“He was the one who arranged that cake. Do you think anyone else could afford it? That’s why it was such an insult when I didn’t get any. It was for people he liked only. Or at least people he didn’t despise.”
“He did always like spectacle,” Naomi said.
“But he usually preferred to live to appreciate it.” I bit my lip. “If there were any official records, my advisers would have gone through them already.” Assuming they could be trusted.
“They won’t have everything,” Fitzroy said. “My father always locked his study, and that’s where he kept everything not entirely official. Personal letters, notes he was working on, things like that.”
“And I suppose you know where to find the key?”
He smiled. “Of course. It was my father’s secret study. I’m an expert at breaking in.”
“Who knew you had a history of crime?”
“Freya, there’s so much you don’t know about me.”
Naomi grinned at me, and I quickly looked away. “So we should go,” I said, all businesslike. “See what we can find there.”
“Your guards aren’t going to let you just wander back to the palace alone,” Fitzroy said. “I’ll go. No one cares if I leave the Fort. I’ll collect everything I can find and bring it back to the lab.”
It made sense. I didn’t like it—staying here, waiting for someone else to bring information to me—but it made sense. “Good idea. Bring it back here, and we’ll figure out what to do.”
EIGHTEEN
I COULDN’T BREATHE. SOMETHING WAS PRESSING against my mouth, cutting off the air.
I jerked awake. A small shape loomed over me in the dark.
I tried to scream, but the sound was swallowed by the figure’s hand, the cold rings pressing against my lips. The figure leaned closer, honey-brown hair catching the moonlight.
It was Madeleine Wolff.
“Shh.” She glanced at the doorway. “You have to leave. Quickly. I’m going to move my hand now, but you can’t make a sound.” She took her hand away, and I scrambled out of bed, feet landing hard on the floor.
“Madeleine,” I hissed. “What’s going on?”
“You’re being attacked. I don’t know how much time you have, but you have to hide. Or run. Get out of here.”
I froze. “Who’s attacking?”
“My cousin. And his supporters. I managed to lie my way past your guards by pretending I was involved, but they’re in on it, too, and they won’t wait long. You have to move now.”
I stared at her, fighting to understand. My mind was still fuzzy with sleep, and—Sten was attacking me? “Why did you come to warn me?” I said. “Why didn’t you fetch more guards?”
“Because I don’t know where they are, and I don’t know which ones you can trust. Freya, that doesn’t matter. We have to leave.”
“We have to warn Naomi.”
Madeleine scrambled after me. “They don’t want to hurt Naomi. They want to hurt you. They’re going to kill you.” She grabbed my arm, her perfect painted nails digging into my skin. “Do you think you can fight them, Freya? You have to hide. Now.”
It didn’t make sense. Sten was trying to kill me? Sten had been the murderer? I pulled my arm out of Madeleine’s grip and ran into Naomi’s room. Naomi was still asleep, dark hair falling across her face.
“Naomi,” I hissed. I shook her, making her hair shake. “Naomi, wake up.”
Her arm flew out, knocking me away. She blinked. “Freya?” She scrambled up, shoving her hair away from her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Madeleine says Sten is attacking. We have to leave.” Back in my room, Madeleine clattered through the drawers of my dresser. She pulled out a long, delicate gold chain, with a ruby cut like a star. It was one of the jewels I’d worn at my coronation.
“Madeleine, what are you doing?”
“Let’s hope you don’t need this. But just in case—”
The front door rattled and slammed, and Madeleine jumped. “I wedged a chair against the door,” she said. “But it’s not going to hold them for long.”
“There must be another way out of these rooms,” Naomi said. “They’re supposed to be safe for the king, aren’t they?”
“If there are other ways out, I don’t know them.”
“There are storage rooms in the back,” Naomi said. She hurried for the door. “Covered up. There must be something.”
I nodded. Naomi led us out of the bedroom into the corridor, as the guards rammed on the door again.
Naomi grabbed my hand at that, squeezing painfully tight. She tugged me around the corner and into a room at the end of the corridor, before shutting the door quietly behind us.
The room was dark except for one sliver of moonlight, creeping in through the arrow-slit window. I could just make out the shapes of several large pieces of furniture, but Naomi seemed to know where she was going. She pulled me toward what appeared to be a wall in the dark, then reached out and opened a space where the door must have been.
“Wait!” I said. “Dagny! They’ll hurt Dagny.” I pulled my hand out of Naomi’s grasp and turned back.
“Freya, wait—” But I’d already thrown open the door, and ran back into the corridor. I couldn’t let them hurt Dagny. She relied on me to take care of her, and if they touched her . . .
I pulled open the door to my bedroom. Please let her be somewhere obvious, I thought. Please don’t let her have wandered off.
But Dagny wasn’t there. Not that I could see. I pulled back the blankets and peered at the top of the wardrobes, but there was no sign of her.
A door creaked. Someone was walking through the corridor.
I ducked and looked under the bed, but I couldn’t see anything. Why was it so dark? “Dagny?” I hissed. “Dagny, where are you?”
A meow came from behind me. I spun around. Dagny leaped out of a slightly open drawer, her tail fluffed, eyes glowing. “Dagny!” I ran forward and scooped her up, pressing her fur against my nose. Dagny meowed again, and she whacked me on the chin with her paw.
“Queen Freya.” I spun around. The black-haired guard, Reynold Milson, stood in the doorway. “Why don’t you put the cat down, and come along with me now?”
I tightened my grip on Dagny. The only other way out of the room was into Naomi’s bedroom, and that had no other door, no other means of escape. Which meant I had to speak, not run. “What do you want?”
He stepped closer, still blocking the doorway. “Come on, now. Let’s not make it any harder than it needs to be.”
I took a slight step back. If I could lure him closer, make him step fully into the room, I might be able to dart around him and escape into the corridor. But he would have allies, wouldn’t he? Other people helping him. Should I pretend to surrender? Pretend to trust him, make him relax?
No. Madeleine had barricaded the door. He knew I was afraid of him.
“I take no pleasure in this,” he said. “But justice must be done. You understand that, don’t you?”
I shifted Dagny’s weight, trying to free one of my hands. There was a heavy candlestick on the table on the side—if I could just reach it, if I could use it as a weapon . . .
Milson stepped closer again, and something glinted between us. A sword.
I couldn’t fight a sword with a candlestick. But I wasn’t going to go quietly, either. I took a small step to the side, trying to make out the shape in the corner of my eye without looking away from him.
More men would come. More people to drag me away. I couldn’t fight them all. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. I snatched up the candlestick, feeling its weight, holding it between us.
“That isn’t going to help you.”
A loud crash shook the room, and he staggered forward.
Madeleine stood in the corridor, a candlestick raised above the guard’s head, ready to strike again. I ran. The guard struck out with his sword, but his aim was slightly off, dazed by the attack, and I swung my own makeshift
weapon wildly. It hit the blade with a shriek of metal on metal. The force of the blow knocked it from my hand, but I didn’t pause to care. I twisted past him, and Madeleine grabbed my arm, hauling me away.
More shouting from down the corridor. If the guards had had any hope of being subtle, that crash would have destroyed it. More attackers would follow now.
Madeleine dragged me back into the room we had entered before. The lock clicked behind us.
“It won’t hold them for long,” Naomi said. She was pushing a huge shape forward, her voice straining with the effort. Madeleine darted forward to help. The furniture—some shelves, I thought—scraped against the floor. The door thudded as someone tried to open it from the other side. And then the shelves were wedged there, and we were running again, through the next door, and the next. We stopped in a room full of strange shapes—a storage room, maybe—slamming the door closed behind us. I clutched Dagny tight as Naomi and Madeleine maneuvered a cabinet in front of it.
“Is there a way out from here?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Naomi said. “But it’s safer than being out there.”
“There has to be some sort of passage,” Madeleine said. “We have to look.”
But the darkness was everywhere. I bashed my leg on another piece of furniture as I pushed farther into the room and felt the walls for any kind of door, anything useful for hiding.
“You went back for the cat?” Madeleine said in disbelief. “You risked your life for the cat.”
“Of course I did. She’s my cat.”
I hit my hip against the corner of a table, and fought the urge to swear. We couldn’t hide in here. The attackers had seen us come in, they’d find us. How long would it take for the rest of my guards to realize something was amiss? Until morning? Or did they already know? Were they all against me?
I hoisted Dagny into the crook of my elbow so I could hold her with one hand, and began to search the room. Dagny meowed in my ear, her claws kneading my upper chest.
My fingers brushed behind worn tapestries, but I only found more stone. I found a wardrobe, but it was slightly away from the wall, with no secret passageways behind its doors. If there was another way out of this tower, it wasn’t in this room. And the longer we spent searching, the less chance we had to form another plan, to hide, to do something . . .
“We have to go out of the front door,” I said. “That’s the only way out.”
“But they’re out there,” Naomi hissed. “They want to kill you.”
“And I won’t hide in here until they break in. You heard Madeleine. No one’s coming for us.” I began to pace. “They won’t expect us to burst out and run toward them—”
“Because it’s suicide!”
“It’ll give us an advantage.”
“Against swords?”
“We have to do something.”
“Can you make something?” Naomi said. “A—a weapon, or a bomb, or something?”
“Not without my equipment. Not in the dark.”
I glanced around the room again. The window was tiny. None of us would fit through it, even if we weren’t high in the air. Even during daylight hours, the room would be dingy, too dark to properly see. “There have to be lanterns in here somewhere,” I said. “And a way to light them. We have to find them.”
We scrabbled against the walls again, hands sweeping over the tables, looking for any strange shapes that might provide light.
A metallic thud, and a hissed cursed from Naomi. “Here. But I knocked it over, I think the oil is pouring out.”
“Then pick it up,” Madeleine hissed back. “And light it.”
“I can’t see—”
I scrambled over, trying to balance Dagny with one hand as she began to squirm. The lantern was the usual oil sort, like thousands of others in the city. I reached under the base, brushing over the sandpaperlike material that coated it until I found the small compartment of matches. One scrape against the base, and the match was lit. Even that small amount of light seemed too bright in the darkness.
The glass door on the side was already open, so I tossed the match inside and slammed it closed against the rush of fire. It singed my fingers, and I flinched, but the lamp was lit, there was light in the room.
I passed it to Naomi so I could clutch Dagny closer to my chest. She was fond of hugs, for a cat, but not fond enough to put up with being held through all this noise and chaos. “Shh,” I murmured, stroking her back. She nipped my wrist in protest.
Naomi raised the lamp higher. Now I could see her fearful face, Madeleine’s stubborn calm—and another door, half concealed behind some crates.
“There!” I scrambled toward it. Naomi and Madeleine heaved the crates aside and pulled on the door handle. It resisted once, twice, sticking in the frame, but one final pull and it flew open, slamming into us.
The swinging light illuminated the space beyond the door at intervals. It was a narrow stone staircase, twisting down out of sight. Cobwebs stretched between the walls, and the worn steps were coated with dust. They looked like the slightest weight would make them crumble away.
“Go!” I said, jerking my head toward the space. Dagny squirmed again, hitting me in the chest with her tail, but I wasn’t going to let go now. “Quickly.”
They didn’t argue. Madeleine ran ahead, and Naomi gestured for me to go between them before pulling the door closed.
The floor was like ice against my bare feet, and the autumn chill settled through my nightgown, making me shiver. Cobwebs tangled on my arms as we ran down and down, praying the staircase was safe, praying more men were not waiting wherever it let out, our elbows bashing against the jagged stone walls. The passage was clearly one of the oldest parts of the Fort, not renovated even after a thousand years.
Ahead, Madeleine gasped. Naomi raised the light higher.
Water filled the narrow corridor below. It did not look too deep, but that could be deceptive, especially in the dark. Who knew how many steps it covered before it reached the floor?
“It must have come in from the moat,” I said. “Are we that far down?”
Madeleine stepped tentatively forward, holding her skirts high. She was wearing heels, I suddenly noticed. “There should have been a boat here,” she said. “It would have been tied there, look.” She gestured at a metal ring on the wall. Assumedly it had been there to stop the king from getting his feet wet if he ever had to flee his chambers. But there was no boat now. I peered into the darkness, as though it might be floating just out of reach, but no. Nothing.
“We’ll have to swim,” I said. Swim, with an oil lamp and a cat, in our nightgowns and Madeleine’s heels. But we had to do it.
“Or not.” Naomi followed the steps down, her white nightdress floating around her as the water rose to her knees, and then her waist, and then the bottom of her chest, and then . . . stopped. “We can walk. Come on.”
I wasn’t going to argue. I hoisted Dagny a little higher, but if the water reached Naomi’s chest, it would only come up to my waist. We’d be safe, as long as it wasn’t too full of disease. The water must have been down here a long time.
“It used to be deeper,” I said, nodding at the walls. There were lines about a foot above our heads, a difference in the color of the stone. “It must have drained somehow.” The water pushed against my waist, weighing me down, making every step a struggle. My white nightgown had puffed up around me. At least it was a fashionable size now, I thought distantly, and snorted despite myself.
Something skittered against the wall, and Dagny pricked up her ears. I didn’t pause to see what it was.
We passed the ruins of a boat once the stairs were no longer in sight. At least, I assumed it had once been a boat. Only rotten scraps remained.
A few minutes beyond that, stairs rose ahead of us again, eroded by the now-drained water. I stopped to listen. No voices, no signs of chaos ahead.
“Have we left the Fort?” I asked, as we picked our way onto the steps.
The cold air hit me again, and I shivered. My skirt stuck to my skin, outlining my legs. Madeleine’s silks were stained by the water, but they were less see-through, at least. And she still wore those heels, apparently without concern.
“I don’t think so,” she said, looking ahead. “I don’t think we’ve gone far enough.”
I looked back over the water. The tunnel had vanished into darkness again. No sign of pursuit.
“We could wait here,” Naomi said, peering into the darkness as well. “It’s probably safe.”
“No,” I said. “I want to see what’s happening.” I wouldn’t wait here for them to find me. I strode up the steps, pressing my bare feet decisively into the stone.
The steps ended in a metal gate. It was locked, with a large padlock rusted shut across the handle, but the whole gate had warped with age. I shoved it with my shoulder, and it lurched, leaving a small gap. Another shove, and it bent sideways, leaving a space large enough to squeeze through. Naomi went first, her nightdress catching and tearing, and then she reached out to take Dagny before I climbed after her.
We emerged in the dungeons, tucked in one of the alcoves designed for guards. Everything was silent. “My lab,” I said. “This way.” We’d be able to find things to defend ourselves with there, chemicals and heavy instruments and things that made the eyes burn. But when we turned the corner, someone was already standing in the entrance to the lab. Madeleine raised her candlestick again. The figure turned at the sound of our approach.
It was Fitzroy.
“Freya!” he hissed. “You’re all right. Where have you been?” It almost sounded like a reproach.
“I’ve been running,” I said. “The guards turned on me, some of them attacked us in our rooms—”
“I know,” he said. “I was looking for you! And then I saw your lab—”
“What do you mean?” He hesitated. I pushed past him.
It was chaos. Vials and jars had been smashed, their liquids and powders spreading across the counters. One patch of wood bubbled as what must have been acid ate away at it. My journals had been torn apart, pages now littering the floor. My weighing system was smashed, the metal dish above the fire ripped down and dented. My beautiful lab, all my work . . .
Long May She Reign Page 17