The hours ticked by slowly as the crowd became more intoxicated with drink and the lights slowly dimmed. Gay laughter and the delicious scent of tarts wrapped like lovers around those who sat and enjoyed the feast. Dinah was bored. She glanced over at her father, who was roaring with laughter along with Xavier Juflee, the Knave of Hearts and commander of the Heart Cards. The King of Hearts did not notice Dinah staring, nor did he notice Vittiore gazing sadly off into the distance, looking at something Dinah could not see. She followed Vittiore’s gaze to the back of the room, but there was only the trace of a shadow, no one. Vittiore cast her eyes down, blushing. There was some movement in the periphery of her vision, and Dinah jerked out of her trance and looked down at the table.
Her plate was gone, and in its place was a steaming slice of berry loaf on a delicately thin plate. She blinked in shock. She had not seen the extra plate put down in front of her, and that was alarming in itself. Scrawled in lovely looping letters, someone had written “Eat Me” in raspberry jam on the side of the plate. Bewildered, she looked around, but there was no one acting suspicious, no one looking mischievous in the corner. There were only hundreds of people eating, dancing, and boasting with excitement about their own croquet games of that afternoon. Wardley was making his way to the other side of the room, drinking heavily out of a gigantic silver stein; Harris was talking with the Master of Music; and Charles would never be let anywhere near the royal feast.
She returned her eyes to the message on her plate: “Eat Me.” Was this an insult? A threat? Poison? Dinah quickly smeared the words with her silver spoon. Her every breath bursting with curiosity, she raised her fork and brought it down into the loaf. She heard the clink of metal on glass, and found a miniscule glass vial, smaller than a spool of thread. Hands trembling, she picked up the vial, keeping her hands low over her plate. The cork came out easily and a tiny piece of paper slid into her waiting fingertips. She looked around again.
The party continued to escalate. Fat white birds were running up and down the tables, being fed by amused guests. As always, no one cared about the King’s strange, black-haired daughter. Her hands shook as she unrolled the paper, wondering from whom this could possibly be. Five words, written in a lilting script, graced the square of parchment: Faina Baker, the Black Towers. Scribbled next to the words was a tiny picture of a triangle with a wave underneath it. The symbol was vaguely familiar, although Dinah couldn’t quite put her finger on it and didn’t have time to think about it at this moment. She turned the paper over. Nothing. The thudding of her heart was so loud that she was sure the entire room could hear it, yet no one even looked in her direction. Dinah closed her eyes, committing the name, the symbol, and the words to memory. Then she did as her plate instructed and ate the words, the paper pasty and tasteless on her tongue.
Chapter Seven
The stars were scattered that evening—sprinkled north over the Todren and also to the south, where they hung in vertical lines over the Darklands. Dinah stood alone on her balcony, wrapped in a thick sheepskin blanket.
“Your Grace, you’ll freeze out there!” nagged Emily from her chambers. Dinah rolled her eyes and silenced her with an upraised hand.
“Emily, I’m fine! I am warm enough, the winter is almost over.”
Emily made a face and silently retreated. Dinah turned her head back to the sky.
“Faina Baker, the Black Towers.” She murmured the words to herself, again and again. She couldn’t imagine what those words meant, only that she felt—no, she knew—that they were something of great meaning and consequence. She had been waiting for that tiny scroll all her life, without knowing it. The unspoken thread of unease that followed her every step in this palace, it had origins. It was present at the croquet game, at the feast, in the whispers of Cards and the court, especially since Vittiore had arrived. Was this tiny paper perhaps her answer, something to put her one step ahead?
Who was Faina Baker? What did she know? And most importantly, why was she in the Black Towers? Dinah bit at her lip, a nervous habit. Contrary to what she had told Emily, there was quite a bitter chill in the late-winter air; it ripped through her blankets as though they were thin as linen. She gave a shiver. It was time. Dinah pulled a long, burgundy scarf, embroidered with tiny pink flowers, out from beneath her blanket. She reached over the edge of the balcony and looped it around a tiny iron rung on the bottom of the railing. The scarf unfurled itself in the whipping wind, a red ribbon against the black sky.