The Hedgewitch Queen

window-couvre if anyone happened along.

I reached the hall that housed the Princesse’s suite not long after, with a stitch gripping my side and bringing me tears.

There I had my first horrible intimation of utter doom.

The Guards on duty all afternon—Chivalieri di Tatancourt and di Belletron — both lay slain at the door to the Princesse’s afternoon chamber. I gasped and clamped my hand over my mouth. Blood washed the floor where they had fallen — di Tatancourt, who had a splendid waxed blond mustache and who was courting Lady Arioste di Wintrefelle, had a horrible gaping grimace under his chin. A slit throat. Di Belletron was gashed and terribly torn; I supposed he had put up a stouter resistance.

Hot sourness rose under my breastbone. It was a lucky thing I had taken no chai, for the slice of bread and jam was demanding to be released from the confines of my stomach. I resisted, and heard myself give a dry barking sob instead.

Lisele. She will be terribly frightened. Where is she? “Lisele?”

I had to gather up my skirts to go over the fallen Guards. The door — a door I had passed through hundreds of times, I hardly noticed anymore its carved bunches of grapes and the royal crest worked in gold and blue — was hacked apart as if by axes, and spattered with dark fluids I dared not think on too closely. I ducked through, my garden-boots slipping in blood, and I am not too proud to say that just inside the door the long-resistant slice of bread escaped me at last. I vomited, having enough presence of mind to pull my skirts back so I did not foul them more.

There was Lady Arioste, sprawled in a corner, graceless in death as she never was in life. And beside her a stout headless body I recognized from her pink and gold as Baroness di Vonstadt. Dama Elaina di Cherefall and D’mselle Courceline di Maritine lay tangled together by the gilt fireplace grate — they must have been clutching each other as they died. D’mselle Robertine, Dama Pirial, Baroness Iliana di Chantrour et Val, the Marquise di Valancourt, and the Comtesse di Cournburiene—

I lost count. I looked for one face, and did not find it.

I followed the trail of destruction. Not one of the Princesse’s attendants remained alive.

Except me.

The door to Lisele’s inner receiving-room was hacked open as well, and the Comtesse Rochburre lay across it, fearfully wounded and with her eagle eyes closed. I stepped over her, miserably determined to find Lisele. Please, I begged, not knowing which god I pleaded with, since I was fashionably irreligious like most of the Court. We laughed at the pious, but never too loudly. After all, Arquitaine bore the mark of the Blessed, just as other countries had their own gods…

I found my Princesse, my Lisele, lying across a half-couch of watered-blue silk we had been wont to sit giggling upon in our girlhoods, and later. Her harp lay cast aside, its strings cut. Had she tried to defend herself with it?

I cast myself to my knees, bruising them anew, and shook her. “Lisele—Lisele!” She was covered in blood, and there was an awful wound to her breast, dewing the pretty pale-green silk. She had been dressed without me.

I sobbed, repeating her name, and when her dark eyes opened and she drew in a terrible tortured breath I actually recoiled. Those eyes fastened on me, and I heard a horrible sucking sound. A punctured lung. I had read enough treatises to know, though I had never treated more than a fever or pneumonia, or a wound on a scullery maid’s hand.

Treatises? Of course. A healing charm, anything to stem the flow of blood.

“Vianne,” Lisele said, in a choked whisper.

“A healing charm. Oh, Lisele.” Cease, you ninny. Find a healing charm in that warehouse of oddities you call a brain.

I did. It was the same simple bit of hedgewitchery I had used on Jirisa’s hand, meant for binding a small wound and staving off infection, but I repeated it quickly, flattening my hand against the bloody hole. I repeated it again, heat draining through my palm — hedgewitchery draws its power from the witch when it cannot draw from a bit of free earth. A tree, the open sky, or even a clod of dirt, none of which were to hand.

I repeated it a third time, my vision blurring with exhaustion, before Lisele’s fingers came up and gripped my wrist with surprising strength. “No…Stop, Vianne…too late.”

“I can heal you, I can.” Remember a charm, Vianne. A stronger one. A better one. Think!

“Do not be a silly goose.” She looked so weary. A smear of blood marred her pretty cheek, and her dark hair lay tangled over blue watered silk. She must have been waiting for me to braid it. Guilt twisted my heart. Was she dying while Tristan d’Arcenne kissed my forehead? “Listen to me, Vianne…carefully. I…command it.”

So rarely did my Princesse command anything from me, I swallowed my tears. “Lisele…” I ceased to speak. The spell still worked through my palm, its power coming from my already weary body. Her grasp curled around my wrist, cold and waxen.

Lisele firmly pulled my hand away from her wound. I cried out, the charm breaking, and she pushed something hard, metallic, and warm into my fingers. A momentary flush of strength filled her, turned her cheeks crimson and brought her words without gasping. “Take this. Keep safe. I could not wake…If they have killed me, Father is dead too. Go to mountains…d’Arcenne. Go to Arcenne. Father said…loyal… please, Vianne…do as I…”

The mention of Arcenne caused a guilty start in me, but it was too late. Lisele sighed, a long, low sound, and slumped back into the blue silk. Something fled her, a spark I could see only with the small amount of magical Sight I possess.

“Lisele,” I whispered. “Lisele, no, Lisele, no, no, no—”

I do not know how long I crouched there, sobbing, repeating the same small hedgewitch charm that availed naught since there was no life left in her body for it to foster, no spark for it to conserve. I wept and heaved dryly until I heard something. My head jerked up, as if I’d been stung.

Footsteps, coming this way. Booted feet, purposeful strides.

I fair leapt to my feet. Lisele’s eyes were closed. She lay pale and perfect, her pretty sharp-chinned face smooth as if she merely slept.

I could not wake, she had gasped. What it meant would have to wait. I looked wildly about the room. There, beside the fireplace, a door that led to a half-stair, and from there I could…do what, precisely?

Where could I go? What place was safe?

Clutching whatever Lisele had given me in my sweating palm, I ducked through the door and locked it just as the bootsteps reached Lisele’s receiving-room. Four or five men, I guessed, listening with Court-sharp ears.

I hesitated, my hand on the knob, the key in my fingers. If they were from the King I should make myself known, not hide like a thief.

If they are from the King they will take me to him, and d’Arcenne might be there. I struggled with temptation, caution and a small deep irresistible instinct nailing me in place, freezing the words in my throat and my hand on the dusty crystal knob.

It would be foolish not to see who they are, Vianne. Do not be a fool.

I slowly lowered myself to my knees again, peered through the keyhole. I could only see a small slice of Lisele’s receiving-room, and thankfully none of the blood. I could, however, see the edge of Lisele’s dress. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine she simply slumbered, perhaps given a draught of night’s-ease and valeriol to quiet her dreaming.

I sought to calm my heaving sides. My own harsh gasps sounded loud as a trumpet in the quiet.

They thundered into the receiving-room. I saw plumes and blue sashes.

The Duc’s Guard. The Duc Timrothe d’Orlaans, the king’s brother, perhaps the finest Court sorcerer in Arquitaine. He dueled regularly, and rumor said he allowed his opponent to survive only if there were official witnesses present. For all that, he was blood royal, and had he killed a few, noble or common, nothing could be done. Still, his Guard was perhaps here to protect the Princesse.