Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(59)
William is quiet beside her, but she can feel his tension. Finally he lifts her by the elbow and says, “We need to leave here, now.”
“But—”
“My brothers,” he chokes out. “They were traveling with a large retinue to overlook stores of Aubinian weapons proffered to the Delucian council.”
“And they were ambushed—”
“At Tristesse Pass, not far from here. Come on, we have nothing to stay for anyhow.” His voice is urgent. “No one is by. We can slip away unnoticed if we hurry.”
Her pulse hammers in her ears. William’s right. For all they know, his brothers’ killers could still be lurking nearby, protected by locals and perhaps even by the convent itself.
They have to leave now, and quickly.
But even as they flee the courtyard in broad daylight and head for the road into the nearest village, the foolish part of Isbe—her curiosity—thinks they ought to have stayed to learn more. She can hardly imagine Hildegarde harboring murderers! Still, she feels William’s wariness as they make their way toward town, and it begins to infect her as well, starting out as a tension in her hands and wrists, evolving into a stiffness in her chest.
As they enter the village in search of horses to take them the rest of the way, they find it eerily quiet. Even in winter, there should be peasants herding goats to market, traders hawking wares, people going about their daily business with a coarse and noisy obliviousness. Instead, the tension, Isbe realizes, is not just within her but outside of her too, in the lack of busy voices and grunts and—
“Where is everyone?” she whispers to William. She clutches the Aubinian dagger, which she has shoved into her belt, hiding the seal beneath a fold of her dress. “Something isn’t right.”
No sooner are the words out of her mouth than a man’s deep voice barks out, “Halt, in the name of Queen Malfleur.”
Isbe always thought that her death would have some sort of meaning or bravery to it. Maybe she’d take a dramatic fall from a wild horse. Maybe she’d throw herself before a drawn rapier at some profound and important moment. Maybe she’d lose her mind and run naked through a frozen field, hollering until her last breath turned to frost.
But now she fears her death will be swift and unremarkable. There’s no doubt the soldiers intend to kill her and the prince. She and William are currently sitting back to back on the floor of a recently abandoned manor, tied together by the wrists. The lord who once governed over the village from this very manor is still where the soldiers left him: hanging, dead and bloodied, from the front gates of his own estate, winter flies ravenous at his eye sockets. Isbe didn’t even need William’s gruesome, whispered description to envision it. She got all the information she required from the stench as they were shoved past, before being dragged roughly inside, thrown to the floor, and bound.
The soldiers who apprehended them are just beyond a closed door, arguing in gruff murmurs.
Perhaps it is stubbornness alone that’s keeping her from succumbing to complete panic. That and the lingering question blazing through her brain like fire: How did the soldiers discover their identities? It’s not like the visages of Deluce’s bastard half princess or even Aubin’s youngest and thus, until recently, least important prince are well known across the land. Neither of their faces has made it onto any stamps or coins. The mercenaries did find the dagger Isbe was carrying, bearing the royal insignia, but that alone would not be proof of anything.
Perhaps they make an unusual pair: William, with his noble bearing and the smooth dark skin of a highborn Aubinian, and Isbe, with her sightless eyes and raggedly shorn locks. But the soldiers didn’t just capture them because they’re unusual. They specifically referred to Isbe and William as “the ones we’ve been looking for.”
Isbe can hear their muffled argument through the door, even now. One word emerges from the rest, ringing out like the toll of a bell: “ransom.”
William’s body goes alert against hers. He has heard it too.
Which is perhaps why neither of them is all that shocked when, a short while later, a couple of the soldiers burst back into the room and, instead of threatening them with violence, simply corral them toward a covered wagon. By now it is getting late, and Isbe can feel the chill as the winter sun begins to sink below the horizon. She’s heaved up onto the back of the wagon and hears the swish of leather and clanking of metal rings as a horse is harnessed.
So. She will not be making her journey to the afterlife today.
She will be making the journey, instead, to LaMorte. Presumably to become a pawn in the faerie queen’s game.
She thinks of the models William carved. The miniature knights, the ships, and the cannon; how they reminded her of elaborate chess pieces. For some reason, even though she should be thinking about ways to escape, or to die nobly if they’re tortured for information, she instead thinks how wondrous it must feel to turn an unyielding mass of ivory or marble into an object that seems to breathe. So different from one of her silly snow statues. She thinks, uncontrollably and irrationally, of William’s hands.
A bell peals in the distance—probably all the way from the convent, signaling evening vespers once again. The nuns will be going about their divine offices, pews lined with their devout postures and solemn faces, the prioress probably wondering, meanwhile, where her new visitors have gone.