15. Lope
15
Lope
The night is all I know.
It is an old friend with her blade upon my throat.
It is a warm blanket and a shroud.
When the cricket song dies, so, too, will I.
E ach day, I went to the king’s gardens, searching for what I knew must be there: Shadows. The maps I’d drawn indicated that the Shadows had come from Le Chateau, and we had fought so many just beyond the gates. Besides all that, I trusted my senses. When I walked the gardens, I found all the things I had kept watch for at the countess’s manor—scratches in trees, the faint stench of smoke and rot, the lack of any birdsong. I wanted to find a Shadow, to hold up its hide to the king—if such a thing were possible—and say, How do you explain this? But my searches were fruitless.
After several hours in the gardens and then in the library, I finally returned to sleep, each night hoping dearly that I’d finally see Ofelia. We seemed never to cross paths, save for in the dead of night, when she’d rouse me from sleep as she crept in from a party, her hair mussed, her gait clumsy. She’d drop onto her bed and let out a contented sigh before falling fast asleep. I’d take comfort in her presence for a few moments before sleep overtook me, too.
And here I was, still, wandering the gardens in my endless search. Above the tall, neatly trimmed trees lining the horizon, evening light burned gold. I kept my hand against the hilt of the penknife in my pocket.
That second day, when the guard had stopped us in the garden, when we had gotten too close to some secret... she and I had been near a bosquet to the gods. The strange one—the one with only a door standing alone within a pavilion. I rounded a dozen twists and turns to find the bosquet, or any landmark, but I only came across rose gardens and groves, the canal, an obscene number of fountains... I’d lost my way. Again. I sighed and turned back onto the main gravel drive, following a long, skinny path flanked with trellises and hedges.
What I wouldn’t give for someone beside me, to help me with my search. If Carlos were here...
Chevaleresse Beautemps back at the barracks had always warned me that wounds of the heart were very, very slow to heal. That some never did properly heal.
I tried to imagine Carlos beside me. What he’d say.
He would laugh. He’d lean his head against my shoulder and watch the setting sun above us. The pain won’t stop, but it’ll change. And even so, you’ll remember me. I am indelible.
Then I smiled, in spite of myself.
No , I could hear him say, I would never use the word indelible . But unforgettable , certainly .
But the space by my side was still empty. My heart ached. With Ofelia gone, the only conversations I held were with ghosts.
A loud scream split the summer air. The voice of a man I didn’t recognize.
With a flick of my hand, the penknife was drawn. To my right came the sound of crunching gravel, a hissing sound, and metal clanging against rocks. Sounds I knew.
At a run, I followed the direction of the voice, the dying sun casting strange shapes through the hedgerows. In a small grove near a row of marble statues, a knight was on his knees. And there, out of my nightmares, the sign I had been waiting for—three Shadows, taller than I was, surrounded him, their claws wrenching his arms and head backward. The man weakly tried to bat a rapier at the creatures, but when a Shadow’s claws twisted and pierced through the gap in his armor at his shoulder, he let out a cry, his hand seizing and sending the blade clattering to the earth.
My chance.
I sprinted across the drive and first drove the penknife into the head of the Shadow inhaling the soldier’s breath. The monster wailed and disappeared in a cloud of dark vapor, and the penknife fell. In the next blink, I had swept up the rapier. I reveled in the feeling—that I was complete again.
With their brother freshly killed, the two Shadows turned away from the man they’d chosen as their prey, dropping the crumpled form on the ground. I ran backward, luring them away from the man—or the body. Just as I’d hoped, the two of them bounded toward me, barreling on all fours, the shape of men, but the movement and swiftness of nightmares.
One leapt at me, and I twisted out of the way, heart racing. Half of me was thrilled by the hunt, and the rest was consumed by white-hot anger; utter loathing for the liars at Le Chateau who claimed these Shadows did not exist, and for these monsters, coming into our world and taking our lives away. Carlos. Other knights. Other children. Other innocents.
To my left, a Shadow cried, a hissing, rasping warning just before it swiped vicious claws at me. I dodged out of the way, sweeping my foot through the black vapor of its own legs as I moved. It collapsed to the earth. I had mere seconds before its legs would evanesce again. I surged to my feet and beat my boot as hard as I could into its head. It vanished with a soft crackling sound, like a dry leaf.
But I wasn’t through.
After years of training, my senses had become attuned to the presence of Shadows. It was their earthy, smoky smell, and the faint scrape of their claws against the gravel drive. And something else, something inexplicable that let me know a Shadow was near. If I had been standing on the center of a clock’s face, toward midnight, I would have felt the monster somewhere around seven o’clock.
Swift as a snake, without conscious thought, I took the rapier and twisted behind me to strike the Shadow perfectly through its gaping mouth. It groaned, a hellish death rattle, and then it, too, bled into smoke.
I wiped my brow and glanced about the grove for any signs of other straggling Shadows in the dusky light. Just like on that evening at the Bouchillon manor, Shadows had emerged before they were due.
The perimeter seemed clear. With the sword in hand, I strode back to the soldier, lying dazed on the ground. Thank the gods, not dead.
“Can you hear me?” I asked as I stepped closer.
“Yes.” His voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
I offered the pale-faced man a hand.
He took it, groaning as he stood. Blood rolled down his temples in streams from where the Shadows had wrenched his head back. He wiped his forehead against the metal of his bracer and frowned at me. “You aren’t a civilian, are you?” he asked, his voice still strained.
“Not quite.” I kept my fingers tightly wrapped against the hilt of the rapier. “My company was hired by a noble family to keep them safe from the Shadows. It has been my charge since I was twelve.”
“Gods above,” he mumbled. “No wonder you know your way around that blade.” The soldier reached out a gloved hand. “I’ll be needing that back.”
I reluctantly returned the rapier to its owner. He slipped it back into its scabbard and then tipped his head down toward a lane of hedges, bright with torchlight. “Come, I owe you my thanks. The beasts don’t come near that spot. There’s too much light.”
Finally. Finally, someone who looked the Shadows in the eyes and acknowledged their existence. Finally, someone with a modicum of decency. I felt gratitude and kinship with him, as my fellow knight. Someone sensible, at last. In this new world of manners and dancing and lies, perhaps he would provide me with some truth.
Still, I swept up the penknife from the dirt.
The man laughed. “Very fair, Mademoiselle...?”
“La Caballera Lope de la Rosa.”
“Caballera de la Rosa.” He bowed his bloodstained head to me. “Just Guillem will do. I’m only a soldier. I’ve served His Majesty for ten years now.”
Ten years. Ten years of history in this place—of understanding the Shadows here.
With the knife still at my side, I followed at his heels. “You must know much about the Shadows.”
“About the same as you do. No one knows much about them. Just how to kill them.”
I shook my head, marching faster to keep up with his long strides. “No, there’s more than that. I have been charting the paths they take. I have been counting them. They always came from the north—from this very area.”
Guillem raised a brow at me. “What are you implying?”
My cheeks burned. “I—I don’t know; I’m only asking a question. These creatures... they haven’t been around forever. And sometimes they increase in number for no discernible reason.”
The soldier sighed and stood beneath the shelter of a tall, burning torch. “Mark me, the king does not favor talk of such things—”
“Why does he not?”
“The king represents holiness and prosperity. He cannot be associated with the Shadows.”
“But they are here ! They are on his grounds !” My hands balled into fists; I wanted to grab a sword or run or do something . But this place, this ridiculous place, was all about restraint , even while chaos reigned outside.
I exhaled heavily. “Everyone dances around the truth here, and I’m asking you, soldier to soldier, to be honest with me. We have a common enemy.” I pointed down the allée, back toward the scene of the attack. “For decades we soldiers have been bandaging a wound that will just keep bleeding unless we find a reason why . These monsters have been around since your childhood, haven’t they?”
Guillem gave a stiff nod.
“I cannot allow another generation of children to grow up fearing them.”
“Caballera,” he said, his voice soft, exasperated, “if you swear on your life to repeat none of this, I will tell you everything I know.”
I bowed low, offering my neck. “I swear it.”
He tapped his hand against my shoulder, accepting my vow. “All right. They come at night, every night. They vanish by sunrise. I was hired in 1650. The queen mother’s funeral was to be held at Le Chateau, and they needed more guards in the garden. The place was swarming with monsters then. They didn’t let the courtiers outside at all.” Guillem squeezed his eyes shut, like I did when I tried hard to remember. I wondered if his memories were painted in red, like mine.
“The past few months have been the hardest. There was a flood of them a couple of months ago. The king was out of sorts. He wouldn’t let anyone into the garden. He had us patrolling round the clock. It was around the time that the king’s favorite singer had fled the court. The king tried to keep things calm, but people were worried for her.”
The singer. “Her name was... Francoise?” I asked, remembering what Eglantine had told Ofelia and me.
“That’s right. She went missing, and we were suddenly patrolling the gardens night and day. If you ask me, it’s almost like the king hoped he’d find her wandering the gardens instead of acknowledging that she’d left to be an opera diva.”
“And since then?” I prompted.
He gestured back to where the Shadows had attacked him. “Well, now. Things have been unusually mad. Started around the time the Hall of Illusions appeared. The king demanded three soldiers in rotation to guard the new hall, even though we’ve been swarmed out here.” Guillem nodded toward me. “We could always use another knight among our ranks. I can recommend you to the king.”
A lump rose in my throat. I wanted nothing to do with him .
Besides, my head was spinning. My heart was yearning for quiet. For answers.
“No, thank you,” I said, and a beautiful, honey-sweet thrill swept through me at the word— no . A decision, my decision, all my own.
How strange. Freedom, choice, used to be so impossible and so frightening, so big . For just a brief moment, I got to grip the reins of my life and pull in the direction I wanted to go.
It felt good .
With a final bow, I left him standing, speechless, in the golden circle of torchlight.
I had a suspicion about the king’s favorite singer.
I barreled into the library, marching directly for the ledger that Eglantine had shown us. The last drops of orange sunlight trickled into the library, leaving only small pockets of warm, golden candlelight.
Bringing it to my desk, I flipped through the pages, past the reference of Ofelia’s mother’s arrival. And then further back in time, back and back. The rumors had mentioned that Francoise had vanished about a month ago. My finger ran down the column of names starting from the first day of the past month. I scanned each one.
LeNotre, Gonzales, Villiers, Moire...
Dozens of names, but no “Francoise de la Valliere.”
I searched the list one more time. But I did not doubt my senses. My heart quickened.
Her departure had not been noted. She could have left in secret, I supposed, but the king’s guards at every gate made that near impossible. The other possibility... she had truly vanished.
“Mademoiselle Lope?”
I whirled around at the sound of my name, my penknife already drawn.
Eglantine, the librarian. She had largely kept to herself each night I was here, busying herself with a novel or by tidying up her papers over at her desk.
She stood a few paces between me and the double doors now, a wry smile on her lips as she observed me. “I’ve been looking for my penknife,” she said.
I breathed again. “My apologies, madam. I—I am not used to being defenseless.”
“I understand.” She kept her gaze upon the knife—which I had yet to relinquish. “This evening, I peeked at the books you studied so voraciously. I thought I’d find poetry and plays and sonnets, but no. Books about the king. Books about monsters. Books about the Underworld.”
It sounded so absurd when all those things were strung together. She took a step closer. My mouth grew dry.
“Your friend is the daughter of this very king,” Eglantine murmured. “I want you to tell me truthfully. Just one time, then I’ll never speak of it again. I’ll not tell a soul. What do you think of King Léo?”
I had been trained to preserve my life at all costs. I had been raised to be honorable and noble.
But above all, I had sworn to protect Ofelia.
“Why did you mention Lady Ofelia?” I asked. What sort of test was this?
“I want to know where your loyalty lies.”
An older, more confident knight might have laughed at how boldly the librarian spoke to a trained soldier. But it was spoken with the candor I had been longing for since my arrival at Le Chateau.
So I answered truthfully.
“My loyalty lies with Ofelia,” I said. “Not the king.”
A smile spread across her face. “Then we have much to discuss.”