Chapter 38
The first leg of the tour was a tremendous success.
Nicolas took care to see the commoners well-fed.
Donations of food were sent out to every keep we’d visit through the procession; because of this, we were met with a great deal of enthusiasm all along the road, often announced with instrumental fanfare and a spirit of revelry.
Such an offering helped ensure that we were not a parade of grotesque opulence, but a promise of better days to come.
All along the way, I rode alone with my husband, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was passenger, wedged directly between us.
Nicolas behaved as though he’d been leashed, carefully restraining himself from any act of intimacy beyond a peck here and there.
Oddly enough, his eyes spoke of that same familiar desperation they’d had since the beginning, but no matter how I prodded—and I did prod—I couldn’t get him to unfurl.
Perhaps he’d finally realized what was happening during our nights together.
The way shadows clung to him, how he lost himself so completely.
Florence had said the Lord of Night only unveiled what men hid, but what if Nicolas decided he didn’t like what emerged?
What if he was disgusted by his own abandon?
I shifted closer, letting my knee brush his. He tensed, and that yearning look intensified. This wasn’t disinterest, it was denial, but why? I considered simply asking him, but the words died before I could form them.
“The innkeeper last night claimed that the bog spirits of Thornmarsh steal babies from their cribs,” I commented to break the silence, trying for levity. “They replace them with changelings, or something like that.”
He didn’t smile. “It’s always been a strange place. Perhaps we shouldn’t have come here.”
“What, should we have gone around it?”
Doing so would have added at least a week to the journey, and the baron supposedly had a longstanding history with the Montford family. Adelaide would never see them insulted in such a way.
I touched Nicolas’ hand, and he finally looked at me. “I’m curious to see the flora here, anyway. Wetlands have all manner of beneficial plants.”
“You and your plants.” He rested his head on my shoulder. “Bring Marcy.”
The village proper sprawled before us. Thatched hovels dotted the landscape, connected by raised walkways over ground that never quite dried. Our carriage’s wheels struggled through the mud, eventually halting us.
“This is where we get out, then,” Nicolas sighed, unhooking his arm from mine as he opened the door.
The smell hit me first. Rot and stagnant water made my morning sickness surge. Florence couldn’t bless the pregnancy against such symptoms without alerting the Seekers, who joined us for the tour alongside Taran Banewight.
“It could be worse,” she’d offered. I wasn’t sure how that could possibly be true.
I pressed a lavender sachet to my nose and stepped down, my travelling boots sinking into mud with a loud squelch.
A small party picked their way along the walkways toward us.
I straightened my clothes, already clinging to me in the humidity.
My attention drifted to the peculiar foliage growing in the marsh pools.
Mosquitos danced in my ears, and I had to fight to hear another word from our greeters without swatting erratically.
We followed them to the nicest building in the marsh, a crumbling fort of red brick.
The baron greeted us, standing tall beside a frail and aging baroness.
Little by little, the townspeople trickled out from their hovels to see the fuss.
Either they hadn’t been informed of our impending arrival, or they simply didn’t have the energy to wait about for us.
They should have been eating already. I couldn’t smell anything cooking.
“Baron Ashworth,” Nicolas said with performative kingliness. “Your people look hungry. Our letters expressed that you wouldn’t need to wait for our arrival to feed them.”
“Feed them what?” the baron asked. “I got your letter, but no food ever came. Now I suppose you’ll want us to feed your people, too.”
My brow pinched as Nicolas went on. “I received confirmation from your steward that a shipment arrived. He sent a falcon.”
“We ate the last of our falcons while you were getting married.” His voice held the required respect, but there was no concealing the snarl of his upper lip. “My steward vanished long before that.”
“It sounds like highwaymen might be the culprit,” Quinn chipped in. “In any case, there will be no food for us here, Your Majesty, and we’ll need to put out a bounty on his steward. If he signed the letter, he was likely involved in some sabotage.”
“We’ll arrange a hunt.” Nicolas squared off with the baron. “Your people will eat.”
“And what do you suppose we’ll hunt?” asked Baron Ashworth.
“Whatever it is you’ve been fattening yourself up with.”
I looked between the men with uncertainty. The faint clinking of plate mail alerted me to Marcy’s approach. She took my side, and the baron sized her up for all of a second before his posture deflated. His fingers drummed against his thighs.
“A hunt it is,” the baron said. “It’ll be on foot. Horses struggle in this terrain. Perhaps we’ll happen upon a duck. More likely, some crawfish or frogs.”
“I can help,” I signed to Nicolas. “I’ll forage while I’m out with Marcy.”
He smiled. “My wife would like to explore. Keep her safe, Siere.”
The baron took one step forward. “You cannot mean to send the queen out beyond the marsh? The swamp is no place for a woman.”
Oh, please.
“There are things out there,” he continued.
“Bog spirits?” Nicolas’ lips curled upward. “My wife is free to go where she pleases. I would not cage her here.”
“Witches, Your Highness,” the baron corrected. “And their blasphemous creations.”
That made my husband hesitate. I smiled back at him. No way in hell was I staying alone in this creepy place with the miserable-looking baroness.
“I’ll not risk starving the baby,” I signed. “Let me help.”
He growled under his breath, and relented. “Go on, Alana.”
And that was how I became unfathomably lost in the middle of a swamp at sundown.
My wicker basket was filled with wild leeks, cattail shoots, and violets, but the assortment grew burdensome on my arm as Marcy continued to try and navigate our way out.
“Perhaps orienteering should have been measured during the tourney,” I joked dryly. The fog had come from nowhere, and though we’d followed a relatively straightforward path in our exploration, the way back only drove us deeper into the wetland.
“It’s getting dark,” Marcy replied, that last bit of sun dipping into the horizon. “You should let me carry you. I’ve seen you lose your footing a few times today.”
“I caught myself,” I protested, and Marcy scooped me up anyway. “You may not be showing yet, but there’s still a child in you. No need for unnecessary falls.”
I sighed, moving the basket onto my stomach and looking up at her. “We should have brought a torch.”
“It will be a full moon. Our eyes will adjust.”
And they did, slowly, but the moon only confused things worse. Now every little pool reflected its light, pockets of white in an otherwise black landscape. Far in the distance, wolves howled… strange, for a wetland, but not impossible, I supposed.
We passed another pond, and from its depths, the moonlight almost appeared…floral, somehow. I put a hand to Marcy’s breastplate, patting it.
“Hold on.”
She did. I climbed down, handing her the wicker basket, and neared that strange formation. It was no reflection, but a lotus flower giving off its own radiant light.
I drew a sharp breath. The Silverwood Lotus. This was a rare find, as coveted to the apothecary as quicksilver to the alchemist, and ironically inverse of that; it was said that a tea from the leaves of this flower could leech metals from the bloodstream. It could cure a hatter of his madness.
“Your Majesty, perhaps—” Marcy started, cutting herself off.
There was no deterring me and she knew it, so she let it go with a sigh and sat down beside me.
My hands sank into the water, tracing down its long stem.
I was up to my armpit in the putrid depths when my hand felt mud, and deeper down, the rhizome.
Those distant howls grew nearer.
“We should go.”
“Just a little more.” I carefully worked my fingers lower to the plant’s true root system and slurried the mud around them. “The root hairs have to be intact. The most potent part of the lotus is in its root system. You want to speed this up? Grab some wet moss or marsh grass so I can preserve it.”
“Gods,” Marcy groaned, but she did as I asked. There were more howls, and I wasn’t immune to the bone-deep dread of finding ourselves surrounded by wolves in the dead of night. If the people of Thornmarsh were starving, they probably were, too.
But if I left this plant here, it would be gone by tomorrow. The lotus had an incredibly short lifespan, only a day that it could be harvested before it was worthless…not to mention it only bloomed at night, and I probably wouldn’t even be able to find it again if it did live another day.
And if every noblewoman who ever used ceruse was poisoned, then this was their means of salvation.
I removed the lotus from the water and swiftly wrapped it in Marcy’s offering of moss, but her attention was elsewhere. She rose to her feet, drawing her blade. “We’re surrounded.”