Gunnar retrieved the final strip of white-hot metal from the fire and laid it on the great, heavy anvil. “You don’t have to worry so much about me and the little ones,” he told his sister, tongs in one hand and hammer in the other. “You know how resilient we all are.” With a cheeky wink, he brought the hammer down.
“That’s not something I want to test!” Inge shouted over the din.
Gunnar spared her a wry glance but said nothing.
The hammer’s ringing pulse hid approaching footsteps. As her brother beat his final ploughshare, Inge discovered Raske in the doorway. The captain met her gaze and tipped his head back the way he had come, wordless instruction that the time for her visit was over.
Gunnar’s faint, reassuring smile as she stood eased her harrowed thoughts, but only in a small measure. Her family had been through a lot already, but under the circumstances, their resilience wasn’t a joking matter. Gunnar hadn’t taken her warning seriously at all.
But then, why should he?
She followed Raske’s tall, straight back from the smithy. The clang of the hammer faded. Inge almost had to jog to keep up with the captain’s longer stride, but when they entered the castle’s cool, dim halls, he checked his pace.
“Did you have a good visit?” he asked.
She made a noncommittal noise. “Gunnar mostly hammered, and I mostly watched.”
“Did you tell him about your family?” He meant the move from the king’s estate.
“No,” said Inge. “I thought you were the only one who was supposed to know.”
Raske’s brows arched. “I thought that was the reason you asked to visit him.”
“It—” She bit off an instinctive denial. “I did tell him someone might be trying to kill all of us. But he only laughed it off.”
The expression that crossed Raske’s face made Inge wonder if she should have withheld that information from Gunnar as well. It seemed better to warn her brother than not, however, even if he didn’t take her at her word.
Whether Raske approved or disapproved, he did not say. Instead, they continued in silence to Inge’s afternoon lessons, and from there to dinner with the king. A new set of nobles attended that event. Inge spent a miserable hour being shunned on one hand and ignored on the other. Surrounded as she was by possible insurrectionists, she was glad to make her retreat, back to her room for the evening.
***
In the days that followed, every soldier Inge passed was a potential enemy, and every nobleman a potential traitor. Were they part of an elaborate plot against the king? Did they know anything about Osvald? Did they secretly want her or her family dead, and for what reason? Simply because the king claimed she was his heir?
Her imagination vaulted into paths of intrigue, and her nerves stretched thin. Each evening’s meal presented her with a new cast of villains. Every conversation pointed to circumstantial evidence of treason. It was exhausting.
“Have you been getting enough sleep?” Captain Raske inquired one morning as they trekked to her tutoring session.
“Yes.” She hadn’t, but she already knew he would decline to put any of her fears to rest.
His gaze lingered just long enough to summon a blush to her cheeks.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
He might have pursued the question, but one of his underlings called him from behind. “Wait here,” Raske told Inge, and he stepped just out of earshot.
This scenario had occurred all too frequently of late, guards making confidential reports right in front of her, but in whispers that she could not hear. It only encouraged her runaway thoughts of subterfuge in the castle.
Annoyed, Inge let her eyes wander down an adjoining corridor. Someone was standing near an outlet to the king’s garden walk. She squinted and leaned to one side, bringing the dawdler fully into sight.
It was Baron Adelborg.
Nobles dawdled in the castle halls all the time, it seemed, but there was something in the way Adelborg stood that drew her already paranoid attention. He was looking another direction, to a corridor that Inge could not see. He straightened. A second nobleman joined him, and together they exited to the gardens.
Baron Adelborg had always been untrustworthy to Inge, partly because of Signe’s dislike of his family, and partly because of his oily personality. The last time she had seen him, he had been speaking with the ill-fated Captain Bergstrom. He had left town the morning of the second night-walker’s attack, too. Could he be in league with Osvald? Was he conspiring now with his fellow traitors?
Impulsively Inge brushed past Raske and his underling.
“Hey!” the captain called.
She turned with a smile on her face, walking backward the whole time she spoke. “I’m going on ahead so I won’t be late. Don’t worry—I know the way.”
Raske started to protest, but he caught himself with a glance toward his underling. “I’ll be right behind you. Go straight there.”
She nodded, with absolutely no intention of obeying. The passage to her tutoring lessons also branched away into the garden, meaning that she might look in on the suspicious pair, confirm whether they were harmless, and then run all the way to her lessons before Raske even finished his conversation. Not even a pinch of guilt teased her as she moved beyond his sight.
Gingerly she eased open the door that led outside. A tall hedgerow lined the garden path; there was not a soul in sight.
Inge skulked along the pathway, ears perked for any sounds of conversation. It came in wisps upon the gentle breeze, snippets of words she couldn’t quite make out, sounding from the other side of the hedge.
One of the few benefits of a small stature was the ability to fit into tight spaces. Jagged twigs raked across Inge’s hands and arms as she pressed between the branches of the hedge. Halfway through, she realized what a terrible rustle she was making. She froze, wary of drawing attention to her hiding place.
Still afar off, the voices approached, oblivious.
“It’s dangerous business,” one of them said. “This might not end well for any of us.”
“It is dangerous,” the other agreed, “but—I’m sorry to say—the king has brought it on himself. Naming a peasant child as his heir? I don’t care if it’s Torvald Geirson’s son! Our enemies would overrun us in an instant!”
“You know as well as I do that the peasant will never be king, Adelborg. Halvard’s trying to ensure that the crown goes to Signe. And I must say, between her and the boy, she’s the better choice.”
“A woman!” cried Baron Adelborg. “We wouldn’t last any longer under her rule than under a child’s. If this was to be the outcome, Halvard should have made Osvald his heir from the start!”
His companion hissed. “Careful where you say that name! Osvald’s a madman. If he’s resurrected the Mark of the Dragon, that’s even more proof.”
“He hasn’t resurrected it. He’s only marching under its flag. The movement always existed—”
“King Halvard had everyone associated with it put to death decades ago!”
“King Halvard was in his proper senses decades ago, so the movement was unnecessary,” Adelborg retorted. “He could crush our enemies if he wanted to, but instead he keeps our soldiers hamstringed at the border, waiting for a treaty that will never come. We need a true leader right now!”
A scoff cut the air. “And you think that leader is Osvald? He is mad.”
“Bergstrom always managed him. Someone like Osvald could only ever be a figurehead with a man like that as his advisor.”
“Yes, Bergstrom always managed everyone. But now we have Raske instead. Are you going to trust his counsel to the next ruler?”
“A foreigner,” sneered Adelborg. “I’m not even going to approach him. His father was a true warrior, but I can’t trust a man who keeps to foreign customs, even if it is by treaty. Halvard never should’ve allowed him into the army, Lukas Falk notwithstanding—yet more evidence to his descent.”
The two men p
assed where Inge stood. She held her breath, careful to make no noise, terrified that they might peer between the thick green leaves to see her hiding there.
They were too wrapped in their own conversation to give the hedge a second glance, though.
“I don’t know where Raske’s loyalties lie,” said the first nobleman. “It honestly wouldn’t surprise me either way. If he’s a foe, someone will have to deal with him.”
“Someone will, if it comes to that,” said Adelborg.
“What about our peers? Have you heard from Baron Ridderhielm? Count Sparre?”
“Ridderhielm shares much the same opinions we do. The Sparres are in line as well. At least, they will be. They’ve agreed to my proposal for a match between Mikkel and Lina.”
“How rich! Lina, who only a few years ago you were preening to marry Osvald? Have you given up any notion of making her queen, then? I’d sooner die than see a Sparre on the throne.”
Baron Adelborg tipped his nose in the air. “Mikkel Sparre wouldn’t last three weeks. He may not yet. The proposal and the marriage are two separate events. The whole point was to kill these rumors about him and Signe. If such news had reached Osvald’s ears—”
“Your madman would become that much harder to control,” his companion finished. “I don’t like it, Adelborg. What’s to keep him from turning against you?”
“Against us, I hope you mean.”
“Against us, against everyone. You say Halvard has gone mad, but you want to replace him with someone even worse.”
“Osvald is not a replacement. I told you before…”
To Inge’s great frustration, their voices moved beyond her hearing. Their backs were to her, their words lost on the space between. She waited, breathless, to see if they might turn back, but when they moved beyond her sight instead, she began the careful process of extracting herself from the hedge, as quietly and as carefully as she could.
Suddenly, an iron grip clamped around her arm and yanked her out.
Inge yelped and instinctively slapped her free hand over her mouth. She looked up with wide, guilty eyes to meet the stone-faced gaze of Captain Raske. When he had come, whether he had overheard any of the exchange on the other side of the hedge, she did not know.
“I was on my way,” she said feebly, once she had gathered her wits.
He spoke not a word as he pulled her back through the door into the castle. He maintained his hold on her arm as they went.
“I know, I know,” Inge babbled. “I said I would go, and I didn’t. I’ve betrayed your trust and I’m a horrible person for it. I’ve lost all rights to privacy, because I’ve proven I’m not worthy to be out and on my own, and you’ll never let me out of your sight again until King Halvard sees fit to dismiss me and send me on my way in perfect disgrace.”
“I thought you’d been kidnapped,” he said shortly.
Inge glanced up, but his face was unreadable, as always. “What? Why?”
“Because you weren’t where you said you would be. Because I trusted you to go there.”
She had already admitted to breaking his trust, but to hear it from his mouth struck her like a slap across the face. “Well, I’m not kidnapped. I’m none the worse for wear, aside from a few minor scratches when you pulled me out. And how you honestly expect me to sit still and stupid while we’re in the midst of some silent rebellion is beyond me!”
He stopped short and stared. For once he seemed at a loss.
“Don’t pretend you’re still and stupid too,” said Inge. “You’re in the thick of it, and you know it. Or maybe you’re part of it. How long were you there? Did you hear what they were saying?”
“It doesn’t matter what they were saying,” Raske replied. “You had no business following after them!”
“You have no business keeping me here! You certainly have no business keeping me in the dark about everything! It’s the king’s orders, I know!” she added before he could say just that. “He wants me left in the dark. He told me so himself. And no one will tell me why, but you can’t expect me to pass up an opportunity to overhear.”
She ended with a huff of righteous indignation.
Raske remained unmoved. “You shouldn’t have gone.”
That single reproving phrase deflated her more than she cared to admit. “You’re impossible. Of course I shouldn’t have gone, and of course I did. Adelborg’s a traitor, you know.”
“I know nothing of the sort. We’re late for your lessons already, Your Highness. We need to hurry.”
With quiet determination, he propelled her down the hall. She wasn’t going to let the subject drop so easily. He had previously forbidden her from speaking of Prince Osvald, but her eavesdropping had uncovered plenty of other items to ask about.
“They mentioned something called the Mark of the Dragon. What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice clipped.
“You don’t know? Or you’re just not going to tell me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it.”
“They said a certain someone I’m not supposed to talk about was marching under its flag.”
“Ingrid, please!” He turned on her in frustration. “I am not going to discuss this with you!”
The look on his face neatly crushed her courage. She had pushed too far. Yet again, she was the child and he the seasoned warrior—never equals, always at cross-purposes.
She answered him with a subdued nod, resentment and despair warring within her. Raske, for the moment satisfied, motioned her onward. They traversed the remaining steps to her tutoring lesson in complete silence.
Chapter 20: Advent of the Dragon
King Halvard favored Inge with a very long, very stern glare that evening at dinner, sure proof that Raske had reported her antics. She tried to meet the monarch’s gaze, but her sense of shame and wrongdoing kicked in, forcing her to look away.
The nobleman who had conversed in the garden with Adelborg was at dinner, too, further down the table. Inge, wary after the fact of how easily she might have been discovered, kept her eyes on her plate.
“You snitched,” she accused Raske as he escorted her back to her room.
“Snitched?” he repeated.
“It’s not as though I was trying to escape. You didn’t have to tell King Halvard.”
His brows shot up. “You put yourself in harm’s way. Not that anyone should be surprised by that—I think you must have an inborn genius for being in harm’s way.”
“If you’re talking about the night-walkers again—”
He cut her off before she could mount a defense. “I don’t want to argue tonight, Your Highness.”
Inge snapped her mouth shut, injured by such an abrupt rebuke. Inwardly she stewed until her thoughts reached a boiling point. “I can’t stand not knowing things, all right?” she blurted “If I don’t know, then I can’t plan, and if I can’t plan, then I’ll be caught off-guard. If I’m caught off-guard, I might react wrong, and then something bad might happen. I can’t stand not knowing things!”
He had paused and listened patiently to this rant. Inge expected another rebuke at the end of it and wouldn’t have cared. As she glanced up at him, however, she discovered not a frown, but an expression of conflicted sympathy. To her astonishment, he actually raised one hand and, after a slight hesitation, rubbed her head in reassurance.
He rubbed her head. Like she was a child.
Or a dog.
The gesture, meant in kindness, had the opposite effect.
“I am not a child! I am not a dumb animal! Don’t treat me like one!” She stamped her foot and then beat an angry path to her room. Raske, shocked, gathered his wits enough to follow, but at a distance. She slammed the bedroom door behind her. He left her to her wrath, which only made Inge all the more furious.
In rage she threw herself on the bed, pounded her fists on the pillows, and ended her tantrum face-down and listless.
Not a child? Sure she wasn’t.
Sometime in the midnight hours, this suffusing melancholy broke with a tentative tap-tap-tap at the door.
“Your Highness?” said Raske’s voice from the other side. “Are you awake?” He spoke quietly, so that had she slept, he would not have roused her.
Inge, by now buried under her bedding, tore off the covers and flew to the door.
Raske stood on the other side. He openly met her gaze. Before she could ask why he had come at such an hour, he said, “The king wants to see you in his council chambers.”
Dread replaced any glimmer of hope that had sprouted within her. “Why?”
He ignored her question. “He’s waiting for us. Come quickly.”
She scrambled to fall in step beside him. “Am I to be scolded? Punished? Can’t you give me a hint, at least?”
“We’ve received a messenger from the border. Things have taken a turn for the worse.”
The border conflict had never alarmed Inge, even when her older brother had been involved. Their neighbors to the south were combative by nature but weakly manned and equipped. Halvard’s forces might have overrun them at any time, to her understanding, but he chose to maintain the current borders instead of increasing the reach of his kingdom. How things might have taken a turn for the worse, then, she could not fathom. Worry gnawed within her as she followed Raske through unfamiliar halls.
The king’s council chambers were brightly lit. Within, King Halvard sat at the head of an oblong table, a flat expression on his face as Inge entered. Her gaze darted to the faded woman next to him—Dagmar Pehrsdotter, the king’s magician—and then to the warrior who stood opposite the king, waiting to give his report.
“You, sit here,” said King Halvard to Inge, and he pointed to the chair on his left.
The Legendary Inge Page 21