Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-six
Catalaya and the prince were standing in the stone courtyard, surrounded by blooming hollyhocks the color of the midsummer sky, when I went out for a walk the next day. She put her hand on his arm and gazed up at him.
The prince didn’t look receptive, but that didn’t make the stone in my belly any lighter. It was a strange contrast to the ember, which hadn’t stopped burning since last night.
“Your Highness. Your Ladyship.”
He looked over first, and his eyes were set and grim.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and moved closer.
“Jonas,” he said. “The farrier’s son. He’s dead.”
It was a warm and sunny day, but all the heat went out of me—all except the warm pulsing in my chest. “Dead? How?”
“The Aetheric practitioner.”
Fuck the moons. “When?”
“Before dawn, we think. He was traveling outside the stronghold to assist his father. He has possession marks.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t think I’d caused it by opening the door, but I sure hadn’t done any damned thing to prevent it.
“A moment,” he said to Catalaya. And without waiting for her answer, he drew me away to the other side of the courtyard. “Did you feel anything? The Aetheric pain?”
I didn’t dare tell him the full truth about my opening the doorway; I knew he wouldn’t send a messenger to the City of Flowers to tell his father, but knowledge was still dangerous. On the other hand, I had to be honest about why I missed the magic.
“I can’t tell you everything,” I said quietly, “there’s too much I don’t know. There are…difficulties in the Aetheric, and Luna visited me a few days ago. She was weak, and I helped her access it.”
“All right.”
“I was feeling useless. I haven’t found anything in the library that would teach me how to stop a possession, how to stop the practitioner from making a weapon. I needed to do something. So last night I tried to replicate what Luna and I had done.”
“Did you?”
“Mostly.”
“That was the disturbance in your room? With the table and chairs and broken jug?”
Of course the guard would report that. I nodded.
“The guard thought you were having a snit.”
“I don’t have snits.”
“You’re perilously close to having one right now.”
Because he was goading me into it, probably to make me smile. Which I didn’t want. I wanted to wade around in my self-pity. “The point is, I managed to trigger the same pain I feel when the Aetheric practitioner manipulates Aether. I can still feel it.”
Understanding dawned in his face. “So you didn’t feel a specific pain when Jonas…”
I nodded. “Correct.”
“This isn’t your fault, Fox.”
“If I hadn’t tried something stupid—”
“Trying to help isn’t stupid. Risky, but not stupid. And even if you’d felt it, even if I’d sent out more soldiers to look for him, we wouldn’t have found him in time. And yes, they’re out now. I have soldiers inside and outside the wall looking for witnesses, asking questions.”
Catalaya approached with a golden goblet in hand.
“In the meantime,” he whispered, “tell no one else.”
“You look as though you could use a bit of wine,” Catalaya said when she reached us, and handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I said, and wondered if it was poisoned. I took a sip anyway.
“If you’re done here, I thought I’d take a walk in the garden.” She looked at me. “Perhaps you’d like to join me? It’s a lovely day, and you look as if you could use some cheering up.”
It was like she’d exchanged personalities overnight. Maybe she’d decided being prickly wasn’t her best strategy. She already thought I was a threat, or she wouldn’t have deigned to talk to me. I didn’t plan to toss tinder on that fire.
“Of course, Your Ladyship.” I put the goblet aside.
“I’m going to get back to work,” the prince said. “Enjoy your walk.” But he gave me a wary look as he moved back to the palace door, Galen falling into step behind him.
“It’s a beautiful palace,” Catalaya said when we were alone.
“It is,” I said, following as she stepped down from the terrace to the pathway below. “You may stay here, Essie,” she told her maid, who nodded and folded her hands to wait.
“It takes a great deal of work to run a palace,” she said, trailing her hands over the carefully manicured shrubs that lined this part of the walk. “Many servants, significant coffers, diligent oversight.”
I made a sound of vague agreement, although these coffers were decidedly empty.
When we reached the pond, she stopped and cast her gaze across it—boardwalks, gazebos, white water lilies just beginning to open.
“A beautiful place. With catalayas blooming.” She picked up a petal, held it in the palm of a soft hand. “Like it was meant to be.”
I’d heard better lines from market grifters; maybe minor aristocrats couldn’t be choosy.
She let the petal fall to the ground and looked at me. “He may not have told you, but the prince and I are promised to each other.” Her voice was absolutely certain. She wanted to see my response, just as she’d tried to manipulate the prince at dinner.
I didn’t have the energy to give her the fight she wanted.
“How lovely,” I said with the bland pleasantness of an experienced servant.
“It isn’t official yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”
I nodded sagely. “Of course.”
Apparently dissatisfied with my nonreaction, she pressed on. “In the meantime, princes will do what they will with…who they will. It’s in their blood and their training.”
“In their training?”
“To sample the horses in the stable, you might say.”
I was apparently the horse.
“But even if a prince cavorts with animals,” she continued, “he will not marry them. He will only marry a noblewoman—someone with training and skill and the ability to manage a place like this.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not certain I understand.” I frowned. “Are you concerned about courtesans? I haven’t been here long, but I haven’t seen any in the palace.”
“I don’t care about damned courtesans.” But she cared enough that a flush rose on her cheeks. Probably brought up to be prudish.
She moved closer and considered me with a narrowed gaze. There was frustration there, anger, and maybe a little fear. “I suppose you think you’re clever, having made it into the palace.”
It was getting harder now to keep the bland smile on my face. “Your Ladyship, I’m here because the prince and I happen to have a mutual enemy—an enemy who wants the prince dead and who killed a strongholder last night.” Another strongholder, I thought, and felt immeasurably sad.
She just snorted. “The prince is well guarded, and now I’ve added my soldiers to his. He won’t need your ghost-finding soon enough.”
This time, I moved closer, looked her in the eyes, and let my bland smile slip away. She had power and money behind her. I had years of calluses and hunger and scraping by. She may have been royal, but I was tired of being intimidated by people like her. I was so tired.
Her eyes widened with surprise, with concern, that the servant she’d just insulted was moving ever closer, and looking none too friendly. She thought I was dangerous.
I found that very satisfying.
“There’s a petal on your sleeve,” I said politely, and plucked the blossom from her gown, let it drop to the ground.
Her lips moved, but she didn’t make a sound. And then she turned and walked away.
It was a kind of victory, but I didn’t feel much like a winner.
My heart was still racing, my soul still tired. Mindlessly, I walked all the way to the wall, then all the way across the grounds to the opposite wall. The sky was going pink at the horizon when I reached the palace again; I’d spent most of the day on my pilgrimage, and it hadn’t helped.
I needed out of this damned place. I needed to breathe. I needed Wren. And I needed all of that without guards following me through the stronghold, which seemed inevitable if they knew I was leaving it without the prince at my side.
So I was going over the wall.
Well, not literally over it. A thief never said never, but the wall was too high to scale without proper planning, which I didn’t have.
But I knew how to blend, how to be invisible.
So we’d see if I could make it out of the palace without the prince’s guards being any the wiser.
I bet myself a gold coin that I could do it.
I found my old clothes cleaned, mended, and neatly folded in a trunk in my room.
I pulled them on, tied my hair into its usual braid.
My old boots, Wren’s knife. Out of habit, I picked up the coin purse of princely brocade and nearly tucked it into my tunic.
But I didn’t even want that reminder of the palace.
Not tonight. Instead, I pulled out a few coins and slipped them into my clothes.
“Going for a walk,” I told the guard. It wasn’t Pax, and I got only a mild nod.
If I wasn’t scaling the wall, I’d have to go through the front gate.
I slipped silently through the palace’s passageways, ducking once behind a column as servants carried baskets to the storeroom.
The throne room door was closed, and no light shone through.
Maybe the prince was dining with Catalaya, which I didn’t want to think about.
I ignored the guards inside the palace’s front doors, held up the badge the prince had given me, and walked outside. It was a gorgeous night, with the scent of blossoms in the air.
The palace’s tower now thrusting into the air behind me, I walked down the long bank of stairs that led to the courtyard between the palace and the wall.
Twilight cast long shadows over the palace grounds, but it wasn’t dark enough for me to make a run for the door.
So instead of heading for the guardhouse, I crept to the corner of the palace.
There were flowering trees here, and I ducked beneath one, leaned back against the trunk, and watched the guards patrol.