Cas stared. A very bad feeling came upon him. “What?”
“Well, the queen lives here anyway,” the man amended. “The king comes and goes. It’s safer in Palmerin. Elvira was hit hard.”
Cas tried to take it all in. “We weren’t?”
A familiar bleakness shifted over the man’s expression. He tightened his grip around the little girl’s boots. “Oh, it didn’t spare us, that’s for certain. But most were lucky. Palmerin is isolated. And clean. There are more people than rats here. Unlike Elvira.”
Bewildered, Cas asked, “What do rats have to do with anything?” Plague was spread through the air. Everyone knew this.
The question provoked a strong reaction from the stranger. The man lifted his daughter’s leg and pointed a small boot directly at Cas. “Rats,” he said with hard emphasis, “are everything.”
And then suddenly the rats did not matter to Cas. A terrible suspicion caused him to ask, “Where do the king and queen live?”
“At the keep, where else? Plenty of room there with the family gone, God rest them—whoa! Ho! Are you all right?”
Cas could no longer see clearly. The man’s face had blurred, and his voice came from far away. The family gone, God rest them. Ventillas, my brother. Cas’ world tilted; he would have fallen if his mare hadn’t bumped against him just then, forcefully, keeping him upright. He gripped her withers. The man and the girl watched him with identical looks of concern. “Are you all right?” the stranger asked again. Cas nodded. He could not speak.
“Tell the truth. You don’t look so good . . .” The man glanced away, distracted by the nurse, who had stepped onto the bridge, the prince in her arms. “Look, my girl! Here they come!”
Cas swallowed the grief that crept up his throat. He turned away from the bridge. Across the lake, shops and homes lined the shore. Rose-colored stone, three stories tall. A flash of green stopped his eye. He settled on the green, his mind slowly comprehending what it was he saw. There, framed in a high window. A figure cloaked in the color of the forest, holding a bow and arrow, aimed at the bridge.
Even as his heart seized, Cas heard himself yelling, “Archer!” so loudly the man beside him startled and nearly dropped his daughter. The mare sidled away in reproof. Cas pointed at the window. “Archer!”
The guards on the bridge were well trained. Instantly, they surrounded the royal family and raised their shields, but the warning had come too late. In horror, Cas watched as the arrow flew through the air and struck the nurse. She cried out, spinning once before tumbling over the bridge and into the lake, taking the baby with her.
The screaming began in earnest.
“My God,” the man beside Cas said, before fumbling for the reins Cas threw at him.
Cas yanked off his cloak and boots and dove into the frigid water. Silt had churned up from the lakebed, making it difficult to see. But he thought he remembered where the nurse had fallen in. He swam in that direction. Shocked faces watched him from the bridge. Guards tried with clumsy hands to remove their chain mail. When Cas came upon a white wimple floating on the surface, he dove. Hands grasping blindly, deeper and deeper still, and when it felt as though he could hold his breath no longer, he touched something solid. An arm? He grabbed hold.
Cas and the nurse surfaced, sputtering. An arrow protruded from her shoulder. But the baby . . . the prince was nowhere to be seen. Cas swiped water from stinging eyes, then raised a hand to fend off the frantic woman who beat at his face and shoulders, screaming for him to leave her, leave her be, he had to find the child.
“I’ll take her!” A soldier had jumped into the water. He was nearly upon them. Cas shoved the nurse his way and dove.
Where could he be? The gown would have dragged the prince straight to the bottom of the lake. Cas swam farther down, and though he no longer believed in prayer, he found himself thinking, Please, he’s only a baby.
Just ahead came a flash of cream-colored lace. He snatched at the dress and felt the prince within. When he reached the surface this time, a wild cheering erupted.
But for Cas, there was only terror. The prince did not make a sound. His eyes were closed. His lips were blue.
Cas tucked him tight against his side. His frantic, one-armed swim ended when hands reached out and pulled him onto dry land. He knelt on the pebbled shore, the air like ice on his skin. Voices babbled around him.
“Is he alive?”
“Poor little babe!”
“Is he breathing?”
“Give him here!” This from a guard, still in full chain mail.
Ignoring him, Cas put his ear to the baby’s lips and heard nothing.
“He’s not breathing!” someone whispered.
A stunned silence. Then, loud and shrill: “He’s not breathing! The prince is dead! The prince—”
“Shut up, you!” Cas snapped. He flipped the baby over, chest and body supported by Cas’ forearm, and slapped him twice on the back.
“Cassia?”
Cas knew that voice. Dazed, he lifted his head. There was his brother, Ventillas. Alive. Standing two feet away, white-faced with astonishment and wearing the deep blood-red coat of a man of Palmerin. The little prince coughed. His small body shuddered, and as Cas fell back onto the ground in relief, the baby let out a cry, one full of fright and indignation, the most welcome sound of all.
4
Cas held himself together, just. There was no privacy to be had here. They were out in the open, watched by many. Only years of keeping his feelings hidden—by necessity, for survival—prevented him from clutching his brother and weeping. The way he used to when he was a small boy suffering from some hurt or another, and Ventillas had always been there.
Uncomprehending, Ventillas dropped to his knees and hauled Cas up by his shoulders, the prince between them. “Cassia . . . how . . . where—?”
Almost it was like looking at his reflection in the rippling waters of a river. They took after their father, a man stern in appearance though he had been kind, the angles of his face sharp and narrow, a nose described as noble by his admirers and beaklike by his enemies. The kingdom’s finest military engineer until he had been killed in the war against Brisa.
“Brother” was all Cas managed. Because the baby’s shrieks pierced his ears. And the onlookers pressed closer, voices loud, hands reaching. Cas jerked the prince away. Who could be certain that the archer had acted alone? The prince was not out of danger yet.