The duty of watching for everyone who approached the queen had seemed exciting and a little scary at first, but the routine of pointing at everyone who approached Chora had grown old. We walked toward the only respite from that duty, the queen’s private quarters, where she would sleep for the night. Two of us preceded Queen Chora into her bedchamber, searching out every crack and crevice that might conceal an assassin. Only after we’d satisfied the cosp of the security of the queen’s quarters was the queen allowed to seek her bed with us on cots to each side and at the foot. The lieutenant, flanked by the youngest of the cosp, almost boys, nodded to the queen and locked us in for the night.
The first thump against the door woke Oronelle, though she hardly slept anyway. It was her cry that woke me. A second thump, the sound of a body hitting the floor brought Chora to wakefulness. “Guards?”
No answer to her call came from outside the door, but a moment later a key turned in the lock. Relief flooded through me at the sight of the uniformed cosp guards that stepped through, a man and a woman. The woman must have been inordinately skilled with the sword to offset her slight stature, but there was no mistaking the power that resided in the man. His shoulders bulked like hams, and he stood a hand taller than most of the other guards.
Bonicia ran to them as Oronelle and I turned to the queen.
Chora sat up in her bed, openmouthed and watching, her gaze alternating between a wide-eyed stare and a squint, and her head moved back and forth as if she were scanning the room.
A sharp retort of sound by the door shot through me and I turned to see Bonicia on the floor, her head at an awkward angle. The man and the woman darted to us, not slow by any means, but not so gifted as the cosp. Beside me Oronelle whimpered, but I drew breath and screamed.
“Guards! To the queen! Guards!”
Then the man was upon us. I saw the fist coming toward my head, tried to duck, but I was too slow. Pain flared like the sun and everything went black.
I woke to sobbing and light. I recognized that voice. Even as a young child Oronelle had cried in rhythm in her distress, exhaling three sobs before pulling a protracted breath.
I sat up, and the room spun with the effort. I probed twin egg-sized lumps by my temples that felt as if they would split and bleed any moment. The queen stood talking to her advisor, Bishop Gehata.
“He came for me,” Chora said, her eyes cold and calculating, “but I couldn’t see him. Only providence and the girls kept him from killing me.”
“Praise Aer,” the bishop said.
But Queen Chora shook her head. “I’d be more inclined to praise Him if Bonicia hadn’t been killed.” She pointed to a body riddled with arrows that everyone in the room now saw without effort. “I want the other,” Chora said, “the woman.”
The bishop nodded, his unblinking gaze on me and my sister, his expression sorrowful, but his eyes glittered like splinters of agate. “I think it would be best if we brought fresh guards, Your Majesty. And fresh watchers as well. Oronelle and Ariella are probably too grief-stricken to exercise the diligence needed to watch over you.”
The queen nodded. “Go with the bishop, girls.”
We stepped over and he took us, one under each arm, and escorted us out of her chambers. At the top of the stairs, the bishop stopped to signal the lieutenant. “Have one of your men go with them. The girls want to go home.”
I descended the stairs with my arm locked in Oronelle’s, her sobs echoing from the polished stone.
I came out of the delve to see Ariella talking with me, her narrative racing to keep pace with her thoughts. “The next day when we got to the palace we were told to return home.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “Every day we came back, but it was always the same. The bishop told us the palace had no place for those who were so lax in their task.” She swallowed, her throat working against her shame. “Then the queen was killed,” she said. “We were outside the hall. The bishop was furious when he found out we were there, screaming at how we’d deserted her.” She shook her head. “But it didn’t make any sense. He was the one who sent us away.”
I nodded without speaking. It made all too much sense. With none but the cosp loyal to him to witness it, he’d had the queen murdered, but I didn’t have time to explain, and it would have done nothing to succor the wounds the girls carried. I’d seen something else in Ariella’s mind, a room within the protected walls of the farm that no one approached, a room always guarded. “They kept you in the largest building?”
The gesture they both made might have been a nod. Gael herded them toward the nearest entrance, a straight-lined rectangular door in the heavy stone wall surrounding the keep. There was no guard, and the door stood open. We walked through into a community of the Merum church. Penitents and postulates worked at stalls and sheds at whatever tasks the church or Aer devised for them, and across the yard the pinging sound of a hammer came from a smithy.
I paused when my gaze fell across Mirren. The idea of having an apprentice was going to take some getting used to. “Give me your hand,” I said.
When I let go, I watched Mirren sort through the memories. “Why are you giving them to me now?”
“I’m safeguarding them,” I said. “You said so yourself. I’m lucky
