by Raven Oak
Ida. Always Ida. Why must she haunt his thoughts now when there was so much to do?
“Your Majesty?” The servant at his arm peered up at him, the bundle of flowers still in her hands. He motioned for her to withdraw, and the dozen servants left him alone in the audience chamber. For weeks they’d pestered Margaret about the flowers, the seating arrangement, what entertainment would play. The list continued until finally she’d thrown up her hands and stormed off in a bundle of stress and tears.
He thought he could help, but what did he know of such things? They scurried around planning the wedding, and all he could think on was Iliana.
And Ida.
His heart still leapt when he thought of her, and his hands still shook with the urge to strangle something. How could he love and hate someone at the same time? She plagued his thoughts—an irritating distraction when he needed his wits the most.
Word came that she awaited his daughter in Brieghton, and then nothing. Leon’s thoughts flickered back and forth between past and present, while he outright ignored the future. Maybe this wedding would do him good. Provided it wasn’t a trap.
King Leon stared across the mostly empty room until one of the royal guards cleared his throat. Captain Fenton approached and bent down on one knee before the throne. “Your Majesty.”
“What news?”
“Messenger pigeons in from the border. Captain Warhammer returns with a guest.” Leon released air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and Michael continued, “Sire, Lieutenant Thomas says the woman is Amaskan. He asks if he should send anyone to kill her, or if Captain Warhammer will do the task.”
Leon gripped the gilded armrests of his throne. “Do nothing. No one will harm her.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. May I speak boldly, Your Majesty?” Leon nodded. Captain Fenton’s booted toe traced a circle in the blue rug. “If she’s Amaskan, as Captain of the Royal Guard, I should know. Or if nothing else, the Grand Marshal should be notified—”
“Captain, I understand your concern, but the woman traveling with Ida isn’t Amaskan. She’s a Master Guardsman out of Sadai, and I’ve sent for her to protect Margaret as her sepier.”
“Is that wise? It’s good for Her Highness to have a sepier, but to be frank, Her Highness isn’t the easiest person to protect. If anything, this sepier may need a sepier herself just as a shield from Her Highness’s shrieking tongue.”
Leon laughed at the picture the young captain painted. “Point taken, Captain,” he said once he’d caught his breath.
“Truly though, is this wise, Your Majesty? How much do you know about this Master Guardsman?”
The majority of the audience chamber stood empty, the exception being the royal guards who stood watch over King Leon. As such, most of the candles remained unlit, leaving the throne area a blazing brilliance of gold and blue in a dark and shadowed hall. Even in the dim lighting where Captain Fenton rigidly stood, Leon could see his furrowed brow.
“Put aside your worry,” King Leon said with a broad smile.
“But, Sire—”
“I know all I need to, Fenton, all I need.”
Or he hoped he did. Iliana, come back to me a daughter. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and used the motion to hide his concern from the captain. But a daughter isn’t what you need.
You need a killer.
CHAPTER NINE
Margaret stood unmoving, her eyes light slits as fabric moved across her frame before settling into place on girlish curves. A prick at the small of her back made her flinch, and she wobbled on the stool.
A servant latched onto Margaret’s arm to steady her, and Margaret jerked her arm away. She scowled before turning her attention to her lady-in-waiting. “If you keep eating like a bird, my lady, this dress will fall off you before the wedding night, if you pardon my saying so,” Lady Nisha said as she slid more pins into place.
Margaret’s skin flushed, and she patted her cheeks to cool them. Two months. Two months before she would marry Prince Gamun, and yet she still blushed at the thought. She forced her eyes to the mirror. A delicate frame wrapped in a cocoon of pale blue silk, pale yellow threads embroidered the edges along her bosom and feet.
Beautiful dress. Not a beautiful princess. She frowned again, her lips pouting beneath a nose just a hair too large for her slight-jawed face.
“What is it, my lady?”
“Am I beautiful?” Margaret’s eyes saw angles instead of smooth flowing fabric.
“Of course, cousin. You’re very beautiful,” Nisha replied.
Margaret spun away from the mirror to face her lady-in-waiting. Instead of fleeting eyes or fidgeting fingers, she found Nisha waiting with a wide smile that lit up her dark skin like a star. Margaret’s frown deepened, and she tugged at the fabric bunched at her bosom. Trembling fingers danced over the flowered embroidery, but only saw the marred flesh at the edge of it.
Hoof beats rang in Margaret’s ears.
Cold shadows as the horse moved, and a heavy weight leaning against her back which pressed the sharp edge of the pommel against her chest.
The princess shuddered and blinked back the memory. “I’m not worth the months it took to make this dress. Prince Gamun will take one look at me and declare me an impostor. Look at me—all bones swimming in yards of fabric.”
Nisha stuck pins into the soft fabric and pulled it tighter to Margaret’s frame. Margaret winced as another pin poked her, and she couldn’t help but tug at the dress’s waist, her hands smoothing the fabric over hip bones that protruded like rocks along a river bed. She bit one of her nails, then stilled her hands at her sides.
Her lady-in-waiting nodded at the correction and ordered more pins to be brought into the room.
If this dress is sent to the seamstress for adjustments one more time, I think Papa might bust the seams of his own britches. Margaret looked down on the black head of Lady Nisha and said, “I can’t help it. I’m just too nervous to eat anything.”
Nisha bent over the stitching on the back, clucking her tongue as she slid more pins. “The dress will have to be sent back to the seamstress for adjusting.”
The woman rose, and Margaret took her hand in her own. “Thank you, Lady Nisha.”
“Whatever for, my lady?”
“You’ve been like a sister to me, and I know, times like this how you must miss your home and your sister.”
Her lady-in-waiting stared into the mirror at nothing and murmured, “Shad is no longer my home, and my family is dead. But you have given me both a new home and a new family, and a status I’d been stripped of in Shad. I am indebted to you, my lady.”
With the pins in place, Margaret wiggled and squirmed as Nisha pulled the dress over Margaret’s head. It was retired to the chest in the corner until its return to the seamstress. Margaret’s shoulders slumped as her handmaidens dressed her. Their deft fingers made quick work of the task, yet Margaret frowned. “What is the matter, my lady?”
“My father. You know what he’ll say when the dress goes back for a fourth time.” She sucked in a breath as the handmaidens pulled on the laces of her corset.
Nisha chuckled. “Worry not. It’s normal for a bride to be so, I swear it.”
Margaret settled into her embroidery chair and picked up the stitching from earlier. “Would you recommend a purple or blue for his tunic?” Prince Gamun’s embroidered face resembled a blob more than the image in her memory. Not that she recalled all that much. He was handsome, that she remembered. Still, no one would notice with the snow-topped mountains behind him.
Nisha settled next to Margaret. “I would choose the blue of your kingdom.”
“I agree. Have you heard anything of interest lately, Lady Nisha? Please, take my mind from my nerves.” Her fingers trembled as they pushed the threaded needle through the coarse fabric.
“Nothing.”
Her lady-in-waiting stared at her feet, her own embroidery forgotten, and Margaret pushed the matter. “What have you heard?
I know a lie when it’s before me. Speak.”
“There are rumors about the Prince. I don’t wish to say, my lady.”
Margaret caught the woman’s arm, her fingers tightly gripping Nisha’s brown skin. “You will say. I would know what things are said of my future husband.”
Nisha stared at the stone floor as she whispered, fingers bunched in her russet skirts. “Some call him ‘the Monster.’ They say he enjoys things he ought not.”
“Such as?”
“Young maidens.”
Margaret flushed, the heat spreading across her almost gaunt cheeks. She wasn’t supposed to know of such things, or at least that’s what her father and tutors said behind cracked doors when they thought her not listening. But the books in the royal library held quite an education if one was so inclined. Not that I read the entire book. Some parts were just too unseemly. As if men and women conducted themselves so.
She shrugged at Nisha’s words. “Most men prefer women to other men.” The heat that spread across her arms and chest at this admission was more than embarrassment, and she pretended to study her too-short nails.
“No, my lady. The things they say he does, he hurts them. There are houses in Shad for men such as this, and it is said he frequents such places. The tales from Shad and Nicen—”
When Margaret stood, the embroidery tumbled to the floor and left the Prince a blob against the grey stone. “And where would you hear such unseemly topics? A lady of nobility such as yourself? Or be you the bastard the women say you are?”
Nisha’s lip trembled and tears gathered in her eyes. “No, my lady. My sister, before she was killed, she told me of such things.”
“Your sister is as unseemly as these tales of hers. I will not listen to such conversation. Now,” Margaret said, taking in a deep breath before returning to her chair, “What color for his boots, black or brown?”
“B-black.”
Margaret misplaced a stitch and picked at it, trying to remove the thick thread from the fabric’s heavy weave. The piece of art was her wedding day gift to her new lord, and it had to be perfect. When Margaret said nothing of her lady-in-waiting’s tears, the handmaidens busied themselves with cleaning the bower for a second time that day.
The thread broke, and Margaret bit the inside of her cheek. Rumors reached her ears as well, though she tried to dismiss them as lies. Who knows the sources of such words? Besides, my father would never give me to some monster—someone like that.
Nisha sniffed, and Margaret placed the sewing aside. “Nisha, come and talk with me. I am sorry that I chided you so. I haven’t eaten. You know how I get when I forget to eat.”
Nisha returned to the chair beside Margaret where she sorted the thread colors in the basket beside them. “Your memory of His Highness is perfect,” she whispered.
“Is it? Maybe I remember only the perfect prince my mind wishes to see.”
“There’s little difference between ladies of noble birth and those cleaning the chamber pots.” Margaret gasped, and Nisha continued, “Both are capable of speaking in lies to twist the mind. Pay no worry to the words spoken on your new Lord. I’m sure he’s both handsome and perfect.”
Margaret smiled, her eyes gazing at the stitching of the half-done Prince. “Just wait until he’s done, Nisha. Better yet, just wait until he’s here.” The princess returned to stitching the blues of his tunic.
Two more months. Only two more months, my prince.
She had used him. Ida had used the King to escape the Amaskans and later, to save her own neck.
Adelei didn’t remember her birth father, but after the story Ida told, she understood his fury. And his wish to kill Ida with his bare hands. If Adelei had half the brains, she’d do it now and save everyone the trouble. As the story had flowed, so had the ale. Ida’s heavy snores punctuated the silent room, and Adelei frowned.
There was no way she was getting to sleep with all that racket. Not to mention the thoughts that bounced around in her brain. She breathed slowly to still her pounding pulse. Might as well go see what there is to know.
The dagger, she left behind, as well as most of her throwing knives. She kept the one tucked into her wrist as it was the hardest to detect. She pulled her hood around her bald head and rested her hand against the door.
No change in Ida’s snores or any in the hall outside, and Adelei cracked the door. No guards waited outside nor were any people lingering in the hall. By the sounds of the clinking glasses and frothy talk, all the action was downstairs, and Adelei set out for a table near the bar.
When Ida and Adelei had first arrived, the random scattering of people at the inn had ignored the two women, but as Adelei reached the last rickety step, all dozen heads turned toward her. The servant from earlier pointed a shaking finger in her direction and looked up at Mel, the barkeep. “That’s her. That’s the Amaskan.” he said, and Mel pursed her lips together.
“That true? You Amaskan?” asked Mel while she poured a bottle of something red into a glass.
Damn. Adelei slumped her shoulders toward her chest and forced a shudder. Instead of answering, she played the part of simpleton and looked on the crowd with fearful eyes.
“You hear Mel, girl?” The man closest to her stumbled drunkenly into reach, his nose bumping hers, and she held her breath to keep the stench of his breath from making her gag. She backed up a step and let her bottom lip tremble.
No way was she squeezing out tears when she was this angry. Ugh, why had they picked now to be so observant?
“Didn’t Ida say she was stupid or somethin’? Mabbe tha boy was wrong,” said the man to Mel’s right, the owner of the red liquid in a glass.
Mel came out from around the bar and shoved the man with the horrible breath out of the way with one burly arm. “If that’s tha case, what’s she doin’ down here? You hear me, girl? Whatcha doin’ downstairs?”
Adelei pitched her voice as high and squeaky as she could. “I was thirsty.”
“She can talk.” The boy tumbled backward to land on his rear end, and the audience laughed.
“Of course she can, ya fool. See, Mel, I told ya this boy been spinnin’ lies again.”
The barkeep grabbed Adelei’s chin and jerked her head side to side as she studied Adelei. Her white hooded cloak covered her healing scar, though Mel didn’t give Adelei’s jaw much look at all. Her gaze lay intently on Adelei’s cheeks and chin. She must not have known where the tattoo was normally marked.
"I’ll bring you somethin’ ta drink. Go sit down,” said Mel.
In the corner of the room rested a small table with only one chair, and Adelei chose it as her spot. She kept the hood close to her head, and maintained the look of frightened girl as she watched everyone with widened eyes.
When Mel plopped the mug down, it wasn’t milk this time, though it didn’t look like the ale she’d served Ida. Nor was it the red, foamy liquid the man at the bar savored. Adelei held the cup with shaking hands and sniffed it before turning up her nose in a soured face. “What is it?” she asked.
“Mead. Go ahead and give it a try.”
Adelei suppressed the urge to roll her eyes and took a sip from the mug. Watered down raspberry wine more like—not a proper mead at all. She rubbed one hand across her leggings while scrunching up her face for their benefit.
The men in the room guffawed and bellowed. “She’s no Amaskan, Mel. Look at that face. That’s the face of someone who’s never had good mead before,” one patron yelled, and Mel grinned as she returned to the bar.
As her customers resumed their drinking, Adelei leaned the chair back against the wall and listened. Most of the chatter involved women—who had one, who was looking, and who was avoiding theirs by sitting at the inn—but none spoke of the upcoming royal wedding or the attacks on the royal family.
“Heard the shepherd boy got himself a new bundle of thatch.”
“Oh? Does he look ta be buildin’ a house?”
“So it seems. He’s rather swe
et on the baker’s girl.”
Adelei ignored the conversation and turned to the table to her left, which fared little better. “My Lady of the House of Hertwig is looking for a good breed mare. Might be seein’ if ol’ Betsy has a few more in ’er.” Laughter followed the statement, and she stilled the tapping of her foot.
I’d say they were avoiding the conversation with me in the room. Even if I’m a harmless dull-wit.
She sat in her corner nursing her “first glass of mead” for an hour with little of use said in the candle lit room. Her jaw-splitting yawn was a warning. Boredom and fatigue were not friends to an Amaskan. Unwilling to arouse more suspicion or fall face first into her mead, Adelei sauntered back up the stairs to the room she shared with Ida. The warrior answered the door’s groan with a loud snort.
Adelei stripped off her clothes and pulled on a long tunic for sleep. Between the loud snores and her throbbing head, she ended up staring at the planks of wood overhead and imagining she was home.
In Sadai.
Where I’ll never be again.
Sounds of people and animals moving outside the inn’s walls announced the morning too early for Ida, who cursed and grumbled her way through dressing. Despite Adelei’s late evening, she awoke alert and rested.
By the time both women entered the empty stables, the sun had spread across the small town. It cast shadows in corners and curves and nooks and crannies as people went about their business. Both horses whinnied and stomped their feet, their tails dancing in the sun.
It must have been a rough night in the stable if Midnight wanted to hit the trail again. She wiped down the stallion’s back before tossing a riding blanket over his side. Ida’s fuzzy-headed fingers made saddling her mare a chore.
Adelei was long finished saddling Midnight as Ida swore, dropped the bridle, and then swore again. “Damn fingers feel like pig guts this mornin’.”
“Do you need some help?”
Ida’s groggy stare was enough to light all the fires in the inn’s hearths at once, yet Adelei continued to grin as she waited. Payback was warranted.