Allies & Assassins

by Justin Somper

  Nova placed a hand on Asta’s arm. “I always envy them the moment of flight,” she said. “Imagine taking to the skies and soaring over the Princedom!” As she said the words, Asta had a sudden vision of the Falconer stretching out her long, muscled arms and propelling herself off the side of the tower. She had no doubt that if someone could fly, fueled by willpower alone, then Nova would be the one to do it.

  The balcony offered no defense against the strong, bitter wind and Asta felt herself shiver.

  “Come on,” Nova said, her hand on Asta’s arm again. “Let’s return inside before you catch a chill.”

  They walked back inside and past the perch of falcons. Nova now seemed at something of a loss, Asta thought, as though she wasn’t used to human company. There would, she could confidently predict, be no offers of tea and honey form her. Nova hadn’t even offered her a seat. Already, her attention seemed to have returned to—had it really ever really left?—her birds.

  Asta had failed to close the east door properly behind her and now, suddenly, a gust of wind pushed it open again and whipped around the mews. Frowning, Nova marched back and reached for the door handle. As she did so, something fluttered before Asta’s face. Something far smaller and whiter than a falcon.

  At first, she thought it might be a kind of butterfly, though it surprised her to think of one so high up there. As Nova closed the door and the breeze died down again, the butterfly drifted down to the floor. Asta realized that it was merely a fold of paper, animated by the draught. She crouched down to her feet to retrieve it.

  As she grasped the folded slip of paper between her thumb and forefinger, she felt an electric shock of recognition. The paper was the exactly the same size as the one in Anders’s locket and those she had seen at the bathing house.

  “Give that back to me!” Nova demanded now, hand outstretched.

  Asta was reluctant. She had to see the writing on the note. But the very moment she opened it out, Nova snatched it from of her grasp. But not before Asta had the chance to confirm that it bore the very same handwriting as all the others.

  “You have no right to read that!” Nova told her sharply. “That’s confidential business of the court.”

  The Falconer turned and carried the errant note back toward the desk it had come from. Asta followed—seeing the pen and inkwell and the pot containing the narrow slips of paper, ready to write on and assign to one of the falcons.

  Asta couldn’t believe it had taken her until now to realize that the slips were the perfect size to be inserted into the falcons’ messenger tubes. Now she not only knew who had penned the love notes to Prince Anders but also exactly how he had received them. Nova’s clandestine love for the Prince had been borne on the Archenfield wind.

  Having set the note back down on the table, Nova turned toward Asta. Her arms were folded, her beautiful face now flushed with anger and perhaps other emotions too. “Why did you really come here?” she demanded. “What do you want from me?”

  “I think it’s time we had a talk,” Asta said. “About Prince Anders and the secrets the two of you were keeping.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Falconer’s Mews, the Village

  “I DON’T NEED TO TELL YOU ANYTHING,” NOVA said. “to the best of my knowledge, the Captain of the Guard is conducting the investigation into Prince Anders’ assassination and now Silva’s death. You’re supposed to be the Physician’s apprentice, aren’t you? Not Axel’s.”

  Asta nodded. “You’re right. I’m not here in any official capacity and I’m certainly not here to judge you. I’m just trying to understand what happened.” When this did not succeed in changing Nova’s demeanor, she added, “The past five days must have been extremely hard for you. It has been a difficult time for everyone but you alone of the court have had to grieve in secret.” She shook her head, feeling moved by genuine sadness. “I cannot imagine how painful it has all been for you.”

  She knew immediately that her last comment had hit home. It was as if she had taken a key and unlocked a casket deep within Nova Chastain’s being. The Falconer’s face had changed and, when she spoke, so too had her tone of voice.

  “I have grown adept at keeping my true emotions hidden.”

  “Yes,” Asta said. “I’m sure you have. But you deserve to grieve for him. You, most of all, deserve to grieve for him.”

  She saw tears spring from Nova’s eyes. Tears not only of grief, she surmised, but relief.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Asta suggested, moving toward the chaise and seating herself.

  “We never had enough time,” Nova said, sitting down beside her. She turned toward Asta. “Do you know what it’s like to love someone but not really have them?” Nova asked. “No, of course you don’t. You’re too young to have experienced such intense emotions.”

  Asta wondered if Nova was referring to loving a prince or loving a married man.

  “At first,” Nova continued, “it was so easy. No one knew anything. That was the beauty of my being one of the Twelve. A prince has to be versed in all the talents of the Princedom—falconry included.”

  Asta nodded, remaining silent now so as not to interrupt Nova’s flow.

  “Deep down, at heart, Anders was a simple man. If he hadn’t been born to the Wynyard family, I think he might have been in the Woodsman’s team. He loved the nature of Archenfield, as do I. He was never happier than walking in the forest or climbing the mountains.”

  “Or spending time with you by the fjord,” Asta chanced her arm. Nova’s eyes met hers and Asta pressed home her advantage. “I saw what a lovely home you made together there.”

  “Yes,” Nova said, blotting her tears with the back of her hand. “Yes, we did. It was the one place we could be together, away from prying eyes.” She smiled at the memory. “You know what we would do, on rainy afternoons? He would read to me. He read from the books on the bookcase there and sometimes he made up stories, using nothing but his imagination. I cherished every moment we spent together. But it was never long enough. There was always somewhere he had to be, someone he had to be with.”

  Asta nodded, taking another gamble. “And of course, there was always Silva.”

  Nova nodded. “Silva was not a bad person,” she said. “But she was not right for Anders.”

  “But you were? Because you shared a love of nature?”

  “We shared much more than that,” Nova said. “But there are things that must remain between Anders and me. Until the day we are together again.” She frowned suddenly. “You know, I would have married him. But then his mother and the Poet hatched the plot to marry him off to Woodlark, in order to secure the alliance.”

  Asta couldn’t help but notice that Nova hadn’t even deigned to speak Silva’s name this time. Perhaps it was easier to think that way.

  “We stopped seeing each other for a time—in the run-up to his marriage and a short while after. I tried my best. We both did. But can you imagine what it was like for me seeing them together at the front of the chapel, saying their vows? And afterward, sitting through those interminable speeches, suggesting theirs was the perfect love when I knew the lie of it?”

  Asta nodded. “It must have been heartbreaking for you.”

  Nova’s voice was stronger when she resumed again. “Ultimately our bond was too strong to break. He needed to see me, to be with me. He knew I was his true love. We were destined to be together.” She nodded emphatically as she spoke.

  “And then Silva fell pregnant,” Asta said, watching Nova’s face for her reaction. “I’d guess that felt like a terrible betrayal.”

  Nova shrugged dismissively. “I felt nothing. I always knew he had to impregnate her to secure the longevity of the alliance. That was all that baby would have meant—it certainly wasn’t created out of love, only politics.”

  “I wonder if Prince Anders felt the same way?” Asta reflected aloud. “From what Silva told me, he was very caring to her once he discovered she was pregnant.”

>   Nova frowned again. “He was doing his duty. He was very focused on that—his duty. His mother especially had drummed it into him at an early age.” She sighed, then smiled serenely. “I knew he would come back to me, in the end.”

  Asta knew it was a risk but she decided to push Nova still further. “I wonder. If perhaps things changed for Anders at that point? If Silva’s pregnancy might have prompted him to take stock and think about the future? That it was time for him to draw back from you and devote his full care and attention to his wife.”

  Nova’s feline eyes blazed with fury. “What do you know about Anders’s thoughts and feelings? What do you know about anything?”

  Asta’s heart raced. She knew from Nova’s reaction that she was onto something important.

  “He did stop seeing you again, though, didn’t he? Much like he tried to at the beginning of the marriage. Only this time, for whatever reason, it seemed like he was going to stick to his plan. And you knew that, with Silva carrying his child, things would never be the same again. There would be no more walks together through the forest, no more rainy afternoons down by the fjord…”

  “No!” Nova exclaimed, but she had begun to tremble.

  Asta pressed on. “That’s why you came to such a difficult decision. The hardest, most heartbreaking decision, I’m sure you have ever had to make. You couldn’t live with things as they were, and so you would have to remove the one thing that stood between you and Anders. It was the only possible way to return things to how they had been.”

  Nova seemed to be rendered speechless now, though her body shook—perhaps with the shock of grief or another kind of release. Asta knew she had to finish the story.

  “It was clever in so many ways. You took savin from my uncle’s garden and found a way to get it into Silva’s food. Perhaps you persuaded the steward to put it in there—perhaps you found information with which to blackmail him—but even if he was guilty of that action, it wasn’t his idea. It was yours. You know about nature and animals and plants. You knew savin would trigger a miscarriage.”

  Nova’s eyes seemed locked on her own as she proceeded. “So, whether by your own hand or that of Michael Reeves, the savin was added to Silva’s food and carried to her. Had she taken a bite, she would certainly have miscarried the baby. But, you see, Silva had been feeling so sick with the pregnancy that she was wasn’t eating. Not wanting others to know yet, Prince Anders, devoted husband that he was…” Asta noted the flicker of pain that crossed the Falconer’s face. “… ate his own food, then swapped his plate with Silva’s and consumed hers too. He ate the poisoned meal. And now your simple plan took another wrong turn. You didn’t know that you needed to use only a small quantity to achieve the intended outcome. You used much too much. Far more than was needed to kill a fetus—enough, as we now know, to fell a full-grown man.”

  “No!” Nova cried, rising to her feet. Her whole body was vibrating now, as if waves of grief were breaking through her.

  Asta had gone much further than she had intended to, and yet she couldn’t help herself. She rose up to her full height before the Falconer.

  “You killed the man you loved more than life itself,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean to. Fate played a terrible trick on you. I understand what drove you to that point, truly I do. What puzzles me is why you went back and killed Silva. Did you really hate her that much? Why couldn’t you just have let her live and raise Prince Anders’s child? Wasn’t that the least consolation you could have offered her?”

  But now Nova shook her head defiantly. “I didn’t kill him.” Her face was contorted. “I loved him.”

  “Yes,” Asta said. “I know that. You loved him so deeply that it made living without him impossible to bear.”

  “You know absolutely nothing!” Nova had risen to her own feet, spitting her words into Asta’s face. “You think you have this all worked out, but you don’t. You’re not an investigator—you’re just a pushy piece of filth from the settlements.” She leaned toward Asta, so close that her plump lips were almost touching Asta’s own. “Get out now or I don’t know what I might do to you.”

  “I’ll go,” Asta said, raising her hands in submission. She backed away hastily and down the first flight of stone steps toward the door. Opening it—and closing it firmly behind her, she went quickly down the second stone stairwell, her head was a jumble of thoughts.

  As she pushed open the door that led back out onto the village green, she gasped for air, as if she had come up from deep underwater. She had thought that when she finally solved this twisted mystery, she would feel suffused with a sense of satisfaction and elation. So how was it that instead she just felt sad and empty and queasy?

  As she closed the tower door again, Asta had the sense she was not alone on the green, that she was being watched. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought that Nova had somehow made it down ahead of her—taking flight, perhaps, as she had spoken of, or sent one of her seven birds to monitor her.

  Feeling a shiver, Asta told herself to pull herself together. Dusk had come early, due perhaps to the dull weather of the afternoon. It was easy to trick herself into fear in the half-light. But she had accomplished her goal that day and now she had to find Prince Jared and tell him at last the terrible truth of his brother’s murder. At least now they could be sure there would be no more deaths. It all ended there, where it had begun some years before, at the Falconer’s Mews. It was not, by any definition, a happy ending. But it was an ending nonetheless.

  “So it was Nova.” Prince Jared looked dazed as Asta concluded her report.

  Asta nodded. “Evidently, she loved your brother very deeply. So deeply that she intended to induce Silva to have a miscarriage. From that point on, she was set on a course she could not pull back from. Like a falcon pursuing its prey.”

  Jared sat, stunned, on the edge of his desk. “She killed my brother by accident and my sister-in-law by intent.” He shook his head sadly. “I thought I’d feel lighter, somehow, once we knew the truth.” His eyes met Asta’s. “But I feel as heavy as stone.”

  She came over to sit beside him. A few days earlier, she wouldn’t have dared make such a bold gesture but now it felt quite natural to do so. “I’m glad that you said that. I feel exactly the same way.”

  They sat there, for a time, in utter silence. Then Jared turned to her, with a new question.

  “Did she actually confess to the murders?”

  Asta looked at him. “Well, no. Not in so many words. But the way she talked—the way she let me talk—she didn’t leave me with any remaining doubt.”

  Jared frowned, standing up again.

  “You do believe me,” Asta said. “Don’t you?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Of course I do. You’ve done a remarkable job here, Asta. You trusted your instincts and they have led us to the heart of this dark matter.” He paused, a troubled look in his eyes.

  “But…?” Asta prompted, folding her arms. “I feel like a ‘but’ is coming.”

  Jared was silent for a moment, before he continued. “Asta, you’re the Physician’s Apprentice, so you know how vital it is that we have something tangible to go on here. Nova has to confess to what she’s done. We have to have her confession, or some other evidence. Though I don’t know exactly what that would be.”

  Asta couldn’t help but feel frustrated. After everything that had happened this day alone, after all their concerted work on the investigation—just when she had thought it was over, he was telling her there was yet more to be done.

  “Look, I need to start dressing for dinner,” Jared said. “A delegation from Woodlark will be here within the hour.” He rested his hand gently on Asta’s shoulder. “You won’t thank me for saying this but you look dog-tired. Why don’t you go back home and get some rest? We can pick this up in the morning.”

  Asta shook her head. “It’s Prince Anders’s funeral tomorrow morning.”

  “Of course,” he said, his words frayed with fati
gue and frustration. “Come and see me first thing tomorrow, before the ceremony. We’ll have time to talk more then. We can work out our next move.”

  His use of the phrase “our next move” more than made up for his momentary irritableness.

  “If you like, I’ll go and talk to her again now,” Asta said. “Maybe I can get her to confess this time.”

  “I really don’t think that’s wise,” Jared said. “From everything you‘ve told me, you left her in quite a state. I think it would be dangerous for you to go anywhere near her again tonight. Besides, she’s supposed to be coming to dinner with the Woodlark delegation. It’s my belief she won’t attend, as she’s not fond of ceremonial dinners. Perhaps she just needs time on her own to reflect on her actions. Maybe she will come to her senses and realize what she needs to do.”

  Asta nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “I’m sorry but I need to send you on your way now. But let me dispatch Hal or one of his team to escort you to the village.”

  Asta shook her head. “There’s no need. I can take care of myself.” Already, she was at the door.

  Prince Jared frowned. “Sometimes, Asta Peck, you can be most infuriating.”

  Asta grinned. “I know,” she said. “I work hard at that.”

  He shook his head, but he was smiling. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything you have done. Please try not to feel frustrated. We really are close to the end now.”

  Though she knew it was far from his intention, nonetheless his words made her sad. She had enjoyed this sudden, brief intimacy with Prince Jared, not because he was Archenfield’s new Prince, but because he was the first friend she had made in quite some time.

  Not wanting him to witness her dismay, she turned her head and slipped out of the chamber, leaving him to prepare himself for the arrival of the Woodlark delegation and all that came with it.

  THIRTY-FOUR