The Sentinel Mage (31 page)

Britta blinked.
What?
her brain asked sluggishly.

“...utmost secrecy,” the king said.

“Of course, sire.”

Her mind groped for what had alarmed her, something the duke had just said, but it swam out of reach.

Movement came from within the study, the rustle of papers, the sound of chairs being pushed back.

Fear pricked in her chest.
I mustn’t let him find me here
.

Britta pushed clumsily to her feet, lurched across to the bed, fell onto it. Fumbling, she pulled the sheet over her. Voices murmured in the study, too faint now to hear the words. She heard footsteps, heard the door open from the study into the salon. Jaegar and her father were leaving.

Britta squeezed her eyes shut and tried to float up to the ceiling before Duke Rikard could come back to his bed.

B
RITTA WOKE SLOWLY.
The shutters were open. Outside, the sun shone.

She lay drowsily, staring at the blue sky with unfocussed eyes. Her body felt heavy, not her own.

As time passed, more awareness slowly came. The smell of Duke Rikard’s sweat and his seed, the faint tightness where his saliva had dried on her skin, the damp stickiness between her legs.

Panic tightened in her chest. She pushed up to sitting.

“Britta, you’re awake.”

Her gaze fastened on Yasma’s familiar face. “I must wash,” she said, stumbling out of the bed.

“I have a bath ready.” Yasma slipped an arm around her waist, steadying her.

“And the juices?”

“Those, too.”

Britta scrubbed her skin. Steam curled up from the bathwater, along with the scent of sandalwood. Bubbles drifted, disappeared. Light and shadow danced along the rim of the tub with each movement she made.

A golden bath tub.

Queen Sigren had died in a golden bath tub.

Her hand faltered, scrubbing. A memory came faintly, hazily. Something about Lundegaard. Something she’d heard recently.

“The poppy juice, princess.”

Britta laid down the scrubbing brush.

Voices twisted in her head. Harkeld’s:
Not everywhere is like this, Britta. Some kingdoms don’t have bondservants. Lundegaard doesn’t
. Duke Rikard’s:
I want you to wear the crown always
. Jaegar’s:
Ours for the taking
.

Britta took the goblet Yasma held out. Bath water dripped from her fingers.
A toast!
The voice was the duke’s. She paused with the cool rim of the goblet pressed to her lips and tried to grasp the memory, but it slid away from her.

Britta lowered the goblet. “I’ll wait a few minutes.” She handed the poppy juice back to Yasma. “Where’s the dung root?”

Yasma gave it to her. Britta gulped it down, tasting fennel, smelling sulfur.
A toast!

A toast to what?

W
HEN SHE WAS
dressed, Britta walked back into the bedchamber and stood there, trying to remember. Something had happened last night. Something important. Something she had to remember.

She closed her eyes, groping for memory...

She had woken. She had woken and there’d been lamplight in the study, voices.

Britta opened her eyes. She walked across to the door to the study. It was shut.

Memory returned, swimming out of the haze that cloaked her mind.

She’d got up to close the door, to shut off the voices and the light. She’d knelt, there, on the floor, and heard...what?

Ours for the taking.

A toast!

Britta tried the door. It swung open on silent hinges.

The study was dark.

Britta hesitated on the threshold for a moment, and then walked across and opened the shutters. Light entered the room, glinting off wall hangings stitched with gold and silver thread, off gilded vases, off gilt-framed mirrors.

Britta turned and faced the desk. Jaegar and her father had been here last night, talking with Duke Rikard. Why? Why not in daylight in the audience chamber?

More memory came. Her father’s voice:
Utmost secrecy...

Three glasses sat on the desk. She recalled the clink of glass, the gurgle of liquid being poured.
A toast! To the invasion of Lundegaard!

For a moment Britta stood frozen, then she shook her head. Osgaard had no reason to invade Lundegaard. The poppy juice was muddling things in her head. She turned back to the windows and closed the shutters.

But as she walked across to the door, another memory came. A clear memory, from when she was a child. Her father, his face red, bellowing, striking the table with his fist, making the cutlery jump and the goblets wobble.
Osgaard
will
expand under my rule!

Britta halted in the doorway. Faintly, she heard the third bell ring.

“Princess?” Yasma said, emerging from the dressing room. “Would you like the poppy juice now?”

Yes
. But the words that came from her mouth were, “No. There’s something I need to check.”

Yasma’s face showed her puzzlement.

“Here, in the study.”

The maid’s eyes widened. “Britta...no, you mustn’t! If the duke should find you—”

“It’s important, Yasma. I shan’t be long. If my—” Her throat choked on the word
husband.
“If the duke should return early...if you should hear him...”

“I’ll warn you.”

“Thank you,” Britta said, and she went back into the study and opened the shutters again.

T
HE DUKE’S DESK
was bare apart from an oil lamp, three empty glasses, and a quill with a blunted, ink-stained tip. The drawers held more quills, ink of various shades in glass flasks, and rolls of sealing wax, all jumbled together with no care for the fragility of the flasks or the quills. Amid the clutter were no secret plans, no maps with invasion routes marked out in red ink.

Britta closed the last drawer.
See, you imagined it. There’s nothing worthy of alarm here
.

She walked over to the ebony and mother-of-pearl table beneath the window, on which a pile of maps lay. Their edges were curling, creased, smudged with fingerprints. She flicked through them swiftly. They depicted Osgaard and the other kingdoms that made up the Seven.

No, not all of them.

She went through the maps again: Osgaard, Vaere, Sault, Ankeny, Roubos, the Urel Archipelago.

All of the kingdoms—apart from Lundegaard.

So where were Lundegaard’s maps?

Britta turned away from the table. A tall cabinet stood alongside the door to the salon. She walked across and opened it.

Here was the duke’s liquor—spirits and wines crammed together in no apparent order. Bottles of all sizes and shapes crowded the shelves, some tall and fluted, others smooth and squat. She saw clear glass, red glass, blue glass decorated with gold leaf, glass as green as the sea. The liquids they held shimmered in the sunlight, some the color of blood, some as clear as water, and all shades of brown and gold.

In the cupboard below were cut crystal glasses with golden rims, like the three on the desk. Britta closed the doors and turned to face the room again. Only one place remained to look: a chest crafted of maplewood and pressed gold, to one side of the desk.

She walked to the chest and lifted the lid. Sheets of blank parchment met her eyes, lying every which way, as if they’d been hastily bundled in.

See?
she told herself, rummaging through the sheets.
There’s nothing here—

Beneath the parchment were maps of Lundegaard.

Britta slowly unpacked the chest. The sheets of parchment were creased, in some places torn. A quill lay among them, and a roll of sealing wax. It was as if Duke Rikard had swept everything off his desk, to hastily conceal the chest’s contents.

She laid the items out on the floor: maps of Lundegaard, several annotated with arrows and scrawled comments; lists of the squadrons that comprised Osgaard’s army, also annotated; notes on scraps of paper; and a document, page after closely-written page, with comments jotted in the margins.

Britta read it, skimming quickly. When she’d finished, she sat staring at the final page. The words blurred, black ink on white parchment, the loops and twists of letters.
No. It can’t be true.

How long she sat, she didn’t know. The tolling of the fourth bell brought her back to an awareness of where she was. Hastily, she piled everything back into the chest and closed the lid. She scrambled to her feet. For a moment the room spun around her and she had to grip the edge of the desk to stop herself falling, then everything steadied again.

Britta pushed away from the desk and crossed to the open door. At the threshold, she turned and looked back at the study. Had she left any sign of her presence?

The shutters were open.

She half-ran back across the room and hastily closed them. The study became dark. The bedchamber, glimpsed through the open door, was light and bright and safe, a sanctuary. Britta hurried towards it.

Her fear receded slightly as she stepped into the sunlit bedchamber, as she closed the door.

Yasma looked up from mending a tunic. Her face broke into a relieved smile. “Everything is all right, princess?”

No. I have to decide what to do.
“Yes,” Britta said. And then, “The poppy juice? Where is it?”

Yasma put aside the tunic and stood. “Here.” She held out the goblet.

Britta looked at the dark liquid.
I should keep a clear head.
But the duke would be here soon, wanting to bed her. A fist seemed to tighten in her chest. She gulped a mouthful of poppy juice, tasting its bitterness on the back of her tongue.
Not enough
, a voice whispered in her head.
Not nearly enough.

Britta took another sip, then thrust the half-full goblet at Yasma. “Take it!”

I
N THE AFTERNOON,
Britta visited her garden. She sat on the cushions in the rose bower and tried to decide what to do, while her armsman patrolled the paths. Her eyelids kept drooping shut. Thoughts went around and around in her head, slow and disorganized.

How can Father stoop to such a plan? So despicable, so utterly without honor.

She knew the answer: Because he was driven to expand Osgaard’s borders, as his forefathers had done for the past six generations. He refused to be the first to fail.

And following on the heels of that thought:
What should I do?

Drowsily, Britta tried to list her options. Easiest, would be to ignore what she knew.
But if I do that, then the dishonor will be mine, too.

What else could she do? Who could she tell? Harkeld was gone, and there was no one else she trusted enough.

She could tell the ambassador from Lundegaard.

Britta pondered that for several minutes, while the armsman paced and the bees hummed among the roses in the bower.

Yes, the ambassador from Lundegaard. He was the logical person to tell.
But if I do that, I’ll be a traitor. Betraying my country.

Should she be patriotic? Or honorable?

Shouldn’t the two be the same?

Britta drifted asleep in the sunshine, pondering that question.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

T
HEY REACHED THE
base of the escarpment midway through the afternoon. Harkeld tilted his head back and stared up. The cliffs leaned over him, bulging outwards, sheer and impossibly high. “There’s a way up?”

“Couple of ways,” Tomas said. “But only one suitable for horses.”

Clouds drifted in the sky. Their movement made it look as if the cliffs were toppling slowly forward. Harkeld looked away, blinking against dizziness. “Do we start today?”