They Sold the Wrong Princess

Chapter 2

By the time Karhold Keep rose out of the whirling white dusk, Cecily could no longer feel her toes inside her stirrup-leathers.

The fortress did not sit among gardens like the palace at Valmere; it grew straight out of a black crag above a frozen gorge, four square towers of grey mountain stone joined by curtain walls thick enough to drive an ox-wain along the battlements. Below the gatehouse, a cluster of slate-roofed cottages huddled around a smithy whose chimney threw orange sparks into the driving snow.

Aldwin blew a single blast on a horn at the barbican. The iron portcullis groaned upward, and their small train clattered into an outer ward that smelled of wet wool, woodsmoke, and turnip broth.

No lord came down the wide stone steps to take her bridle. Instead, a portly man of fifty-five in a furred woollen tunic emerged from the great hall, carrying a ring of iron keys at his girdle and a willow wand of office.

"I am Brannoch, steward of Karhold," he said, offering a bow so shallow it barely creased his tunic. His eyes moved past her face straight to the solitary dray behind her. "Is the rest of the train behind the hill, my lady? The contract spoke of three wagons."

"The contract spoke of many things, Master Brannoch," Cecily said, stepping down onto the cobbles with Wynne's hand under her elbow. "You see what the roads have left us. I trust my lord Thorne is within?"

"The Lord Warden is on the high wall," Brannoch said smoothly. "A wolf-pack was sighted near the sheep-folds at Vespers. He bade us see you warmed and fed."

He led them into the great hall. It was long and smoky, lit by iron cressets burning tallow and pine-knots, with hounds drowsing in the rushes near two vast hearths. Three dozen northern lords and household captains sat at the trestle tables over wooden trenchers of mutton and dark ale.

As Cecily walked up the center aisle in her travel-stained grey cloak, the talk along the benches dropped to a coarse murmur. A broad-shouldered lord with a scarred nose leaned across his trencher and said, loud enough to reach the rafters, "So that is the little poppet from the south. Careful you do not sneeze on her, or she'll snap in two."

Laughter rolled down the benches. Wynne's chin came up, her mouth opening to spit a retort, but Cecily laid two cold fingers against the girl's wrist.

Brannoch did not conduct them to the high table on the dais. Instead, he stopped beside the lowest trestle near the buttery screens, where the draft from the courtyard doors blew the rushes flat. "Here is place for you and your maid, my lady. The garrison eats early in winter."

Before Cecily could take her seat, a woman rose from the high table and came down the steps. She was twenty-six, tall, with heavy braids of bright red hair coiled over her ears and a gown of dark green wool trimmed with marten fur. She wore a chatelaine's silver chain at her hip, though every link of it had been polished until it shone like a blade.

"Steward, where are your manners?" the red-haired woman said, stopping before Cecily and looking her over from hood to hem. "I am Isabeau Fenn, cousin to Lord Gareth. Welcome to Karhold, cousin-to-be. You must forgive my lord's absence. He has little taste for courtly prettiness."

"He is fortunate to have a cousin so attentive to his guests, Lady Isabeau," Cecily replied evenly. "A corner out of the wind will suffice for tonight."

Isabeau's lips curved. "Oh, we would never lodge a royal bride in the barracks. I have had the North Tower aired for you. It has the finest view of the gorge, and the quietest bedchamber in the keep. My lord's first wife, Lady Elspeth, kept her rooms there until the night she died."

Along the nearest table, the men stopped chewing to watch the southern princess flinch. Everyone knew the tale: that the Beast had broken Elspeth's neck or driven her to poison in that high, cold room.

Cecily untied the wet ribbons of her hood and folded them neatly over her arm. "At what bell will the hot water be sent up, Master Brannoch? The mountain mire is stubborn on wool."

Isabeau's smile stiffened. Brannoch blinked once, caught off balance, and muttered, "Before Compline, my lady. A boy will bring a kettle."

"Thank you," Cecily said, and inclined her head to the hall before following a link-boy toward the northern stair.

The North Tower was a hundred and forty stone steps above the courtyard, and the wind beat against its narrow lancet windows with a low, steady howl. The bedchamber was round, hung with faded wall-cloths of stag-hunts that stirred in the drafts. A small fire of damp birch logs smoked sullenly on the hearth.

Once the link-boy had set the oak casket beside the bed and bolted down the stairs, Wynne dropped to her knees before the grate, blowing fiercely on the embers. "The brazen red-haired vixen! Putting you in a dead woman's bed on your first night, and that fat thief of a steward seating you by the slops! Let me go down to the kitchens, my lady. I will find the water myself and take the skin off anyone who looks crooked."

"Go," Cecily said. "Find the head cook. Ask for tallow candles and a handful of coarse salt for my travel-boots. Look at the locks on the buttery doors as you pass, and see who carries the keys."

Wynne grinned, her anger sharpening into purpose, and slipped out the door.

Alone, Cecily did not take off her cloak. She lifted the iron poker and knelt on the cold flagstones before the hearth. A woman who had lived and died in this room had left something behind—if not in the chests Isabeau had surely stripped, then in the stone itself.

She tapped the poker lightly along the soot-blackened bricks at the back of the firebox, listening to the pitch of the iron. Near the lower left corner, behind the smoking birch logs, one brick gave back a dull, hollow clink instead of a ring.

Cecily raked the embers aside with the poker, wrapped her cloak hem around her hand to shield her fingers from the heat, and worked the point of her herb-knife into the mortarless seam. The half-brick slid forward two inches, then came free in a shower of dry grey ash.

Behind it, nested in a hollow chipped from the rubble core of the wall, lay a small phial of green blown glass.

She drew it out and carried it to the single candle on the table. The mouth of the phial was sealed with dark purple wax—the exact shade of resin and beeswax used by the royal apothecary in the lower court of Valmere. Through the bubbly green glass, a finger's depth of pale grey powder shifted like dry bone-dust. She did not need to break the wax to know it; she had scraped the same tasteless grey dregs from the bottom of her father's silver cup two years ago, the night King Aldous died clutching his throat.

A square of yellowed vellum was pasted to the side of the glass, faded by two winters of chimney smoke. In the bottom corner of the blank label, drawn in brown gall-ink with three tiny, deliberate strokes of a split nib, was a miniature feather.

Cecily sat down on the wooden stool beside the hearth, the green glass warming in her palm.

For two years she had wondered why Lark—the sharpest, most faithful informant the Quill possessed in the northern marches—had stopped sending ciphers without a word of warning. Cecily had never known Lark's true name. Now she looked at the curtained bed across the cold room, and she knew whose hand had hidden the phial before the end.

Lark had been Lady Elspeth Thorne.