Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(44)

‘Not even if you got yourself into this mess,’ she whispers as she rounds the path toward the entry gate.

Ahead, people have gathered to see the queen. From the looks of them, they are mostly merchants, with bolts of fabric beneath their arms: black and many shades of blue. When she gets closer, she sees they are not actually raw bolts of fabric but completed banners and flags. At the front, a woman stands holding something large and draped in black cloth. She has an air of nervous pride. Whatever she holds, it must be important.

Arsinoe walks alongside the waiting carriages, blending in with the apprentices. Too soon she finds herself blocked in, in the middle of the waiting group, with queensguard soldiers making inspections. The soldiers begin to bark instructions, and the crowd around her jostles itself into a line.

She does her best to look like she has been here before. But when she stands up on tiptoe and sees the queensguard searching and questioning every person, her heart jumps into her throat.

‘When did they start doing this?’ she hears a man ask irritably.

‘Ever since the Legion Queen rose in the north,’ someone replies.

Arsinoe wants to turn tail and walk out of there on fast legs until she can dive behind a shrub to panic properly. But if she does that, she will never have the nerve to try again. And she will probably be caught.

She thinks quickly and worms her way through the line, ignoring every cry of ‘Hey!’ and ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ until she manages to get directly in front of the woman holding the item draped in cloth. Now that she is closer, she can make out the faint outline of the item’s shape. It looks to be armor. Custom armor.

The line moves fast. The last few ahead of her answer questions with downcast eyes and hold their arms out to be searched.

‘Surrender all personal weaponry,’ one of the soldiers calls down the line. ‘It will be returned to you as you leave.’

Arsinoe reaches for her belt and unbuckles the leather sheath that holds her small sharp dagger.

‘Next, step up.’

She goes forward and turns over the knife, trying to keep her fingers from lingering. She has had that dagger for a long time. It survived the Ascension. It went with her to the mainland and back again. Now it is lost.

She holds out her arms, and a soldier runs her hands over them, flattening her sleeves and patting every inch of her vest before turning her attention to Arsinoe’s trouser-clad legs.

‘What business do you have here at the Volroy?’ ‘Consultation,’ Arsinoe answers quickly. The soldier’s brow furrows, and she starts to really look at Arsinoe’s face. Arsinoe turns her scarred cheek slightly away. ‘I’m an associate of one of the other merchants. I lost her in the line. She’s already come through.’ None of it sounds any good. But before the guard’s suspicions can be raised any further, another soldier pulls Arsinoe along to clear the path for the woman behind her.

‘That’s the armorer,’ he says. ‘They’ve been waiting on her. Get her through.’ He nods to Arsinoe. ‘Get on.’

Arsinoe walks through the raised gate and into the interior of the castle, falling into step with the rest of the line as they meander through the corridors. She takes a deep breath. She feels safer now in the shadows of the torchlit hallways. But she has to find an entrance to the passageways soon or a discreet staircase to slip up or down. If she does not, she will wind up nose to nose with her little sister, and a pair of buns is not a good enough disguise for that.

The good news is the queensguard escort seems to pay little attention to the merchants now that they are in the Volroy proper. So when they turn a corner, it is all too easy for Arsinoe to slip out of line and dash quickly around the next corner, moving so smoothly up a staircase of the West Tower that it is like it was meant to be. From there, it takes only a few moments to find the right ancient tapestry and open the right stone, allowing her into the walls to move about undetected.

All of that time she spent living Daphne’s life in the Volroy, dreaming those long-ago dreams, has finally come in handy.

Far up in the hills, the rest of the rebel party lies in wait, blended into the trees and snow-covered stones. They will wait there undetected until Arsinoe returns from the city, and then they will wait longer, until the parade is under way and Billy’s party springs the diversion.

‘Do you think you kept me far enough back?’ Jules asks sarcastically. From there in the hills, Indrid Down looks like a play city made of blocks. Something for a child to build and knock down on a whim.

There are not many there, tucked into their cloaks behind the rocks, sharing plates of bacon and barley mush. A small faction of soldiers, totaling twenty-five, not counting those six who went with Billy to hide for the night along the parade route. They are mostly warriors, but a few naturalists and giftless as well.

Jules growls deep in her throat. ‘We’re too far away.’

‘We will move closer on the day of the parade,’ Emilia says. ‘There is no reason to endanger you yet. You should have listened to me and not come at all.’

‘Arsinoe and I never listen to anyone. Didn’t we tell you?’ Jules pats the neck of her own mount, who is actually Katharine’s old gelding, and the horse flinches. Since Jules’s return, he has been shy of her, and only her naturalist gift allows her to come close enough to mount. She must have given him such a fright that day when she lost control at Innisfuil Valley.