The queen’s regal manner had morphed the instant her ladies left. Now she just looked like a scared little girl. Her voice verged on panic as she muttered, “Where are Rachel and the apothecary with that tisane? They should have been here long ago.”
“Your Grace.” The words came out squeaky, too high. “Where is my . . . cousin? Where is Lady Babcock?”
Disgust rippled across the queen’s lips. “Sir Babcock, that horrible little cretin, claims his wife too ill to leave her chambers. Even at his queen’s command.” Her thin lips pressed white together. “But worry not, I’ve sent my man to fetch her. She shall be here anon. No one disobeys my order.”
My diaphragm constricted, pressing against my spine. Too ill?
The queen scanned the room. Her gaze lingered on Collum, his face shaded by the cloak. “Who is that man? Why does he hide his face?”
I looked to Phoebe and her cloaked, hooded brother, clustered together near the now-closed door.
“He is with us, Your Grace.” I so hoped that would be explanation enough.
Eleanor stared hard at Collum for a moment as my pulse pounded in my temples. Yes, the queen had agreed to help us, but I wasn’t sure how far that help would extend if she knew Collum was the very thief who’d stolen from her husband.
Hectare squinted blearily at Collum, then came to our rescue. “Never mind him, my girl. It is time. Give them the dagger.”
All movement in the chamber ceased. I don’t think anyone even breathed.
“It’s here?” Bran asked in a reverent whisper.
We’d been prepared to beg. To somehow make them understand how important it was that we took the dagger with us. If that didn’t work, we’d have had to steal it. With my mother’s bracelet gone, it was the only way.
Hectare nudged the queen with a gnarled hand. Eleanor stood, then from a nearby table retrieved a carved ebony box. As her ermine cloak glided along the rushes, a delicate scent of summer roses and nutty herbs drifted up.
When Eleanor withdrew the blade from its sheath, a walnut-size opal seized the candlelight and cast it back in blue and green shimmers that sparked across the beamed ceiling and tapestried walls. It was as though someone had captured the moon and imbedded it in the golden hilt.
My hand flew to my chest. Beneath the fabric of my bodice, the lodestone warmed against my skin. Bran reached up to clasp the cloak pin at his throat.
“My bracelet,” Phoebe murmured.
From his place near the door, Collum quietly studied the ring on his right hand.
“Yes,” Hectare said into the silence. “Our world is not yet ready for such a thing as this. It holds a power the ignorant might use for ill. I think it best that it leave this place. But . . . may I see it for a moment first?”
The queen stared down at the dagger, mesmerized.
“My child?”
The sister struggled upright on her cot, her stern command breaking the dagger’s hold on Eleanor. With a grimace, she thrust it back into the sheath and handed it to Hectare.
The nun slid the blade out just enough to examine the hilt. She tilted her head, frowning. “I must have misremembered. I thought . . .” Hectare pursed her lips, and a thousand wrinkles radiated outward. “No matter.” She slipped the blade home and held it out to me. “This old memory is not what it used to be. Take it.”
Blindly, I snatched the dagger and handed it off to Collum. He stared down at the blade. I saw his shoulders bunch and his head bow as he rubbed a thumb over the stone.
Something was gnawing at me, though. Something about the stone. I tried to focus, but as each moment ticked by, a queasy trepidation began to build inside me.
Why isn’t my mom here yet?
“Hectare would speak with the two of you,” Eleanor called, waving Bran and me over. The queen looked wrung out, heart-bruised. “Do not tax her,” she warned in a voice cracked with grief. “For I think she does not have much time left. I must find out where Rachel has gotten to. It is not like the girl to tarry.”
The queen’s footsteps dragged as she went to confer with the guard at her door. Bran and I knelt by the nun’s cot. When I looked into her face, grief coiled through me at the dusky color around her lips.
“I’ve given much thought to you since we met, child.” Sister Hectare spoke in a crackle. Paper ruffling in a breeze. “In my long life, the Lord has seen fit to grant me many gifts. When I look at those two over there”—she gestured to where Collum and Phoebe spoke quietly together—“it is as though I am seeing them through a long tunnel. It was the same with this Celia.”
She coughed, wheezy and weak. Her rheumy gaze switched back and forth between Bran and me. “The two of you now, you are clearer to me.” Hectare reached out and clasped my hands between hers. Her palms felt like silk and sandpaper. “The same yet different from the others.”
A chill raced across my shoulders. I glanced at Bran, but his eyes were riveted on Hectare.
“None of you belong here.” My hands bunched inside the old woman’s skeletal grip. Her gaze fixed with Bran’s as she finished. “Though you two are not so far away as the others. It is difficult to explain, though I see in the young lord’s eyes he knows of what I speak, yes?”