“And Miss Roary Hollow, bless her heart.” George wiped his nose with one white-gloved finger as he leaned over Evie’s kneading table. “She told the duke to try the papaya or he’d likely dry up!”
Evie gave a half-hearted laugh as she unstuck her fingers from a particularly sticky bit of brioche dough. George tried so hard.
“Oh, wait a second, Evie.” George shoved a hand in his coat. “The guard’s come by again this morning with a letter for you.”
“A letter? From who?” Evie turned quick enough from covering the dough to let it rise. “Where is it? Which guard?” Max wasn’t supposed to come until first moonrise that very night. At least she was fairly certain moonrise happened at night.
“I don’t know. He was tallish. With a beard?” George patted all his pockets, twisting around to see them better.
Courderly bustled out from her room, a large stovepipe-shaped hat with a great profusion of red ruffles on her head. “Aren’t you ready yet, Evie?”
“Ready for what?” Evie watched with horror as George checked his sock, finally locating the long envelope, her mum’s measured handwriting on the front. George held it out to Evie and she took it.
It might have been Evie’s imagination, but the paper seemed to smell like Pop’s cinnamon swirls. Or, perhaps, dirty socks.
“We’re not heathens, child. Even robbers shouldn’t keep you from your chants.” Courderly shielded her mouth as she said robbers, as if that would keep George from wondering what exactly Evie had to do with robbing and such. She shooed Evie off her stool. “You’ve only a few minutes to smarten yourself up. It’s Heaven’s Day.”
“You’re going to let me outside?” Evie gripped the letter, wanting to tear it open right there, but Courderly was already tapping her foot. She shoved the letter into her pocket and ran toward her room before Courderly could change her mind about allowing her out into the sunshine. Monthly chants with the adules didn’t seem as if they should exist so far from home, but maybe when Courderly wasn’t looking, Evie could do some snooping around. Captain Garry and the others would be at chants too, wouldn’t they? Maybe she could sneak away and talk to the robber herself while none of them were looking.
Gisa was perched on her pallet just inside their room, tying her boots. A bag made up of Trouvani patchwork sat on the bed next to her. Perhaps it was full of magic talismans, or a draught of sleeping potion meant for Miss Roary Hollow upstairs? Trouvani kidnapped girls all the time, forcing them to learn to do flips and twirls, bleaching their hair and wiping their brains blank with poison, so they’d never run away. At least that’s what they did in the stories Pop told.
Gisa could have danced for her dinner from Reinstadt to Tersha if she liked, so unless there was some sort of exciting plot to kidnap Miss Hollow with magic, choosing to be a boring housemaid didn’t make much sense. Evie had never even heard of a Trouvani leaving her family troupe, but the only thing Evie had seen Gisa kidnap was a cookie from a plate headed for the dining room.
“You’re coming to chants too?” Evie asked as she pulled her apron up over her head, doing her best to clap away the bits of flour clinging to her arms and face.
“I don’t believe in all your saintly nonsense.” Gisa finished tying her boot with a violent pull. Her brokenhearted orange flower had died within a day, but somehow new ones popped up quicker than Evie could believe, nodding at her from their corner.
“No? Which nonsense is your kind, then?” Evie really was curious. She hadn’t had much to do with the saints or adules back in Paline past monthly chants, but she’d never heard of other places to go on Heaven’s Day.
Gisa started on her other boot rather than answering. Evie shrugged and went to the trunk at the end of her pallet, opening it to look for her only hat. She hesitated before setting the letter down while she looked. It was very tempting to sit down and read it right then, but Courderly didn’t seem keen to wait. It would have to be the bright spot to look forward to after chants, when the kitchen doors had once again shut her in.
“From your folks?”
Evie looked up to find the maid craning her neck as if she wanted to see what Evie’s parents had written. Evie stuffed the letter into her pocket, then stuck her head down into her trunk, fishing for the missing hat. “Yes. You get letters from yours?”
“No.” Gisa’s voice was soft.
The hat, when Evie found it, was rather squashed after the trip from Paline, the modest straw brim bent on one side. The ties were caught on something deep under the mess of clothes and books, and it took two rather large pulls and a few unmaidenly (and unsaintly, for Heaven’s Day) words before she managed to wrench them free, pulling something heavy along with them.
The Robber Lord’s knife thunked on the floor between Gisa and Evie.
Gisa’s eyes widened, her white eyelashes almost touching her eyebrows. She pointed at it, mouth opening and shutting like a baby bird hoping for food. “That’s … that’s … where did you get that?”
Evie picked up the knife, the blackened blade looking unnaturally dark in the room’s dim light, almost as if it were sucking the brightness from the room. She shoved it into her apron pocket. “Bought it off a man in Paline. He might have been a robber, or a Fel, or—”
“You can’t joke about Fel. Don’t you know—?” Gisa tore her eyes away from the bump in Evie’s pocket as Courderly opened the door.
“You ready, love? Now, that won’t do. You need something to cover your face. Even if we can’t keep you from chants, we can’t have you seen.” Courderly’s chins wobbled as she glanced toward Gisa. She cleared her throat. “Are you coming with us, Gisa?”
Gisa stood up from the bed and slipped past Courderly out the door, not bothering to answer. Courderly only spared her a sad look before turning back to Evie. “Small hope to find a Trouvani resting in the fields of paradise with Saint Hart, no? Come on, then. You’re not such a hopeless case.”
Evie thought resting anywhere with Saint Hart for eternity—even if she was a warrior queen—sounded terrifyingly dull. She kept her hand over the knife in her pocket as Courderly pinned a length of lace over the top of her hat. It fell straight over Evie’s face as if she were visiting from a Capal nunnery. But the prospect of real fall air in Evie’s lungs and hints of real sunlight seeping through the gaps in the lace once they left the kitchen were enough to make her not mind the veil so much.
What she could not forget, however, was Gisa’s expression at the sight of the robber’s knife. The weapon’s handle dug uncomfortably through the layers of Evie’s skirt as she pressed it against her leg. Courderly bustled her out of the room before she could put it back in the trunk. If the blade had belonged to the Robber Lord, then what under saints’ Heaven did Gisa know about it?