Footsteps echoed. Boots, approaching my sanctuary.
Oh, dear gods. I rose, silently, and backed away from the door. My mouth gapped open so my breathing would not betray me, and tears trickled hot down my cheeks, dripping onto my collarbones.
“We must find the di Rocancheil girl.” Di Narborre sounded very close, and the door rattled as he tested it. Had I left a trace of blood on the knob on the other side? “Let us go. Our lord the Duc will be crowned tonight.”
I let out a soft, shapeless breath, dropped the key that had held the door closed between me and di Narborre, and fled.
Chapter Two
I could not return to my own rooms, but I did stop in Lady Arioste’s tiny closette between the Princesse’s bedchamber and mine. She and I were of a size, though thankfully not of matching temperaments; I dug in her wardrobe until I found a serviceable dark blue velvet-and-silk, frightfully old but still good. I took hair ribbons and a servant girl’s bag I filled with fruit from the bowl on Arioste’s night table; and a sewing kit, as well as extra stockings. For some reason I also took a comb, instead of a hundred other items which might have proved useful.
The table was not laid for chai, since Lisele would have ordered chai in one of her own reception rooms, and Arioste would have been in attendance.
Carrying the dress carefully so as not to foul it with mud or…other things, I made my way through dusty passages to a little-known door that gave into the North Tower. Several times I heard running feet. Once I even hid in a niche, lost behind dusty red-velvet curtains as a detachment of the Duc’s Guard thundered past, no doubt searching for me or on some other unsavory business. Tears rolled unheeded down my cheeks and dripped onto my poor muddy gown.
One of the keys on the ring d’Arcenne had given me fit a neglected door at the end of a long, chilly passageway. I might have simply sunk to the floor and given up if it had not. I was famished, exhausted, and at what I thought then was the end of my strength.
I closed the door behind me and locked it carefully, took my first faltering steps into the gloomy dust of the North Tower. The narrow hallway of the servant’s entrance hung thick with cobwebs, a sour exhalation from the masonry full of neglect and rot; the lower windows still sealed tight.
The Tower had been stopped up when the King’s treacherous great-great-grandmother, the Dowager Elisaine, was bricked inside it to die. She conspired with the Damarsene, who would always like nothing better than to swallow our land — you would think they had enough and to spare, but no, they are greedy. The Dowager had plotted to kill her elder brother’s son Archimvault the Tall, before he came of age to be crowned. That treachery had been averted just in time, the Damarsene ambassador sent home in disgrace, and the White Dowager starved to death in the North Tower. The sealing-bricks from the entrances had been taken away with her body, and used to line her tomb. It was said that when her body was found she was clutching a statue of Jiserah, and the goddess’s face had turned away.
When Lisele and I were young, we had dared each other to spend a night before the great ironbound main door to the Tower, carved with Elisaine’s device — the swan and the serpent over the crown of Arquitaine.
None would think to look for me here. At least, not for a while. And none would suspect I had a key, except Tristan d’Arcenne. Would they torture him to find what he knew? What would he say?
The sweat coating me was suddenly cold as a lemon-ice. Still, they must have greater matters at hand than a hedgewitch lady-in-waiting, even a di Rocancheil. The assurance was hollow, at least in my ears.
I penetrated the mysteries of the North Tower a short way and found nothing but decay. I climbed to the third level, where some of the windows had not been sealed, and found a room with wan sunlight coming from a high casement, piercing the gloom. Dust lay in great sheets over everything, and the furniture was covered in white drapes grown gray and moth-eaten with years. I took two more steps and sank to the floor, buried my face in my filthy, sweating hands, and proceeded to weep like an absolute fool.
The storm of tears did not last as long as I thought it would, since I was too hungry and exhausted to cry much more. So I did the only thing I could — gathered up the dress and the bag and carried them further up into the Tower until I found a half-hidden door behind a rotting tapestry of Elisaine’s crest. This led into a sitting room, close and still and cold as all the Tower, even in the late-spring heat. I changed into Arioste’s gown with shaking hands. I had no servant girl to help me, so it took two or three tries, but the lacings were relatively easy.
With that done, I tossed a dusty sheet back to reveal a frightfully old divan done in faded red and gold satin, chewed by gods alone knew how many tiny animals but sound enough. I sank down, dropping the bag of fruit and other things next to me, tucking the strap as if I were arranging an embroidery bag prettily on one of Lisele’s wide sophas.
Another wave of faintness went through me at the thought. I shook it away, transferred the keys to my new skirt-pocket, and fished the thing Lisele had given me out of my old skirt as well.
I opened my fingers, found my palm full of a medallion that occupied my hand to the first joints in my fingers, with a thick antique silver chain. The medallion itself was three serpents twisted in a complex knot — copper, silver, and black gold, set with rubies and clear glittering diamonds for eyes.
The world slipped from beneath me again.
It was the Aryx, the Great Seal of Arquitaine. It lay cool and weighty in my hand, the source of all Court sorcery and the servant of the bloodline of Edouard Angoulême, however diluted in the house of Tirecian-Trimestin. It belonged in the possession of the King. Why had Lisele had it — and why had she given it to me?
If the Duc’s men had found it, they would have taken it to the Duc, and he would be the king in truth. I touched the medallion with one trembling finger smudged with garden-dirt and blood. I had scrubbed my fingers on my green velvet, but it did very little to help. Lisele is the Heir — of course she would hold it sometimes; the Festival of Skyfall is soon, and the reigning monarch and the Heir pass the Aryx between them at sundown. The whys and wherefores matter not a whit. It only matters that you do not let the Duc find it. Lisele charged you with keeping it safe.
I found the clasp and fastened the chain about my own throat with trembling fingers, silently praying it would not take a notion to fry me for my insolence. The histories said the royal family of Arquitaine knew the secret to using the Aryx as a weapon, but it had not happened since the time of King Fairlaine’s suicide, after the death of his beloved Queen Toriane. Since then, we had not needed the Aryx’s power in battle or in the defense of the King’s person. King Fairlaine’s death had brought the Great King Tibirius to the throne, and he had been the architect of a lasting peace, even if that peace meant paying tribute to the Damarsene across our borders with their hungry army — and to the Damarsene alliance with the Pruzians, those mercenary masters of cold warfare.
If the King had carried the Aryx, the Duc could not have killed him, and Lisele would still be alive.
I had more pressing matters at hand. I dropped the Aryx down into my bodice, thanking the gods Arioste had been relatively modest — at least when it came to showing her twin charms. Heartless and fickle, with no more brain than a poisonous serpent, she still had not deserved…that. A cold shudder racked me.
The neckline concealed most of the medallion, leaving only a meaningless curve of copper that was a serpent’s back but might have been anything.