A Song for Orphans

CHAPTER FIVE

Dowager Queen Mary of the House of Flamberg stood in the middle of her gardens, lifting a white rose to her nose and taking in the delicate scent. She had become good at masking her impatience over the years, and where her eldest son was concerned, impatience was an emotion that came to her far too readily.

“What is this rose?” she asked one of the gardeners.

“A variety created by one of our indentured gardeners,” the man said. “She calls it the Bright Star.”

“Congratulate her on it and inform her that from now on it will be known as the Dowager’s Star,” the queen said. It was both a compliment and a reminder to the gardener that those who owned the indentured’s debt could do as they wished with her creations. It was the kind of double-sided move the Dowager enjoyed for its efficiency.

She’d become good at making them too. After the civil wars, it would have been so easy to slide into powerlessness. Instead, she’d found the balancing points between the Assembly of Nobles and the Masked Goddess’s church, the unwashed masses and the merchants. She’d done it with intelligence, ruthlessness, and patience.

Even patience had its limits, though.

“Before you do that,” the Dowager said, “kindly drag my son out of whatever brothel he is ensconced in and remind him that his queen is waiting for him.”

The Dowager stood by a sundial, watching the shift of the shadow as she waited for the wastrel who stood as heir to the kingdom. It had moved a full finger’s breadth by the time she heard Rupert’s footsteps approaching.

“I must be going senile in my old age,” the Dowager said, “because I’m obviously misremembering things. The part where I summoned you to me half an hour ago, for example.”

“Hello to you too, Mother,” Rupert said, not looking contrite in the least.

It would have been better if there were any sense that he had been using his time wisely. Instead, the disheveled state of his clothes said that she’d been right in her earlier guess about where he would be. That, or he’d been hunting. There were so few activities her elder son seemed to actually care about.

“I see that your bruises are finally starting to fade,” the Dowager said. “Or have you finally started to get better at covering them with powder?”

She saw her son flush with anger at that, but she didn’t care. If he’d thought himself able to lash out at her, he would have done it years ago, but Rupert was good at knowing who he could and couldn’t direct his temper at.

“I was caught by surprise,” Rupert said.

“By a serving girl,” the Dowager replied calmly. “From what I hear, while you were in the middle of attempting to force yourself on your brother’s former fiancée.”

Rupert stood there open-mouthed for several seconds. Hadn’t he learned by now that his mother heard what went on in her kingdom, and in her home? Did he think that one remained the ruler of an island as divided as this one without spies? The Dowager sighed. He really did have too much to learn, and showed no signs of being willing to learn those lessons.

“Sebastian had put her aside by then,” he insisted. “She was fair game, and nothing but an indentured whore anyway.”

“All those poets who write about you as a golden prince have really never met you, have they?” the Dowager said, although the truth was that she’d paid more than a few to make sure the poems turned out right. A prince should have the reputation he desired, not the one he’d earned. With the right reputation, Rupert might even have the Assembly of Nobles’ acclamation when the time came for him to rule. “Did it not occur to you that Sebastian might be angry if he heard what you tried to do?”

Rupert frowned at that, and the Dowager could see that her son didn’t understand it.

“Why would he? He wasn’t going to marry her, and in any case, I’m the eldest, I’ll be his king one day. He wouldn’t dare to do anything.”

“If you think that,” the Dowager said, “you don’t know your brother.”

Rupert laughed at that. “And you know him, Mother? Trying to marry him off? No wonder he ran.”

The Dowager bit back her anger.

“Yes, Sebastian ran. I’ll admit that I underestimated the strength of his feelings there, but that can be solved.”

“By dealing with the girl,” Rupert said.

The Dowager nodded. “I assume it’s a task you want for yourself?”

“Absolutely.”

Rupert didn’t even hesitate. The Dowager had never thought that he would. That was good, in its way, because a ruler shouldn’t shrink from doing what was necessary, yet she doubted that Rupert was thinking in those terms. He just wanted revenge for the bruises that marred his otherwise perfect features even now.

“Let us be clear,” the Dowager said. “It is necessary that this girl should die, both to undo the insult to you, and because of the… difficulties she could represent.”

“With a marriage between Sebastian and an unsuitable girl,” Rupert said. “How embarrassing.”

The Dowager plucked one of the flowers nearby. “Embarrassment is like this rose. It looks innocuous enough. It draws the eye. Yet it still has cutting thorns. Our power is an illusion, kept alive because people believe in us. If they embarrass us, that faith could falter.” She closed her hand, ignoring the pain as she crushed it. “These things must be dealt with, whatever the cost.”

It was better to let Rupert think that this was about maintaining the prestige of their family. It was better than acknowledging the real danger the girl represented. When the Dowager had realized who she really was… well, the world had turned into a crystal-sharp thing, clear and full of cutting edges. She could not allow that danger to continue.

“I’ll kill her,” Rupert said.

“Quietly,” the Dowager added. “Without fuss. I don’t want you creating more trouble than you solve.”

“I will deal with it,” Rupert insisted.

The Dowager wasn’t sure if he would, but she had other pieces in play when it came to the girl. The trick was to only use the ones who had their own reasons to act. Give commands, and she would simply draw attention to the fact that this girl was someone worth watching.

It had taken all her strength of will not to react the first time she had seen Sophia, at dinner. Not to betray what she felt at the sight of that face, or at the news that Sebastian planned to marry her.

That her younger son had left in pursuit of her made things more complicated. Ordinarily, Sebastian was the stable one, the clever one, the dutiful one. In a lot of ways, he would make a better king than his brother, but that wasn’t the way these things worked. No, his role was to live his life quietly, doing as he was commanded, not to run off, doing what he wished.

“I have another thing for you to do as well,” the Dowager said. She set off on a slow circuit of the garden, forcing Rupert to follow after her the way a dog followed after its master. In this case, though, Rupert was a hunting dog, and she was about to provide the scent.

“Haven’t you given me enough tasks, Mother?” he demanded. Sebastian wouldn’t have argued. Hadn’t argued with anything, except on the one matter where it counted.

“You cause less trouble when you’re busy,” the Dowager said. “In any case, this is the kind of task where your presence might actually be useful. Your brother has acted out of emotion, running off like this. I think it will take a brother’s touch to bring him back.”

Rupert laughed at that. “Judging by the way he set off, it will take a regiment to bring him back.”

“Then take one,” the Dowager snapped back. “You have a commission, so use it. Take the men you need. Find your brother and bring him back.”

“In pristine condition, no doubt?” Rupert said.

The Dowager’s eyes narrowed at that. “He is your brother, Rupert. You will not hurt him any more than is necessary to bring him home safely.”

Rupert looked down. “Of course, Mother. While I’m at all this, would you like me to do a third thing?”

There was something about the way he said it that made the Dowager pause, turning to face her son.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked.

Rupert smiled and waved a hand. From the far end of the garden, a figure in the robes of a priest started to approach. When he got within a few paces, he swept into a deep bow.

“Mother,” Rupert said, “may I introduce Kirkus, second secretary to the high priestess of the Masked Goddess?”

“Justina sent you?” the Dowager asked, deliberately using the high priestess’s name to remind the man of the company he was now in.

“No, your majesty,” the priest said, “but there is a matter of the utmost importance.”

The Dowager sighed at that. In her experience, matters of the utmost importance to priests mostly involved donations to their temples, the need to punish the sinful who apparently weren’t being sufficiently afflicted by the law, or requests to interfere in the affairs of their brethren across the Knifewater. Justina had learned to keep those matters to herself, but her underlings sometimes buzzed around, irritating her like black-clad wasps.

“He’s worth listening to, Mother,” Rupert said. “He’s been spending his time around the court, trying to gain an audience. You asked where I was before? I was finding Kirkus here, because I guessed that you might want to hear what he had to say.”

That was enough to make the Dowager reconsider the priest. Anything that was enough to make Rupert pull his mind away from the women of the court was worthy of her attention, at least for a short while.

“Very well,” she said. “What do you have to say, second secretary?”

“Your Majesty,” the man said, “there has been a most callous assault on our House of the Unclaimed, and then on the rights of the priesthood.”

“You think I haven’t heard about it?” the Dowager countered. She looked over to Rupert. “This is your news?”

“Your majesty,” the priest insisted, “the girl who killed our nuns suffered no justice. Instead, she found sanctuary in one of the Free Companies. With Lord Cranston’s men.”

The name of the company caught the Dowager’s interest, a little.

“Lord Cranston’s company has been most helpful in the recent past,” the Dowager said. “They assisted in fighting off a force of raiders from our shores.”

“Does that – ”

“Be silent,” the Dowager snapped, cutting the man off in mid-rebuttal. “If Justina really cared about this, she would raise the issue. Rupert, why have you brought this to me?”

Her son smiled like a shark. “Because I have been asking questions, Mother. I have been very thorough.”

Meaning that he tortured someone. Was it really the only way her son knew to do things?

“I believe the girl Kirkus seeks to be the sister of Sophia,” Rupert said. “Some of the survivors from the House of the Unclaimed spoke about two sisters, one of whom was trying to save the other.”

Two sisters. The Dowager swallowed. Yes, that would fit, wouldn’t it? Her information had concentrated on Sophia, but if the other was alive as well, then she could be just as much of a danger. Perhaps more, judging by what she’d managed to do so far.

“Thank you, Kirkus,” she managed. “I will deal with this situation. Please leave me to discuss it with my son.”

She managed to turn it into a dismissal, and the man hurried from her sight. She tried to think this through. It was obvious what needed to happen next. The question was simply how. She thought for a moment… yes, that might work.

“So,” Rupert said, “do you want me to kill this sister of hers as well? I take it we don’t want something like that seeking revenge?”

Of course he would think it was about that. He didn’t know the real danger they represented, or the problems that could result if anyone found out the truth.

“What do you propose to do?” the Dowager said. “March in and take on Peter Cranston’s regiment? I’m likely to lose a son if you do that, Rupert.”

“You think I couldn’t beat them?” he shot back.

The Dowager waved that away. “I think there’s an easier way. The New Army is gathering, so we will send Lord Cranston’s regiment against them. If I choose the battle wisely, our enemies will be harmed, while the girl will die, and it will look like no more than another unmarked grave in a war.”

Rupert looked at her then with a kind of admiration. “Why, Mother, I never knew that you could be so cold-blooded.”

No, he didn’t, because he hadn’t seen the things she’d done to keep the scraps of her power she had. He’d fought rebels, but he hadn’t seen the civil wars, or the things that had been necessary in their wake. Rupert probably thought that he was a man without limits, but the Dowager had found out the hard way that she would do whatever was necessary to secure the throne for her family.

Still, it wasn’t worth thinking about. This would be over soon. Sebastian would be safely back with his family, Rupert would have avenged his humiliation, and two girls who should have been long dead would go to the grave without a trace.

CHAPTER SIX

“It’s a test,” Kate whispered to herself as she stalked her victim. “It’s a test.”

She kept saying it to herself, perhaps in the hope that repetition would make it true, perhaps because it was the only way to keep herself following after Gertrude Illiard, keeping to the shadows while she sat on the balcony of her home for breakfast, slipping silently through the crowds of the city while the merchant’s daughter walked with friends through the early morning markets.

Savis Illiard kept dogs and guards to protect his property and his daughter both, but the guards had been at their posts too long and relied on the dogs, while the dogs were easy to quiet with a flicker of power.

Kate watched the woman she was supposed to kill, and the truth was that she could have done it a dozen times over by now. She could have run up in the crowd and slid a knife between her ribs. She could have fired a crossbow bolt or even thrown a stone with lethal force. She could even have taken advantage of the environment of the city, startling a horse at the wrong moment or cutting the rope that held a barrel as her target walked beneath.

Kate did none of those things. She watched Gertrude Illiard instead.

It would have been easier if she had been an obviously evil person. If she had struck out at her father’s servants in pique, or treated the people of the city like scum, Kate might have been able to see her as just a step away from the nuns who had tormented her, or the people who had looked down on her on the street. Instead, she was kind, in the small ways that people could be when they didn’t think too much about it. She gave money to a beggar boy as she passed. She asked after the children of a shopkeeper she barely knew.

She seemed like a kind, gentle person, and Kate couldn’t believe that even Siobhan would want someone like that dead.

“It’s a test,” Kate told herself again. “It has to be.”

She tried to tell herself that the kindness had to be a façade masking some deeper, darker side. Perhaps this young woman showed a kind face to the world to hide murders or blackmail, cruelty or deception. Yet while someone else might be able to tell themselves that, Kate could see Gertrude Illiard’s thoughts, and none of them pointed to a predator lurking beneath the surface. She was a normal enough young woman for her place in the world, made wealthy by her father’s business, perhaps a little unconcerned about it, but genuinely innocent in every respect Kate could see.

It was hard not to feel disgusted at what Siobhan had commanded her to do then, and at what Kate had become under her tutelage. How could Siobhan want her dead? How could she demand that Kate do this thing? Was she really asking it just to see if Kate had it in her to kill on command? Kate hated that thought. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, do such a thing.

But she had no choice, and she hated that even more.

She had to be sure, though, so she slipped back to the merchant’s house ahead of her prey, slipping over the wall in a moment when she could feel that the guards weren’t watching and sprinting to the shadows of the wall. She waited another few heartbeats, making sure that everything was still, then clambered up to the balcony to Gertrude Illiard’s room. There was a latch on the balcony, but that was an easy thing to lift using a slender knife, letting her pad inside.

The room was empty, and Kate couldn’t sense anyone nearby, so she quickly searched it. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find. A vial of poison saved for a rival, perhaps. A diary detailing all the tortures she planned to inflict on someone. There was a diary, but even at a glance, Kate could see that it simply detailed the other young woman’s dreams and hopes for the future, her meetings with friends, her brief flash of feelings for a young player she’d met in the market.

The truth was that Kate couldn’t find a single reason why Gertrude Illiard deserved to die, and even though she’d killed before, Kate found the thought of murdering someone for no reason abhorrent. It made her sick just to think about doing it.

She felt the flicker of an approaching mind and swiftly hid under the bed, trying to think, trying to decide what she would do. It wasn’t that this young woman reminded Kate of herself, because Kate couldn’t imagine this merchant’s daughter ever truly knowing suffering, or wanting to pick up a blade. She wasn’t even like Sophia, because Kate’s sister had a deceptive streak when she needed it, and the kind of hard practicality that came from having to live with nothing. This girl would never have spent weeks pretending to be something she wasn’t, and would never have seduced a prince.

While a servant went around the room, tidying it in preparation for her mistress’s return, Kate put her hand to the locket at her neck, thinking of the picture of a woman inside. Maybe that was it. Maybe Gertrude Illiard fit with the picture of well-born innocence Kate had when it came to her parents. What did that mean, though? Did it mean that she couldn’t kill her? She touched the ring that sat beside the locket, intended for Sophia. She knew what her sister would say, but this wasn’t a choice that Sophia would ever be in a position to have to make.

Then Gertrude came into the room, and Kate knew that she would have to make her choice soon. Siobhan was waiting, and Kate doubted that her teacher’s patience would last forever.

“Thank you, Milly,” Gertrude said. “Is my father home?”

“He isn’t expected back for a couple of hours, miss.”

“In that case, I think I will take a nap. I woke too early today.”

“Of course, miss. I’ll see that you aren’t disturbed.”

The servant walked off, shutting the door to the room behind her with a click. Kate saw embroidered boots pulled off and set down next to her hiding place, felt the shifting of the bed above her as Gertrude Illiard sat down on it. The timbers creaked as she lay down, and still Kate waited.

She had to do this. She’d seen what would happen to her if she didn’t. Siobhan had made it clear: Kate was hers now, to do with as she wished. Kate was as tightly bound to her as she would have been if her debt had been sold to another. More tightly, because now it wasn’t just the law of the land giving Siobhan power over Kate, but the magic of her fountain.

If she failed Siobhan in this, at best, she would find herself sent off into some living hell, forced to endure things that would make the House of the Unclaimed look like a palace. At worst… Kate had seen the ghosts of those who had betrayed Siobhan. She had seen what they suffered. Kate wouldn’t join them, whatever it took.

She just had to keep reminding herself that this was a test.

She watched Gertrude’s thoughts as she fell asleep, noting their changing rhythms as she slid into slumber. There was silence around the room now, as servants kept away to let their mistress get her rest. It was the perfect moment. Kate knew she had to act now, or not at all.

She slid out from under the bed without making a sound, rising back to her feet and looking down at Gertrude Illiard. In sleep, she looked even more innocent, mouth slightly open as she lay with her head on one of a pair of goose down pillows.

It’s a test, Kate told herself, only a test. Siobhan will stop this before I kill her.

It was the only thing that made sense. The woman of the fountain had no reason to want this girl dead, and Kate wouldn’t believe that even she could be that capricious. Yet how did she pass the test? The only way that she could see was to actually try to murder this girl.

Kate stood there contemplating her options. She didn’t have any poisons, and wouldn’t know the best way to administer them if she did, so that was out. There was no way to engineer an accident here, the way she might have on the street. She could take out a dagger and cut Gertrude’s throat, but would that leave enough of an opportunity for Siobhan to intervene? What if she stabbed or cut so fast that there was no saving the target of this test?

There was one obvious answer, and Kate contemplated it, lifting one of the silken pillows. It had a river scene from some far-off land woven into it, the raised threads rough under her fingers. She held it between her hands, stepping so that she stood over Gertrude Illiard, the pillow poised.

Kate felt the shift in the young woman’s thoughts as she heard something, and saw her eyes snap open.

“What… what is this?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Kate said, and bore down with the pillow.

Gertrude fought, but she wasn’t strong enough to dislodge Kate. With the strength the fountain had unlocked, Kate could hold the pillow in place easily. She could feel the young woman struggling to find any space in which to breathe, or scream, or fight, but Kate kept her weight down over the pillow, not allowing the least crack of air to sneak through.

She wanted to reassure Gertrude that it would be all right; tell her that in a minute, Siobhan would stop this. She wanted to tell her that as bad as it felt now, it would all be fine. She couldn’t, though. If she said it, there was too much of a risk that Siobhan would know that she wasn’t treating this as real, and force her to go through with it. There was too much of a risk that Siobhan would throw her soul into the hellish depths of the fountain.

She had to be strong. She had to keep going.

Kate kept the pillow in place while Gertrude thrashed and clawed at her. She kept it in place even when her struggles started to weaken. When she went still, Kate looked around, half expecting Siobhan to appear from nowhere to congratulate her, revive Gertrude Illiard, and declare this done.

Instead, there was only silence.

Kate pulled the pillow away from the young woman’s face, and astonishingly, she still looked peaceful, despite the violence of the seconds before that moment. There was no life there in that expression, none of the animation that there had been while Kate had been following her around the city.

She could feel that there were no thoughts there to sense, but even so, she put her fingers to the pulse at Gertrude Illiard’s throat. There was nothing. The young woman was gone, and Kate…

“I killed her,” Kate said. She stuffed the pillow back into place beneath the merchant’s daughter, beneath her victim, and stumbled back from the bed as if she’d been shoved. Her feet caught the boots that Gertrude had kicked off, and Kate fell, scrambling back to her feet in a hurry. “I killed her.”

She hadn’t believed that it would happen, not really. She hated herself in that moment. She’d killed before, but never like this. Never someone so helpless, so innocent.

“Miss, is everything all right?” the servant’s voice called from the other side of the door.

Kate wanted to stand there, to let the ground swallow her up, to let people find her and kill her for what she’d done. She deserved it, and more than that. The full horror of what she’d just done started to dawn on her. She’d stood over an innocent woman and smothered her to death, with nothing quick or clean or gentle about it.

She deserved death for that. She should just stand there and let the merchant’s guards give her it. She didn’t, though. Woodenly, stumbling, Kate made her way back to the balcony. Around her, she could sense the guards springing into life as they started to understand that something was wrong.

A few more seconds, and there would be no way to escape. The guards would be hunting for intruders, and then Kate would have to fight to get clear. She would have to kill again, too, because if anyone recognized her later, she wouldn’t be able to go back to the forge, or to Lord Cranston’s company.

That thought was enough to drive her forward, sending her into a leap from the balcony that ended in a roll across the hard ground. Kate was up and running then, sprinting for the outer wall even as she pushed the dogs away from her with a burst of fear. She planted her feet on the wall, running up it and then leaping to catch the top. Kate hauled herself over, the way she might have pulled herself into a tree back in the forest. She leapt again, landing lightly on the other side and quickly losing herself in the crowds of the city’s streets.

As she did it, Kate couldn’t work out who she hated more, Siobhan or herself. Maybe she didn’t need to choose. Maybe, after what she’d just done, there was enough hatred to be found for both of them. Kate knew one thing – she was going to find Siobhan, and she was going to get answers.