She didn’t lunge. She waited for them like a spider in a web. The sylveth lights flickered and dimmed, then flared brilliantly and faded to sparks, casting the corridor into murky darkness. She released the needles on three rings. When the first Crown Shield grabbed her wrist, Margaret shook and staggered, letting her knees buckle as if overwhelmed by pain. Her twisted ankle made her performance all too real. An arm came around her and she grasped it as if to balance herself, then pressed her hand to the shoulder of one and gripped the hand of the other. The poison was quick and ugly. The two Shields spasmed and dropped to the floor in convulsions. They were dead within grains.
The chaos and the dying lights kept anyone from noticing. More majick snapped, and now she smelled burning flesh and hair. She didn’t waste time. As more Crown Shields moved into range, she poisoned them. Each movement was calculated and methodical. When there were only two left, she snatched a dropped crossbow and snapped away a bolt. It burrowed through the throat of the taller man. That left one.
He turned, searching for her. Blood ran from wounds in his scalp and face, and even in the gloom he looked shaken and angry. He leveled his pike and strode toward her over the bodies of his fallen comrades. Margaret pulled a throwing knife from her hair. The light sputtered and brightened for a moment. She saw the curved gleam along the edge of the pike’s blade and a flickering shine on the Crown Shield’s breastplate. His eyes were black holes in a rectangle of shadow. Her fingers flicked with practiced ease as she flung her blade. It bit deep into his right eye. He dropped with a clatter.
She scanned the carnage, rubbing her hand absently at a tickle on her cheek. Her palm came away sticky and wet. Blood. It trickled freely from a wound that ran from her eyebrow almost to her chin. Suddenly it burned like fire. Her mouth tightened and she wiped her hand on her skirt.
A husky female voice from the cross-corridor startled her. “You’d better come quick if you plan to get away.”
Margaret spun to face the maid who stood in the opening. “Who are you?”
“I’m a lady’s maid for Mistress Alanna. Are you coming?”
“What did you do to the squad of Blackwatch? Hit them with pillows?” Margaret asked. Ellyn might be a lady’s maid, but that wasn’t all she was. The explosion of majick had come from somewhere and there was no other likely culprit.
“Yes. That is exactly what I’ve done,” Ellyn said with breezy insincerity. “But we’re wasting time. If you want help to get away, now is the time. Otherwise I should be about my business. M’lady Alanna will want her feet rubbed.” She made a face.
“Why would you help me?”
“Perhaps because I would do anything to avoid touching M’lady’s revolting feet. Who knows? I may be hoping to earn a splendid reward, Princess Margaret.”
That Ellyn knew who she was should have startled Margaret, but it didn’t. Something about the other woman told Margaret that she knew a whole lot more than she ought to. “I wouldn’t count on it. The regent has made paupers of the entire royal family.”
That was met with a disbelieving snort, but Ellyn didn’t argue. “Then I must want to help you out of loyalty to the crown, don’t you think?”
No, Margaret thought. I definitely do not think. But she was running out of time. Whether or not she accepted Ellyn’s assistance, she had to get moving. Did she dare grab the satchel? But the real question was whether she dared leave it behind. The answer was unequivocally no. There would be no chance to ever come back and get it, and those documents were needed now.
She glanced again at Ellyn. Taller than Margaret by several inches, the woman had a gamin face with a narrow chin, dark sunken eyes, and long blond hair she wore wrapped in a tail down her back. She held herself balanced and taut in the way of a predator. She wore an air of untiring patience and contained ferocity. A wolf in lady’s maid clothing. She said nothing, a faint smile curving her lips as if she knew Margaret’s dilemma and was both entertained by it and indifferent to the outcome.
“Crack it,” Margaret muttered and turned to face the cabinet. She leaped up, ignoring the shooting pain in her ankle. Gripping the top edge, she pulled herself high enough to reach behind and grab the satchel. She smothered a yelp of pain when she landed; then, lifting the strap over her head, she started picking her way toward Ellyn over the bodies of the Crown Shields.
The Blackwatch squad lay crumpled in front of Ellyn’s cart. Their bodies were mangled and torn as if they’d been through a butcher’s grinder. Blood splattered the walls and seeped and puddled on the floor. It matched the splashes on Ellyn’s apron and the red rim around the bottom of her shoes.
“Messy,” Margaret said. Unnecessarily so. She flipped a needle open on one of her rings. Ellyn was clearly a majicar, and she just as clearly enjoyed killing. That made her more dangerous than Margaret could live with.
The other woman scowled at the bodies. “It shouldn’t have happened like that. Something’s wrong with the majick in Crosspointe. Has been since the Kalpestrine fell.”
Margaret hesitated. The day after her father was assassinated, Merstone Island had simply collapsed. The craggy mountain that had contained the majicar stronghold—the Kalpestrine—had fallen in on itself without warning. Seawater had drowned the crater it left behind. Most of the majicars had been on the main-land, but rumor had it that majick had not been working right since. Some reports said it was driving the majicars insane. So maybe Ellyn’s spell had gone wild and killed the Blackwatch squad.
Or maybe she just liked carving people to shreds.
“Trust me or not, you’ve got to go if you want to escape,” Ellyn murmured. “If I don’t come with you, I’ll have to raise the alarm.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It is reality. I must rub M’lady’s feet, or I must go with you and be generously rewarded. If I go to her, I will have to mention the bodies in the corridor, or else they will think me a conspirator in the murders.”
“What are you up to? What do you want from me? What is a majicar doing serving as lady’s maid to the lord chancellor’s wife?” Margaret demanded.
Ellyn cocked her head. “Do you really want to waste time on that now?”
“How do I know you aren’t just leading me into another trap?”
“I saved you.”
“And I’m grateful for it. But that neither makes you friend nor ally. I am not a stupid woman. You want something. What is it?”
“I want to help you get out of the castle safely.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ll have more time to talk without worrying about getting killed.”
Margaret glanced again at the bloody Blackwatch squad. “With you at my side, how can I not worry?”
Ellyn’s lips curved. Her smile was bitter and her eyes ancient. Margaret knew that look—she’d seen it in her mirror a thousand times. It was the expression of someone who lived by the blade—an assassin and a spy.
“Would you rather be caught by the regent? He’s all too eager to put a chain around the neck of every member of the royal family. He would no doubt offer me a rich reward for you.”
Bile rose on Margaret’s tongue. The regent had set about enslaving her family and anyone he thought might be a Rampling ally. She would never have thought her people would stand for it, but many had dragged the new slaves away in chains. For these people she risked her life. She pushed the thought away. “Regent Truehelm would. More than I can give.”
“But I do not think he can give me what I want.”
“And you think I can?”
“Yes.”
“Then you don’t want money.” It wasn’t a question. A majicar lady’s maid in the regent’s service was certainly looking for something far more valuable than dralions. But Margaret had no idea what, except that it was likely a price she couldn’t afford to pay. Neither could she afford not to find out exactly who Ellyn was. It was the sort of mystery that could only come back to bite Crosspointe in the ass. “I make you no
promises,” she said at last. “Except that I will hear what you have to say.”
“Good enough,” Ellyn said. “Let’s go.”
True to her word, Ellyn helped Margaret get out of the castle. Margaret hid in the belly of the trundle cart and Ellyn wheeled her into a storage closet. Margaret exited the cart and donned a mob cap and an unbloodied apron, hiding hers behind a stack of sheets. She hoped the spatters of blood on her sleeves would pass as food stains. She next pulled up her skirts and belted the satchel to her waist. She took up two baskets from a shelf, then hunched her shoulders and limped after Ellyn, clutching the stained handkerchief she found on the floor and sniffing loudly behind it at regular intervals.
Maids in the service to lady’s maids were by definition, beneath notice. Margaret muttered and snuffled so that she could not escape attention and, as a result, was summarily dismissed as being exactly what she appeared to be—an arthritic, querulous servant. As Ellyn strode imperiously down the serving passages ahead of her, other staff dodged out of her way. Ellyn’s status as a lady’s maid to Alanna Truehelm put her among the elite in the hierarchy of castle servants.
Twice they were stopped by patrols of Crown Shields, but the guards asked only desultory questions of Ellyn and ignored Margaret altogether. She watched them sharply. Were they simply incompetent? Or had they decided that chasing a Rampling princess was against their oath of loyalty to the crown? Hoped sparked in her breast that perhaps she wasn’t risking her life for people who cared nothing about her family after all.
Each time they were halted, Ellyn explained their middle-of-the-night venture into the city as a whim of her mistress, rolling her eyes and heaving an exasperated sigh as she spoke. “She’s got a sick headache and a bitter stomach, and wants a tisane blessed at the Maida of Chayos. I’ve been up all night, rubbing her feet and putting cold cloths on her forehead.” She grimaced and bent toward them conspiratorially. “Her feet are scaly and they smell like spoiled cheese.” The entire squad snickered. Ellyn straightened, making a sudden fearful look and glanced around like they were being watched. “I had better hurry.”
After each performance, the guards gestured for the two women to move along. The second time, one of the men groped Ellyn’s ass as she passed by. She started and giggled flirtatiously at him, then hurried away.
They made the city center just as the sky was beginning to lighten. There Margaret had turned to her. Her ankle had been so sore and swollen that she could hardly stand on it, and their progress had been slower than she liked. At least majick still worked well enough to heal. She’d see about that very soon.
“This is where we part ways,” she told the majicar firmly.
Ellyn frowned, her gaze turbulent and dark. “You said that you would listen to me.”
“I have no time now,” Margaret said. Exhaustion was dragging at her. She’d been awake for nearly two whole days. Her body shook with the leftover pain of Ellyn’s majickal attack and she needed to get the satchel somewhere safe.
“Then when?”
Margaret eyed her narrowly. “You’re awfully eager.”
“I am,” Ellyn said sincerely.
Truth be told, Margaret wanted to hear whatever it was that Ellyn had to say, and to know what she was doing working as a lady’s maid to Alanna Truehelm. She couldn’t afford to walk away without some answers. She thought rapidly. “Meet me in three days at the Spotted Lace Teahouse. I’ll be there at the ninth glass.”
“Three days?” Ellyn repeated dubiously.
“I cannot promise sooner. I have obligations.” In fact, she didn’t know if she’d be able to get away in three days. Everything depended on what was in the satchel. She’d opened the vault in her father’s—or rather, the regent’s ill-gotten—office. It was hidden beneath the rug under the regent’s desk chair. To everyone it appeared to be nothing more than a solid parquet floor. Unlocking it required the proper words, chanted with the right intonation and cadence, as well as wearing the right bit of jewelry.
Every Rampling born on the right side of the blankets was given a cipher at birth. The pendant was hung on an unbreakable necklace that could not be removed and it offered some protection against majickal attacks. The white sylveth drop in the center of the its compass rose had turned black upon the death of the Margaret’s father and would not turn back until a new king or queen sat on the throne. Without the cipher necklace, it would be impossible to unseal her father’s vault. But with majick acting so erratically, she feared that those protections would not last much longer and she was afraid of what the regent might discover inside.
She’d not taken the time to examine what she took, merely snatching up everything and stuffing it all into her satchel. She’d resealed the vault and had begun to leave when she’d noticed the papers littering the desk. Geoffrey Truehelm’s personal correspondence. She’d cleared the desk and rifled through the drawers, taking everything that looked important.
She glanced at Ellyn, waiting for her reply.
The other woman pursed her lips and then gave a short, ungracious nod. “I have no choice. I will be there. Do not be late.”
Margaret arched one brow. “Or else what?”
“I’ll find you.”
“Will you, now. And what then?”
The majicar’s smile was slow and predatory. “I’ll do what’s necessary.”
Ellyn turned and walked away, disappearing with an uncanny swiftness. She didn’t use majick; she faded into the shadows like a thief. Margaret stared after her. Who was she? What was she?
Suddenly making that meeting seemed of paramount importance.
Margaret’s first stop after splitting with Ellyn was to find a safe place for the satchel and get some sleep. She would find a healer in the evening before she took the contents of the satchel to her brother Ryland. Her mouth thinned. He was going to be very unhappy with her. Like most people, he believed in her helpless, simpering, public princess persona far too much to bring himself to acknowledge her as an assassin, a spy, a thief, and sometimes whore. He didn’t want to think his sister capable of such things, really, nor did he want to think of how the king—their father—turned her into such a weapon.
She sighed, limping along the street to the corner. She wanted to flag down a footspider and have him pull her in his cart, but it would only call attention to her. Better to walk.
By midmorning she made her way to a ramshackle room down near Blackwater Bay on the north side of the customs docks. The place was located in the back of a tavern and looked like nothing more than a lean-to storage shed. As she unlocked the door wards, the first drops of a chill rain pattered against her cheeks. She made a face. Halfway through summer and it felt like late fall.
She slammed the door and sneezed as dust swirled up from the floor in a thick cloud. The place was cold and damp and smelled of brine and moldy bread. From the undisturbed dust in the rest of the room, it was clear no one had trespassed here since her last visit six months ago. Margaret’s stomach growled in the silence of the room. She hadn’t eaten since she’d stolen a half-eaten sandwich that had been hidden in a maid’s workbasket. That was more than a day ago.
She yawned, her jaw cracking. She lifted her skirts and unbuckled the satchel. She stepped forward and turned back to the door and knelt. She placed a splayed hand on the middle of the warped wood floor. White light ran around the edges of her palm and fingers and a feeling like a mass of sticky squirming worms engulfed her hand. After a moment, the sensation dissolved and the light spread across a rectangle of the wood-slat floor. The boards shimmered and then melted downward.
Inside the space below was an iron box with no visible lid. Margaret traced a sigil on the top. It flared orange and the top of the box turned into a layer of oily, thick smoke. She pushed the satchel down into the box. The touch of the smoke was greasy and cold. She pulled her hand back out and traced a different sigil across its slow-swirling surface. Immediately it firmed back into solid iron. Next she closed th
e wood floor and stood, scuffing the dust to make it less obvious she’d disturbed it. Then she slid her hand over the door to reactivate the locking wards.
She turned around and longingly eyed the potbellied stove in the corner. There was a full bin of coal beside it. But if she lighted a fire, Markham, her landlord, might come to find out if someone had broken in. He was discreet enough and loyal to the crown, but now was not the time to take needless chances. The satchel was too important.
She crossed to the bed in the corner and carefully peeled the sheet off the top, folding it back along itself to keep the thick layer of dust covering it from erupting into the air. Beneath, the straw mattress was swathed in a thick layer of blankets. Margaret took off her boots and apron and crawled under, falling almost instantly asleep as she ignored the loud protestations of her stomach.
She woke after dusk. The room was pitch-dark, and outside the wind whined and the rain pelted the slate roof like pebbles. Margaret sat up and stretched. Her ankle throbbed, and when she examined it with the tips of her fingers, she found that it was swollen twice as large as it should be and was hot to the touch. She sighed and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Her breath caught hard in her chest as the pain throbbed through her ankle like a deep-rung bell.
She fumbled for a striker in her bed table drawer. She found it and scraped alight the thick candle on her bed table. Flickering light melted the darkness away. She breathed slowly in and out, then reached for her boots. Lacing them on her hurt foot was an exercise in self-torture, but eventually she succeeded. She pulled the bed right and slid the dust sheet over it again. A few minutes later she had retrieved the satchel. She started to buckle it on beneath her skirts, then hesitated.
Her father had made Ryland prelate until their brother Vaughn could be crowned king, following a proper election, of course. Margaret was to serve as their weapon and spy, the same as she had done for her father. But her father had confided in her—trusted her. Ryland thought she needed protecting and kept far too many things from her.
The Hollow Crown: A Novel of Crosspointe Page 2