Chapter 10
Roderick said he was planning to store the pixie dust somewhere safe, and I encouraged it, hoping that when he did store it at whatever safe location he had, I’d be able to follow and find where my sister had gone.
But Peter stomped on that idea, saying that it needed to be kept close so they could keep an eye on it.
“How did they get so much?” I asked, still in awe at the size of the bag. It was about the size of my whole torso. “I was barely able to collect a teaspoon when I tried. You’d have to cage pixies and collect the dust that way or something.”
Peter shot me a quick look. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, okay?”
Roderick let out a booming laugh. “That’s sound advice, boy! Now, don’t you two have a knitting booth to open up today?” He pointed at me and Lochlan.
“No,” Lochlan answered, arms folded across his chest. “The market’s closed today.”
“Why?” Peter asked. “I thought they were open almost every day.”
“And they are. But today’s the annual Day of Mourning,” Lochlan reminded him. “That’s why the roads were so empty and why they were moving the caravan today, remember? They wanted to do it on a less crowded day.”
Roderick clapped a massive hand against his forehead. “That’s right, I’d forgotten.” He opened the bag of pixie dust again so the golden glow illuminated his scarred and bearded face. “Take the day off, lads. We’ve done plenty for now.”
“It would be a good day to take the pixie dust somewhere safe,” I suggested. “Is there a place you can keep important things like that until we need it?”
“I have a few ideas,” Roderick said with a grin. “But Peter’s right. We can’t move it quite yet. There’s time, and I’m tired from that little heist, aren’t you?”
“No.” Even though I hadn’t slept much the night before, the hospital bed had provided better quality sleep than what I was used to, and I didn’t feel tired at all.
“Me neither,” Peter said immediately.
“I am,” Lochlan put in as he picked up his knitting. “After everything we did, I say we take the day off.”
“I’m not tired,” I insisted.
“How about we go to a cemetery together?” Peter answered with a wicked smile. “Let these two old men take a nap. Do you have anyone you want to pay your respects to?”
A cold hand gripped my heart. Until that moment, I’d never thought to look for my family names in a graveyard, but once the thought occurred, I couldn’t shake it. Why hadn’t I been combing through the graveyards?
“Yeah, I want to go look for someone,” I said. “But we can’t go looking like this. You’re a fugitive and I just broke out of a hospital. People could be looking for us.”
Peter’s mouth twitched. “No problem.” He strode into one of the back rooms, then returned with a bundle of fabric that he shook out to reveal a long black dress and a veil.
His face was momentarily visible before he draped the dark face covering across his nose and mouth, then pulled the veil over his face.
“Who would ever question a widow in mourning? There’s one for you, too. ” He held the other bundle out to me.
Roderick chuckled deep in his throat. “For a baby, you sure are a sly one.”
“Gil’s the baby, not me. I’m of age,” Peter reminded us.
My jaw jutted out in defiance as I pulled on the dress over my tunic and breeches. “I’m almost fourteen. That’s old.”
Roderick scoffed. “I doubt you even have hair on your chest yet.”
“I don’t need to prove anything,” I said mulishly.
“See? Point proven.”
I finished pulling the long black gloves up to my elbows and draping the veil over my face. “Where did you get all this?”
“It belonged to my wife,” Roderick said gruffly.
Peter paused. “I’m sorry. Would you prefer we don’t use it?”
Roderick hitched a smile back onto his face. “I’d prefer you did. She ran off and left me long ago. I wouldn’t care if you burned everything she touched.”
There was an awkward pause while Peter and I looked at each other. I could see through my own veil well enough, but I couldn’t see Peter’s face beneath his.
“Here,” Lochlan said, handing each of us a delicate knitted handkerchief. “No mourning widow would be complete without something to dab her tears away.”
Peter dipped his handkerchief into the kitchen’s water bucket and pressed a hand dramatically to his chest, hobbling along with his back bent.
“Thank you, my dear boy,” he crooned in a falsetto voice from beneath the veil that sounded a little like Auntie Mable.
“Come along, Agatha. We must be on our way.”
On the summer solstice each year, Berkway took a day to remember and honor the dead, and the cemetery courtyard was crowded with black-clad figures, all of them somber and slow-moving as they came to pay their respects.
Bells tolled softly in the distance, each sound vibrating through the stone path beneath my feet.
Incense burned at the front gates and we walked through the haze.
“Have you found who you’re looking for, dearie?” Peter said in that same croaky, old woman voice.
“Not yet,” I answered in a similar tone. “Help me look for a Nora or a Brielle.”
We combed through the entire cemetery but didn’t find either name, and Peter, who never seemed to grow weary, suggested looking in another cemetery. It took an hour to walk there, and when we arrived, we found it crowded as well.
I looked at each gravestone, memorizing each name and birth date before moving on, terrified that I might find my sister’s or mother’s name, but there was nothing.
I wanted to be relieved but couldn’t manage it.
There had to be dozens or hundreds more graveyards all around Berkway, and I didn’t want to find my family’s name on a gravestone.
I wanted to find them all alive and well.
A gaggle of several wealthy-looking young women were clustered in a group near one of the gravestones, where one girl, perhaps sixteen years old, was crying.
“Where do you think their parents are?” Peter whispered to me.
“They attend Rosehaven Hall,” I whispered back. “You know, that elite boarding school for rich girls. They all have the same coat of arms on their bags.”
“I’ve heard of that place. I was told it was a fancy finishing school, but that’s about it. How do you know what their coat of arms looks like?” Peter asked curiously, tilting his head so he could get a better view of the bags.
“I saw it on a carriage,” I said. “What about you, Peter? Are you looking for anyone here?”
Peter shrugged. “No. I don’t have anyone that I care about who has died. I’ll help you look for your people, though.” We slowly made our way through the graveyard, where people were placing flowers or small trinkets in front of the headstones and murmuring a few words.
With each new gravestone, I desperately searched for the names. Sometimes my stomach would swoop unpleasantly as I saw a name that began with an N or B, but inevitably it was a different name, and the one time I saw another Nora, the headstone had a death date marked some seventy years ago.
My stomach gave a thunderous growl, and Peter gently bumped my shoulder. “Hungry much?”
“I don’t have any money for food right now,” I said, realization dawning on me. “I left my money pouch in my other clothes. I didn’t know where to put it in a dress.” There was no way I was going to go to the Syndicate’s safehouse to make a withdrawal from my account with Peter in tow.
“I left mine, too,” Peter said. “But there is already plenty of wealth all around us.” He nodded at the mourners.
I eyed the gemstone-laden bracelets and necklaces that were weighing down some wrists and necks and let out a breath of wicked laughter. “It would be a shame to leave without a souvenir,” I said.
Peter chuckled. “My thoughts exactly. Grief always makes people careless. We don’t need much and don’t want to attract attention. Just pick one target.”
I couldn’t resist the slow grin that spread across my face as I looked around, mentally cataloguing everything.
There was an emerald ring on the second finger of one woman’s left hand with a loose fit.
Another bore a gold signet ring with a family crest. It would be too easily traceable if it was sold and too much hassle to melt down.
I curled my lip at the pearl necklace on one young woman’s throat. It was too tight.
I shuffled forward with the other mourners, head bowed and shoulders curved inward.
My short stature worked in my favor. No one paid much attention to a small, elderly widow swallowed by black cloth and dabbing at her tears.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Peter feigning a fall, and when someone stooped to help him up, Peter’s hand clutched at them, supposedly to steady himself, and I just barely caught a flash as he pocketed their bracelet.
I turned away and kept scanning the crowd. I would only need a few coins, but if there was a good target, I wouldn’t say no to something better.
A few of the girls from the Rosehaven Hall group had wandered off to another section of the graveyard and we got a better glimpse of the crying girl.
She had long, black hair braided back from her red eyes and tear-streaked face, and her friend was squatting down next to her, rubbing her back and speaking quietly.
“That’s Princess Tess.” Peter had come up behind me and was so close he was nearly breathing in my ear.
He nodded at the friend beside the crying girl.
A sapphire bracelet gleamed on the princess’s wrist, tantalizingly close.
It didn’t even have a difficult clasp. My eyes lifted to her throat, where a heavy silver necklace hung, just as tempting as the bracelet.
What that princess needs is a comforting hug from an old woman, I thought. If there was anyone who wouldn’t miss a bit of jewelry, it was royalty. It was more than I needed, but it was practically begging to be taken.