy sat down on her bed, trying to process everything that had just happened. Coldness seeped into her bones as the very real possibility that she’d been duped by Phane began to sink in. All of the old stories said he was a deceiver, that he’d unmade whole countries with nothing but a well-told lie. What if everything he’d said, everything he’d done was a lie?
She didn’t even know the waifish girl who’d appeared at just the right moment, her moment of need, and saved her life, but she knew with perfect certainty that Wren had saved her. Whatever she did, she wouldn’t repay her with betrayal.
She looked down at the corpse and nodded to herself, drawing her own dagger and stabbing him in exactly the spot where Wren had, drawing her blade out his side just as she had only slightly deeper. She took Wren’s knife and wrapped it in a scarf, then hid it under her bed before going to the door.
“Guard!” she shouted.
***
After some very suspicious and threatening house guards disarmed her and sat her down at the end of a sword, they called for Phane. He arrived half an hour later, casually strolling into the room, then stopping in his tracks, assessing the situation in a glance.