Moon by Moon, I Became a Jewel

I was fastening the buttons on my black dress when the palace messenger struck my door hard enough to rattle the latch. "By order of the Lord Chancellor, you will appear at Halewick Palace before noon." I kept my hand on the final button. The messenger waited in the hall. He had not come to ask whether I was able to travel. He had not come to tell me why the Lord Chancellor wanted me. Men who carried sealed orders rarely needed to explain them. "Tell him I received the summons," I said. The paper slid beneath the door. I heard the messenger's boots retreat down the boardinghouse stairs. My room was small, with a sloped ceiling and a window that looked onto the back wall of a bakery. I had lived there since my dismissal from the royal household. Eighteen months was long enough for the landlady to stop calling me "my lady" and short enough for me to wake some mornings expecting the palace bell to summon me back to duty. I broke the seal. The order accused me of failing to surrender property belonging to the Crown. It did not name the property. It required my attendance at an inquiry into the treason of Princess Mara, ninth daughter of King Alaric. My fingers tightened around the paper. Outside, a cart rolled past over wet cobblestones. A baker's boy whistled. The world carried on with the blunt confidence of a thing that had never been ordered to bury a princess in secret. I placed the summons in my pocket and took the key from the drawer. The grave lay beyond the old chapel of St. Orra, in a patch of ground the gardener had stopped tending after the chapel roof fell in. I had paid the groundskeeper to leave the weeds alone. He had asked no questions, and I had offered no answers. On the first night, I had dug until my hands blistered. On every visit since, I had brought something small: a ribbon, a sprig of rosemary, once a paper star cut from the corner of a household account sheet. That morning I brought nothing. The grave was not marked. I stood where the earth had settled and listened to the rain tap the stone wall. I had expected to feel fear when the summons arrived. Instead, all I could think about was the Crown's habit of asking for property it had already taken. "I'm going back," I whispered. There was no sound beneath the earth. I had not expected one. I turned at the crunch of gravel. A woman in a charcoal cloak stood at the edge of the ruined path. She had a silver pin at her throat, shaped like a hawk with folded wings. Princess Cecily, the late king's eldest surviving daughter, lowered her hood. "I wondered where you went," she said. I curtsied before I could stop myself. Old habits had a way of reaching the body before courage did. "Your Highness." "Don't." Her gaze moved to the unmarked ground. "Not here." I straightened. My throat had tightened so much that my answer came out thin. "How long have you known?" "Since the night I found the chapel gate open and my brother's clerk told me he'd sent the burial wagon to the river." She glanced at the damp hem of my dress. "I did not know where you put her until today." I took a step between her and the grave. Cecily didn't try to pass me. "The inquiry begins at noon. My uncle intends to make you say that Mara gave you a packet before her execution." "She did not." "Then he wants you to say what you did with her things." "I kept nothing." The lie came easily. It had been practiced for eighteen months. Cecily looked at me for a long moment. "He has the guard searching the houses of everyone who served her. If there is anything you buried with her, they will dig it up." My mouth went dry. "Why tell me?" "Because I'd like one person at that hearing to speak about my sister as though she was alive before she was accused of treason." Her voice broke on the last word, then steadied. "I can't make you do it." No, she couldn't. No one could. That did not mean I would. A carriage waited beyond the chapel wall, its dark door open. A palace driver held the reins. I saw the royal crest on the carriage panel and thought of the last one I had ridden in, the day they told me not to look at the execution ground. I had looked. That was how the trouble began. I turned my back on the grave and followed Cecily to the carriage.