Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(9)

Then a final guard stepped forward, and all other thoughts fell from Foxbrush’s head as he gazed upon what this man held.

“We found this by the tree stump.”

The baron stepped forward to take it. “Yes. The catalyst of this mystery,” he said. With careful fingers, he unfolded the letter, which had been crumpled into a tiny wad.

Foxbrush earnestly hoped to die and be swallowed up by the Realm Unseen.

The baron scanned the letter. “Ah,” he said and nothing more for several moments. “Perhaps this explains a little,” he said then. “It appears to be a love letter, unsigned, poorly spelled. Perhaps my wayward daughter had a rendezvous in mind when she made her flight.” He ground his teeth, the first sign of anger he had displayed since the whole business began. “A rendezvous with whom, though?”

No one spoke. But the same thought passed through almost every head: Lionheart, the disinherited prince who had vanished a year ago, after his deposition. Everyone knew that he had been intended to marry Lady Daylily. Everyone knew how she had loved him.

“It all comes together now,” the baron said.

Only it didn’t.

“Um,” said Foxbrush.

Every gaze, which had mercifully overlooked him for the entirety of the exchange thus far, turned suddenly and fixed upon the prince. His stomach chose that moment to roar its ire, and he leapt to his feet, trying to hide the noise with another. “Um, I, uh. I feel I must . . . well . . .”

“Have you something to contribute, crown prince?” The baron could order executions in that voice.

Foxbrush tried to meet the baron’s gaze and, failing that, tried to meet Stoneblossom’s. Failing that as well, he fixed his eyes upon a mark in the wall over the head of young Tuftwhistle.

“That’s mine,” he said.

The baron looked from the prince to the letter and back again. “This? Addressed to my daughter?”

“Um. Yes.”

“You misspelled ‘devotion.’”

“It was, um, an early draft. I, uh, I didn’t mean to send it.”

“No,” said the baron, and his fist clenched, recrumpling the letter. “No, I’m sure you did not.”

With that, he tossed the sorry little ball of paper at Foxbrush’s feet.

Every eye in the room fixed upon the crown prince as he bent to retrieve it; everyone in the room knew now why Daylily had fled. Foxbrush sank back into his seat, hanging his head, and felt he would never have the strength to rise again.

The baron, however, chose once more to dismiss the prince’s existence, addressing himself instead to his captain. “She cannot, as this boy says, have descended to the Wilderlands—”

“Oi!” Tuftwhistle protested, but Stoneblossom silenced him with a smack and a “Hush up, you!”

“—so it remains that she must have crossed Swan Bridge and is even now making her way across Evenwell. Put together a company and ride out. Take some of Evenwell’s men with you; they know those roads.”

The captain saluted and, summoning three of his men, marched from the room. The other guards, at the baron’s indication, shuffled the groundskeepers out. Foxbrush watched them depart as a man watches the last of his allies departing from the field of battle, leaving him alone with the enemy.

But one of the groundskeepers, who had stood silently by with the others, a low green hood pulled over his face, paused in the doorway, his brown hand clutching the frame so that even when the guard hustling him out pushed his shoulder he remained in place. He said in a thick voice, “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

The baron, who had turned to contemplate the fire, looked up. The firelight playing in his eyes gave him the appearance of some devil trying to recall his victim’s sin. “What did you say?” he demanded of the lone groundsman.

“I said, I wouldn’t put it past her. Climbing down to the Wilderlands, that is.” Suddenly the groundskeeper’s voice altered and became almost, but not quite, familiar. He said, “I wouldn’t put anything past Lady Daylily. Best not to underestimate her.”

Before the baron could reply, the hooded man was gone. The baron took two steps in pursuit before halting and deciding against such a chase. He returned to his study of the fire, and Foxbrush, in his hungry, sweating corner, could only hope the baron would not turn those devil eyes upon him.

At length the baron said, very quietly, “Get out.”


Foxbrush mustered himself and fled.



The figs in the basket had all turned to putrid mush in the heat of the day. Foxbrush, hungry as he was, was not quite as disappointed as he might have been. There were times when, no matter how urgently a man’s body might cry out, a man’s spirit cannot comply.

He felt sick to his stomach.

Foxbrush, like most young men of limited experience misled by centuries of poets, had always believed that heartbreak would lodge itself in . . . well, in the heart. Yet his heart beat on at a healthy if rapid rate.

His gut, however, felt as though someone had scooped it out and filled it with gnawing worms.

He sat gingerly at his desk, perched on the edge of his seat. No one had thought to light so much as a candle in his study, and little of the sky’s dusky glow found its way through the window into his room. It was very like—and he shuddered at this—the gloom of the Occupation.