“Far’s I can take ya, lad.” The stranger who saved Isbe from drowning now pats her shoulder with a rough hand as their boat bobs, quietly knocking against a pier.
She nods, her mouth dry from salt and vomit. “Honor be w’ you,” she says, trying to keep her voice masculine and devoid of the polish of nobility. It seems an inadequate phrase, but she’s at a loss for words. The man rescued her for no good reason. He asked for nothing in return, only stated with a half laugh, “A’ thought you’d were the ghost a the Balladeer hisself out there, I did,” as he pulled her aboard.
Isbe’s entire body now screams in stiffness and pain as she wobbles out of the small boat, pulling herself onto the abandoned pier. The immense cold had ceased to bother her for the last hour, but moving has reawakened the bone chill, and she shivers uncontrollably as she sits on the dock listening to the man row away.
She inhales, taking a moment to consider this new depth of aloneness, cool and echoey as a wine cave. She has never been this alone—never without Gilbert’s or Aurora’s hand to guide her through unknown territory. Or when they weren’t there, she always knew they’d be close by, looking for her. Now the world yawns open around her, a giant blank. A terrifying mystery full of mixed sounds and smells and unpredictable dangers.
The air here is fresh and bright, though. A marbled fog constantly stifles the Delucian palace—the maids always complained of the challenge of drying laundry, and Isbe grew accustomed to the smell of damp sheets and mildewed braies—but here she finds herself squinting in the sun. There must be a glare off the water. She listens to the wood licked by the gentle Aubinian waves: glog glog ricket-glog. Nothing like the ravenous kush-kash of the Delucian surf against the cliffs. Deluce is a peace-loving nation surrounded by violent breakers, while Aubin, it seems, is a militaristic state hugged by friendly seas.
But the friendliness ends at the shore. Isbe and her anonymous, gruff-voiced sailor savior had been turned away from three ports already, told that Aubin’s borders were closed off to prevent the spread of disease. The country has not only heard of the sleeping sickness but believes it to be the next in a rash of plagues that have decimated the population over the last few decades, and they aren’t taking any chances, especially not on bedraggled riffraff like them.
After the third refusal, the sailor decided it was wise to split up and find their own ways past the harbor guards. Isbe knows Gil would never even consider leaving her in such a situation. But he has left her, however unwillingly. They never found each other after getting separated during the hunt. She doesn’t know if he managed to scramble back aboard the merchant vessel or if he made it safely to Aubin in one of the smaller dinghies like she has, or . . .
She can’t bring herself to think of the third possibility. The screams of the many men who were dislodged from their positions—lost their footing and found their way into the sea—echo in her memory. And Gil was never a particularly good swimmer.
If he did make it back onto the larger vessel, they would likely have been turned away at the harbor too. Which means they probably would’ve returned to Deluce to recover. She can only hope that in another day’s time, Gilbert will have found his way back to Roul’s house. But knowing Gil, he’d make every effort to set out again to find her.
And then she remembers something else: Gilbert gambled his luck away to Binks. The thought falls inside her, heavy as a rock. But surely, surely she would know somehow—she would feel it—if Gil had died. Wouldn’t she?
Her jaw clamps hard, and she runs her hands through her shorn hair, trying to think . . . or to stop thinking. Stop remembering their fierce, fleeting kiss before he vanished. Stop desperately wondering what it meant. She touches her face, feels the harsh but familiar angles of her cheeks and nose. Feels the wetness coming from her eyes. Wipes it away.
She sucks in a shaky breath. She may never know if Gil is alive or dead—just like the injured narwhal, he has entered an unknowable darkness. However, she reminds herself that if Gil is alive, she can do nothing for him right now but wish and hope. And wishing and hoping don’t get results. Action does. She left on a mission, and she’s still far from accomplishing it.
She pushes herself to standing, feeling her way carefully along the rickety pier with one foot in front of the other. She needs to get to the prince.
The stench hits her before she stumbles onto dry land, and it immediately becomes clear why this point of entrance has been left unguarded: sewage. Isbe gags, then tears off part of her sleeve and ties it around her mouth and nose. This must be the narrow waterway that lets Aubin’s royal sewage out to sea. No wonder no ships dock here. She walks a little bit taller. The discovery is disgusting, yet convenient. It means she can follow the little inlet straight into the heart of the castle village.
There have been many times during Isbe’s childhood when she questioned her rightful place at the palace—her rightful place anywhere. But Gil often assured her that these distinctions of class are less important than we’d like to believe. “Rich or poor, noble or peasant, everybody shits,” he’d say with a laugh.
And so, as the day blooms above—doing little to melt the glacier within her—Isbe labors along the muddy, rancid shore toward the Aubinian palace and the unknowing prince within it, covering her mouth and clinging to the memory of Gil’s laughter like the edges of a warm cloak.
Isbe has always enjoyed making her sister laugh. Just days before the report of the princes’ murder, she and Aurora were making snow statues in the palace gardens. The air tasted like watered honey, a sure sign that more snow would come. Isbe was just putting the finishing touches on a sculpture of Pig, a mutt that had become a favorite of the palace guards.
You’re missing something, Aurora tapped, bending down and quickly patting together a mushy lump of snow, which she placed at Snow Pig’s feet.
“What is it?” Isbe asked.
A pastry he stole from the kitchens, of course.
“Let me see yours,” Isbe demanded.
Aurora guided her over to the sculpture she’d been working on all morning and set Isbe’s hand on its shoulder. Isbe gently felt for the chin and face before running her fingers over the rest of him, taking in the details Aurora had added. It was Prince Philip, again. Of course.
“Yours is missing something too,” Isbe announced, grabbing a handful of snow off a nearby hedge and patting it into a flat circle like a medallion. She used her fingernail to carve the Aubinian insignia on it: a hawk perched on a sword.
Showoff, her sister replied.
Aurora had read everything there was to know about the Aubin court, from their favored fashions to their dining customs to the castle layout itself. She’d tapped all of this information to Isbe, sometimes struggling when the details were too complex for their secret language. The spires on the towers of Aubin’s palace, for example, became roof spears.
Now Isbe reached up and, before Aurora could stop her, rearranged Prince Philip’s face so that his tongue was sticking out. Aurora laughed, and then, out of nowhere, pegged her with a snowball. And that spelled the end for Philip and Pig, as Isbe screamed and Aurora laughed and both got covered in snow until Councilman Maximilien spotted them from a window and ordered them inside.
Then, the cold air on her bare hands and cheeks had made Isbe feel alive and happy. Now, though, her legs tremble uncontrollably and she falls to the ground. Unable to shake the chill from her bones, or her mind, she gets onto her hands and knees in the icy mud and sewage, and crawls.