The Sentinel Mage (35 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I
T HAD TAKEN
Britta four mornings to copy the invasion plans and another to copy the scrawled notes from the squadron lists and the assorted scraps of paper. Now, only the maps remained, five of them. “I need bigger sheets of parchment,” she told Yasma. She rubbed her forehead, trying to get her brain to work more clearly. Three days until the garden party, three days in which to copy the maps.
Think.
There had to be some way of obtaining large sheets of parchment without arousing suspicion.

“Your brothers?” the maid suggested.

Britta lowered her hand. “What would I do without you, Yasma?”

I
T WAS A
question she asked herself again that afternoon, as she prepared to visit her half-brothers. She sat on a stool, cloaked in serenity. Yasma tidied her hair, winding strands of hair around the golden crown, anchoring it tightly again. Britta watched the maid’s agile, brown fingers. For the past four years she’d been the girl’s protector; now their roles were reversed.

“All the acceptances have come in,” Yasma said. “Twenty-three.”

“The ambassador’s wife...?”

“She’s coming,” Yasma reached for a jeweled pin and slipped it deftly into place. “The menu’s gone to the palace kitchen and the musicians are engaged in your name.”

Britta surveyed the litter of pins, brushes, and combs on the gilded table top. The only things keeping her anchored in reality were Yasma—and the invasion plans. She couldn’t think beyond the garden party, beyond giving the plans to the ambassador’s wife.

I should stop taking the poppy juice altogether.

Her serenity faltered. The scent of the duke’s bed filled her nose: sweat, semen. The smell made panic clench in her chest as memories spilled over one another—

No, don’t remember.

Britta exhaled a shaky breath and tried to gather the serenity around herself again.

“All that’s left are the gift baskets,” Yasma said. “I’ll start lining them with silk this afternoon.”

Britta nodded. She imagined the bitter taste of poppy juice on her tongue. The tension in her body trickled away.

B
RITTA WALKED SERENELY
along the marble corridors. At the gilded door to the nursery, she halted. Karel stepped forward and opened it.

The boys were playing soldiers, their squadrons spread out across the floor. “Britta!” Rutgar scrambled up and launched himself at her, his arms wrapping around her waist. For a moment she felt the armsman’s hand against her shoulder blade, steadying her, and then she found her balance again.

“Britta!” a shriller voice cried: Lukas.

Britta bent and hugged the children, kissing each of them, smelling milk and cinnamon and rosemary; the scent of childhood, of safety.

Lukas clung to her. “I thought you’d gone away, like Harkeld.”

Her serenity vanished. In its place was guilt. “No, sweetheart. I’ve...I’ve been busy.”

Rutgar tugged on her arm. “We finished coloring the last picture you drew for us,” he said eagerly. “Do you want to see it?”

Britta spent the next hour admiring the pictures the boys had drawn since she’d last visited, exclaiming over lopsided wolves and soldiers with crooked swords and horses that were an improbable shade of yellow. “You’re getting very good,” she said at last, shuffling the sheets of parchment together.

“But we’re not as good as you,” Rutgar said solemnly. “Will you draw something new for us?”

“Not today, sweetheart.”

His face fell.

“But I’ll take some parchment with me and draw something for you. I’ll bring it with me next time I come.”

Rutgar’s face lit up. “With horses!”

“And woodcutters with axes,” Lukas said. “And wolves!”

“With all of that,” Britta said, laughing. “I promise.”

She took a dozen large sheets of parchment, rolling them carefully. Guilt was heavy in her chest.
You’re using them.

But the boys’ mother had been from Lundegaard, and if they knew what she was doing, if they were old enough to understand—

She looked at the children, fair-haired like Queen Sigren.
You’d be glad you were helping me, if you knew.

“Promise you’ll come again?” Rutgar’s expression was anxious.

He’d never asked that of her before.
I left them too long.
The guilt became heavier. “I promise.” Britta hugged them both, very tightly.

K
AREL STOOD AT
his post in the salon. The princess was dozing in her bedchamber, Yasma was sewing at the long table in the dining room, and outside the afternoon was slowly ripening towards evening. They were all waiting for the duke to return.

Tension built in him with each minute that passed. Karel tried to shake it off. He made himself release his grip on the sword hilt, made himself pace the length of the salon and back.

The door to the dining room was open. After his third traverse of the salon, Karel walked across to it and looked in. The long, polished table was strewn with baskets and lengths of silk.

Yasma glanced up, pausing in mid-stitch. “The duke?”

“Not here yet.”

Karel walked over to the table. There were twenty-three baskets, prettily woven from reeds. Yasma had lined sixteen of them with silk of differing colors: crimson, sky blue, leaf green, yellow. Inside each completed basket lay a gilt-edged card.

Karel looked at the cards.
Lady Agata. Lady Fridetha. Lady Sofia.
“This is your handwriting.”

Yasma laid down the needle and thread, alarm on her face. “How can you tell?” She reached for a card.

Karel shrugged. The letters were identical to the princess’s—the slant of each
t,
the loop of each
g
—but to his eyes, the writing wasn’t hers. He picked up one of the cards and examined it. “I think...you’re more careful than she is.”

“I’ll have to write them out again,” Yasma said, anxiety furrowing her brow. “I’m not free. I’m not meant to be able to read or write—”

Karel kicked himself mentally. “Don’t,” he said. “It looks just like her writing.”

“But you noticed—”

“Only because I know you can write. No one else does.” He laid down the card. “Why is she having this party?”

Yasma looked away. She picked up the needle again. “Because it’s fitting. She’s a new bride.”

There was more to it than that. Karel surveyed the items on the table—baskets, silk, thread, scissors, gilt-edged cards. This had something to do with the secret purpose that was driving the princess.
There’s something here I’m missing.

“Yasma, please tell me what’s going on.”

She bit her lip and glanced up at him. “I’m sorry, Karel.”

He stared at the little maid.
I could bully it from you. Force it from you.
And then he sighed and went back to pacing the salon.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

A
HEAD, THE FIR
trees pulled back from the road. There was a sunny patch of grass, a brook.

Jaumé nudged the old gray gelding towards the brook. Others had halted here before him—the grass was flattened and muddy.

He and the horse drank, then Jaumé sat in the sun and ate two of the pears he’d scavenged yesterday. Juice dribbled down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

The sunshine made everything seem brighter. He had a knife, a waterskin, a blanket, and a horse, and one pear and three apples left to eat. The curse was falling further behind him. If he just followed the other people on the road, he’d find somewhere safe.

The sunshine and the sound of running water, the sound of the gelding cropping grass, almost lulled him to sleep. Jaumé pushed to his feet and filled the waterskin at the brook. It was too early to stop. They could travel a few more miles before night fell.

When he turned back to the horse, someone else was standing in the glade. A man with a shaggy red beard and mud-stained clothes.

“This your horse, boy?”

Jaumé nodded, hugging the waterskin to his chest.

“I’m taking it.”

Jaumé dropped the waterskin. He fumbled in his pocket for the knife, pulling it out. “No.”

The man grinned. “What you going to do with that thing, boy?”

Jaumé gripped the knife more tightly. His heart thudded in his chest. “Go away.”

The man took a fistful of the gelding’s mane. “Come on, horse.”

Jaumé gulped a deep breath and ran at the man, holding the knife out in front of him. Sunlight glinted off the blade.

The man watched him coming, still grinning. He released the horse’s mane and swung his fist. It struck Jaumé in the face.

Everything went black—and then Jaumé was blinking up at sunlight. The taste of blood filled his mouth. He pushed up on one elbow.

The man glanced back at him from astride the old gray gelding. “Thanks for the horse.”

J
AUMÉ TRUDGED ALONG
the road, clutching the waterskin, the blanket, the knife. His nose still bled sluggishly. Tears leaked from his eyes.

The rumble of wagon wheels came from behind him. He stepped to one side and hunched his shoulders.

The family in the wagon stared at him as they drove past—a man, his wife, two young boys.

The wagon halted. The man looked back. He had a bald head and a long, curling black beard. “Had some trouble, did you, son?”

Jaumé nodded and wiped his nose, smearing blood on his sleeve.

“How old are you?”

“Eight.”

“Alone?”

Jaumé nodded again.

The man looked at him a moment longer, and then jerked his head. “Get in. We’ll give you a ride to the top of the pass.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

T
HEY SLEPT WRAPPED
in blankets and woke to a chilly dawn. Innis huddled in her cloak, eating breakfast as the sky shaded from palest gray to a delicate eggshell blue. They rode following the river, hugging the base of the cliffs, with the desert on their left. As the sun rose higher and the blue of the sky deepened, a northerly wind picked up. Innis no longer needed the hood of Justen’s cloak pulled over her head for warmth, but for protection from wind-blown sand.

“What are those things?” Prince Harkeld asked when they halted for a lunch of hardbread, cheese, and peppery smoked sausages. He pointed at the cliff.

Innis blinked, not seeing anything but sandstone and a few scraggly thorn bushes.

Tomas glanced at the cliff. “A granary.”

“A granary? Here?”

Innis chewed, squinting at the sandstone. The cliffs were pock-marked with holes and caves, but nothing resembling a granary—