“Bakewell, Your Majesty. Mary Bakewell. I wanted to tell you . . . some people believe you, Your Majesty. In the group. They want to listen to you, and they want to believe that—well, that the Forgotten support you, Your Majesty. But some . . . they want to believe, too, but they want more proof.”
More proof? “I don’t think it’s possible to prove something like that.”
“I don’t, either, Your Majesty, but there we are. That’s how they feel. And then there are the extreme ones, of course, the ones who aren’t happy if they aren’t shouting. I can promise, none of us were involved in what happened to the court. We’ve never been like that. A couple of them now, they think violence is the right path, they tried to attack you, once . . . but most of them just want change. They just need a little encouragement to believe.”
“Encouragement,” I said. Short of getting the Forgotten themselves to descend from the sky and give me their endorsement, I couldn’t think what more encouragement I could give. But it was something. They weren’t all against me. They wanted to believe. If only I could convince them.
This time, I went to the palace alone. It was dangerous—no guards, no friends, no one to protect me beyond my own wits—but I couldn’t trust anyone now. I had to see the evidence without giving anyone the chance to interfere.
Nobody tried to stop me. The guards at the Fort’s entrance looked uncomfortable with my orders, but they opened the gates anyway. What else could they do, when the queen told them she needed to go into the city?
The halls of the palace were silent this time. Occasionally I heard the rustling of rats, settling into the unoccupied space, but no human footsteps, no other signs of life. The figures in the portraits stared at me, and every step sounded too loud on the marble floor. A large painting of Fitzroy’s father watched me as I climbed the stairs, one hand on his hip, the other brandishing a sword he had never used in his lifetime.
Fitzroy had cooperated enough to tell me where his father’s study was, at least, and it seemed he had told the truth. It was inside the king’s private quarters on the third floor of the palace, and he had left the door unlocked.
I paused on the threshold. I’d never been in the king’s quarters before, not even the semiprivate ones, and although he was dead, although I was now queen, it still felt dangerous, forbidden. I didn’t belong there.
But I couldn’t let that silliness stop me now. I forced myself to step into the corridor.
It wasn’t what I had expected. The king had been ostentatious, wasteful, but he hadn’t filled these rooms with the usual gold paneling and endless staring statues. A couple of paintings hung on the walls, but otherwise, the place was almost plain.
The king’s study was also more sensible than I had expected. A huge oak desk filled most of the room, and several shelves leaned against the walls. No paintings here. I hurried around it, lighting the sconces on the walls until the room flickered with light.
It was mostly empty, thanks to Fitzroy. But he couldn’t carry an entire room’s worth of papers, even if he wanted to. There had to be something here.
And the king, it seemed, had been incredibly messy. Papers had been shoved on top of books on the bookshelf. They’d been piled on the windowsill behind the curtains. They teetered in the corner and under the desk. A quick glance through the stacks on the floor suggested they were almost a year old—probably not relevant, which would explain why Fitzroy hadn’t brought them. But I couldn’t leave anything to chance. Evidence could be hidden anywhere.
I sat in the king’s red-velvet chair, cushioned by its luxury. If only the king had cared as much for organization as he did for comfort and gold.
I looked at the chaos on the desk again. I had no time left, and this would take hours to sort through. But I needed to play to my strengths. I would work out a system, and I would get through everything, bit by bit, until I had the whole picture in mind.
The hours flew past, Sten’s army getting closer and closer to the capital, and I found nothing. Nothing about Fitzroy, nothing about the banquet, nothing hinting at the murders. A few letters from nobles, a few drafts of notes to send back to them, pleas from his advisers to consider this or that. A note from Holt, warning the king of the expense of his birthday celebrations, but no sign of how the king had responded.
One letter of note came from Rasmus Holt. In it, he begged the king to consider using some of the gold decorating the chapel to support victims of a flood in the west, but the king had merely scribbled Find other resources at the bottom. I ran my finger along Holt’s signature. Yesterday, I would have added this to the pile of reasons why Holt must have been involved, why he resented the king and tried to create a new regime. Now, I wasn’t sure. It explained his appearance in the palace, confirmed that he supported charity and religious simplicity. It wasn’t necessarily a motive for murder.
Once I’d worked through the piles under the desk, I crawled underneath, searching for any dropped pages. When that revealed nothing of worth, I emerged and pulled books out from the shelves and moved the curtains aside, checking for any hidden pages.
Behind one of the curtains was a wastepaper basket. It was full.
Most of the pages here were unfinished letters, full of crossed-out words and apparent frustration. I skimmed through them, but found nothing useful.
After several hours, the king’s desk was completely tidy, his notes sorted by topic and author, and I’d found nothing more than a few coins lost in the mess. I slumped back in the chair, tiredness weighing my eyelids down. If I found nothing . . . if there was nothing to find . . .
I couldn’t stay in this room any longer. I needed to stretch my legs, to see what else this part of the palace had to offer. There had to be secrets and intrigue behind some of the doors.
I stepped out of the office and stopped. A large landscape hung on the wall opposite the door. It had been obscured before, by the darkness, by my distraction, but it caught my attention now. Rolling hills, tinted orange and yellow by the setting sun. The sky was a rainbow of color, the sunset gliding across the clouds. Near the top, where red blended into blue, there was a streak of yellow that almost looked like gold.
The same yellow that had been used in the cake. The same yellow as the powdered dye when it colored my fingertips. I scrambled closer, until my nose was inches from the canvas. It was here. I searched the painting for a signature, for any sign of its origin, but there was nothing, so I wrenched it from the wall and pried it out of its swirling golden frame.
A note had been tucked inside. It said:
I see these hills from the window of our country manor, and the richness of the sunset makes me long for your company and your court. I hope I can return soon and find you as well as when I left.
It was signed by Madeleine Wolff.
THIRTY