Authors: Mark Anthony
At midday, a serving maid brought her a tray with dinner. She ate, then she spent the afternoon working on her embroidery. Aryn had said all noblewomen in the Dominions knew how to embroider. Grace thought she would be good at it—after all, she had sewn enough stitches in the Emergency Department. However, it turned out she was awful. No matter which finger she wore the thimble on, she always seemed to prick another, and what was supposed to be a pattern of leaves and acorns looked more like something she would grow in a petri dish.
She looked up, neck aching, as the daylight began to fade beyond the window. It was nearly time. She set down her embroidery, rose, donned a different gown—the frosted winter violet, her favorite—then brushed her hair until it shone like the last of the sunlight that gilded the castle’s turrets. She set the brush on the sideboard, turned, and faced the door. Outside, shadows crept across the snow—a deeper hue of purple than her gown.
“Let’s go, Doctor,” she murmured to herself.
Grace opened the door, stepped through, and set out to catch the murderer in the castle.
Over the last two days, the Circle of the Black Knife had refined their plan to discover the conspirator at the Midwinter’s
Eve feast, although they had told no one—not even Falken and Melia—what they intended.
After their meeting with Trifkin Mossberry, Grace and Travis had gone at once to the bard and the lady’s chamber to show them the broken seal from the Rune Gate. Falken had sworn, then had asked them where they had gotten it, and they had told them of their encounter with Trifkin.
“It looks as if you were right after all, Travis,” Falken had said as he folded the stone disk back into its cloth.
Melia had raised an eyebrow.
“Travis saw them at King Kel’s keep,” Falken had said. “Trifkin and his troupe of actors, I mean. Travis told me there was something strange about them, but I thought he had just drunk a bit too much ale.”
Melia had rested her chin on the back of a slender hand. “Travis does have perceptive vision. I think it’s best if we don’t forget that.”
Falken had grunted.
With this new revelation, the bard had been more resolved than ever to speak to the kings and queens about the danger that faced the Dominions, to convince them to act, and he intended to use the broken rune
Gelth
as further evidence. Grace had not disagreed with his words. However, something had told her it would take more than shattered stones and old stories to change the minds of those rulers who did not believe in the Pale King.
Grace had exchanged a look with Travis, and she had known they were in accord—they had not mentioned their Midwinter’s Eve plan.
Now Grace halted before a door and lifted her hand to knock, but the wooden surface swung away before her hand could contact it. She gazed into a pair of solemn brown eyes.
“The others are all here, my lady,” Durge said.
She nodded, then stepped into the room, and the dark-haired knight shut the door behind her. Travis, Aryn, and Beltan all nodded to her in greeting.
Grace had never been in Durge’s chamber before. What she saw was not what she had expected. The room was small and had only a narrow slit of a window. It was heated, not with a fireplace, but with a small brazier that cast its smoke on the air and left the substance to find its way out through
cracks in the walls and ceiling. There was a low bed and a heavy wooden chest which most likely housed the knight’s armor when he was not wearing it, and which was doubtless empty at the moment. Durge was clad in his gray tunic and cloak, but the garments were bulkier than usual, and Grace heard a jingling when he moved. His greatsword was slung across his back.
What caught Grace’s attention most of all was the chamber’s sideboard. It was covered with crucibles, glass vials, clay pots, and oil lamps with wrought-iron stands to hold an item being heated. Jars contained thick liquids or colored powders. In all it looked like a well-equipped chemistry lab. Grace looked at the knight.
“What is all this, Durge?”
He stroked his mustaches in what seemed an embarrassed gesture. “It is nothing, my lady. I have a passing interest in alchemy, that is all. I know little enough.” He moved to the sideboard, picked something up, and handed it to Grace. “Thank you for letting me study this.”
Grace accepted the object. It was the bracelet Trifkin Mossberry had given her. When Durge had seen her wearing it the day before, he had expressed interest in it, especially the charm of dark stone, and had asked if he might examine it. Grace had given it to him, but only now did she understand the source of his curiosity. She slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.
“Do you know what it is?” she said. “The charm, I mean.”
“I was able to perform some tests,” Durge said. “I believe it to be a piece of lodestone.”
“Lodestone?” Aryn said with a frown. “You mean it’s a stone that fell from the sky?”
Durge nodded. “That’s right, my lady. I have heard astrologers of the south call such rocks meteorites, but lodestone is the name used in the Dominions. It is the same kind of stone as the artifact of Malachor in the great hall.”
Beltan let out a whistle. “That must have been some falling star. It takes ten men to move that thing. Though the ring turns easily enough.”
Grace regarded the charm bracelet, then thought of the massive ring of dark stone in the great hall. So the two were
connected. This fact seemed important somehow, but she couldn’t say why.
“Is everybody ready?” a low voice said.
Grace looked up. It was Travis. His gray eyes were serious behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and his face above his beard was white.
Capillary constriction—an autonomic response. He’s frightened, Grace
. She almost laughed at the diagnosis. Grace suspected her own capillaries were constricted as well.
She drew in a deep breath, then stepped toward the others. “I’m ready.”
Beltan nodded. “And I.”
Aryn braced her shoulders inside her azure gown. Her dark hair was intricately coiled and woven with strands of pearl. “I suppose I’m ready.”
“And I as well,” Durge said in his grim voice.
Travis sighed and rested a hand on the stiletto tucked into his belt. “Me too. I think we’re all ready then. Everybody knows what to do?”
Each of the five nodded.
“Then I guess it’s time to go.”
They started to move to the door, then Grace halted, turned, and regarded Travis.
“Can we trust them?” she said in a quiet voice. “Trifkin and his troupe, I mean.”
Travis seemed to think about her words, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think we can trust them. They’re older than us, and different. But I don’t think they have much love for the Pale King, either.” He shrugged his shoulders inside his baggy tunic. “We’ll just have to hope that’s enough.”
Grace nodded. She looked at each of the members of the Circle in turn, and only when she was done did she realize she had just fixed each one in her mind exactly as he or she was at that moment. Afraid she knew the reason why, she hurried to the door, before she lost her resolve, before she let herself think that this plan just might be sending one of these people—one of her friends—to his or her death.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
They left Durge’s chamber one at a time, and let a minute or two pass between each of their departures so no one
would see them together. Grace was the second to go, after Beltan. She stepped outside and glanced both ways down the corridor. A few servants hurried this way and that, caught up in their tasks, but that was all. She set her shoulders back and forced herself to walk calmly down the passage. It would not do to appear nervous or in a hurry. Besides, the light was still fading outside the castle’s windows: soft purple hardening to gray slate. There was still time before the feast—and the longest night of the year—began.
She heard the dull roar of voices before she even reached the great hall. Rumors concerning the Midwinter’s Eve feast had flown about the castle these last days, and no doubt everyone had turned out to see if any of them were true. According to the stories, Boreas had spared no expense on the feast. There was to be an entire roasted ox, some said. No, it was
two
roasted oxen, and each was to be stuffed with a lamb, and the lamb with a hare, and the hare with a partridge, and the partridge with a single dove’s egg. There were to be braised swans, and lampreys, and subtleties shaped like each of the kings and queens of the Dominions. Grace didn’t know what to think of the rumors, but she hoped the last one turned out to be true. Something told her it would be fun to take a bite out of King Boreas.
She steeled her will and turned a corner that would take her to the doors of the great hall.
“Lady Grace,” said a dangerous voice. “How regal you look this evening.”
Grace cursed herself for doing it, but she couldn’t help gasping as she turned toward the sound of the voice. She hadn’t seen the woman there, standing in a shadowed alcove. Now the other stepped into the light, although the shadows seemed to cling to her still.
“Lady Kyrene,” Grace said, then remembered to sketch a curtsy.
Kyrene smiled and bowed her head.
It had been days since Grace had last seen the countess, and then Kyrene had been wild and ragged, half-mad at her fall from Queen Ivalaine’s favor. Now Kyrene was … different. Her hair was lustrous, but darker than Grace remembered it and pulled back in a severe knot. Her skin was milky as always, but the shade with which she had colored her lips,
once coral pink, was now a deep red, like wine. Even her choice in garb had changed. Gone was her usual low-cut gown. Instead she wore a tight-fitting dress the same color as her lips, its collar high and fastened tightly around her throat by a choker of shell and jade.
“So, have you come to enjoy yourself at the feast?” Kyrene said.
“Why else would I have come?” Grace tried not to sound defensive but knew she failed.
Kyrene smiled again. Her emerald eyes were brighter and harder than ever. “Why else might you have come? Perhaps to weave useless magics as witches do.” Kyrene moved closer. “Tell me, Lady Grace, are you still Ivalaine’s plaything?”
Grace’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about, Kyrene?”
“Don’t worry, love. I’m not angry at you for what you did to me. It was a favor, I know that now.” Kyrene smoothed her hair. “Ivalaine is a fool. She plays her little games and thinks she’s so important. But there are others here now, others who are far greater than she.”
Despite Kyrene’s beauty, a sour scent rose from her. Grace felt sick.
“I have to go,” she said.
Kyrene gave a knowing nod. “Of course, love. And so do I. We each have our alliances to uphold. Farewell, Lady Grace.”
The countess gave Grace one more smug smile, then sauntered away. Grace rushed down the corridor, grateful to be away from her. Perhaps Kyrene was mad after all, or perhaps she really had found some new faction to ally herself with. Either way, Grace didn’t care. She inhaled, steadied her mind, then stepped into the great hall of Calavere.
“Lady Grace?”
She blinked, then glanced down at a tug on her sleeve. A page stood beside her.
“This way, Lady Grace,” the boy said.
She gave a wordless nod, then let him lead her among the trestle tables filled with nobles. Once again the castle’s great hall had been decorated to resemble a forest, and for a moment Grace felt the same disorientation she had in Trifkin’s
chamber. It seemed she really walked in a misty sylvan glade. However, it was only a trick of torch smoke. Fir boughs draped the blackened rafters, and leafless saplings stood in the corners like shy, slender ladies waiting to be asked for a dance.
Grace thought she would be seated at one of the lower tables, but instead the page led her to the dais at the head of the great hall. She was to be seated at the high table. That was a stroke of luck. Her view would be better from up here, and she needed to be able to see the entire great hall. If their plan worked as it was supposed to, and the murderer was in the hall, it was Grace and Travis who would spot him.
She nodded to King Kylar as she passed him, then at King Boreas, who barely caught her gaze before he returned his glower to the hall. It did not look as if the king of Calavan intended to enjoy his own feast. The page showed her to the last empty seat at the high table, and her breath caught in her chest. So she was twice lucky that night.
“Good eventide, Lady Grace,” Logren said with his white-toothed smile.
He stood as she took her seat, then sat again beside her.
“Good eventide, my lord,” she said. She had not noticed it before, but now the great hall was too warm, and her gown too constricting.
“You look beautiful tonight, my lady.” His voice was low and private, just for her.
So do you, my lord
, she wanted to say. He was clad in pearl-gray, like the night she first met him. She drank in his features like wine. Why had she run from him when they last met? He must have thought her an idiot.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said when she realized he was waiting for an answer.
“I have been keeping an eye open as you asked, my lady.” His voice was casual—he could have been speaking about bird-watching in the garden—but he gave her a conspiratorial nod. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen anything such as you described.”
Yes, he was good at this game. “It’s all right, my lord. I appreciate your help.”
“At your service, my lady.”
A thrill passed through Grace, and she could not help but
smile. He was intelligent, kind, and handsome. If not him, then who? Kyrene had her new friends now—Logren had escaped the countess’s web. Maybe Grace could try again, and without thoughts of spells and simples this time. She remembered the soft touch of his lips on her own. Maybe she didn’t need magic to make Logren hers. Maybe he already was.…
“A drink, my lady?”
She almost laughed. Those were the first words he had ever spoken to her, that night in the great hall when she had been so new at this, when she had fled the nobles in terror, and he had been there to steady her.