Storm told Brandyn this as they waited at the base of the massive ghost arboria.
“And why would you know or care about such a thing, then?”
“My father is the steward of these lands. It befits him to be in possession of all number of facts he can use to regale the guests who pass through.”
Brandyn cracked a small, humorless smile. “He tell this fact to any Quinlandens?”
“Truth is, we received very few guests here in Whitewood. They are much more enamored with their holidays at Wildwood Falls, or the rolling valleys of Windwatch Grove. Our position on the wrong side of the Seven Sisters keeps us safe, but also painfully isolated.”
“Capture by Quinlanden men would be painful. I’d much prefer isolation.”
“Don’t trouble over it. Even the few who actually listened to my father’s words over the years wouldn’t know the location of The Ghost Queen.”
Brandyn judged her from his peripheral. “That’s really what you call this thing?”
“Trees are not ‘things,’ Brandyn. They live, same as you or me, though their lives are quite different obviously. And if you hadn’t noticed, men traded cleverness for clarity when they named this world.”
Brandyn didn’t give a fig about a tree. He had more pressing matters on his mind. He’d never seen so much crimson and gold in the Westerlands. It sank his heart into his boots. How fast Lord Quinlanden had settled and taken root in a land that was not his own. He had to have been planning this treachery long before the Right of Choosing. But how had he foreseen circumstances would develop there that would leave the Westerlands absent of their leader and ripe for takeover? That would leave Brandyn’s father vulnerable?
A seer, no doubt. One better than him.
Most of the ride from Briarhaven, and the Sepulchre, had taken them through the Easterlands. They’d doubled the time needed for their voyage to keep even farther from the path than the last time they’d passed this way, with Hollyn—which now seemed an entire lifetime ago. They’d mercifully had no trouble, but as soon as they crossed into the Westerlands, they had to disappear deeper into the woods. Banners of crimson and gold, flying high into the sky, set to the sounds of hundreds of hooves, were an immediate assault to the senses. And so far from even the main roads, which meant the towns would be swarming with them.
We won’t if we can make it into Whitewood without capture until it’s too late, Storm had said, reading his mind. And I can’t enter even without you. I’ve been missing too long. Quinlanden will have figured out by now that I’ve been with you.
We have to do something. We can’t stay here, and we have nowhere to go. I won’t go back, not until I’ve restored my mother’s lands to the Blackwoods.
That will not be so easy hiding in the woods. But I have an idea.
Storm’s idea had been to send a raven into Whitewood with a coded message. Brandyn wasn’t keen on this. Anything coded could be deciphered, and with as many men as Quinlanden had milling about on sentry in the Westerlands, it was a significant risk. But she insisted their code was different. It was, she said, not actually code at all, but rather, a message written with the innocence of childhood.
When I was a girl, my father was a busy man. But when he had time for me, it was at this remarkable tree, The Ghost Queen, that we would meet. We would see who was fastest to the stream, and we marked our times upon the bark. Although he could have shouted across the keep to get my attention, he sent me a raven, simply saying: a prince requires his princess for a quick game. And I would know precisely where to meet him.
That still sounds like subterfuge. Especially now.
That is why we must wait. Days, weeks. Until my father can come safely. Until the suspicion has passed.
Twelve days they’d camped beneath The Ghost Queen, with no news, no return message. They took turns on watch, but after so long without direction, Brandyn’s sleep was no longer restful. Storm had to force him to eat, which he did, but only because he could not organize a rebellion if he was dead.
“Did you hear that?” Brandyn asked. His hand moved to his bow.
Storm rose to her feet, slowly. Making a fist, she knocked it against the bark in a strange pattern.
“What are you doing?” Brandyn hissed.
“Quiet.”
The next sound came from the forest. A whistle, following the same pattern Storm had beat upon the tree.
Storm smiled. “My father.”
* * *
“These you can eat,” Eavan said, opening her palm for Gabi and Meadow to see. “You see here? The dark lines that pass through the center of the nut? You look for that, and you will live.” She opened her other palm. “These have no dark line. You eat these, at best you’ll be stricken with flux for days. At worst, you’ll be read the dead-given rites, though I daresay you won’t be around to hear them.”
Meadow’s eyes widened in fear. Gabi reached forward and took one of each nut. “How many would make me sick?”
“I would not chance a single one,” Eavan replied. “You aren’t considering it?”
Gabi tossed aside the safe one and examined the other. “Well, it looks so harmless, does it not?”
Eavan emptied the piles into the grass and reached for Gabi’s hand. Gabi quickly moved it away.
“And how do you even know such things?” Gabi challenged. “You’re no Medvedev.”
“Gabi,” Meadow warned.
“What? My question is fair. And aren’t you supposed to be an expert in flora? What say you about these nuts?”
“These lands are foreign to me. We should listen to our elders.”
Eavan flushed bright pink. “I’m eighteen. Hardly an elder.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Gabi said. “Why should it be you we trust to determine the safety of our food?”
“Gabrianna,” Eavan replied with a heavy sigh. “Your mother would want me to look after you here.”
“You say this as if we are on holiday!”
Eavan frowned. “Of course we are not on holiday. But we must make the best of what the Guardians have given us. I have no power here, but I did spend several childhood summers in these woods, upon the exclusive invitation of Yseult herself, and what I know, I learned from Kian.”
“Kian. Who wishes us dead.”
“If he wished you dead, you would be dead.”
“Oh, right. It is only you he wishes dead.”
Eavan snaked a hand out and slapped her. The moment of connection shocked her as much as it did Gabi, and she immediately wished she could take it back. “Gabi... forgive me. I don’t know what came over me.”
Gabi dropped the nut and clutched her face. “It is your father who has marked us as enemies! How could you not know? How could you not have seen thousands of Medvedev, thousands?” Gabi jumped to her feet. “Your father killed mine.”
Eavan fell back upon the grass in defeat. She’d pondered this to the point of exhaustion. The question wasn’t how she hadn’t seen it, but why she hadn’t cared. Of course she’d seen the Medvedev milling about in the woods beyond Whitechurch. And part of her had even wondered about how positively odd it was for them to be there at all. But such was the business of men, not girls, and so she’d left it for other amusements, which were more suited to her.
Kian had said nothing to her since revealing the truth of her father’s terrible machinations. Even the news of her uncle, Byrne, had been kept from her until she was reunited with the others. She’d been so shocked to see Gabrianna here, but that shock was quickly stilled by the terrible news that Eavan’s father had killed Gabi’s.
Somehow, that was even more difficult for her to accept than what he’d done with the Medvedev.
Her father had taken a life. With his own hands. His brother, in the eyes of the kingdom’s laws. And then he had taken the Westerlands, which was not his, any more than the Medvedev were. He was now enemy to all his peers, his actions an aggressive declaration of war.
Backed by t
he same king she’d nearly wed.
“Let us see if Lisbet has returned,” Eavan said, gathering her skirts with a strained smile. “Perhaps this visit has been more illuminating than all the last.”
* * *
Mason Wakesell nodded to his wife, Jasmine. She lifted her hands above her head and then let them fall down to her sides in an arc formation. She turned to another angle and did the same, repeating this until, at last, she dropped her arms and smiled.
“We will be safe here. For now,” Jasmine said, adding the last with a light frown. “I could do with some practice.”
“Your mother knows magic?” Brandyn whispered.
“The Blackwoods aren’t the only in the realm who find reason to hide it,” Storm said.
“But what if she’s discovered? She could be put to death!”
“Your mother knows,” Jasmine said to Brandyn. “In fact, I would say there is very little Asherley Blackwood does not know. Wouldn’t you?”
He nodded. “And I... I would never tell.”
Jasmine laid a hand against his cheek. “I know, little one.” She looked at her daughter. “What a gift it is to see your face, to know you’re all right. You had us so worried.”
“Of course I was all right. Father trained me well.”
Mason grinned from one corner of his mouth. “I told your mother as much.”
“I wish you’d not waited to return for such volatile times, but that would be to misunderstand your intentions, I believe. You’ve returned because of these things, haven’t you?”
“We’ve been careful, Mother,” Storm said. “We took our time in getting here, though we saw no Quinlanden men in the Easterlands at all on our path. Only when we entered our own Reach did the crimson and gold make itself known.”
“Hmph,” Mason said. He placed a hand on each sword. “A bold traitor, he is, leaving his own lands sparsely tended. He must think so little of us that he does not fear us taking it.”
Jasmine smiled sadly at Brandyn. “We are so very sorry about your father, dear. Lord Byrne was a good man, even measuring him by the standards of a Westerlander. We all loved him, as I know you did.”
Brandyn pressed his tongue to the top of his mouth to quell the quick storm of emotion. He nodded. “I will avenge him, Lady Jasmine. And all others who have and will fall to protect the Westerlands. I will avenge us all.”
“Of course you will.” A dark pall fell over her face. “But you will not do it from Whitewood, I’m afraid.”
“They’re really here now, too?” Storm asked, defeated. Brandyn, too, felt the sinking sensation at the confirmation. “Here, on the eastern side of the pass?”
“At first, they stayed to the towns close to Longwood Rush. But when they lost communication with The Deceiver, they spread their tendrils farther,” Mason explained. “If you ask me, they do it from fear, not power.”
“What do you mean, lost communication?” Brandyn asked.
“Lord Quinlanden has been on Duncarrow nigh a month,” Jasmine said. “He was not expected to stay so long, but what concerns his men is that the ravens sent bring no response. He’s gone silent, and no one knows why.”
Storm grinned. “And how do you know this, Mother?”
Mason shook his head. “You know quite well how your mother knows this. We can’t know what it means, but the king has been allied with The Deceiver since the springtide. Longer, perhaps, we don’t know. But his men are restless. He has one... a Mads Waters. Frightening man, lacking a conscience, so others more acquainted are saying. It was that one who ordered more knights from the Easterlands and spread them south, to cover more land.”
“So they’re everywhere,” Brandyn said, sighing.
“Not everywhere...” Jasmine said. “There is much a foreigner would not know about our Reach. Such as places beloved to us and forgotten by others.”
Storm watched her mother. “I don’t understand.”
“Greystone Abbey,” Brandyn said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
Jasmine smiled as she nodded.
“Everyone has sent men to Easlan James,” Mason replied. “Rebellion stirs in the neglected town, and Quinlanden’s men are none the wiser. It will all begin or end there.”
“It will end with Lord Aiden’s head on a pike, and my family back where they belong.”
“We would all help you see it done. But we are powerless here. They’ve already executed a dozen of my men, good men, for failing to reveal your whereabouts. This is why, we believe, Waters has infiltrated all the key cities. He knows you are a child, who will have no destination as enticing as ones familiar to you.”
Brandyn’s eyes closed. “And yet, that’s exactly what I did. Returned home.”
Jasmine tucked his hair behind his ear. “No. You returned to reclaim what is yours, Brandyn Blackwood. You did what any heir would and should do. And you will reclaim it, with the help of all those loyal to your mother and her kin. But it won’t be from here.”
“You believe we should go to Greystone?” Storm asked.
“I believe it is the only place in the kingdom you can be both safe and also positioned to stir the rebellion.”
Storm bowed her head. “I had thought... we had planned... Brandyn could pretend to be Shadow, and we could be safe here.”
Jasmine pulled her daughter in for a tight embrace. “My dear. It was a wise plan. You could not have known how determined the men of crimson and gold would be to see Brandyn’s head next to his father’s. But there are too many in Whitewood, in all the towns and cities, who would recognize him on sight. Many would not be clever enough to hide that recognition. Others would trade their lives for Brandyn’s. We all live in this fear, now. Not all are as brave or as loyal as we are.”
Mason patted his daughter on the back. “You will need to practice the same caution when you travel to Greystone Abbey. Shadow was a fair choice for a cover, and we can spread a rumor that Shadow has been seen alive, in case you are apprehended. It may or may not save you, Lord Blackwood, but every moment of peril as men comes down to fortune and chance. Does it not?”
Brandyn nodded. He looked off into the woods, into the sea of white bark and lush undergrowth. He was weary of travel. He’d trade all the food left in his satchel for even one night in a bed.
But he trusted the Wakesells. There had been few Great Families as loyal, and he’d seen that reflected in Storm as she made difficult, brave choices to protect him and Hollyn.
There was also the vision that had come to him while they awaited Storm’s parents. He’d seen the ruins of a town once great. The face of a man who his mother would raise up and protect until her dying breath. Joran had been there too, though this made little sense, as Joran had not been seen since Byrne’s death. Brandyn’s visions were still difficult to read. He’d left in the middle of vital instruction from Magi Christian, and he was unsure now of what he could and couldn’t trust.
There was another he saw. One whose face was covered, but her magic was strong. A sorceress, though unlike any he’d studied with or under at the Sepulchre. Hers was a magic unfamiliar; perhaps forbidden. Why she was there was as unclear as her identity.
If the Wakesells would send them to Greystone Abbey, the very place Brandyn had seen in his vision, then there was no other destination. They must go.
Jasmine passed a satchel to Storm. “Food, and two new waterskins. Even if you double your journey, it should be enough to keep you both sustained until Steward Easlan can resume care of you. You will tell him, too, that we will send more men as we are able.”
Brandyn thanked them both and let Storm say her goodbyes.
In his mind, he was already traveling the path ahead.
* * *
Lisbet sat before the imposing chieftainess, as she had every day for weeks, and answered the same questions she’d been asked each day. She’d even come to feel relaxed in the small thatched room with no dressing or adornment, or at least, no longer afraid. The fresh dirt o
n her knees as she lowered herself to the exposed ground reminded her she was yet alive.
“Who are you?” Yseult demanded.
“I am Lisbet Dereham, eldest daughter of Lord Holden Dereham and Lady Gretchen Dereham.”
“Who sent you?”
“No one. I sent myself.”
“Why did you come?”
“Idealistically, perhaps foolishly, in search of a place where I could be free from being wed to a cruel king and my brother could be safe to follow his heart.”
“What do you want?”
This was the only answer Lisbet had changed since the first time asked. Early on, she had answered that she wanted her freedom. That answer felt wrong now, though she didn’t know why.
“I want for you, Chieftainess Yseult, and the others to know that neither I nor any with me knew of the atrocities undertaken by Lord Quinlanden on others of your kind. That we are united in our horror of it.” Lisbet paused. She didn’t know if she should say the next words. She was afraid of them, but also, compelled to speak them into life. “That we would join you in avenging the Saleen and righting the wrongs perpetrated.”
Yseult, who had already bored of the scripted conversation and prepared to dismiss Lisbet, paused the waving of her hand in midair. She looked left and right at her sons with a disdainful smile, which they both returned in mirrored kind. Kian’s, though, faded when his mother looked away. As he watched Lisbet.
“And what could you, Lisbet Dereham, bring to this retribution that would be of any value to the Medvedev?” She laughed. Her sky blue hair, piled into braids atop her head, shook with the rest of her. “You, girl, not even a man.”
Lisbet’s heart beat so hard she felt it behind her eyes. She’d never stayed this long. Exchanged so many words. “I... do not believe you look down upon women at all, Chieftainess. You draw these words, instead, from a disdain unique to man, that they cannot see the gifts women alone can bring to war, to battle, to politics. Values you do not share.”
Kael muttered something that she couldn’t hear. The hawk on his shoulder screeched.
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