Finally, with eleven more candidates to go, the aide called for Ilsa. With all that had transpired, Avery thought she might actually have a chance to impress. And though Avery was disappointed not to be the candidate herself, she couldn’t deny the advantage it would be to the kids if Ilsa won. She found herself pulling for her rival in spite of everything.
Ilsa appeared not to have been rattled by the earlier confrontation and did well remembering her invented history. She may have gone a bit long with one of her answers, and it appeared the queen might be losing interest. But Ilsa signaled the mousy scout, who dramatically reappeared, facing the queen with an elaborate wooden box. At Ilsa’s request he raised the lid, and Angelina rose from her throne.
“For me?” she said.
Ilsa curtsied anew. “Your Highness.”
“What’s in the box?” Avery whispered.
“The result of much pickpocketing,” Kate said.
Angelina descended the throne and lifted one of the coins to the sun before returning it to the box. Scanning the ten remaining candidates, she said, “Did any of the rest of you think to bring your potentate a gift? Or did you assume today was all about you?”
She turned back to Ilsa. “Well played, dear.”
And then to the scout: “As for you, knave, what was your connection to the other girl, the homely, impudent one?”
“None, Majesty.”
“Yet your swift action spared her life. Why?”
“It seemed her motive was loyalty, Highness, not disrespect.”
The queen turned back. “Ilsa, is it? This is your servant? Keep him close.” She sauntered back up the steps to her throne and sat then beckoned Ilsa to follow.
Ilsa self-assuredly gathered her skirt and climbed to stand before the queen, who spoke so softly it was clear no one else heard. Ilsa bent and whispered in Angelina’s ear. The queen arched a brow and, for the first time, smiled.
Angelina instructed Ilsa to stand next to her with her hand on the armrest of the throne. “Now, allow me to repeat my question to the ten remaining candidates,” she said. “Did any of you think to bring a gift to your queen? Anyone? No one?
“Knave, again, I commend you for your valor. Leave the tribute with my aide as you depart. And now, Your Royal Highness, members of the court, honored guests, and beloved subjects: it gives me great pleasure to introduce the newest member of my court, a lady-in-waiting, Ilsa!”
That night, in her new role as one of Ilsa’s scouts, Avery knelt at her assigned grate and peered into the queen’s private chamber. Ilsa and her new lady friends giggled over some whispered gossip until Angelina burst in and the laughter ceased.
The queen marched to the center of the room and paced. “If I can’t give the king an heir, he’ll kill me just as he did Queen Elizabeth. If I don’t stop him, he’ll put a stop to me.”
Avery couldn’t believe it!
Queen Elizabeth wasn’t killed. She died hours after giving birth. Or did she?
Angelina approached Ilsa and clutched her wrist so tightly that Ilsa’s face drained of color. “I must take matters into my own hands. Will you help me?”
Angelina was close to exposing the star on Ilsa’s wrist. Avery wondered if she should alert the other scouts, but she couldn’t pull away.
Ilsa said, “Whatever you ask.”
“Good,” Angelina said. “It may have to happen tonight.”
With these words, Avery ran for the tunnels.
Hours later, Avery sat with Kate and smiled at Babs across the Great Room as he watched a bunch of boys enjoy a noisy game of pins. They had whittled the pins out of wood and now tried to knock them down with a ball. Babs had joined them for the afternoon, and Avery got a kick out of the way he stood out like a sore thumb. He had become a regular fixture at meals and during their activities, the gentle giant with a funny line or wise suggestion.
“I brought you something from the fishwife!” he called to her.
Avery was curious but didn’t want to interrupt a perfect evening. She had wheedled a few sheets of parchment out of Kendrick and drawn caricatures of her friends while Bronte lay at her feet, raising her head only when someone laughed or shouted. Avery laid her hand atop the dog’s silky head, and her eyes brightened at the attention.
A scout raced in—winded and wide-eyed. “They’re coming!” he said, gasping.
That got Tuck’s attention. “Who?”
“Guards. Lots. Of. Guards. Either you guys were too loud or someone must have told them we were here.”
Avery shot Kate a knowing glance. Ilsa!
Was that how she had made the queen smile? Had she promised Angelina some inside information and had now delivered?
The rumble of approaching footsteps became overpowering.
“Hide!” Babs growled. “All of you, out of here, now!”
The thirteen-year-olds scattered like cockroaches, darting in every direction, upending game boards and leaving balls and books. Some took off down the main tunnel, others into the shadows or around corners out of sight.
Avery bolted into an alcove away from the light of torches, Kate close behind.
“Do not move,” she whispered. “No matter what. Promise?”
But even she had no idea how long they could elude an army of royal guards.
Chapter 24
The Devastating Death
Avery peered around the corner at guards wearing breastplates, hoisting torches, and brandishing swords.
“Out of our way!” one hollered.
Babs had planted himself squarely in their path. “What’s going on?” he said calmly. “My friends and I live here in peace. How can we help you?”
“The queen’s diamond coronation necklace is missing,” the guard grunted.
Avery shook her head. They’re not looking for the necklace. They’re looking for us!
Kate drew a finger to her lips.
“I’ve nothing to hide,” Babs said, “but leave my friends alone. They have nothing that belongs to Her Majesty.”
The guards mumbled, their crashing and bashing echoing off the walls, reminding Avery of the night that squatters destroyed her mother’s best dishes. She winced at each new clash and clatter, wondering if any of their belongings could survive.
“I didn’t take it!” Babs cried out. “Unhand me! I had nothing to do with it. I’ve never seen that necklace before in my life!”
“Oh no,” Kate whispered. “You think they found it on him?”
“Wherever they say they found it, they had to have planted it,” Avery said. “I trust him, and none of us would have taken it.”
“And what’s this?” a guard bellowed.
“That’s mine! I didn’t steal that!”
“That’s a heavy piece of gold for a man like you.”
“I earned that!”
“We’ll see about that. It’s the kind of coin bestowed by kings or queens. How’d you come by it?”
“I told you, I earned it! Take your hands off of me! I’m innocent!”
“Tell that to the throne! To the dungeon with him!”
Avery could barely keep herself from rushing to his defense—but Kate must have sensed it. She grabbed Avery’s wrist.
It was a good thing, because it was clear Babs tried to fight for his freedom. And not even a man of his size and strength was a match for armed guards.
Grunts, clangs, a cry of pain. Avery prayed Babs would just surrender so they wouldn’t run him through with a sword.
A sickening crack was followed by a whine. That didn’t sound like Babs! In fact, it hadn’t sounded human.
Then Babs said weakly, “I didn’t do it! Let me go!” as he was plainly being dragged away.
As if he had gathered a last ounce of strength, Babs’s shout reverberated off the walls: “Find me! Don’t forget me!”
And Avery knew it had been directed right at her.
Everything became unnaturally quiet.
When Avery finally peered around the
corner, cold dread shot through her.
Bronte lay motionless where the guards had been.
“No!” she said, gasping, but as she stepped out, Kate yanked her back into hiding.
“Wait! Someone could still be watching.”
“I don’t care!” She wrenched free and ran to kneel beside her dog. “Bronte,” she cried, running her hand over the furry head and trying to rouse her.
A gaping wound in Bronte’s side revealed where someone had thrust a knife.
Hot tears coursed down Avery’s cheeks and splashed onto Bronte’s fur. This dog had been her best friend for as long as she could remember. They had grown up together, running through the woods. Henry held Bronte’s tail when he was learning to walk. Bronte had been a constant, comforting presence in their lives before and after Avery and Henry lost their mother. Avery and Bronte had spent countless nights in her castle tree house while she dreamed of better days.
Time seemed to stop as she grieved, memories rolling through her mind. Though it felt like hours, mere minutes passed before Kate, Kendrick, and Tuck joined her and dropped to their knees, petting Bronte and whispering condolences.
“Why Bronte?” Avery said as she rocked on her knees. “She had nothing to do with the queen’s necklace.”
“And neither did Babs,” Kendrick said. “But you know Bronte had to be trying to defend him or she wouldn’t have been attacked.”
That thought made Avery proud but also cut through her and shot guilt to her heart. Babs could be in the Tower by now, or worse, he could be dead by supper—hung before a crowd of cheering villagers. Angelina was known to send thieves straight to the gallows.
“All this because the queen is so selfish,” Kate said.
She, Tuck, and Kendrick helped Avery to her feet as a group of scouts arrived and asked if they could take the dog. “What will you do with her?” Avery managed, knowing they didn’t have much choice. She would wind up at the bottom of the Salt Sea. “You’ll wrap her with dignity, won’t you?”
“Of course,” a scout said.
“And don’t let her pups see her.”
“If we can help it.”
“Can I have one more minute?” she said.
“Hurry,” the scout said.
In tears, she knelt again and laid her head on Bronte’s matted fur the way she had as a child. As she gathered the warm, lifeless body into her arms, Avery felt something sharp and jagged beneath the dog. She surreptitiously closed her hand around it and stood to make way for the scouts.
As they gently lifted Bronte onto a blanket to carry her away, Avery told her friends she wanted to be alone for a while. Kate said, “We’re going to look for the pups.”
“I appreciate it.”
When they were gone, she hurried to her room and opened her hand, praying she wouldn’t find Queen Angelina’s diamond coronation necklace.
She didn’t.
It was the ruby flower necklace. Could this be what Babs said he had brought her from the fishwife?
Chapter 25
Secret Meeting
As if the kids hadn’t lost enough already, the guards had ransacked their rooms, upending beds, rummaging through trunks, ripping clothes, trampling linens, and breaking furniture.
They worked silently and somberly late into the evening putting everything back in order, and they would need to rebuild their lives again, too.
Fortunately, and remarkably, the scouts reported that the royal guards told Queen Angelina they had found no colony of thirteen-year-olds in the tunnels. But the scouts also said they had not seen Ilsa since the incident either. Naturally, no one knew whether she had left on her own, been dismissed, or was in mortal danger.
Avery sat alone on her bare mattress, not motivated to put her room back together. Several of her books had been ripped, her jeweled dagger was missing, and her gowns lay trampled in a heap, but she didn’t care. Bronte was all that mattered.
Avery wrapped her fingers around the ruby flower necklace, grateful to have it back. She quickly concealed it when her blanket door swept aside and Tuck appeared.
“You could have announced yourself,” she said.
“Right, sorry,” he said. “Won’t happen again. Listen, if Ilsa gave us away, we have to find her and silence her.”
“We don’t even know where she is or if she had anything to do with this,” Avery said, narrowing her eyes.
“We both know she had everything to do with this,” Tuck said. “She knows too much.”
“If she gave us away, it’s a little late to silence her, wouldn’t you say?”
“What if she tells someone where we’re hiding?” Tuck said. “We don’t have enough scouts to stand sentinel all night watching for an ambush.”
“Another ambush, you mean?” Avery said. “What do you call what just happened?”
“They didn’t know who they were ransacking. They thought we were Babs’s people.” Tuck’s eyes widened. “What if Ilsa tries to collect a bounty for exposing us?”
“Who would she tell, and who would believe her? She would be implicating herself. She’d better pray nobody finds the star on her wrist.”
“I wish I shared your confidence,” Tuck said, shaking his head as he was leaving. “But I have to admit you were right. I never should have put Ilsa up for lady-in-waiting.”
Alone again, Avery examined the necklace for signs that it might open. Though it was heavy, she had not considered it might be a locket until Kate had showed her her grandmother’s locket ring.
The ring and the necklace looked as if they could have come from the same collection. Discovering a tiny hinge on one side, she pressed it with her thumb.
And just like that, it opened.
To Avery’s disappointment, she found no tiny message inside, but she did find something else. On one half was a tiny sketch of Queen Elizabeth—no surprise. Avery had long suspected she originally owned the necklace.
But the tiny rendering on the other side caught her off guard. An infant, but familiar.
“Kendrick,” she whispered, smiling.
But why would my mother give me a locket containing a portrait of Kendrick, let alone the queen? And how did it end up under Bronte’s body?
Babs must have had it.
At the sound of a rustle, Avery quickly slipped the necklace into her pocket.
A girl she didn’t recognize swept aside her blanket door. She had raven hair and troubled blue eyes. “I need your help,” she said. “Follow me.”
The longer they walked through the web of alleys and tunnels, the more Avery wished she had refused or asked a lot of questions before following the girl. In her grief, she hadn’t thought clearly about the danger in following this girl. She had simply welcomed the distraction.
For all Avery knew, she was about to come face-to-face with Ilsa.
The girl stopped and motioned for Avery to go on without her.
A few tentative steps led to a large, airy chamber shrouded in shadows where a young man stood with his back to her.
“Hello?” she called tentatively.
He turned. She gasped.
Chapter 26
Evidence!
“I hoped for a moment alone with you again,” the young man said, with what appeared to be a phony smile. It was the long-lost Edward, and he was shivering. “I suspect the cold and damp are constant down here?”
Avery nodded, kicking at the tunnel floor with her slipper. She had been certain when she bade him good-bye after he brought her back to the castle that she would never see Edward again. And if she were honest, that would have been fine with her. “How did you know where to find me?”
He laughed. “I’ll take that as a welcome.”
But when he stepped toward her, Avery stepped back. “Answer me. Who told you I was here?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if I’m going to trust you.”
Edward’s smile vanished. “We were friends. What’s happened?”
“Everything’s happened. Earlier today your sister disappeared.”
Avery waited for this news to alarm him, but it didn’t.
“Why are you here?” she pressed.
And then it hit her. The carrier pigeons! He sent them. Of course! They belonged to my father, and Edward is still squatting in my family home. Why had it taken her so long to figure that out?
Edward began to answer, but Avery put up a hand. “Can you prove my family is alive?”
He smiled. “Smart girl. I thought you might ask.” He reached into his shirt pocket and extended a fist to her. He slowly opened his fingers.
Henry’s paper boat!
She reached for it and gently turned it over to survey the smudges where Henry’s pudgy fingers had folded and refolded it, so important had it been to him to get every detail right. Their last day in the woods, he had tucked it in his pocket to take to a nearby stream. He chattered nonstop about it as they walked.
“Do you think it will float?”
“What makes boats float?”
“You should make one so we can race!”
She had been annoyed by his jabbering, sulking that she had to spend her birthday taking care of him. Now she swallowed a tide of emotion. They’d never made it to the stream, and she would give a hundred birthdays just to spend one afternoon racing paper boats with Henry, questions and all.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Edward cocked his head. “You know the rules. You agree to help me, and I return you to your family. I need to know you’ll uphold your end of the bargain.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trick?” she asked.
“You don’t, but what do you have to lose?”
“Why do you need my help?” she asked. “You were a scout, and you know I botch every attempt to be helpful.”
Edward smiled. “Best to have on one’s side those with the most to lose if you fail. You, dear girl, are fighting for your family. What could be more important than that?”
Avery desperately searched Edward’s face. “Please tell them I love them and that I’m coming for them as soon as I can.”
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