Seeker of the Crown

by Ruth Lauren

  There’s virtually no one around this side of the palace. The streets are quiet, but the spies still keep a measured pace, drawing no attention to themselves. We follow at a distance, keeping the horses reined in single file, until the five riders reach a wide crossroads. I hold up my hand to let the others know to stop. There’s a water trough nearby, and I lead our party to it, pretending the horses need to drink.

  One spy heads down the main road that leads out of the city. Nicolai nods at me, then takes off after her. One heads toward Tyur’ma. “Hold back,” I say to Anatol. Maybe someone at the prison has information, but my instincts tell me not this time, and I can’t afford to send one of us toward a likely dead end. The prince follows the next spy, my sister the one after that.

  Sasha gives me a tense smile as she canters past. “You always put yourself last. You just can’t bear not to see what happens in the end, can you!” Her words trail off, drifting on the air, but I hear the teasing note in them.

  I allow myself to smile after my sister for a second, and then I spur my horse and take off after the last spy.

  CHAPTER 17

  The spy’s horse picks its way swiftly through the streets on neat hooves, its rider’s cloak flowing back along the horse’s brown satin flanks. I follow a long way behind, hoping my own mount’s footfalls are lost in the noise made by the passing carts and laden donkeys in the city.

  Snow starts to fall, and I’m grateful to it for muffling my horse’s steps, but I’m so focused on not losing sight of my spy that I don’t take notice of my surroundings. When she stops and dismounts, I finally look up and see where we are—the Great Library.

  I hang back, my horse shaking its head and twitching its ears to flick away the thick snowfall, but there are no guards outside the library today. They must have conducted their search and let the librarians resume normal service—either that, or Inessa’s ordered them away, not caring for them to find any evidence of the true queen.

  I dismount and hitch my horse to the nearest post. A boy smaller than Feliks hovers, having seen me pull up. I rummage in my pocket for a coin and toss it to him as I stride through the snow, glad of the excuse to pull my furs around me and keep my head down.

  The spy flits up the steps of the library. I wait for as long as I can force myself to after the doors close behind her, then run up the steps two at a time. Inside, I shake melting flakes from my clothes. I just catch a glimpse of a fast-moving figure ascending the staircase, and then she’s gone. I follow on hunter’s feet. She passes a librarian and doesn’t even acknowledge the man. She knows exactly where she’s going, neither slowing nor turning around.

  We go all the way to the top of the building, and I duck behind a marble bust on a tall pillar when she reaches the same doors Anatol, Katia, Nicolai, Feliks, and I passed through days ago. Once she’s stepped into the genealogy room and closed the doors, I creep forward and put my ear to the carved wood. Nothing. Is she looking for the secret passageway we discovered—or is there something in the room we missed when we were here?

  I ease the door open, my muscles tensed, ready to take off if I’m discovered. But as I gradually pull the door open wider, I realize the room is empty. I straighten and, with a quick glance behind me, step into the room and stride to the far end. The clock—the secret door—is ajar.

  The second time around, I know not to touch anything, and I go faster as I wind down the stairs to the cavern. I wonder how the spy knows to avoid the traps that caught us. Maybe the secrets of the royal family aren’t as secret as Anatol thinks.

  At the entrance to the cavern, I peek into the darkness. I don’t even see the spy until she moves, and then I freeze—she’s right in front of me. I hold my breath until my pulse pounds, but her back is to me, hands on her hips as she surveys the space. Only one torch burns—she must have lit it—and it throws just the barest hint of light into the farthest reaches of the cave, where I know the cell is.

  She lifts the torch and moves to the edge of the water. I stay hidden, watching her pause, work out the bridge, and then slowly make her way across. She goes a little way down the tunnel I helplessly watched Anastasia escape through, and as the flare of the torch gets smaller and smaller, I step out into the cavern itself.

  The torch’s movement changes. I halt and squint into the darkness to be sure I’m right. It’s coming back toward me. I slip into the passageway, backing up farther and farther until I’m certain—the spy discovered no more than I did. She’s leaving.

  I bolt up the stairs, knowing I have to get out of the genealogy room before I’m discovered. If Inessa finds out I orchestrated this whole situation, my father will pay the price. My stomach twists as I realize what a risk I’ve taken, what a risk I’ve forced my sister and the others to take. Inessa could put every one of us back in Tyur’ma. Or she could do something worse.

  The stairs curl upward in a tight spiral. My legs churn, and my hand scrapes along the rough stone until I burst out from the clock into the room and run straight for the door. At the last second I decide I won’t make it and throw myself behind a glass case full of glittering jewels. I realize that I’m not fully hidden, but there’s no time. The clock swings open, and the black-cloaked spy strides out. She has a long, straight nose and eyes as watchful as a mountain cat’s. She flicks the hood of her cloak over her dark braids as she closes the clock door.

  I try to slow my breathing, but it only rushes in my ears. I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the banging in my chest to give me away. Seconds pass, and I blink. The spy is gone. I should have kept my eyes open.

  But the room is quiet. She can’t have seen me. I push to my feet and run for the door, slipping out into the hallway just in time to see the hem of the spy’s cloak disappear around a corner in the direction of the map room.

  “Can I help you?” The tone is stern, and I straighten and spin around.

  “I—I’m looking for the map room,” I say.

  The librarian eyes me sharply. Everyone in the city is suspicious now that Queen Ana has disappeared. That probably goes double for people who work in the place she disappeared from. The last thing I need is for anyone to call the Guard.

  The librarian frowns at me, and then gives me directions I barely hear and don’t actually need. I just nod, and when she seems intent on watching me, I head for the map room, walking as slowly as I can.

  The door stands open and the spy is gone, but there are two scholars in the room—plus the librarian outside—so I enter and walk straight to a window. The spy’s horse is gone. I press my face to the glass and crane my neck to look both ways down the street, but there’s no trace. I’ve lost her. My horse is still hitched, though the boy I paid to watch it has deserted his post. I’d better get down there quickly.

  “What is the meaning of all of these intrusions?” One of the scholars glares at me, her foot tapping impatiently.

  I turn to her. “All of these …?” The spy. The spy was in here.

  “Why are you staring, girl? What do you want?”

  “I want the same thing the woman who was in here before did,” I say.

  The scholar tuts and waves her arm at one corner of the room, then pulls her candle closer and presses her nose to the map she’s studying.

  I move to the corner she pointed out. A dull glass case positioned there holds rolled maps stuffed inside seemingly at random, making the whole thing look like a honeycomb I once pulled down from a tree in the garden at home. It broke on the grass and spat out a swirl of bees that had me sprinting for the house while Sasha flung the door open and yelled for me to run.

  One map, though—one map is sticking out farther than the others, as though it was replaced in a hurry. I pull it out, brush a cobweb away, and unfurl the yellowed, powdery parchment. Faded brown ink outlines the familiar lands of the realm—including the flat, featureless land labeled only “Saylas”—but this map is so old that the Demidovan forests are double the size they are today, spreading over what is now farmland
. The city is tiny, and though the mountains look exactly the same, the rivers look different somehow.

  I stare at it, trying to fathom the reason the spy picked this particular map. I trace the river that runs through the valley outside the city with my finger, following its path through Demidova and out to the sea. There’s another river in the lands beyond the mountains; the map shows it running through Pyots’k, but then it just stops. It must be incomplete. Rivers don’t just stop.

  I stand up straighter. Rivers don’t just stop. But maybe they disappear underground. Maybe whoever made this map didn’t know where this river went. Maybe they had no way of finding out.

  I run to the table and lay the map in my hands next to an up-to-date map of Demidova. Then I run back to the stack of ancient maps and pull them out one by one to unfurl them and run my fingers along the faded blue lines of rivers.

  The scholar tuts at me again, but I ignore her, even though both the table and the floor are covered now. Some of the maps are so old that I can’t read the writing, and on some the countries I know are called different names altogether.

  I stand back, and then when I can’t see everything at once, I clamber up onto a chair.

  “Young lady, if you don’t desist at once, I am going to call for assistance,” the scholar says.

  “Sorry,” I say, but I don’t stop, and I don’t care. Back in the cavern, we decided that the river simply led to the sea, and that we had no chance of catching Anastasia or finding anything more to help us.

  But we were wrong.

  We were looking in the wrong direction—thinking only about were the river went, and not where it came from. Now I see, as I stand and survey the maps, that the river came from Pyots’k. It all started there. Why would Anastasia need to use a river that comes through Pyots’k to Demidova?

  The scholar is talking to me again, but I ignore her. I’m thinking about what Anastasia said back in the cavern—that she still wants the throne, and that she’ll have it. She always intended to ally with Pyots’k, and she still means to. If they launch their ships from our harbors, if their fleet wins the war they aim to start, they’ll put Anastasia on the Demidovan throne in return.

  I jump down from the chair just as the irate scholar swings open the door to the map room. Behind her is the librarian. I run past them both, and they shout after me. I’m halfway down the stairs, going too fast for my own feet, before I realize the full extent of what’s happening.

  I have to get to the others. We have to return to that tunnel and follow it to its end.

  We have to see what Anastasia’s been secretly bringing in on that river from Pyots’k.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Hurry up!” I call over my shoulder for the tenth time. I’ve been desperate to get back here since the moment I burst out of the Great Library into fresh knee-deep snow and rode hard back home.

  Anatol, Katia, Sasha, Feliks, and Nicolai follow me into the tunnel that carries the river from Pyots’k, through the cavern in Demidova, and out to the sea. I grudgingly admit to myself that Sasha and Katia were right to make us wait until morning to do this as I lead them into the dark of the tunnel with a freshly lit torch, dry furs, and a borrowed crossbow at my back.

  “Careful.” I point out a stone underfoot that’s slick with moss. The tunnel walls are curved stone, and the path beside the river is narrow. We have to walk single file, our torches flaring out over the black water. My bow is wedged at an angle, digging into my back.

  “How long is this tunnel, anyway?” Feliks’s voice echoes.

  I think back to the maps, trying to judge the distance. “We’ll have to walk for two hours.” I secretly wonder whether it might be more, but Sasha insisted she come along, and her ankle is still sore, so I don’t want to say it aloud.

  Behind me, Anatol is silent. When I glance back, his face is taut in the orange torchlight. I go as fast as I can—almost a breakneck speed on the treacherous stones of the path—but he’s hot on my heels the whole way, the heat from his torch warming my hand if I slow at all.

  We walk a long way like that, no one saying anything, until Sasha calls out, “Can we rest? Just for a minute?”

  It’s not until I look back again that I see how far behind the others are. I look to Anatol, and he nods.

  “Okay,” I call back. “For a few minutes.”

  We stop where we are and I crouch to rest my back against the damp wall. Anatol does the same, his torch spitting as an errant drop of moisture falls on it. The flickering light throws shadows under his eyes, but they only add to those that are already there.

  “We’ll find the queen,” I say in a low voice. “There’s more to this tunnel than there seems, I know it.”

  “She doesn’t know,” he says, his voice small and fragile.

  “What?”

  “My mother. She doesn’t know what Father’s done, and how Inessa’s betrayed her too, on top of Anastasia.” He rubs his hand over his face, pressing too hard. “If we ever do find her, I’ll have to tell her what they’ve done.”

  “She’ll still have you,” I say, because I don’t know what else I can say.

  “You don’t understand,” he says in a louder voice. “Everyone has betrayed us, and she’s not here. I don’t … I don’t have anyone.” He sighs and slumps to the ground.

  I think about my parents—kept from us, but not gone. They’ve never let Sasha and me down, but I know how much it hurts to be away from them, to know they’re worrying about us. I think about Sasha too, how she’s plunged deeper and deeper into Father’s world since she got out of Tyur’ma. How she’s moved farther away from my world. We’ve had to push the rift aside, often, since we returned to Demidova, but her not telling me about Anatol’s banishment is like a hot ember inside me that won’t go out. I’ve dulled it—she’s done nothing but help since Queen Ana gave us our tasks—but I still can’t extinguish it, not entirely.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Anatol. “But you have all of us. We’re here with you.”

  “Katia and Feliks hate me. They think I’m a spoiled prince who endangered the thieves’ network. Nicolai is paid to be near me. Sasha’s loyalty lies above all with my mother, and—”

  “Don’t you dare,” I say sharply. “Don’t you dare tell me why I’m here. Katia and Feliks were annoyed with you over something you did. It doesn’t mean they hate you. Say you’re sorry and mean it. They won’t hold it against you. Nicolai would be offended if he heard you say that about him, so you’d better count yourself lucky that I won’t tell. My sister is doing this for you, and for me, and for the entire country, because that’s what she cares about, and I’m here because I’m your friend and I want to put things right just as much as you do. I have just as much to lose, so—”

  “Valor?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. And I mean it.”

  I let out a breath and bump his shoulder with mine.

  He sighs deeply. “You’re right about Nicolai too. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s the first in his family to receive an apprenticeship, you know. I couldn’t have picked anyone better than him when I chose who to send into Tyur’ma.”

  I twist to face the prince. He’s never talked about this before. And come to think of it, neither has Nicolai.

  “When I realized I needed a spy, I went to the training grounds under the pretext of taking a royal interest, and out of all the apprentices, Nicolai caught my eye. I asked the master about him, and he told me Nicolai had plans to work his way up through the ranks. I could see how determined he was, and how loyal to my family. His own family staunchly supports my mother. They think the world of him for dedicating himself to the Guard.”

  Anatol looks past me to where the others sit farther down the tunnel. “I really am sorry I risked the thieves’ network by sending that message to Nicolai. I … felt like I’d lost everyone else, Valor. But I knew Nicolai would never let me down.”

  I nod. “Feliks and Katia understand. They know what
it is to miss family. They know about loyalty.”

  Anatol manages a small smile. “I can tell. You know, Nicolai sends every coin he earns home for his younger brother. He says the Guard gives him everything he needs, so he doesn’t want the money for himself.”

  Down the tunnel, Katia gets to her feet.

  I nudge Anatol. “Come on. Let’s go. I’ve had enough of being in the dark.”

  He nods, and I call to Sasha and pick up the pace again, thankful for the sturdy treads on the soles of my boots. We fall into silence, with only the occasional hollow drip from the roof of the tunnel into the water beside us and the shuffle and echo of our footsteps to keep us company. The path widens in places, and the roof lowers in others so much that we’re forced to crouch. For one stretch we walk hunched over for so long that I can barely stand it. The hilt of Nicolai’s sword scrapes the rocks more than once, setting my teeth on edge. When we eventually straighten again, everyone but little Feliks sighs in relief.

  I catch movement among the shadows. A rat darts past me, and I suck in a breath through my teeth. I spin to see it scurry over Katia’s foot. She gasps and drops her torch. The light flares over the dark water for a split second, and then blinks out with a hiss.

  “How much farther do you think we have to go?” Nicolai asks.

  I thought I saw a faint circle of light ahead before the rat distracted me, but I don’t answer him. Instead I hold my torch high, peering back the way we came.

  “What is it?” Sasha asks.

  “Valor?” Anatol joins me, his torch adding to the light my own casts.

  I squint until my eyes smart. Something in my gut, something I thought I saw in the brief light of the fall of Katia’s torch, has all my senses on high alert. I screw up my eyes in frustration at not being able to see into the thick blackness down the tunnel.

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s nothing.”