“He stays with me.”
Captain Lorenz was close enough to hear. He came over with a torch, giving the doctor the light he needed to do his work. While the doctor readied needle and thread, a nursemaid braved the wall of guards and came up to Cas. Her eyes were red from weeping. Faustina had been a mother figure, not just to the queen. Her name was Esti, he remembered. She had cut Lena’s hair. Clara’s, too.
Esti said, “I will take him for you, Lord Cassia.”
“No.” Cas held the prince closer. Esti hesitated and then melted back into the crowd.
Cas felt the scrape of a blade as a patch of hair was removed behind his right ear. The needle stung and was followed by the unpleasant tug and slide of threaded catgut. He gritted his teeth through the pain. Captain Lorenz shifted, still helpful to the doctor with his torch, but Cas knew he was ready to catch the prince should he drop him.
Prince Ventillas was a welcome distraction. Cas studied every inch of his little face. His black hair, as straight as Cas’, though finer. The sweep of his lashes, the tiny, pointed chin. So much danger around him, Cas thought, before gasping at a particularly sharp tug of catgut. Captain Lorenz glared at the doctor, who murmured apologies.
The doctor worked quickly. It was not long before he said, “It’s done,” and began to pack up his box.
“You’re all right, lad?” Captain Lorenz asked. When Cas answered yes, he moved away to speak with some guards, taking the torch with him.
“How is the boy?” Cas asked the doctor. “Luis?”
“Better. We will see.” The doctor closed the box and hurried off in the direction from which he had come. The weeping had stopped inside the tent, or at least quieted enough that Cas no longer heard it.
Bittor came over and offered a flask. “Water,” he said.
Cas hesitated.
Bittor tipped the flask back and drank. He offered it again. “Only water.”
“Sorry.” Cas shifted the prince to one arm. He took the flask and drank. “Thank you.”
“You’re right to be careful. That is one crazy woman on the loose.” Bittor took the flask and went back to his post.
The prince woke briefly. He looked blearily at Cas, who looked blearily back. Cas was reminded of their first meeting on the shores of a lake back home. “So here we are again,” he said, before the baby closed his eyes.
That was how King Rayan found them. He had joined the search early and had not heard what had happened in the royal tent. The guards moved aside so that he could ride through. He dismounted before Cas, who saw the fear in his eyes.
“Where is she?” King Rayan asked.
“The queen is safe,” Cas assured him quickly. “Lena is with her. But Faustina was killed, Your Grace.”
King Rayan inhaled sharply. Cas did not hear him exhale. He passed a hand over his son’s head and Cas’ shoulder before he slipped inside the tent.
In the end, three men were captured and questioned. All of them strapping brothers from a nearby farm whose sole job was to lead the king’s men on a merry chase. Who hired them? Why, a woman wearing a hooded cloak. She did not give her name. They knew nothing about poisoned sugar cane. They did not even know what sugar cane was. Why had they agreed to such idiotic, suspicious employment? Well, because of the gold. Each brother held up a familiar coin.
They swore on their mother’s life that they had not hit Cas. They quaked when Ventillas loomed over them, glowering. Two of the brothers wept, blubbering into their hands.
“It sounds so stupid I think it must be true,” Ventillas said later, when he and Cas were alone in his tent. Lena had finally returned to take the prince from Cas.
“What will you do to them?” Cas asked.
“I haven’t decided.”
They stood by a table looking over a map. Neither had removed his cloak. “She escaped through here.” Ventillas pointed to a crevice in the mountains, one even narrower than the Desfilad. “She didn’t bother to hide her trail. By the time we tracked her it was too late. She had gone through one of the caves. We lost her there.”
Cas eased himself into a chair. “How does a Brisan find her way through our caves?”
“She must have a guide. Someone who knows our mountains.” He glanced at Cas. “Likely the same person who nearly knocked your head from your shoulders.”
Cas tried to ignore the throbbing in his skull. “She walked right into our camp with sticks full of poison.”
“Faustina couldn’t resist the sugar cane,” Ventillas said. “Queen Jehan made sure there was a ready supply on the ship. Lady Mari knew this. Even I knew this.”
“What about Luis? Why would she hurt the boy?”
“A diversion?” Ventillas pinched the bridge of his nose, a sure sign of headache. “I don’t know. Maybe she is just cruel.”
Lady Mari had been smiling, even as she offered poison to a child. “Was she cruel before? What was she like?”
“She was not,” Ventillas said after a moment. “She didn’t want to be in Oliveras. I do not blame her for it. She came because it was her duty to come. Our exchanges were civil, and I like to think that, in time, they would have been more than that. But she was devoted to Jehan. And she loved Faustina.” He stopped, his expression one of sorrow. “What she did, it is as unthinkable as you raising a hand against Master Jac.”
Something Cas would never do. Under any circumstance. “She’s smarter than us, Ventillas. She’s escaped three times now.”
Ventillas threw himself into a chair and brooded. “It’s an embarrassment. But she’s made mistakes. She shot the wrong nurse. She did not anticipate you showing up and saving the prince’s life. I’ll wager she did not like being chased through the streets of Palmerin.”
No. Lady Mari had said as much. “She still escaped.”
“One day she won’t. She’ll make another mistake, Cassia, and it will be her last.”
The tent flap lifted; Bittor poked his head in. “My lord Ventillas, the king wishes to see you both.”
They gathered before the king and queen: Cas, Ventillas, Lena, and High Councilor Amador. Lena and King Rayan stood near the rug where Faustina had breathed her last. There was no sign she had ever been there. No sugar cane. No wimple. The gold coins had been cleared away. There were no strange smells in the tent either, if one did not count the heavy cloud of camphor hanging over the high councilor.
No one sat, for Queen Jehan was on her feet, pacing restlessly before her chair. Her tears had dried. A quiet anger had settled in their place. The moment Cas and Ventillas appeared, she stopped pacing. She did not waste words.