They Sold the Wrong Princess

Chapter 3

The chapel of the Ash Lantern smelled of mutton tallow and wet iron.

Snow beat against the high, narrow windows as Cecily walked up the stone nave at Terce the next morning. She wore no silk from Valmere; she had chosen a gown of heavy unbleached wool with wide northern sleeves, her dark hair braided plain beneath a linen veil, the green glass phial sewn securely into the lining of her gown.

At the altar steps stood the man they had sold her to.

Lord Gareth Thorne was taller than any man at her uncle's court, broad-shouldered beneath a surcoat of black wool and brushed mail. A half-mask of moulded black leather covered his left cheek and brow, buckled behind his dark hair, yet the red, puckered ridge of an old burn scar still showed beneath its lower edge, running down the side of his neck and across the back of his left hand.

Between them stood Anselm Dray, High Prelate of the Order of the Ash Lantern. Above his grey robes, Dray's face was smooth and well-fed, his fingers heavy with silver rings as he lifted the ceremonial lantern of ash-grey glass.

Gareth did not look at her when she took her place beside him. When Dray bade them join hands under the woollen binding-cloth, Gareth held out his right hand. His palm was hard with sword-calluses. When he spoke the vows—"I take this woman to keep the march and the hearth"—his voice was low and harsh, and his gaze stayed on the lantern.

The feast that followed in the great hall was loud with the clatter of iron knives on wooden trenchers, though little enough warm cheer reached the high table. Gareth sat beside her in the carved oak chair, his masked profile turned toward the hall, leaving his roasted venison untouched. At the far end of the dais stood a grizzled man of fifty-eight with a notched ear—Ser Tobias Rook, the master-at-arms—watching the benches with narrowed eyes.

Halfway through the second course, Isabeau Fenn rose from her seat at the foot of the dais, lifting a pewter goblet. Her green gown caught the torchlight as the hall quieted to hear her.

"My lords, captains," Isabeau called out, her voice bright and carrying. "Let us drink to the grace of Regent Corvane, who promised Karhold a royal bride and sixty sacks of wheat and barley, and sent us five sacks of oats and a mute mouse in grey wool. Pray she keeps better than the barley!"

A harsh bark of laughter broke from the middle benches, where Brannoch sat leaning back with his thumbs in his belt. Beside the dais, Wynne's face went white with rage.

Cecily did not look at Isabeau. She kept her gaze on the serving man approaching the high table from the buttery screen.

He was a thin man in household wool, carrying a silver flagon in his left hand and Gareth's personal mazer—a wide cup of polished maple rimmed with silver—in his right. As he climbed the three steps of the dais, his right thumb twitched twice against the rim of the cup.

Cecily watched his wrists. He did not tip the silver flagon to pour before the lord's eyes, as custom required. Instead, as he bowed low behind Gareth's scarred left shoulder—the blind side of the black leather mask—his right hand dipped behind the heavy fold of his left sleeve. In a single smooth motion, the cup he had carried up the steps slid into the deep woollen cuff, and a second maple mazer, identical in silver rim and already filled to the brim with dark spiced wine, slid out into his fingers.

He set the cup beside Gareth's trencher. In the orange flare of the wall cresset, Cecily saw a hairline ring of pale, gritty residue clinging to the wet silver lip where a powder had not fully dissolved. A powder ground from dried monkshood root left that grey-brown scum when mixed with cold wine, and it stopped a man's heart before the bell could ring twice.

If Gareth drank that cup and died at his wedding board, every northern sword in this hall would turn on the Valmere bride sitting at his elbow—the daughter of the south who had brought rotted grain and sat in the dead first wife's tower.

Gareth reached out his scarred left hand and closed his fingers around the maple cup.

Across the hall, High Prelate Dray had stopped chewing, his ringed hand resting still beside his trencher. Isabeau was still smiling, waiting for the bride to weep or stammer at her toast.

Gareth lifted the cup toward his lips.

Cecily stood up. The oak bench scraped back against the stone flags of the dais.

"My lord, do not drink."

Her voice was not loud, yet it cut cleanly across the hearth-smoke and the mutter of the benches. Gareth's hand stopped an inch from his mouth. Slowly, he turned his head, the single dark eye beside the black leather mask fixing on her face for the first time since they had knelt at the altar.

"The wine is soured?" Gareth asked, his voice like two stones grinding together.

The cupbearer took a half-step backward toward the buttery stairs, his boots scuffing in the rushes. At the corner of the dais, Ser Tobias Rook's hand dropped to the hilt of his longsword.

"Worse than soured, my lord," Cecily said, keeping her hands flat on the white linen cloth where every eye in the great hall could see them. "Your cupbearer did not pour that wine from the flagon on this table."

"The southern lady dreams," Brannoch called out, rising halfway from his bench with a scowl. "The wine came straight from my cellar cask!"

"The cask may be clean, Master Brannoch," Cecily said, never taking her eyes from the trembling servant on the steps. Every lord and man-at-arms along the trestles had turned now, knives halted in mid-air, staring up at the dais. She pointed one steady finger at the cupbearer's arm.

"Search his left sleeve. He is carrying a second cup."