The Hedgewitch Queen

I let out a relieved sigh and was about to rise and make myself known when yet another voice I recognized sounded deep and harsh.

“Check the bodies. Make absolutely certain none live.” Garonne di Narborre, the Duc’s servant, otherwise known as the Black Captain for the coal of his hair and eyes. I had danced with him several times, had even taken a rose from his hand at the last Fete of Flowers. He cut a fine figure, yet somehow few of the women cared for him. I had found his fingers too hard on my waist and my hand, but twas not politic to refuse him a dance.

Not politic at all, and while he was occupied with me he did not watch Lisele so closely. I simply did not like the way he gazed at her. He could not hope to win her hand, and there was no tenderness in his watching, and since the Duc was just after Lisele in the Line of Succession and she was just barely of age…well. I danced with him, and Lisele told me afterward she did not like him overmuch.

“Aye, sieur.” A lieutenant — I think it may have been Gregoire di Champforte.

“Have they found the di Rocancheil girl yet?”

I started violently, tasted bitterness on the back of my tongue. Bit my lower lip, hard, to stop any betraying noise from my treacherous, dry throat.

“No, sieur. She was in the gardens this morn, has not been sighted since.”

“Well, perhaps Simieri caught her; he was waiting in the passage. And d’Arcenne?”

Simieri was part of this, and meant to catch me in the passage? Why? My heart pounded in my ears, and I swayed.

Do not dare faint now, Vianne. Do not dare!

“Taken to the donjons, sieur. Executed come morning, the orders are being drawn up now.” The men were stepping among the bodies. I heard a crunch, and a wet stabbing sound.

They were making certain no woman survived.

My gorge rose again, and I trembled. Whatever Lisele had closed in my nerveless hand was still there, pulsing.

“Look, sieur. On the Princesse.”

“Hedgewitchery,” someone breathed. “The di Rocancheil girl has been here.”

A tense, indrawn breath. “Find her. Search the Palais and the gardens. She wanders about in the gardens and the kitchens. Find her! Bring her to the Duc. He needs her.”

What? I am of no account, and I have not done anything!

Yet I knew even an innocent could be caught in a net at Court. I hesitated. Should I announce myself, and be taken to the Duc? But they were making certain the women were dead.

They had not said aught of “rescue.”

The Duc is next in line to the throne, with Lisele…gone. It was the only answer that made any sense at all. And yet…

My wit, weak and weary as it was under these successive shocks, began to work again. I must hide. But where would they not find me? I cast about frantically, taking care not to lean on the door — varnished wood, and suddenly thin as an eggshell. Such a fragile, flimsy shield.

The North Tower. Tis locked, and none have used it for a hundred years or more. My wits began to work, racing inside my head with little pattering feet, rather like a collection of cats chasing about in my skull. Stunned and witless, with my Princesse’s blood on my fingers and something in my hand she had entrusted to me, I closed my eyes and forced myself to think.

You must find food, and clothing, and you must wait for nightfall.

Then what do I do? I wailed silently. My eyes squeezed themselves shut, and had I been more pious I might have begun praying again. Instead, something horrible occurred to me.

Tristan d’Arcenne is in the donjons, and they will take him to the Bastillion and behead him. The fingers of my free hand crept into my pocket, found the cold metal ring. Among them would be keys to a donjon door, perhaps?

But there will be many guards, and the whole length of the Palais between you and him.

It does not matter. He will know what to do.

Footsteps echoed. Boots, approaching my sanctuary.

Oh, dear gods. I rose, silently, and backed away from the door. My mouth gapped open so my breathing would not betray me, and tears trickled hot down my cheeks, dripping onto my collarbones.

“We must find the di Rocancheil girl.” Di Narborre sounded very close, and the door rattled as he tested it. Had I left a trace of blood on the knob on the other side? “Let us go. Our lord the Duc will be crowned tonight.”

I let out a soft, shapeless breath, dropped the key that had held the door closed between me and di Narborre, and fled.

Chapter Two

I could not return to my own rooms, but I did stop in Lady Arioste’s tiny closette between the Princesse’s bedchamber and mine. She and I were of a size, though thankfully not of matching temperaments; I dug in her wardrobe until I found a serviceable dark blue velvet-and-silk, frightfully old but still good. I took hair ribbons and a servant girl’s bag I filled with fruit from the bowl on Arioste’s night table; and a sewing kit, as well as extra stockings. For some reason I also took a comb, instead of a hundred other items which might have proved useful.

The table was not laid for chai, since Lisele would have ordered chai in one of her own reception rooms, and Arioste would have been in attendance.

Carrying the dress carefully so as not to foul it with mud or…other things, I made my way through dusty passages to a little-known door that gave into the North Tower. Several times I heard running feet. Once I even hid in a niche, lost behind dusty red-velvet curtains as a detachment of the Duc’s Guard thundered past, no doubt searching for me or on some other unsavory business. Tears rolled unheeded down my cheeks and dripped onto my poor muddy gown.

One of the keys on the ring d’Arcenne had given me fit a neglected door at the end of a long, chilly passageway. I might have simply sunk to the floor and given up if it had not. I was famished, exhausted, and at what I thought then was the end of my strength.

I closed the door behind me and locked it carefully, took my first faltering steps into the gloomy dust of the North Tower. The narrow hallway of the servant’s entrance hung thick with cobwebs, a sour exhalation from the masonry full of neglect and rot; the lower windows still sealed tight.

The Tower had been stopped up when the King’s treacherous great-great-grandmother, the Dowager Elisaine, was bricked inside it to die. She conspired with the Damarsene, who would always like nothing better than to swallow our land — you would think they had enough and to spare, but no, they are greedy. The Dowager had plotted to kill her elder brother’s son Archimvault the Tall, before he came of age to be crowned. That treachery had been averted just in time, the Damarsene ambassador sent home in disgrace, and the White Dowager starved to death in the North Tower. The sealing-bricks from the entrances had been taken away with her body, and used to line her tomb. It was said that when her body was found she was clutching a statue of Jiserah, and the goddess’s face had turned away.

When Lisele and I were young, we had dared each other to spend a night before the great ironbound main door to the Tower, carved with Elisaine’s device — the swan and the serpent over the crown of Arquitaine.

None would think to look for me here. At least, not for a while. And none would suspect I had a key, except Tristan d’Arcenne. Would they torture him to find what he knew? What would he say?

The sweat coating me was suddenly cold as a lemon-ice. Still, they must have greater matters at hand than a hedgewitch lady-in-waiting, even a di Rocancheil. The assurance was hollow, at least in my ears.