Rosamund stepped forward.
“You can’t win.” Sonia’s eyes glittered. She drew her sword. “There is no point in trying. No point in fighting. The cause is lost. Already the soldiers have eliminated the Howes. They say Catherine and the rest of them burned up in a fire of their own making. And as for your house . . .”
Rosamund thought of Antere House. Her brothers, laughing in the kitchen, the wives planning some grand hunt. Her mother, old now and unwell, but still ruler of them all. And the girls. The sweet, wild girls who slept with their wooden swords in their arms like dolls and covered her face with kisses when she returned from the Volroy after a long day.
“You should not have told me about my house, Sonia.”
“Why not?”
“Because now there is no one for me to protect by surrendering.”
Rosamund drew her sword with a bellow and brought it arcing down directly at Sonia’s head, so fast that the other warrior could not fully block it, and the blade glanced down along her arm, finding its way through her armor and drawing blood. Those who saw Rosamund fight always said it was a wonder she could move so fast, with her bulk and size. They said watching her was like watching a dance of red and silver.
Rosamund’s sword clashed again with Sonia’s, and she pressed up close as the other warrior glanced at the wide-eyed soldiers. “None of them will intervene. None have the stomach to face me outside of training. How many do you think are secretly hoping that I will win?”
Sonia growled and shoved her away. They met and clashed and fell back again, and it was clear whose war gift was the stronger. Sonia panted, soft from so long sitting on the Black Council. Rosamund’s sword was light as a dagger in her hand.
“Stand down!” Sonia shouted, and threw three fast knives, guiding them with her gift. But Rosamund knocked them all away. Then she picked them up and sent them back, her own gift too strong to be deflected, so that Sonia had to dodge and duck.
“Sonia Beaulin, in your fine black cape and fancy, shining boots. Dressed up in a warrior’s clothes with no war gift to speak of.”
Teeth bared, Sonia charged, slashing and striking with all her might. Together they stumbled into a table. They knocked up against the watching, astonished soldiers. She sliced into Rosamund’s shoulder, and Rosamund fell across the long table and rolled, but came up on one knee and laughed when she saw Sonia panting.
“Weak,” Rosamund said. “Pampered, Black Council pet.”
Sonia leaped, and Rosamund blocked and kicked. Sonia spit blood onto the wood floor.
“You’re too small for this, Beaulin. Why don’t you send the rest of my army in here to finish what you can barely start?”
Sonia wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “You are truly mad,” she said. “Your whole family is dead. They tell me your mother was stabbed in her bed.”
“My mother would never die in bed.” Rosamund bellowed and charged her again, metal on metal like a song in her ears and Sonia’s frustration turning to fear like a song in her heart. Sonia pushed back with her gift; Rosamund felt it, like a hammer against her chest. But Rosamund’s gift pushed back harder.
“Guards!” Sonia shouted, and they stepped forward like cautious dogs to surround Rosamund and Sonia in the center of the room.
“They won’t follow you,” Rosamund said, her smile full of red teeth, “unless you do it yourself.”
“They already follow me,” Sonia growled.
Rosamund fought as bravely as she could, for as long as she could. She cut down three, then four of her trusted soldiers. She ran them through. She knocked them back and sent them flying. But every one she dispatched was replaced by two, and the swords began to land. Blood ran down her arms, her legs; it spread across the floor. When Rosamund had gone down to one knee, Sonia finally came to finish her, and by then, there were too many knives in Rosamund’s back to know which one it was.
Coward, Rosamund thought as the blood filled her lungs, as she dragged herself through the fury until she saw the toes of Sonia’s fine, black boots. She had hardly any strength left, but she found enough to raise her dagger and stab Sonia through the foot. Sonia Beaulin screamed like a child and dropped to the ground.
And Rosamund Antere died with a smile on her face.
PRYNN
By the time he reached Prynn, Jonathan’s horse was nearly spent, even though it was a fine mount gifted to him from the queen’s stables. He supposed he had not been mindful and had ridden her too hard. He bent and patted her frothy neck. Rest and time in a good stable, with plenty of grain and cool water, and she would soon be back to herself. Fit enough to carry him . . . wherever he decided to disappear to.
Jonathan sighed. He did not know exactly what he had hoped his return to Prynn would be, but it was not this, creeping in under cover of dark, running, when everything inside him said to turn back and fight, turn back and protect Elsabet from whatever came. But what could he do? She was his queen, and he would obey.
The horse’s tired steps clipped and clopped along the road. When he turned the corner of the street that led to his family’s house, not one of the finest in Prynn but nor was it on beggars’ row, his mood lightened, thinking of his mother, and his father, his sister, and her two little ones.
Beneath him, his horse snorted and pulled up short. She smelled the wrongness and blood before he was close enough to see the broken-in door. Jonathan leaped from the saddle and ran inside, even though the silence warned him against hope.
He found his mother first, in the dining room, propped up in a chair. The blood that soaked the front of her dress was still warm. His father lay nearby on the floor.
Jonathan walked through the house in a daze. The night air was cold on his skin and blew through in a constant current. Their home had been cracked open and ruined. When he found his sister lying across the stairs, he drew her into his lap and wept, and when the creak sounded behind him, he could not remember if it was only a noise from the house at night or if it meant someone else was still inside.
THE VOLROY
They left Elsabet alone in her prison in the West Tower for one long day and a night. Long enough for her to pace herself exhausted and to scream herself hoarse. They brought food, and she dashed it against the walls. They sent maids to clean it, and she chased them back through the door. And all the while from her window, there appeared to be nothing amiss. No great assault by loyal queensguard on the Volroy. No uprising of her people gathered at the gates. Ships docked in the harbor and sailed away reloaded. Carriages passed in the streets. No one heard her shouting. No one missed her.
Finally, midmorning of the second day, the door opened, and Elsabet turned to see Francesca Arron standing inside. For a moment, she and the queen stared at each other. But it was Francesca who looked away first, to frown disapprovingly at the mess of food on the walls.
“That will rot,” she said. “It will begin to smell if you do not let the maids clean it up. It is already starting to.”
“They may clean it when I am free from here.”
Francesca sighed. “You are not doing anything to help yourself. Screaming at the servants. Throwing food like a spoiled child. What are the people to believe when they hear such things? You are making this all very easy for me.”
Elsabet narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean to do?”
“What I have already done. Imprisoned a dangerous queen, for her safety as well as the safety of the island.”
“The safety of the island. I am its chosen! You cannot keep me here!” She wanted to slap Francesca Arron with all her strength. She wanted to choke her unconscious with her long, blond braid. “Where is Rosamund Antere?”
“Rosamund Antere?” Francesca asked. “Rosamund Antere is dead. So is Catherine Howe. And Bess, the maid. And your handsome friend Jonathan Denton.”