48

NO ONE STOPPED US AS WE LIMPED OUT OF THE TUNNEL AND INTO the hallway I had been in mere hours earlier. The main floors of the Stone Castle were empty save a few guards who recognized Theodor and his family crest.

One of the captains stopped Theodor, and the two discussed the situation on the streets in quiet tones. I leaned against the wall, my legs wobbling like an undercooked pudding. As we had seen, the side streets were barricaded to force the path of the soldiers. But the League had not expected the full force of the soldiers to deploy all at once, and so quickly. The king’s troops had secured the palace, the government buildings, and the perimeter of the city.

The streets were still chaos. There was no escape for me tonight. No escape at all. I took a shaky breath and resigned myself to the king’s justice, and hoped for his mercy.

“No idea on losses yet,” the captain said, “but I’ve had dozens of wounded roll in already. And it’s been less than an hour since they left.” He shook his head. “This isn’t going to end without a fight.”

Theodor listened attentively as I slid down the wall. The exhaustion that had throbbed in my bones since the ball was overtaking me swiftly. Cream silk ballooned around me as I sat down, hard, on the cold stone floor. The hem was filthy, and I had ripped a large hole in the bodice leaping from the carriage. Madame Pliny was not going to be happy when she returned from her winter home in the south. I almost laughed, but it hurt too much.

I leaned my head against the cold granite behind me. Crags in the rough stone caught my hair and I winced. Theodor told the captain, briefly, without names or sources, what Kristos had told us—that there was a rift in the revolutionaries themselves. His voice was low, hurried. Who was there to keep a secret from? No one, I thought, except that the truth of what was happening was so ugly that it was hard to declare it loudly.

Without meaning to, I fell asleep there on the floor. My dreams were confused and dark—roasted pheasants turned into winter crows and pecked out the king’s eyes, and a dancing troupe of women in court gowns leapt and dodged a huge puppet made of rocks and stained glass, its strings held by Pyord high above in the palace dome.

I woke with a start, freezing and stiff, less than an hour later. Theodor sat beside me, staring absently at the opposite wall.

“The palace holds,” he said before I could speak. “And most of the city is secure.”

I found my voice. “But it’s not over?”

“Not yet.”

“The hired soldiers with the Red Caps?”

“Haven’t arrived. Perhaps they weren’t intending to come until later, perhaps they were stopped.”

People moved past us—soldiers with dirt and blood staining their uniforms ferried wounded men into the building and boxes of ammunition out of it. I swallowed, watching those crates trot past, imagining the crates that must have already been spent on the streets tonight.

I still felt like I’d been run over by a team of oxen, but I couldn’t bear to sleep while the city fought. I inched, slowly, up the wall until I was standing. If only I had my sewing kit with me—but, foolishly, it was sitting on Theodor’s ottoman with my clothes.

“Do you have a penknife?” I asked a clerk with a blanched expression as a trio of soldiers hurried past, dragging a comrade whose leg was a torn mess of blood and flesh and brown wool. I gripped the edge of the clerk’s desk, hard.

He stared at me as though I were speaking Pellian.

“Or scissors? Shears? Anything with a sharp edge?”

He shook himself and rummaged on the desk. “Penknife,” he replied. His words stuck to his mouth.

I snatched it from his trembling hands and dodged a troop of soldiers marching a group of prisoners, arms crossed behind their heads, to the cells below us. Theodor waited in the little alcove I had fallen asleep in, the puzzled expression on his face fading as he saw how I used the knife.

Carefully, delicately, I sliced into the hem of the gown. Dozens of embroidered flowers grew there, spattered with mud but still vibrantly pink and still imbued with the good luck charm I’d stitched into them. The charm glowed past the mud, past the stains. I cut, pruning each flower from the embroidered vine trailing the edge of the skirt. And I dropped each square of silk bearing a flower into Theodor’s hand.

“Give them out. To the soldiers. They’re charmed. For luck.”

“You should—”

“They’ll take them from you. They’ll know your sword, your family crest on your medal. They’ll trust you.”

And they did. Each man Theodor stopped accepted the flower, tucking it into a pocket or, more often, lopping it over a button or sliding it through a pin. Somewhere visible.

Watching Theodor, how he clasped the hands of the soldiers, offered them a few words of encouragement, of thanks, of sympathy—something stirred in me. He made a good duke, could be a good prince or king.

Soon all the flowers on my gown had been cut off. I wrapped myself in a blanket that one of the prison guards brought me and, despite myself, fell into a deep sleep.