The Hedgewitch Queen (4 page)

I lost count. I looked for one face, and did not find it.

I followed the trail of destruction. Not one of the Princesse’s attendants remained alive.

Except me.

The door to Lisele’s inner receiving-room was hacked open as well, and the Comtesse Rochburre lay across it, fearfully wounded and with her eagle eyes closed. I stepped over her, miserably determined to find Lisele.
Please
, I begged, not knowing which god I pleaded with, since I was fashionably irreligious like most of the Court. We laughed at the pious, but never too loudly. After all, Arquitaine bore the mark of the Blessed, just as other countries had their own gods…

I found my Princesse, my Lisele, lying across a half-couch of watered-blue silk we had been wont to sit giggling upon in our girlhoods, and later. Her harp lay cast aside, its strings cut. Had she tried to defend herself with it?

I cast myself to my knees, bruising them anew, and shook her. “Lisele—
Lisele
!” She was covered in blood, and there was an awful wound to her breast, dewing the pretty pale-green silk. She had been dressed without me.

I sobbed, repeating her name, and when her dark eyes opened and she drew in a terrible tortured breath I actually recoiled. Those eyes fastened on me, and I heard a horrible sucking sound. A punctured lung. I had read enough treatises to know, though I had never treated more than a fever or pneumonia, or a wound on a scullery maid’s hand.

Treatises? Of course.
A healing charm, anything to stem the flow of blood.

“Vianne,” Lisele said, in a choked whisper.

“A healing charm. Oh, Lisele.”
Cease, you ninny. Find a healing charm in that warehouse of oddities you call a brain.

I did. It was the same simple bit of hedgewitchery I had used on Jirisa’s hand, meant for binding a small wound and staving off infection, but I repeated it quickly, flattening my hand against the bloody hole. I repeated it again, heat draining through my palm—hedgewitchery draws its power from the witch when it cannot draw from a bit of free earth. A tree, the open sky, or even a clod of dirt, none of which were to hand.

I repeated it a third time, my vision blurring with exhaustion, before Lisele’s fingers came up and gripped my wrist with surprising strength. “No…Stop, Vianne…too late.”

“I can heal you, I
can
.”
Remember a charm, Vianne. A stronger one. A
better
one. Think!

“Do not be a silly goose.” She looked so
weary
. A smear of blood marred her pretty cheek, and her dark hair lay tangled over blue watered silk.
She must have been waiting for me to braid it.
Guilt twisted my heart.
Was she dying while Tristan d’Arcenne kissed my forehead?
“Listen to me, Vianne…carefully. I…command it.”

So rarely did my Princesse command anything from me, I swallowed my tears. “Lisele…” I ceased to speak. The spell still worked through my palm, its power coming from my already weary body. Her grasp curled around my wrist, cold and waxen.

Lisele firmly pulled my hand away from her wound. I cried out, the charm breaking, and she pushed something hard, metallic, and warm into my fingers. A momentary flush of strength filled her, turned her cheeks crimson and brought her words without gasping. “Take this. Keep safe. I could not wake…If they have killed me, Father is dead too. Go to mountains…d’Arcenne. Go to Arcenne. Father said…
loyal
…please, Vianne…do as I…”

The mention of Arcenne caused a guilty start in me, but it was too late. Lisele sighed, a long, low sound, and slumped back into the blue silk. Something fled her, a spark I could see only with the small amount of magical Sight I possess.

“Lisele,” I whispered. “Lisele, no, Lisele, no, no, no—”

I do not know how long I crouched there, sobbing, repeating the same small hedgewitch charm that availed naught since there was no life left in her body for it to foster, no spark for it to conserve. I wept and heaved dryly until I heard something. My head jerked up, as if I’d been stung.

Footsteps, coming this way. Booted feet, purposeful strides.

I fair leapt to my feet. Lisele’s eyes were closed. She lay pale and perfect, her pretty sharp-chinned face smooth as if she merely slept.

I could not wake
, she had gasped. What it meant would have to wait. I looked wildly about the room. There, beside the fireplace, a door that led to a half-stair, and from there I could…do what, precisely?

Where could I go? What place was safe?

Clutching whatever Lisele had given me in my sweating palm, I ducked through the door and locked it just as the bootsteps reached Lisele’s receiving-room. Four or five men, I guessed, listening with Court-sharp ears.

I hesitated, my hand on the knob, the key in my fingers. If they were from the King I should make myself known, not hide like a thief.

If they are from the King they will take me to him, and d’Arcenne might be there.
I struggled with temptation, caution and a small deep irresistible instinct nailing me in place, freezing the words in my throat and my hand on the dusty crystal knob.

It would be foolish not to see who they are, Vianne. Do not be a fool.

I slowly lowered myself to my knees again, peered through the keyhole. I could only see a small slice of Lisele’s receiving-room, and thankfully none of the blood. I could, however, see the edge of Lisele’s dress. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine she simply slumbered, perhaps given a draught of night’s-ease and valeriol to quiet her dreaming.

I sought to calm my heaving sides. My own harsh gasps sounded loud as a trumpet in the quiet.

They thundered into the receiving-room. I saw plumes and blue sashes.

The Duc’s Guard. The Duc Timrothe d’Orlaans, the king’s brother, perhaps the finest Court sorcerer in Arquitaine. He dueled regularly, and rumor said he allowed his opponent to survive only if there were official witnesses present. For all that, he was blood royal, and had he killed a few, noble or common, nothing could be done. Still, his Guard was perhaps here to protect the Princesse.

I let out a relieved sigh and was about to rise and make myself known when yet another voice I recognized sounded deep and harsh.

“Check the bodies. Make absolutely certain none live.” Garonne di Narborre, the Duc’s servant, otherwise known as the Black Captain for the coal of his hair and eyes. I had danced with him several times, had even taken a rose from his hand at the last Fête of Flowers. He cut a fine figure, yet somehow few of the women cared for him. I had found his fingers too hard on my waist and my hand, but twas not politic to refuse him a dance.

Not politic at all, and while he was occupied with me he did not watch Lisele so closely. I simply did not like the way he gazed at her. He could not hope to win her hand, and there was no tenderness in his watching, and since the Duc was just after Lisele in the Line of Succession and she was just barely of age…well. I danced with him, and Lisele told me afterward she did not like him overmuch.

“Aye,
sieur
.” A lieutenant—I think it may have been Gregoire di Champforte.

“Have they found the di Rocancheil girl yet?”

I started violently, tasted bitterness on the back of my tongue. Bit my lower lip,
hard
, to stop any betraying noise from my treacherous, dry throat.

“No,
sieur
. She was in the gardens this morn, has not been sighted since.”

“Well, perhaps Simieri caught her; he was waiting in the passage. And d’Arcenne?”

Simieri was part of this, and meant to catch me in the passage? Why?
My heart pounded in my ears, and I swayed.

Do not dare faint now, Vianne. Do not dare!

“Taken to the donjons,
sieur
. Executed come morning, the orders are being drawn up now.” The men were stepping among the bodies. I heard a crunch, and a wet stabbing sound.

They were making certain no woman survived.

My gorge rose again, and I trembled. Whatever Lisele had closed in my nerveless hand was still there, pulsing.

“Look,
sieur
. On the Princesse.”

“Hedgewitchery,” someone breathed. “The di Rocancheil girl has been here.”

A tense, indrawn breath. “Find her. Search the Palais and the gardens. She wanders about in the gardens and the kitchens.
Find
her! Bring her to the Duc. He needs her.”

What? I am of no account, and I have not
done
anything!

Yet I knew even an innocent could be caught in a net at Court. I hesitated. Should I announce myself, and be taken to the Duc? But they were making certain the women were
dead
.

They had not said aught of “rescue.”

The Duc is next in line to the throne, with Lisele…gone.
It was the only answer that made any sense at all. And yet…

My wit, weak and weary as it was under these successive shocks, began to work again.
I must hide. But where would they not find me?
I cast about frantically, taking care not to lean on the door—varnished wood, and suddenly thin as an eggshell. Such a fragile, flimsy shield.

The North Tower. Tis locked, and none have used it for a hundred years or more.
My wits began to work, racing inside my head with little pattering feet, rather like a collection of cats chasing about in my skull. Stunned and witless, with my Princesse’s blood on my fingers and something in my hand she had entrusted to me, I closed my eyes and forced myself to
think
.

You must find food, and clothing, and you must wait for nightfall.

Then what do I do?
I wailed silently. My eyes squeezed themselves shut, and had I been more pious I might have begun praying again. Instead, something horrible occurred to me.

Tristan d’Arcenne is in the donjons, and they will take him to the Bastillion and behead him.
The fingers of my free hand crept into my pocket, found the cold metal ring. Among them would be keys to a donjon door, perhaps?

But there will be many guards, and the whole length of the Palais between you and him.

It does not matter. He will know what to do.

Footsteps echoed. Boots, approaching my sanctuary.

Oh, dear gods.
I rose, silently, and backed away from the door. My mouth gapped open so my breathing would not betray me, and tears trickled hot down my cheeks, dripping onto my collarbones.

“We must find the di Rocancheil girl.” Di Narborre sounded very close, and the door rattled as he tested it. Had I left a trace of blood on the knob on the other side? “Let us go. Our lord the Duc will be crowned tonight.”

I let out a soft, shapeless breath, dropped the key that had held the door closed between me and di Narborre, and fled.

I
could not return to my own rooms, but I did stop in Lady Arioste’s tiny
closette
between the Princesse’s bedchamber and mine. She and I were of a size, though thankfully not of matching temperaments; I dug in her wardrobe until I found a serviceable dark blue velvet-and-silk, frightfully old but still good. I took hair ribbons and a servant girl’s bag I filled with fruit from the bowl on Arioste’s night table; and a sewing kit, as well as extra stockings. For some reason I also took a comb, instead of a hundred other items which might have proved useful.

The table was not laid for chai, since Lisele would have ordered chai in one of her own reception rooms, and Arioste would have been in attendance.

Carrying the dress carefully so as not to foul it with mud or…other things, I made my way through dusty passages to a little-known door that gave into the North Tower. Several times I heard running feet. Once I even hid in a niche, lost behind dusty red-velvet curtains as a detachment of the Duc’s Guard thundered past, no doubt searching for me or on some other unsavory business. Tears rolled unheeded down my cheeks and dripped onto my poor muddy gown.

One of the keys on the ring d’Arcenne had given me fit a neglected door at the end of a long, chilly passageway. I might have simply sunk to the floor and given up if it had not. I was famished, exhausted, and at what I thought then was the end of my strength.

I closed the door behind me and locked it carefully, took my first faltering steps into the gloomy dust of the North Tower. The narrow hallway of the servant’s entrance hung thick with cobwebs, a sour exhalation from the masonry full of neglect and rot; the lower windows still sealed tight.

The Tower had been stopped up when the King’s treacherous great-great-grandmother, the Dowager Elisaine, was bricked inside it to die. She conspired with the Damarsene, who would
always
like nothing better than to swallow our land—you would think they had enough and to spare, but no, they are greedy. The Dowager had plotted to kill her elder brother’s son Archimvault the Tall, before he came of age to be crowned. That treachery had been averted just in time, the Damarsene ambassador sent home in disgrace, and the White Dowager starved to death in the North Tower. The sealing-bricks from the entrances had been taken away with her body, and used to line her tomb. It was said that when her body was found she was clutching a statue of Jiserah, and the goddess’s face had turned away.

When Lisele and I were young, we had dared each other to spend a night before the great ironbound main door to the Tower, carved with Elisaine’s device—the swan and the serpent over the crown of Arquitaine.

None would think to look for me here. At least, not for a while. And none would suspect I had a key, except Tristan d’Arcenne. Would they torture him to find what he knew? What would he say?

The sweat coating me was suddenly cold as a lemon-ice.
Still, they must have greater matters at hand than a hedgewitch lady-in-waiting, even a di Rocancheil.
The assurance was hollow, at least in my ears.

I penetrated the mysteries of the North Tower a short way and found nothing but decay. I climbed to the third level, where some of the windows had not been sealed, and found a room with wan sunlight coming from a high casement, piercing the gloom. Dust lay in great sheets over everything, and the furniture was covered in white drapes grown gray and moth-eaten with years. I took two more steps and sank to the floor, buried my face in my filthy, sweating hands, and proceeded to weep like an absolute fool.

The storm of tears did not last as long as I thought it would, since I was too hungry and exhausted to cry much more. So I did the only thing I could—gathered up the dress and the bag and carried them further up into the Tower until I found a half-hidden door behind a rotting tapestry of Elisaine’s crest. This led into a sitting room, close and still and cold as all the Tower, even in the late-spring heat. I changed into Arioste’s gown with shaking hands. I had no servant girl to help me, so it took two or three tries, but the lacings were relatively easy.

With that done, I tossed a dusty sheet back to reveal a frightfully old divan done in faded red and gold satin, chewed by gods alone knew how many tiny animals but sound enough. I sank down, dropping the bag of fruit and other things next to me, tucking the strap as if I were arranging an embroidery bag prettily on one of Lisele’s wide sophas.

Another wave of faintness went through me at the thought. I shook it away, transferred the keys to my new skirt-pocket, and fished the thing Lisele had given me out of my old skirt as well.

I opened my fingers, found my palm full of a medallion that occupied my hand to the first joints in my fingers, with a thick antique silver chain. The medallion itself was three serpents twisted in a complex knot—copper, silver, and black gold, set with rubies and clear glittering diamonds for eyes.

The world slipped from beneath me again.

It was the Aryx, the Great Seal of Arquitaine. It lay cool and weighty in my hand, the source of all Court sorcery and the servant of the bloodline of Edouard Angoulême, however diluted in the house of Tirecian-Trimestin. It belonged in the possession of the King. Why had Lisele had it—and why had she given it to me?

If the Duc’s men had found it, they would have taken it to the Duc, and he would be the king in truth.
I touched the medallion with one trembling finger smudged with garden-dirt and blood. I had scrubbed my fingers on my green velvet, but it did very little to help.
Lisele is the Heir—of course she would hold it sometimes; the Festival of Skyfall is soon, and the reigning monarch and the Heir pass the Aryx between them at sundown. The whys and wherefores matter not a whit. It only matters that you do not let the Duc find it. Lisele charged you with keeping it safe.

I found the clasp and fastened the chain about my own throat with trembling fingers, silently praying it would not take a notion to fry me for my insolence. The histories said the royal family of Arquitaine knew the secret to using the Aryx as a weapon, but it had not happened since the time of King Fairlaine’s suicide, after the death of his beloved Queen Toriane. Since then, we had not needed the Aryx’s power in battle or in the defense of the King’s person. King Fairlaine’s death had brought the Great King Tibirius to the throne, and he had been the architect of a lasting peace, even if that peace meant paying tribute to the Damarsene across our borders with their hungry army—and to the Damarsene alliance with the Pruzians, those mercenary masters of cold warfare.

If the King had carried the Aryx, the Duc could not have killed him, and Lisele would still be alive.

I had more pressing matters at hand. I dropped the Aryx down into my bodice, thanking the gods Arioste had been relatively modest—at least when it came to showing her twin charms. Heartless and fickle, with no more brain than a poisonous serpent, she still had not deserved…that. A cold shudder racked me.

The neckline concealed most of the medallion, leaving only a meaningless curve of copper that was a serpent’s back but might have been anything.

Chill metal settled against my skin as if it belonged there. The Aryx began to throb, softly, taking on the quality of a heartbeat—my own heartbeat, rapid and thready as it was in my own ears. Strangely, it comforted me to have that warmth against my skin.

I ate an apple, and my hands ceased their trembling. The window set high in the wall let westering sunlight through, making golden motes of dust dance in the air. I thought of Tristan d’Arcenne locked in the donjons, and hoped they would not torture him. I thought of him because otherwise I would have to think of Lisele, and her blood on my hands.

I ate another apple, and wiped at my cheeks with a bit of my green velvet dress. Then I combed out my tangled hair and braided it back, weeping afresh because I had twisted Lisele’s hair so many times. I had taught her to braid in the style of di Rocancheil too, and it had been quite the fashion when we were eleven together. By then we had been fast friends, and Lisele had come to trust me as much as a princesse could trust a confidante of noble blood. She was my Princesse and my lady, and I bound to serve her, but she was also my friend, and I tried to be discreet and trustworthy for her.

Yet I failed her when she needed me most.
Had I not been standing uselessly, feeling d’Arcenne’s lips on my forehead, I might have been able to…

Do not be ridiculous. They would have killed you as well, and found the Aryx to take to the Duc. You did what you should have, Vianne.

But oh, I did not believe it.