Elisabeth looked at the footman. “Go find one of the woman-servants,” she said. “I cannot wait here all day.”
With an agreeing nod, he disappeared through a low servant door to fetch someone with due authority to enter.
Elisabeth, left alone in the hallway, knocked again.
This time, a slight sound answered her. A chittering sound. She recognized it at once: the tamarin.
Somehow, Elisabeth’s hand was on the latch. She pushed the door open. Afterward, she could not have said why or how, but in that moment, old Tamsanne’s mocking words echoed in her ears:
Every door is open to you.
Inside was the room for the Princess’s formal levees, a chamber several out from that private room where Lily had given Elisabeth’s service to Dame Julie. The huge princely bed dominated the chamber, its cover richly embroidered in blue and silver. On the bed—
Elisabeth stepped into the room, swept by a wave of horror and fear.
A young woman lay strewn across the great bed, her neck at an unnatural angle. That broken neck had not been what killed her. She had vomited copiously before she’d died: phlegm that was mostly blood. Two other women lay, unmoving, on the polished inlay of the floor, streams of blood and bile similarly poured from their mouths.
Princess Lily’s slight figure was nowhere to be seen. Elisabeth advanced farther into the room, stunned.
Her first experience of violent death. She had never expected to meet it in these finely appointed chambers. “Princess?” she said in a quivering voice. “My lady?”
A scrabbling sound arose from under the side of the great bed, and the tamarin erupted into view. It bounded into Elisabeth’s arms, chittering and furious, then fought free as Elisabeth reflexively clutched it, jumping back down. Skirting the corpses on the floor, it beelined for the painted wardrobe that stood at the side of the great bed. Keening in a concerned tone, it scratched at this cabinet’s painted doors. When she did not respond quickly enough, it began to make despairing leaps up at the doors’ latch, high over the height of its reach.
“Princess?” On shaking legs, Elisabeth approached the wardrobe’s side. A scuffling sound and a frightened moan whispered from inside, almost too subdued to reach the ear. “Princess, is it you?”
Elisabeth unlatched the doors and hastily swung them open. There, pressed in among sheaves of gorgeous brocaded robes, almost suffocated in their material bounty, was Alyssa Hardee, Ranault’s pregnant young duchess, Lily’s closest assigned companion. The woman’s face was contorted with pain. She had been crushed into the closet with her knees drawn into an unnatural position against her heavily pregnant stomach, and she tumbled out, belly-first, as Elisabeth swung open the doors.
“Oh!” Alyssa cried, clutching at the robes to brake her descent. “Help me!”
Elisabeth caught her reflexively, and almost fell beneath the woman’s weight. “Where is the Princess?”
From behind her, a terrified shriek drowned Alyssa’s weak answer. The red-headed footman, accompanied by a pair of serving women, burst in at the door. One of these women screamed again as Elisabeth turned around, and bolted back into the hall. The footman, with a little more regard to duty, stepped inside and yanked on the nearest bell-pull, summoning help.
Not knowing what else to do, Elisabeth helped the young duchess across to the corpse-soiled bed. Though she seemed otherwise uninjured, the stress of her imprisonment had prematurely started her labor. “Have mercy, Emiera,” Alyssa whimpered, falling back on the bed scant inches from the corpse Elisabeth had spied on entering the room. “My babe is sworn to the Prince-heir’s health. Have mercy, Elianté. Protect my child. For Tielmark’s sake, if not for mine.”
“Lady Hardee—Alyssa.” Elisabeth tried to reassure her. “We’ll send for a woman to help you.” The young duchess’s eyes were half-mad with terror. Her arms clutched with surprising strength over the bulge of her belly. “Tell me what happened.” When the young woman did not or could not answer, Elisabeth glanced sharply over her shoulder at the footman. “Find someone to go for a midwife.”
“The Princess—”
“You’ve called for help already. It will be coming soon.” Taking in the man’s hesitation, she abruptly changed her tone. “You. Go yourself and find someone who can succor this lady.”
When he would have argued, she drew herself up, fierce and sharp as ever her mother might have proven. “Get out of here!” she snapped. “And don’t come back until you find someone who can save this woman’s child. The future of the realm lies on it!”
It surprised her, the satisfaction she felt as the man jumped in fear and ran to do her bidding. Maybe this was what her mother felt so often. If so—it felt surprisingly good.
T
he disappearance of the Princess was unprecedented. Servants came running, high and low together. Ronsars. Courtiers. Lesser serving-maids. No one seemed to know what to do, and no one assumed any chain of
command or order. They shouted questions at Elisabeth, then at each other, as the levee chamber filled chaotically. The corpses were turned and mauled in a disorganized search for clues. Elisabeth did not know what she should do, other than stand by Alyssa. She pressed herself against the bed and tried to whisper encouragement. Ranault’s young duchess had fallen into a whimpering haze of pain, incapable of answering questions and almost unaware of the mêleé. The tamarin, fearful of the crush, huddled on the bed’s pillow, its eyes closed to frightened slits.
When relief came, it was not in any form Elisabeth had anticipated. Gaultry Blas’s ancient grandmother, the terrifying Tamsanne, appeared as if out of the air, followed by a pair of matronly women. The red-headed footman trailed behind, looking nervous. Tamsanne, unlike the others in the room, was notably composed.
She took one look at poor Alyssa Hardee, writhing in agonies, and her strong, age-thickened claw of a hand fastened on the unfortunate red-haired footman’s shoulder.
“There is no time to lose,” the old woman said in a knifelike tone, quickly snapping the footman’s wandering attention from the surrounding chaos. “Run quickly to the Singer’s Court. There you will find Dame Julie of Basse-Demaine. You will bring her here in all due haste—or I will know the reason.” She thrust him away. He disappeared into the throng at something approaching a run.
“Elisabeth.” The old woman’s eyes lit with something like satisfaction. “You did well to call me.”
Nothing had been further from her mind, but Elisabeth sensed this was not a time to argue an explanation.
Tamsanne drew a twist of vine from her belt-pouch. “Hush,” she said soothingly, tying it on Alyssa’s wrist. “Forget. Close yourself, and hold your babe.” Incredibly, Alyssa was able to take a deep breath, and also to relax her legs. Her pretty eyes lit with dawning hope—until another spasm hit. Tamsanne brushed a worried hand across the young woman’s arched belly, as if feeling for the life within.
“What happened?” Her dark eyes bore into Elisabeth, her attention momentarily leaving Alyssa to regard the chaos of the room. Somehow, perhaps with a spell, the old woman had created a circle of calm around the great bed’s edge. The hysteria beyond was a distant thing, even its noises fading.
Elisabeth quickly recounted the events that had led her to the Princess’s chamber. “I have Dame Julie’s missive here,” she concluded, pulling
it in wonder from her pocket, amazed that it was still there.
Tamsanne took it. Ignoring the seal, she tore it open.
“If my mother’s trial were not scheduled for today, I don’t think Dame Julie would have sent me,” Elisabeth concluded, appalled by Tamsanne’s nonchalant infringement of the privacy of Dame Julie’s seal. Tamsanne shot her an amused look.
“So shocked.” She flapped the opened letter in her hand. “Even when all this goes forward around us?”
“The one is not a license for the other,” Elisabeth replied stiffly.
“Dame Julie and I have an understanding,” Tamsanne answered, passingly amused. “My action is not as it may seem.” She turned her attention downward. “Now,” she said. “Do you feel an improvement, my lady?”
Alyssa nodded weakly. Tamsanne bent over, her voice gentle. “Your water has broken. It is too late to hold your child within. What I have done,” the old witch touched the vine on the woman’s wrist, “is set a spell that will quicken the birth. There will be great pain for you, but it gives your child a chance to survive. Will you take this chance? The child within your womb will never take a breath without my spell. But you are young. There can be others. You can spare yourself this pain.”
Alyssa clamped her fingers over the vine, as fiercely protective of it now as earlier she had been of her belly. Tamsanne nodded, whether approving or no, Elisabeth could not guess. The old woman gestured to one of the matrons who had arrived with her. The woman, nodding, advanced and began to rub the young duchess’s back. Alyssa groaned and turned her face against the bed.
Tamsanne bent over her one last time. “It was Dervla,” she said roughly. “It was Dervla who took Lily, wasn’t it?”
Alyssa glanced up from her pain, her eyes opened in startled assent.
“Do not believe anything the High Priestess told you,” Tamsanne said. “Only a madwoman would think to sacrifice her Prince’s heir. Does she imagine the gods will grant him another, having used the first like that?”
An invisible, indrawn dam of fear seemed to melt in Alyssa’s body. Somehow, she found the strength to reach for Tamsanne’s hand. She fought to speak. The old woman soothed her, closing her lips with a gentle finger. “Hush. Keep your strength for your own trial. That is your only business now.” She turned to the matronly women. “Pull the bedcurtains. Attend her as best you can. The one woman who could control this rabble will not be appearing to do it.”
She meant the High Priestess, of course. The Prince had left Princeport without appointing a new chancellor. In the Princess’s absence, Dervla was next in line to assume control, at least until the cabinet of Benet’s ministers could agree upon an appointment.
“What are you suggesting?” Elisabeth asked. “What has happened?”
“Dervla will not come because she is already busy with the Princess,” Tamsanne said grimly. “The question must be—where has she taken her? Thanks to my Gaultry, I think I know.”
She looked at Elisabeth squarely then. “Come with me, if you would serve your Prince.”
There was nothing for it. Elisabeth, bewildered but obedient, followed the old witch as she led the way from the room.
T
he light—it was indescribable. Elisabeth stumbled on the tight coil of steps, dazzled. Save for Dame Julie’s quick reaction, she would have fallen. “What is it?” she gasped, falling into an awkward squat on one of the narrow steps. “What is it doing to me? I can’t hardly see—” With every step she took downward, the green light intensified, thickened. It was almost a glowing green mist, unnatural, eerie, wet like morning fog against her skin.
Julie shot her a curious look. The light was not affecting her similarly, other than to show her the way on. “Tamsanne was right,” the singer murmured. “Damn her eyes, I don’t see why.” In the delay while Elisabeth found her feet and once again stood up, the border-witch outpaced them, disappearing ahead down the stairs. “Go, keep moving. We’ve got to catch her now.”
They rounded a last twist of the stairs, and fell out of a rocky notch into a broad chamber. Elisabeth had a sense of a high, sensuously curving dome rising over her head and of piles of cluttered paper stacked around the sides of the room, but there was no time to look further. The center of the room’s stone floor, with papers pushed back on all sides, had been cleared and marked all over with signs painted in blood. One of Dervla’s acolytes—the Brood-blood woman whose sister had been killed by Gaultry’s assassin-boy—had just completed the last figure, using a brush dipped in a small clay cup. Dervla herself stood at the center of the room, rampant over the Princess’s body.
Lily’s dress had been cut open in front, revealing the pale, flat curve of her meager gut, the ridges of her ribs. Nothing showed of the Princess’s
pregnancy yet. A circle had been traced upon her skin with a knife, drawing an even line of blood; her thin arms and legs were pinned by strings and pegs wedged tightly between the floor’s stone cobbles. For a moment Elisabeth thought the princess was already dead. Then the thin stomach gave a shuddering heave.
Elisabeth would have sobbed in relief, if at that moment a sickening sensation had not passed through her. The light emitted by the room—so pure, so strange, a green so perfect it merged almost into white—it was working on her strangely. Without being told, she knew that Palamar’s vessel was filled with Lily’s blood; the runes painted on the stones were Lily’s blood also.
And the blade that she sensed, concealed within Dervla’s robes, that was the
Ein Raku,
the blade that could kill a god’s child without incurring a god’s vengeance. Lily’s blood was on that blade already—it was what Dervla had used to cut her.
“You have not done it yet,” said Tamsanne, stepping forward. “Benet may yet forgive you.”
“Forgive me?” Dervla shrieked. “For what I am about to do, he will kneel in worship!” Her pale eyes scanned the room angrily, settling on Dame Julie. “I see you have brought reinforcements. Singer—I bid you welcome. Have you come to cast your vote?”