The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(49)

Meredith cocked an eyebrow as I took my seat. “Is everything all right? You look upset.”

I gave a prim smile and took up my spindle, keeping one eye on the queen as she spun. “I’m well enough. Thank you.” All eyes were on me, though, and perhaps there was an opportunity here. I allowed my chin to tremble and made my voice small, but trying to be strong. “Well, I’d wanted to join the wraith mitigation committee. I thought I might be able to help.”

Meredith nodded. “That’s quite brave of you.”

“Unfortunately, the majority of the committee believes I am unsuitable, thanks to the very thing I believe makes me valuable: my experience in the wraithland.”

A few of the ladies hissed, and several scowled. The queen simply focused on her work—or appeared to focus. Chey shook her head and met my eyes. “Women are constantly underestimated. Women can be just as cunning and clever as men, and oftentimes are. Our triumph is simply overlooked or unnoticed, because men do not expect it or know to look for it.” She offered a strange smile. “Use your perceived insignificance to your advantage. It’s what we all do.”

There was a small chorus of yeses and a ripple of nodding, making me wonder for the first time what they were hiding. All these ladies with their own lives, their own goals.

Perhaps I’d misjudged them earlier. Their inane chatter was a small theater, meant to disguise their true selves from me: an outsider.

The queen smiled gracefully as she wound yarn onto her spindle.

“Thank you for the advice,” I said after a moment. A strange sense of kinship welled up in me. We all wore disguises, and now I understood theirs.

Not that I trusted Chey—or Meredith or the queen or anyone else in this room—but that didn’t make her advice any less true. Maneuvering beneath notice was what I’d been doing since my arrival here.

This incident with Tobiah was a setback, but it wouldn’t keep me from my goals.

As soon as the ladies disbanded for the day, I set about haunting the halls around generals’ offices, and anywhere else I might find answers. But I found nothing.

There was no getting around it. I was going to the wraithland.


Days were getting shorter. By the time the clock tower chimed nineteen, the sun dipped below the western horizon and the city’s mirrors glowed with twilight until the sky faded to purple-black, and finally turned dark.

Melanie hadn’t returned to our apartments, and even if she’d been here, I wouldn’t have known what to say to her. Would we talk about last night with Patrick? Or pretend we didn’t know about Quinn and Ezra? Act like she hadn’t voted with Patrick, and now two of our friends were dead?

Black silk gleamed in the lamplight; the mask peeked out from beneath my mattress, where I’d shoved it this morning as I staggered in, exhausted.

I tugged it from the hiding place and turned it over in my hands, looking for hints of Black Knife’s identity. A piece of hair, a scent, or a seamstress’s embroidered mark. But there was nothing. The mask smelled like me now, and there was nothing to indicate it hadn’t been my mask all along.

Keep it, he’d said. You might need it again.

Earlier, the palace ladies had said there were more wraith beasts in the city. If that was true, Black Knife would be hunting them.

I changed my clothes and slipped my weapons from their hiding places. As exhausted as I was, I wasn’t ready to sleep, to think about my wretched life, or to question what I’d always known and believed.

Instead, I shoved Black Knife’s mask into my belt and made my way into the city.

Unsure exactly where I wanted to go, I roamed the market district, rooftop to rooftop, until I found myself above a small chapel with a bubbling fountain in its tiny courtyard. Half a dozen people knelt on the cobblestones, circling the splashing water. Quiet chanting rose into the night.

“They’re waiting to be healed.” Black Knife’s voice came from just behind me. “They were told to fast for a week, drinking only water from that fountain, and to pray ceaselessly. If they did that, they’d be healed of whatever ails them.”

“Has it ever worked?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t heard the good news yet, but I hope I will one day.”

“Huh.” He was optimistic, for a boy wearing a mask.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” he said.

I stood and slipped behind a chimney, out of the way of the mirrors. Black Knife followed, utterly silent in his movements.

“Or perhaps”—he pulled the mask from my belt and held it between two fingers—“you didn’t come to pray.”

Wind tugged at the mask, a banner of black shadow against his dark body. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“Not today. We have too much work to do.” He offered back the mask, and when I didn’t move, he said, “Unless you’d rather I arrested you.”

If he knew how I spent my days, disguised as a dead girl and snooping about the palace, no doubt he’d change his mind.

“Not today.” I took the mask just as an immense roar sounded from the chapel courtyard, followed by screams. “Like you said.”





SEVENTEEN


WE SPENT THE night together, fighting wraith beasts and capturing glowmen. When we were in danger of being spotted by passersby or victims, we traded off who revealed themselves so that no one would suspect there were two of us.