“I do not believe it was Lady Shilton or her bumbling apothecary.” His voice was quiet, raspy. “But you must be on your guard, Lady Maia. If any food tastes strange to you, you should not eat of it. Drink only water. I think the lord chancellor will start an investigation. If someone wanted you dead, they may try again when they learned they have failed.”
He leaned forward and then rose, his brow wrinkling. “This concerns me deeply. I must speak to the king about this matter. Do you have a message for him?”
Maia stared at him, her eyes wide. It was a rare opportunity. “Tell him that I love him. I wish he would let me see my mother.”
He frowned, his eyes stern and severe. “I will,” he agreed with a thick voice. “But I do not believe he will agree.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Armada
Maia awoke in a bed. She blinked and looked around, finding herself in a strange place with no recollection of how she had come to be there. Even though this had happened to her regularly since leaving the lost abbey, it was still a jarring sensation. The sheets smelled faintly of purple mint. The bed had four large posts draped with creamy linen veils. Panic thrummed inside her heart and she quickly sat up. She was lying atop the sheets and comforter, still clothed—thank Idumea—but she noticed she was now dressed only in the burgundy gown that Jon Tayt had given her. The tattered gown she had worn underneath was gone. She was baffled at how kindly she seemed to have been treated. It would not have surprised her to have awoken in chains.
Quickly, she scooted off the edge of the bed and nearly stumbled when she hit the floor as the bedstead was much higher than she had anticipated. The room was small and paneled in dark wood wainscoting. There was a single window on the far wall across from the bed, and though thick velvet curtains covered most of it, she could see a faint dawn light. She hurried to the window and pulled the curtain aside.
It was just before dawn. How much time had passed? She had no idea. The window opened onto a rear alley, very narrow. Maia brushed hair from her eyes, trying to quell the feeling of panic. She gazed down at the alley and realized she was on an upper floor. The buildings on either side of hers were quite narrow and two levels high, each with steep shingled roofs. The windows were roughly the same size and shape and all the ones on the upper floors, hers included, had planter boxes just outside growing an assortment of wildflowers. Gutters and sluices lined each rooftop with spouts to pour water down into the gullies below. Farther down the street the road bent, revealing another row of houses with steep roofs and gabled windows. Behind one of these, she saw another house, perhaps four stories high, with a triangular roof. She craned her neck to see beyond the large house and caught sight of a huge scaffolding and a tower under construction. There were no workers on the scaffolding.
“Where am I?” she whispered, touching the glass. The buildings on her side of the street were made of brick. On the other side, the walls were daubed with white plaster and supported by stained wooden beams. The streets below were immaculately clean—the cobblestones looked as if they had been brushed the night before—which was odd for an alley. A few lazy streams of smoke came from some of the chimneys.
Maia pushed away from the window and examined the room. Other than the tall four-post bed, there was a small couch where she found her other dress, her pack, and her boots. There was a corner table on the other side with two small wooden chairs. On the table was the leftover tray from the previous night’s meal—cold chicken bones, sprigs of asparagus, and a few crushed lime rinds. She rubbed her stomach and did not feel hunger. There were two goblets at the table. Two sets of dishes.
She stared at the remains of the meal she did not remember eating, her insides twisting with worry, her mind full of fog. She struggled to remember. There had been a snowstorm. A snow cave. She and Jon Tayt had fled across the mountains into Hautland in search of Rostick, where she was to meet with one of her . . . her husband’s trading ships. They had been hunted and trapped in the mountains and she had caused an avalanche. She remembered a man pulling her out of the snow. His face was a blur in her mind, but she could easily envision his royal tunic and furred cloak. He spoke Hautlander. Then blackness consumed her world. The Myriad One had taken control again. As she wrung her hands, she wondered how long it had lasted, how many days she had been unconscious, and what had befallen Jon Tayt and Argus. They had not borne the brunt of the avalanche, but even though she respected her friends’ survival abilities, she worried about their safety.
Desperate to escape, she whirled and ran to the door. It was locked. She wrested it, but despite her best efforts, it would only jiggle.
She had been locked inside a room? She searched for other signs that would help her understand where she was. Could this place be Rostick? She remembered asking the man to take her there, though of course it had been the other who had spoken the question.
The morning light slowly flooded the room through the parted curtain. What should she do? Wait in the chamber for the man to come back?