The Hedgewitch Queen

by Lilith Saintcrow

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

  Chapter Two

  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 tr
ust 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.

  Chapter Three

  I did sleep, a thin troubled slumber broken by restless starts whenever I thought I heard a footstep or a mouse scratching. It would not be long before the North Tower was searched as well.

  And I dared not sleep too deeply lest I waste the night.

  When darkness crept slowly through the windows, I wished I had brought a candle. Yet if I had one, or if I practiced my limited Court sorcery and used a witchlight, how would I wend my way to the donjons without being seen? And if I could reach the warren of prison cells without being remarked, what chance did I have of setting d’Arcenne free? Did the keys he’d given me include a donjon key among them?

  I waited in the darkness for what seemed like ages, until the clock in my head—probably thrown off by shock, but the only measure of time I had—told me twas the hour of the planned banquet. Court dines late in summer, and only a touch earlier in late spring; besides, the Duc would be anxious to bring the Palais under his control. I wondered what tale would be given to the Ministers, and to the lords and pages and chivalieri. The women who had not seen the attack on Lisele, of course, would be dead or taken somewhere, whisked out of the way for their own safety. I wondered grimly who would be blamed for the afternoon’s events, where the Duc would pin the conspiracy that had left him King.

  He is not King without the Aryx. I left my green velvet dress on the divan and covered it with the dust cloth. The disturbed dust would not hide where I had spent the afternoon, but I felt compelled to conceal what I could.

  I used a dry abandoned watercloset to relieve my aching bladder and crept through the North Tower to the servants’ door, again. I listened, my ear pressed against cold wood, for a long, agonizing time, before I unlocked it and stepped out.

  The hall was empty.

  Now I had only to reach the donjons without being seen.

  I had mulled the matter long and hard, and decided I would use the Sculpture Hall, since it ran almost the whole length of the Western Palais and was rarely guarded, being completely enclosed by the King’s Pavilion. There were plenty of niches and passages to hide in. Lisele and I had explored the Palais as children, and I knew not all of it, for there were some places children and women did not go, and passages both secret and forgotten. Yet I knew enough to possibly pass unseen if I wished to devoutly enough.

  The Sculpture Hall proved to be under heavy guard by the Duc’s blue-sashed men, so I was forced to use a different route—a dusty garret over the north end of the Sculpture Hall leading to a jumbled, confusing patchwork of servant’s passageways. I kept my ears tuned and had to hide once or twice, and was almost discovered by a fumbling pair of servants eager to find a place for their assignation. From them I learned the whole Palais was at sup in the Coronation Hall, the Court putting on a brave face over the tragedy of the King slain by his own Captain, Tristan d’Arcenne.

  Who was scheduled to be executed tomorrow, beheaded after his tongue was torn out. My stomach turned over afresh when they dropped that choice morsel of news.

  I held my breath while the lovers fumbled to their niche, and I passed by them silently as they were engaged in their congress. I was not innocent of the ways of lovers, but this brought a silly flush to my cheeks. I seemed to feel lips against my forehead, and to smell leather and steel.

  I slipped unseen through the Palais, helped by a generous portion of luck, until I reached the entrance to the donjon in the west wing, tunneled into the rock of Mount di Cienne, which loomed over the Palais and the Citté. Its dark mouth yawned; there was only one entrance and a single Duc’s Guard at it. Everyone else had perhaps been called to duty elsewhere—searching for me, and serving in the Coronation Hall.

  Why are they seeking me? Will they blame me for Lisele’s death, as they are blaming d’Arcenne for the King’s? What could they want with me?

  I tucked myself into a niche down the hall, wondering how I would get past the guard until I noticed him leaning back in his chair, almost certainly asleep. A leathern skin dangled from one limp hand. As I watched, the skin slipped from his fingers and thumped on the floor, but twas drained enough not to spill.

  Wine. I sniffed quietly. D’Arcenne’s Guard would never be caught sopped on duty. Then again, a new King was cause for celebration, even if the old King had been slain. D’Orlaans needed his Guard loyal and satisfied, too.

  It took far more courage than I thought I possessed to step from my hiding place. I moved soundlessly as I could, halting and trembling like a rabbit whenever the guard snorted or muttered, slipping past him and through the half-open gate. I did not recognize the man, but he wore a blue sash. His feathered hat tipped down over his face and his chair leaned back precariously. I had a moment’s mad desire to kick the chair and spill him onto the stone floor.

  Trembling so hard my ear-drops swung, I found myself in the donjon.

  Luck was with me again. Torchlight ran red over stone floor and bare iron bars, and Tristan had not been thrust into one of the deeper cells. No, he was in the third cell to the left, and he was alone. The other cells were empty.

  Of course—the Duc’s Guard might have killed everyone else, but they needed a public beheading for Tristan. I felt almost sick at the thought, and at the cold logical way my mind ran now. Had I ever been this calculating before?

  They will tear out his tongue before they kill him. Cannot have him speaking, of course. And that is the traditional punishment for traitors, is it not?

  I sank to my knees by the door of his cell. I could see him through the bars, flung down on the floor, his red sash half torn off, his dark hair lying on stone. He still had his boots, but his swordbelt was gone. “D’Arcenne,” I whispered.

  He did not stir. Had they killed him already?

  “D’Arcenne.” A little louder. I felt for the keys in my pocket and drew them out, as softly as I could. “Captain!” I nearly wept again, I was so distraught. “Captain, please!” I almost forgot to whisper.

  He stirred, but he said nothing, made no noise. Relief scalded the inside of my throat. He was alive.

  “Tis Vianne,” I whispered. “Vianne di Rocancheil. Please, you must tell me which key will work, if any…please, Captain, for the love of the Blessed, wake up!”

  He curled up to sit, suddenly; I gave an undignified little squeak, choked off halfway as I remembered to be quiet. I fell backward off my knees onto the floor, and my teeth clicked together painfully. From bruised knees to a pratfall. Tis a good thing I am not known for my grace.

  He was at the bars, reaching through, his hand shot out and clasped around my wrist. “Is it you?” he demanded in a whisper. “Or have the gods driven me mad with hope?” He dragged me forward. Torchlight ran red over his face. He had taken a beating—one eye swollen shut, split lips, and half his face terribly bruised. His hand was bruised, too.

  “You look awful,” I murmured. Of all the things to say, Vianne.

  Still, it brought a wisp of amusement to his blue eyes—or eye, since the other one was puffed nearly shut. “Thank you, d’mselle.” There was the shadow of a bow, his body inclining stiffly. “I did not even dare to hope—you brought the keys?”

  I turned my wrist in his grasp, so he could see. “Tell me which one, and I shall unlock the door.”

  “None of these will work. My belt hangs near the door of the guardroom—my sword, my keys, everything else. You shall have to fetch it for me. How did you get past the guard?”

  “He’s sotted. I mus
t fetch your belt?” I sounded blank and witless.

  He nodded. “Quietly, Duchesse, and quick. We have not much time.” He let go of me, finger by finger.

  I made it shakily to my feet. Ghosted over the floor, and almost collapsed as I reached the entrance again. My knees wished to simply fold, and I fought the desire to sink to the floor, put my head in my arms, and let the world do whatever madness took its fancy next.

  Move, Vianne. Do not stop now. The guard still slept, his breathing heavy and whistling, and I padded past him.

  The guardroom was lit only by a single small lantern. I found Tristan’s belt hanging on a row of pegs driven into the stone, took it down with trembling hands. Twas heavy and clumsy, so I cradled it in my arms as I peered down the hall again and set out past the guard for the third time. The sotted man mumbled once as I passed him, and I nearly fell headlong as my knees threatened fresh mutiny. The torchlit dimness of the donjon was almost a blessing.

  I found the Captain’s keyring and passed it through the bars. He selected a thick heavy iron key, and in a trice the door was unlocked. Why had they left his belt there? The Duc must have been confident—or extremely hurried, not to take it and lock it up. Then again, the plan had gone smoothly, and if there were none loyal to d’Arcenne still left alive there was no worry, was there?

  The door squeaked slightly as Tristan eased out. He moved stiffly, but seemed otherwise hale. I offered his belt, but he caught me by my shoulders and examined me from top to toe. His gaze snagged on the copper peeking out under my neckline, then met mine with a question unasked.

  “The Aryx,” I whispered. “Lisele was dying, she gave it to me. They killed the women—and Lisele…” My voice refused to work further.

  He whispered an oath that would have normally made me blanch, and pulled me forward into a rough embrace. I nearly cried out as my face crushed against his chest. He breathed another curse into my hair, as the hilt of his sword jabbed me in the shoulder and his belt made a clinking sound.