14. Laude
Chapter 14
Laude
“Have you told Beatriz about your upcoming nuptials with Jaime?” Queen Cottia asked.
“No, I haven’t.” My curls sprang into a frizzy halo around the edges of my vision when I shook my head. I tried to wrestle them back with no success.
The sun beat down over the garden with the type of heat that instantly produced rivers of sweat. Thank the Ancient One that Queen Cottia and I didn’t have an audience to smell the aroma drifting off my body, not hers—I couldn’t smell anything from her but the flowers she handed me to put in the basket I carried.
“Laude, why don’t we go to my special garden?” Queen Cottia cut several roses and laid them in my basket. The last few days I’d spent with Queen Cottia while Beatriz took lessons had been full of pruning plants and plucking weeds. This was new. No one entered Queen Cottia’s personal grounds, and I mean no one.
“Yes, of course, I’ve always wanted to go into your garden and have thought about sneaking in several times but…” I swallowed the rest of my words at the raise of the queen’s eyebrows. “But yes, I’d love to accompany you.”
Queen Cottia straightened her back into her royal posture and pursed her lips. “Follow me.”
We left the rainbow of colorful flowers—so pleasing to the eye and my favorite part of the estate—as I trailed her along the snaking path into a small section with a stone barrier and metal spikes at the top of the wall. The queen slipped a key out of her gardening apron and fitted it into the lock. The metal gate opened with a squeak which elicited my own tiny squeal. All I could see from this angle was a wall of leaves just beyond the gate and more plant beds lining the walls.
“Now, Laude.” She propped open the gate with her body and gestured for me to enter. “I need you to understand that this—”
I skipped onto the stone path, ready to see if all my guesses proved correct. Did she hide a statue of a past love or have man-eating plants inside?
The queen shut the gate behind me and twisted the key, locking us inside. “Like I was saying, this has much to do with our pasts.”
“What do you mean?” My feet stumbled over a stone while my gaze still searched for something, anything that looked suspicious, but everything inside this stone prison was merely an uglier version of outside the gate. There were a few dull flowers that could pass as weeds.
“I know you and Cosme have gotten close these few months and that my son keeps several secrets from his papá and me, but I am no fool.”
Disappointment sunk into my belly, like a kid opening a candy jar only to find dust. I bit my bottom lip.
Queen Cottia put her hand on my shoulder, drawing my attention to her. “You don’t need to tell me how Jaime arrives each month or any of Cosme’s many methods of obtaining information.” She rolled up her sleeves even more. “But trust me when I say that I care about you and will miss you. I also believe Beatriz would like the opportunity to enjoy your last month here before your wedding.”
Tears built along my lash line, partly because Queen Cottia was right, I should tell Beatriz about my coming nuptials. “It’s not just about saying goodbye.”
“Please do explain.”
My gaze shot to the powder-blue sky, the dark-gray wall, and a strange plant with berries I’d never seen before. Giddel would soon no longer be my home, and yet it had always held my history, one I didn’t know. Maybe asking her the one thing I’d wondered all these years would prove a better revelation than this garden. “Why did you keep me?”
Queen Cottia flinched. Emotion shivered along every line on her face which broke the royal veneer she kept in place like a shield.
“Someone approached me while I…” What could I say about visiting Himzo? Saying I visited would mean we certainly had a portal and that it was in the palace. “Went out for a walk with Jaime.” That wasn’t a lie and didn’t reveal too much, right?
Her mouth twitched in the corner. “You keep your secrets but ask for mine?”
“I’m asking for my secrets, the ones about me.”
She exhaled and nodded. “What if I told you, it’s better that you don’t know all the details?”
“Never mind. It was a silly question.” I spun on my heels, needing to distract myself, and made it two strides before remembering I was trapped. Though she’d never said that I was some child born out of wedlock, I knew the truth. The rules in Giddel hadn’t changed, and no maids could promise themselves to another because of the rules—the same rules that kept Beatriz from Zichri, except hers were a different set of regulations. What I didn’t want to admit was that the story I imagined in my head painted a sad but beautiful picture. The real story might shatter my illusions.
The queen put on thick gloves and rooted up the plant with strange berries. She walked it to a small shed along the back wall, still not answering my question.
So, I folded my arms, dropping a few flowers from my basket and letting the scarlet roses plummet onto gray slabs of stone. I pictured my daydreams. Mamá had always been a vivacious redhead with flowing curls that caught a countryman’s attention, possibly a knight’s. They fell in love and forced a secret wedding where they exchanged their most valuable possessions, certainly a hair lock on her part. Until one day, her love died at sea, and Mamá held her strength just long enough to deliver me. When she saw my face, her heart broke at never being able to share her daughter with the love of her life.
I swiped my cheeks at remembering the tale that had comforted me so many nights alone in my bed.
“Laude.” Queen Cottia peeked her head out of the doorway to the small shelter nestled into the back of the space. “I need to show you something.” She waved for me to enter the tiny cottage.
This. This had to be what she was hiding from the world. I edged closer, the basket swinging on my arm, and drifted into the shadows of the small space. Four walls held up a shallow-pitched roof. The light from the lone window shone onto a worktable with all the tools of an herbalist neatly placed onto shelves on the side: a mortar, a pestle, jars, a scale, tea strainers, a tea kettle, bowls, and scissors.
As I turned, I caught sight of a small oven set on one wall with ashes on the hearth. The back wall held shelves to the ceiling full of who knew what. Bunches of herbs hung above us in different states of drying.
“Excuse me.” The queen pushed open a narrow door to a back room that seemed to bleed shadows into this first room. Several seconds later, she returned with a bottle marked with a quick hand, and she poured it into a dark vial with the root of the plant she’d just extracted. She squeezed the berries from the plant using a metal tool, almost too careful to avoid the substance. The concoction was marked with a moon on the corkscrew, and she walked it to the back room again.
When she returned, she had a small box of unpolished wood. “Let’s take a walk. The thing I have to show you is not here.”
“What did you make?”
She met my gaze with her chin high and a dark note to her voice. “Poison.”
My spine shivered. Why in all Agata would we need that? But I snapped my mouth shut, needing to keep secrets as much as possible and too dumbfounded not to mess up.
“Laude, there is much I have to tell you and something I must ask.” The queen wiped her hands on a small towel and edged around me. “First, let me take you somewhere you might want to see.”
In silence, we took the route through the flowerbeds and grove to the cliffs where a spiraling walkway lined the edges and eventually led to the beach. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she wanted absolute privacy because the boundary of the property had an eerie chill to it, as if a ward to keep people out was placed there, which was a possibility.
Each of our steps down the rough-hewn stone stairs cut from the side of the cliff echoed, and the surf roared as it crashed against the boulders in the small inlet. Queen Cottia screwed up her lips tightly which seemed strange since we tended to keep conversation going—or maybe I normally kept a steady flow of chatter.
Queen Cottia reached the bottom of the stairs where the trail split. A left turn would take us to the beach, and a right turn dead ended at a gray slab of nothing. We turned right and walked toward the sheer cliff face. It shouldn’t have surprised me with all her strange behavior up to this point. She held up a hand, as if she were about to declare something of great importance. Then, she touched the cliff wall, searching.
The grooves of brown-gray rock appeared natural enough, but when she touched a low spot, the stone glowed orange. Something clicked, and the slit of a dark doorway opened.
A breath caught in my throat.
She looked over her shoulder with a pleased smirk twisted at the edges of her mouth. “Dear, will you light your finger?”
I sparked the warm flame, too curious to ask questions.
We entered. My light revealed a cave like any other with pebbles below and teeth-like rocks above. Queen Cottia searched the walls and grabbed a lantern hanging from a metal hook. As I lit it, the door closed behind us.
With more light, I caught the glint of glass and more metal hooks on the cave wall. A narrow path zigzagged between boulders, and we continued until a thick wooden door with a metal latch appeared to our right.
Did any of the servants know this existed? Was this a secret held by the royal family alone? My toes danced from the revelation of so many hidden places in a day: the garden and now this. Though I wished she’d explain more about all the secrecy and the poison.
She opened the door to a room full of chests and sacks. Sets of cots lined the back of the space, allowing for eight people to sleep. A dark wooden table was pushed up against the stone wall to the left, and a desk hid underneath smaller boxes to the right. The queen pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit at the table. She perched on the wooden seat beside my indicated place. The intensity with which she searched my expression made me squirm.
I sneezed and rubbed my nose with the fabric on my sleeve. The tickle in my nose didn’t go away, nor did my desire to rip open each latch to discover what these chests held.
After several long minutes, Queen Cottia said, “These trails lead into the palace as a safe escape for the royal family should we need it. They go far into Giddel and contain parts of our history of which most have no knowledge.”
“Like what?” I danced on my toes with excitement.
A slow smile crept onto Queen Cottia’s face. “My journals and something your mamá gave me, but I need you to promise me that you will tell me the full truth and hold nothing back.” Her dark brown eyes were like pools of knowledge. She’d surely tell the difference between my truths and half-truths.
“Yes, I promise.” I swallowed down every word I’d been holding back from Beatriz, Jaime, and even Cosme.
“Good. I believe you. Now, sit please, you’re making me nervous, and I need you to understand my story in order to understand your mamá’s.”
Upon me finally taking a seat, the queen rose, crossed the room, and extracted two smaller boxes about large enough to hold a well-folded dress.
“Are these my mamá’s?” My voice squeaked.
She nodded and returned to her spot. “This was all that we brought to the palace when we moved.”
“She came with you?”
“Remember, I wasn’t born a princess and even though my papá had a title, he died and left his family paupers. Having a powerful gift was my ruin.” She opened her box and pulled out a small portrait of a family: a refined man with a large mustache, a staunch woman, and two small girls. The elder girl came up to her mamá’s elbow and had the same burning eyes as the woman before me.
“This is your family.” Tears gathered in my throat at the emotion jerking in Queen Cottia’s face.
“Yes, right before Papá passed and Whyzer Patro arrived. Have I told you about him?”
“No.”
“I suppose I prefer to believe the whyzer dead.” The coldness in her statement sent chills dancing up my spine. “But he trained me to use my healing gift to kill, and I was good at it.”
My mouth fell open.
She swiped her cheek and inhaled sharply. “King Ezer, Cosme, and Beatriz know about my past, but only King Ezer knows about my connection to Whyzer Patro. The whyzer used to hear from the Ancient One until he sought power from other sources. You see, he didn’t just want to give others their gifts and use his abilities to create illusion. He sought to control every power to eventually make a better world. That’s at least what he told himself, so he didn’t have to look at the man he had become.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes, my dear, he is very much alive and has set himself against us.”
Fear struck my heart, and I shifted. “You said you’d tell me about Mamá.”
“She also was his slave. Anyone who served him was branded, but she wasn’t because of her ability. Instead, he used people against her.” Queen Cottia tugged at her collar near her shoulder and slipped the neck of her dress down. She twisted around to reveal a marking on her upper arm. The skin-colored marking was raised and shimmered upon closer inspection. “To this day, I can’t be near the whyzer, or he could still take control of me if I stop seeking the Ancient One. King Ezer maintains the wards that keep the whyzer out.”
“Did he do something to Mamá? Was she also powerful?”
“She could turn her entire body into a flame, but she rarely had occasion to do such a thing.” She chuckled to herself. “We spent many days together, and I was able to steal her away when I met Prince Ezer.”
“Why do I think there’s more to the story than what you’re saying?” I propped my elbow on the table and set my chin in my palm. Oh, how I couldn’t get enough of a good love story, and Queen Cottia and King Ezer’s danced in my dreams.
“Laude, we don’t have all day and night, and you have yet to share what happened to make Princess Monserrat rush out of the palace. Don’t think I didn’t notice.” One of her eyebrows arched with suspicion.
“Ehhh…about that.” I panted, trying to spill every detail. But my lungs had no more breath in them at my attempt to share anything related to the letters. My throat constricted as if a snake had wrapped itself around my neck, suffocating me.
“Stop. I’ve seen this before.” Queen Cottia touched my hand and warmth seeped from her skin and loosened the hold on my throat. “It’s as I thought; Whyzer Patro put a curse on the words.”
I gasped for air. “The last re—” My tongue swelled in my mouth, making breathing impossible.
“Stop.” Again, she released a healing warmth through her touch, loosening my tongue. “He finally has the relic he sought. I understand. It also means that the King of Himzo is compromised. Is there a new keeper?”
“What do you mean?”
“A keeper of the relics? It was the King of Himzo, but he’s bedridden. Someone is always bestowed charge over the relics, and they’re meant to protect them to their death. We have a war on our hands that is bigger than the strife between Giddel and Himzo.”
I gnawed on my bottom lip, remembering Cosme and Minerva carrying relics through the palace. “This confuses me, but there is a ma—”
She poured a hot dollop of her energy through my hand, as if she kept my airways opened despite the curse. “A what?”
“A map,” I managed to croak.
She let go of me, and I drank in the air.
“Laude, will Whyzer Patro be at the ball in Aracibel?”
I shrugged.
“Did he call himself the Black Knight?”
My eyes shot wide open as I nodded.
“Does the map lead to the last relic?” She clenched her hands into fists.
“Yes.” I quivered.
She stood in one vicious movement. “Let me think on this.”
“What of this box and Mamá and even”—I bit my lip—“my papá?”
“I shall never name your miserable papá for your sake.” She sat again and let her regal mask slip over the hot emotions straining on her face. “I’m sorry. You must understand that I have spent your life keeping you close but hidden. You will be happiest marrying Jaime, slipping away to a quiet village, and living your life away from court.”
“Is Whyzer Patro my papá?”
“ Cielos , no! All you need to know is that your mamá loved you and had a plan to escape so you would be safe. I couldn’t send you off once she passed.” Wet streaks dribbled to her chin. “She loved you, and I do too. Promise me you won’t go prodding for more answers. Being away from here will be best for you.”
I ripped open the box, unconvinced of her notion. Inside, a woven white and purple cloth laid atop a small wooden box, along with a sketch of curly-haired people. The twelve of them all sat stoic with the same nose, ears, or eyes, as me, and many had my freckles. So many faces like mine stared at me. Now, I sobbed. All that I had been missing. These were my family, blood, and flesh. How many aunts and uncles and grandparents?
Queen Cottia patted my shoulder in comfort.
“Are they alive?” I hiccupped.
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they?”
She shook her head. “Laude, you can search for them. Gema, your mamá, believed some of them still lived in a northern village past Himzo. I can’t remember the name, but if I saw it on a map, I’d recognize it.”
I sniffled with a full heart and hope that filled me as if I slurped a spoonful of honey. Even so, Queen Cottia’s reaction to the question about my papá didn’t feel right. “Does anyone else know who I am? Like I told you, Prince Hugo said he knew my origins.”
“Keep away from that prince. He’s vying for the crown and will look for any weakness in his brothers.” Queen Cottia lifted the lantern and got to her feet. “Will you promise me something?”
I clutched the cloth to my chest, fingering the soft fabric as if I could form some connection to my mamá.
“Laude, will you help me rid the seas of Whyzer Patro?” A somber expression draped over her like a dark veil.
My head cocked to the side. “What are you asking of me?”
She drew nearer. “Please understand that we won’t have another opportunity like this, and he will approach you. If we know his whereabouts, we can put an end to all the pain he causes.”
“Are you asking me to—what’s the word? Are you asking me to assassinate the whyzer?” A cold sweat broke across my forehead.
Queen Cottia and I locked eyes for a beat.
“Yes.” Her voice cut through the darkness. The lamplight on the table flickered as if it trembled at her response. “You don’t have to say yes today. But please consider helping me. If the whyzer knows you exist, you will get no peace. I’m certain that he will try to bargain with you or simply take you and make you do his will.”
“Why would he care about someone like me?”
She turned her face away from me. A shadow darkened the slope of her nose and danced across her cheek.
“Please…” I didn’t want to beg the queen, but how could she make such a request of me without an explanation?
“We should head back to the palace before people begin to worry. Beatriz’s lessons won’t last all day.” She got to her feet, patted off her dress, and collected the bottle of poison she’d brought with her.
“Is your garden full of poisons? Is that how you want me to … you know?”
“Yes, and yes, but you’ll need training first.” She clutched the deadly bottle. “You’re going to learn all the poisons at your disposal and their antidotes. I will teach you how to prepare your own.”
“Can I keep my mamá’s box?” I sifted through the various items and even found a familiar looking pocket watch. “What’s this? I’ve seen this before.”
She snatched the golden pocket watch. “Sorry, I thought this would be the best place to hide it.”
“But what is it? Whose is it?”
With one quick motion, she looped it around her neck and straightened her spine. “Hide the box in your room. I planned to give it to you in a couple of years, but I think you might need it sooner.”
“You promised me the truth, and I shared everything, and I mean everything, I could possibly have told you.”
She grabbed my shoulders and brought me up to my feet with a strength I hadn’t felt from her before. “How much are you willing to sacrifice to free yourself from an enemy who will never stop hunting me and possibly you?”
Heat shot to my temples, and my thoughts raged at her wanting me to agree to such a foul plan, and with little to no explanation. She couldn’t be serious. I stood and flipped the box lid shut. “Why would he want me? I’m nobody special. Maybe I’m someone worth attention to Jaime, Beatriz, and you, but to a whyzer?”
“Darling, you are very innocent and need to learn to defend yourself because the truth destines you for greatness.” She heaved a sigh as if it cost her to speak. “You have one thing he can’t buy or threaten out of someone.”
“What is that?”
A sad smile tipped up her cheeks. “A royal birthright.”