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Three days hadn’t been enough to cool Sir Halvor’s anger. Or that of his father, for that matter, his fury something Molly had never before seen. Indeed, the passage of time seemed to have made them both even more enraged. To be sure, they had been upset when they had discovered Edwin and Elwyn were gone, but because Timothy had carefully put the key back where they had found it, and had dropped the chains in the river, Halvor and Lukas had initially thought that recapturing the Sigors would be a simple matter.
“They can’t have gotten far,” Lukas had said.
But once the village and surrounding countryside had been searched, and no sign of the royals had been found, it was clear they had somehow gotten free and were moving fast. At first there was some debate about where they were going. One of Halvor’s scouts had been found on the west side of Almoner’s Woods with a bad concussion, as if he had been attacked, but the man couldn’t remember what had happened to him. People came to the conclusion that he must have fallen off his horse while drunk.
Most likely, Edwin and Elwyn were heading east toward the border with Sahasra Deva. So Halvor sent out riders to the most trusted knights and nobles in that direction. He and Lukas were reluctant to raise a general alarm; they hoped to recover the siblings quickly without King Broderick ever learning they had been lost. But now, three days on, that was looking like a serious mistake.
“We have to let the king know,” said Lukas.
Molly was serving wine at his headquarters tent, as usual. No one paid her much attention as she went to sit by the sideboard, sipping her own wine and trying to look as innocent as possible.
“We shouldn’t have to alert the king,” said Halvor, glaring at his father from the far end of the camp table. “We shouldn’t have to do any of this.”
“What are you implying?” asked Lukas.
“They were my prisoners!” said Halvor. “And you borrowed them to dress up your stupid party in town!”
“And who is the one who was so drunk he couldn’t order his men into the field until noon the next day?” said his father, slamming a fist on the table.
“Who is it who says we can’t search the abbey?” demanded Halvor. He jumped to his feet and stalked out of the tent. “Let’s see what those fucking nuns are hiding up there.”
Lukas, wide-eyed, followed after him. The rest of the officers rushed out, too, and Molly went with them out of curiosity.
“Son, we mustn’t upset the church,” said the duke. “If you force your way into an abbey before we’ve gotten the official grant of their land, we might—”
“Fuck that,” said Halvor. He ran up to the gate and accosted the first nun he could find. “Where is the abbess? I want to speak to her this instant!”
A window opened at the abbess’s house, and Sister Alberta leaned out. “Here I am, Sir Halvor. What did you wish to say to me?”
“Where is Edwin Sigor and his whore of a sister?”
The abbess could barely conceal her smile. “Sir Halvor, you recently threatened to confiscate the lands of this abbey for the supposed crime of helping the Sigors. Yet now you want me to help you find them. You seem to have very confused ideas about our loyalties.”
“I want my men to search every inch of this convent. If you refuse, I’ll know you’re hiding them.”
“We have nothing to hide. By all means search if you will, but if you find nothing, then I will be writing letters to the king and to every bishop in the kingdom.”
“My uncle is the Bishop of—”
“Son, let’s go.” Lukas stepped up and grabbed Halvor by the arm like a wayward child. The rest of Lukas’s knights surrounded Halvor, and together, they all managed to haul him out of the gate again.
Molly started after them, but then turned and curtsied to the abbess. “I’m very sorry about this, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t be,” said Sister Alberta. “It’s certainly not your fault. And I do so enjoy seeing idiots confounded.” Chuckling to herself, she closed the window again.
It might have been funny to the abbess, but to Molly it was a constant source of worry. She had no idea what Halvor remembered about the night Edwin and Elwyn disappeared, and she was terrified that he would figure out that she and Timothy had been involved in the disappearance.
Sure enough, an hour after they returned to camp, Halvor intercepted Molly while she was going down to the stream to fetch some water. “I want a word with you,” he said.
“Suppose I’d rather not,” she said.
“Then I might tell my father what happened between us.”
Molly had no choice but to follow him to his tent. Timothy was there, and Halvor ordered them both to sit on camp chairs while he paced back and forth in front of them. “Edwin and Elwyn must have gotten out of their chains,” he said. “And the only one who had a key to the locks was me.” He held up the key, then flung it across the tent. “You,” he pointed at Timothy, “knew where I kept the key. And you,” he pointed at Molly, “suddenly showed an interest in getting my clothes off that you’d never shown before.”
He stopped, hands on his hips, glaring down at them. “One of you had something to do with the Sigors’ escape. I know it.”
Molly looked at the front flap of the tent, trying to decide if she ought to run. Probably not. There was no point.
“You were both there at the inn,” Halvor continued. “And there was that other one. The one who said you’d paid for her to service us both, Molly. You know what’s odd? I asked around about her yesterday, and the bar wenches and whores of Basington all knew her, but they knew her under half a dozen different names. They all said she’d been in and out of town, on and off, all through the war. Even when the Sigors were staying here. Do you know what that sounds like to me?” He waited, but neither of them answered. “A spy, obviously,” he said, shaking his head.
A long silence stretched out, and Molly could feel the sweat beading on her forehead and trickling down her back.
Halvor drew a knife out of his belt. “Maybe I should use this and see where that gets us. Now...who should I start with?”
Molly couldn’t stand it anymore. She shot to her feet and cried out, “It was me!”
And at the exact same moment, Timothy stood and shouted, “I did it!”
Molly couldn’t look him in the eye, or Halvor, either. She hunched her shoulders, cringing, and waited for the blow she was sure was coming.
Instead, Halvor burst out laughing. “Ha! I knew it! I knew the two of you were fucking. It really explains everything.” He strode over and punched Timothy lightly on the shoulder. “So you play both sides, do you? I often suspected as much.”
Molly slumped back into the camp chair as Halvor explained gleefully that he’d never really thought either of them was involved, but he had wanted to check to make sure. In some utterly mad way, he really did think Timothy and Molly were secret lovers, and as a result, he thought each was trying to cover for the other. Somehow, in his rage-drenched brain, that proved they had merely been the innocent dupes of the Immani spy.
Molly was ready to faint from relief, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Timothy with a hand on his chest, gulping in deep breaths of air.
“Now, it wasn’t just that spy,” Halvor went on, grinning maniacally. “She must have had help from the abbey. I’m sure of it! We need to find out which of those nuns helped, and then we’ll know where the Sigors went.”
He nearly charged right back up the hill to the abbey, but Timothy stalled him while Molly ran to get Lukas. The duke’s slightly cooler head prevailed, and a formal request was sent to the abbess for the right to address the nuns in chapter. This was apparently something that noblemen did from time to time, so it wasn’t quite so insulting as crashing through the front gates unannounced.
The meeting was held that very afternoon in the chapter house by the cloister and the abbey church. Halvor insisted that Timothy and Molly be present, in case witnesses were needed. Molly dreaded being asked exactly what had happened, because she couldn’t bear to say it out loud. Not to mention the fact that she really didn’t want to admit to Lukas that she had participated in a drunken threesome with his son and an Immani spy.
There were separate doors for nuns and laypersons, and Molly stood off to the side with Timothy while all the sisters filed in. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and as Lukas addressed the assembly she tried to think of some plausible lie she could tell to cover up what had happened.
Then it was time for Halvor to speak, and he did a creditable job of controlling his temper, at least at first. Soon he was striding from one side of the chapter house to the other, though, shaking his fist in the air and reminding all the nuns of the penalties for treason. “Now I know someone at this convent helped the Sigors escape,” he said. “And I want to know who it is.”
The abbess nodded to Halvor and Lukas. “I’m very sorry, my lords, but I know nothing about how the escape happened, and neither does anyone else here. You can question us all you want, but we have nothing to tell you.”
Halvor stood there, breathing hard, working his hands into fists and then relaxing them, over and over again.
Suddenly, from the other side of the room, someone cleared her throat. A middle-aged nun stood up, smiling like someone’s favorite auntie. “Pardon me, Sister Alberta, but I think we should be thoroughly honest.”
“And who are you, madam?” asked Lukas.
“Sister Catherine Foster, your grace. And I feel it’s my duty to let you know that not every member of our little community is here. Sister Morwen Byrne and Sister Lillian Dunster left quite suddenly on...oh, my....” She gasped as if something interesting had only that moment occurred to her. “They left on the very morning the Sigors disappeared.”
Lukas glared at her. “Where did they go?”
“I can’t say for certain, but I believe I heard someone say they were going to Formacaster.”
Halvor rushed from the chapter house, grabbing Timothy by the arm and shouting orders as he went. “Find my captains. Call in my scouts. I want Morwen Byrne found!”