11
It was barely half-full. A few gowns. Some scrolls. Several smaller boxes.
But it smelled of her.
Abruptly I wished I’d thought to ask Ursula to come along, so she, too, could breathe in the essence of our long-gone mother. But another part of me—the selfish part still stinging from her outmaneuvering me—loved it. She had the cabochon topaz. This would be mine and mine alone.
“Do you smell that?” My voice sounded reverent. I added a mental prayer to Glorianna, for leading me here. The gratitude made up for the bit of spitefulness.
“It’s the wood of the chest. That kind preserves the contents from insects and other kinds of decay.”
I shook my head. “No. Not that. It smells like my mother.”
With careful touches, I lifted a cloak out of the chest. Simple black and very worn, lined with some sort of fur I didn’t recognize. I wanted to bury my face in it, but the other things called to me, so I folded it into my lap.
Eagerly, I reached for a box, holding my breath, hoping to see the doll inside. Seashells. Dull grays and tans. One had a pretty polished pink interior, but the rest were boring and unlovely. Why had she kept them?
There were scrolls, too. I started to open one and Dafne made a little noise and laid her hand on mine. I’d forgotten she was there. She wore soft gloves.
“Carefully, Princess.” Her voice came hushed, as soft as her touch. She eased the scroll from my grip. “These are so old they could tear if not handled properly. Even the oils from your fingers could harm them.”
“Nonsense.” But I let her have them. They weren’t what I wanted anyway. Dafne would be sure to tell me if they said anything important.
I pawed through the rest of it, checking each box, thinking at any moment my doll would be revealed. Far too soon my fingers scraped the bottom of the chest. Disappointment as bitter as the bile I’d puked up that morning lurked at the base of my tongue.
“It’s not here.”
“It appears not,” Dafne replied, gentle. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged, the taste balling up into that familiar knot. Back again, my old friend. “Likely it never existed. It was only a tale to put me off.” As with so many.
“Did you ask Lady Zevondeth?”
I stood up and watched as Dafne carefully repacked the trunk. Such an orderly person. I had never felt that desire, to put things away neatly. “We discussed it in front of her. She didn’t say anything. Why?”
“She’s a canny old woman. She might not say unless you ask directly—and offer something in return.”
And did she tell you the price of such information?
“What kind of something?”
“It’s difficult to say.” Dafne was hedging. The scent of Andi’s secrets quivered under her words.
“Don’t you think it’s rude to have more loyalty to Andi than to me?” I’d wanted to sound imperious, but the words came out petulant. Exactly how I felt. “Worse! It’s betrayal! She’s a murderer, a traitor to the crown, and you’re covering for her.”
She stripped off the gloves, having already wrapped the scrolls in a soft cloth. Her sharp movements conveyed the irritation she otherwise wouldn’t dare express. When did everyone start hating me?
“I’m helping you out of loyalty to Andi, because she’s my friend and because she asked me to. However, Your Highness, you do make the job exceedingly difficult.”
I cringed, opened my mouth to apologize, and found the words locked around that same knot. Nobody understood me. Only Hugh ever had and . . . I was tired of thinking about it.
Tired of myself.
“Thank you for your assistance, Lady Dafne. I want to take this trunk with me to Windroven. Do you think that could be arranged?”
She nodded, measuring it with her gaze. “Good idea. It would likely be safer there. I’ll take care of it.”
I acknowledged her, feeling stiff, resisting the urge to thank her again. Not asking her why she liked Andi so much better than me.
“And, ah, you’ll return with us to Windroven?”
“If you’ll have me, Princess, I will. There is nothing for me at Ordnung and I like Windroven.”
“It has its own kind of old and wild beauty, don’t you think?” The words came out in a rush, some of the frozen feeling thawing at her answering smile.
“Yes. I do. I would offer to come with you to see Lady Zevondeth, but I think she’ll talk more freely without me there.”
She was likely right, but I felt a bit bereft anyway. Reaching into the trunk, I took one of the smaller seashells and put it in my pocket.
“For luck,” I said. “Or something like that.”
“I’d do the same thing, Princess, if I found something of my mother’s to have as a talisman.”
“But everything from your home is gone?”
“Yes. Destroyed with Castle Columba and ground to dust before the High King built Ordnung on its foundations. I was lucky I survived.”
My father had done that. In the name of peace, of building the Twelve Kingdoms into the solid, strong whole we enjoyed today. But how awful.
Impulsively I took out another shell and gave it to her. “Then have this. You said she was kind to you. Perhaps this can be something of a substitute.”
Her pretty brown eyes filled with tears, and she took it, pressing it to her heart. “Thank you.”
“Will you still say it’s difficult dealing with me?”
She laughed. “You do have your ways of making up for it.”
There. I wasn’t completely awful.
Lady Zevondeth’s chambers blazed hotter than one of Glorianna’s greenhouses—and smelled far worse. Sweet, but also rotten. Her maidservant admitted me and led the way to a chaise piled with pillows where the old woman reclined as if she were the queen and I the supplicant.
Her milk-white eyes tracked me across the room, not seeming blind at all. It made the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up.
“Welcome, sweet Princess. I wondered when you’d come to me.”
I should have changed into my lighter gown, if only because it would have been cooler. Already sweat rolled down my back, tickling my skin until the gathered fabric around my hips soaked it up.
“You expected my visit?” Ursula would no doubt play this better, but I tried to be cagey.
Zevondeth chuckled, an unpleasant, croaking sound. “You want that doll, don’t you?”
“Do you know where it is?”
“It may be that I do.”
“If that’s so, then you should give it to me. It’s meant to be mine. You have no right to keep it from me.”
“Don’t I? You never missed it before. Could be I had my reasons.”
“Such as? And I didn’t miss it, because you deliberately concealed its existence from me.”
“When you get to my age, child, you may also find that you have kept so many secrets that it’s simply easier to lock them all away than reveal them piecemeal.”
“Somebody said I’d have to ask you the right questions.”
“Lady Dafne is a clever woman. You do well to listen to her.”
“I didn’t say it was her.”
“You didn’t need to.”
She lapsed into silence, thoughtfully sipping her tea, then adjusting a golden velvet coverlet with fringe and tassels higher up on her breast. I supposed I was to ask my question, but hadn’t I already? I thought back over our conversation.
“May I have my doll?”
Her head bobbed, maybe in drowsiness. But then she spoke. “What will you give me in return?”
“It belongs to me by right—I shouldn’t have to purchase it from you.”
“Ah, but it belongs to me in fact. You shan’t bully me out of this, young Amelia, as the King attempted to do. You won’t find it without my help. It’s well hidden.”
“My father?” I felt stupid. Of course she meant Uorsin. “He wanted it?”
“He wanted everything of Salena’s. Everything she had with her when—at the end.”
I sat on a tufted hassock near her feet, my thighs suddenly watery. “What happened . . . at the end?”
“Another question? And yet you have offered me nothing.”
“Fine. What do you want?”
“Your firstborn.” She answered me with certain immediacy, the deadly blade of her wish catching me as surely as Ursula’s swift sword. My breath clogged behind that knot of tears, all bound up with the other ugly emotions that stuck to it, accreting like a dirty snowball rolling across the muddy courtyard.
But I stood almost immediately. “Good night, Lady Zevondeth. I would wish you well, but I don’t.”
Her croaking laugh followed me. “So the fragile flower has a spine, after all. Come back, little Ami. I didn’t mean it.”
I hesitated. “That wasn’t funny.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“You said you didn’t mean it.”
“I didn’t. I said it to you, not in jest, but in warning.”
“Warning that you’ll take my child if you can?”
“That others will.”
Despite the hothouse heat, a chill washed through me. “Who—the Tala?”
Zevondeth shook her head, but it might have been the palsy. Her blind eyes focused on nothing. “You will understand, when the time comes.”
I wanted to ask what she meant, but we still hadn’t agreed on a price. “If not my firstborn, then what will you take as payment?”
She smiled, cracked lips moving to show one unlovely brown tooth, alone in the gaps. “Blood.”
Yuck. “Why?”
“Never you mind that. It’s my price. Yay or nay?”
“How much blood?”
“You’re not so silly. Even Andi didn’t ask that.”
“You took Andi’s blood, too?”
Zevondeth pointed her chin at the mantel, where three crystal vials rested, two empty, one filled with dark fluid. “There. The same from you.”
“And the third is for Ursula’s?”
“Not yet. In time.”
“What game do you play?”
“Not mine. I’ve lived beyond my years to finish this game for another.”
“Salena.”
“Get the vial.”
With my body between her and the set of vials—just in case she could see—I touched the vial with Andi’s blood, the middle one. Unaccountably, despite the blazing fire that seemed it could set my skirts on fire from sheer proximity, the vial was as cold as mountain water. And seemed fixed in place. It had occurred to me to take it, but it wouldn’t be moved.
“Only yours, Ami. The others are not for you.”
My skin prickling with foreboding, I took the vial to the right of Andi’s. It came easily in my hand. Mine.
Zevondeth took it from me without fumbling in the slightest, set it in her lap, and then, quick as a snake, gripped my wrist. I forced myself not to yank my hand away and stared off over her head, at the velvet-curtained walls of her chambers. The pain came fast and nauseating, my blood oozed hot over my skin.
“You’d best sit, dear. No fainting allowed.” She laughed, the croak turning into a hoarse, bone-deep cough.
I sank onto a tufted hassock, sucking on my bleeding finger, my mouth full of salt and fear.
When I managed to look at her again, the vial had disappeared, likely secreted somewhere in all those blankets.
“What will you do with it?” I whispered the question. I’m not sure why.
She whispered, “It’s a secret.” And she winked at me. “If you’re not too proud, kneel down on those tiles before the fireplace. The ones with the deer mosaic.”
I mentally groaned at approaching that blaze again. The hair all along my scalp seemed to be soaked with sweat. I’d have to wash it before dinner tonight, and it would take ages to dry. Once that would have been enough to ruin my day.
No more.
I followed her instructions and knelt by the tiles. They showed deer chased by curious half men, half wolves. I didn’t want to know.
“In the one with the swan, lay your bloodied finger over the image of the woman in the woods.”
I had to squeeze the finger she’d sliced, to make the blood well up again, then found the image she spoke of. The woman in the woods stood as a silhouette among shadows, dark hair flowing, her face obscured. Setting my finger on her, for a moment I smelled my mother again. The scent of forests and love. The tile gave way, shifting under my touch as if the mortar had dissolved.
Digging my nails into the sides, I managed to lever it up, showing a space beneath. In the cavity lay the pieces of a doll. Two legs and an arm were attached to a sack body dressed in pink silk. Another arm, a rose sewed to the nubby palm, sat nearby. I rummaged around in the niche but found nothing more.
“The head is missing.”
Zevondeth sighed. “Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“She’d sent for something to complete it. I recall her mentioning something along those lines, but I didn’t pay close attention. Had I known what was coming, I might have done so.”
“Before I was born?”
“After, Amelia.”
So it was true. She’d been alive after I’d been born. The twin halves of sorrow and joy cleaved me. Breathing in and out over the change in my world, I tried to assimilate what that meant.
“What happened to her?”
“Replace the tile and seal it. Then come here. And stoke up the fire while you’re there.”
I slid the piece into place and rubbed my still-bleeding finger over the shadow woman, watching the edges this time. The mortar re-formed, matching the rest even to the soot stains, as if it had never come and gone at all.
Magic.
“I can do magic?” I asked the old lady when I returned to my perch. So there, Andi!
But Zevondeth snorted. “There’s a difference between activating a set spell and working magic yourself. Your blood is the key. It opens many doors for you, if you but know where to look for them.”
“Like the border to Annfwn.”
“Think you to go there?”
“If I’m the only one who can, then I owe it to my King, my kingdom, my son—the future High King—and Glorianna to bring the traitor back and deliver Annfwn to the people of the Twelve Kingdoms.” My tone sounded suitably ringing with purpose.
Far from being impressed by my noble intentions—or even fearful for the heir I carried—she laughed at me. “You have all of Uorsin’s bold ambition and none of Salena’s keen and strategic caution.”
Stung, I fiddled with the doll. Such an ugly thing, made of some prickly cloth, without artfulness. It smelled bad, like old animal hair. Even when I pressed the dismembered arm up against the ragged shoulder, it looked monstrous in its decapitated state. The silly pink dress seemed to be a cruel joke. “I could also find the rest of this doll, maybe. Andi would help me. She told me to come.”
“Which is it, child?” Zevondeth’s voice gentled, became kinder. “Do you wish to punish your sister or visit her?”
“I don’t—I just don’t know.” I nearly hurled the doll across the room. “I’m so angry at her. How could she murder Hugh. How?”
Zevondeth stared sightlessly over my shoulder. “If you go, be sure that you ask the right question.”
“I’m tired of riddles.”
“Then you’ve given up the game before it’s barely begun.”
“This isn’t a game. This is my life.”
She shrugged, settling into the blankets. “To the goddesses, there is no difference.”
“Glorianna would not toy with us. She loves us.”
“Ah, but what is toying to you may be an expression of love from Her. They are not the same as we are. The concerns of our mortal lives can’t compare to Their long view of the world.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Then ask a question you will understand the answer to. Start simple and work your way up to the more complicated ones.”
Another person had said something along those lines recently—who was it? Ah, Marin with the knitting. Maybe she’d start teaching me tonight, before the feast. She’d be waiting in my rooms when I returned. My ladies would have found her, wherever she’d wandered off to.
“What happened to my mother?”
Zevondeth opened her mouth, throwing her head back as when she made that cackling laugh, but only a long breath rattled out of her. For a panicked moment, I thought she’d died. But she blinked open her milky eyes and stared at the ceiling.
“As if that’s not complicated to answer.”
“I deserve to know.”
“You should count yourself lucky not to get everything you deserve.”
“The worst has already happened. My one true love died. I didn’t deserve that.”
“And who are you to know? It’s always been so with you—you claim the pride of being Glorianna’s avatar, but you don’t truly give yourself over to Her will.”
She fell silent. The nearby brazier of red-gold coals snapped and sizzled quietly. I smoothed the doll’s gown where my sweaty fingers had pressed creases into the old silk. When she seemed to be planning to say nothing more, I risked an inquiring glance at the old woman. She appeared to be sleeping, her breath rattling wet in her nose.
“Lady Zevondeth?”
She snorted, choked a little, and jerked those milky white eyes open. “You’re still here? Go.”
“But—”
“No. No more.” With a palsied hand, she wiped tears from her face.
“I still don’t understand why she died, though!”
“It’s not given to us to understand everything,” she snapped, snatching up a little bell and ringing it so loudly for the maid that my ears hurt. “Perhaps you should seek your answers elsewhere. Leave an old woman be—quit your pestering.”
Standing, I gathered the pieces of the doll in a fold of my skirt. I didn’t want my sweat to mar it any more. Dafne had said finger oils would harm the scrolls, which I acted as if I didn’t care about, but what might sweaty hands do? Zevondeth irritably asked the maid for another blanket and the girl scuttled off with the speed of the well intimidated.
I seized the chance. “But it was put about that she died birthing me and you knew that wasn’t true.”
“Not such a silly goose,” Zevondeth muttered, picking at her coverlets, eyes closed.
“So who told you not to speak otherwise?”
“You’re out of questions, Princess, though that’s a fine one.”
“I’ll give you something else. More blood?”
“You have nothing more I want. Go on with you.”
“You clearly loved my mother. I just wonder why you never told anyone the truth!”
She cracked one eye open and fixed it on me. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” She let it close again and snuggled in. “Some things are worth dying for. Some worth living for. Salena taught me that. Go learn your own lessons.”