“Hand me a stick or a fork—anything like that—and I’ll show you,” Isbe says.
One of the boys places a rustic tool into her hands. She’s not sure what it is. She bends over and tries to draw in the hard dirt of the floor, carving the image from memory. The castle’s main gates are at the eastern wall. The tallest tower is the northeast one, which overlooks the sea in the distance. And the servants’ quarters are clustered along the northernmost wing, which gets the harshest winds and is thus less coveted by the royal family and its guests.
She points to a notch she has just drawn in that wall. “I need you to take me here. In secret.”
She lets the boys study the messy drawing in the dirt for a full minute or two before rubbing it away with her sleeve.
“Will you tell us more about da pirate?”
“Yessir,” Isbe promises. “I’ll tell ya all about ’im . . . on the way.”
Shimmying through the peasants’ pantry window is not the hard part. Though the main gates to the palace are well protected, the peasants’ pantry is easily accessible from the outside. It would not be fitting for farmers to have to deliver grain from the granary to the kitchens via the front entrance, which is reserved for militia, merchants, and visiting nobility.
And of course, there’s no way she’d pass for any of the above. She has to hide behind a sack of wheat for the better part of the day, knowing the palace is heavily guarded and that sneaking about in full light is a bad idea. She remains curled in the blacksmith’s wool blanket, trying to warm up. Weary as her body feels, she’s far too nervous to sleep.
But navigating the northern wing and finding passage to the palace wall walks along the roof that evening is not the hard part either. By testing, listening, and pausing, she is able to make her way to the turret she recalls from her snow-sculpting sessions with her sister. This is far safer than wandering the halls themselves, where she’s bound to knock over something fragile, creating a distraction, or walk straight into a servant who might report her to the guards.
No, the hard part is guessing which of the chambers belongs to the youngest prince. At the news of his elder two brothers’ deaths, would William have moved up into their likely more plush and comfortable rooms, or remained in his own? She knows that royals are always considering such advantages and what they signify. Then again, Aubin is not as enamored of luxuries as Deluce is. The Aubinians are known for being a more austere people.
How she wishes she were with Gil, and that they were entering the castle the way they’d initially planned—as merchants offering goods to the master of trade.
How she wishes, for that matter, that Aurora had never fallen sick with sleep.
How she wishes, above all, that the faeries were not such a vengeful and self-serving breed, because it is Binks’s fault that Gil and Isbe have been separated, she’s certain. It’s Violette’s fault she lost her sight at the age of two. And it’s Malfleur’s fault that a curse was put on Aurora in the first place.
But wishing, she reminds herself, does not produce results.
Her arms shaking from exhaustion, she scampers down over the edge of the parapet and finds footing. Quickly, before she can think how foolishly dangerous this is, she inches along the wall until her foot hits an oriel. The window doesn’t open easily. It takes several kicks before she is able to enter with a loud, shattering crack. She almost loses her grip, and gasps. The wool blanket falls from her shoulders, into the open wind. Then she swings herself the rest of the way through the broken glass and into the room.
She catches her breath. Thankfully, no one else seems to be in the room at the moment, or surely there would be hollering and she’d have been apprehended by now, and dragged to the dungeons. She has thrown caution away as easily as she lost her borrowed “cloak,” and by this point she’s hardly even thinking straight.
Isbe realizes her hand is bleeding, but there’s no time to worry. She gropes for something to hold on to—the room must be sparsely appointed, as it is difficult to find anything. She ends up yanking a drape off a large chair in the process, probably leaving a bloody handprint. This must be Edward’s or Philip’s room—why else would the furniture be covered?
She crashes into a table next, banging her hip hard. This is a disaster. In her hurry to find the door, she smashes an object that sounds valuable as it breaks. A servant is bound to have heard. She can only have a few seconds left before someone discovers her.
Ah. The door. She exits and runs her hands along walls oddly bare of tapestries, down a hallway, her mind racing, not even caring that she might be tracing blood. How is she to find William? Will he believe her story? Will he even remember who she is? She notices a faint fragrance coming from every direction, citrusy and fresh, as though the windows have been purposefully kept open—so different from the sweet floral musks preferred by the Delucian palace.
“You there!” a female voice calls in a thick Aubinian accent. Probably a servant. She’s been spotted. The voice is about fifty paces away—likely at the very end of the long hall.
Isbe doesn’t turn around.
“Stop!” the woman behind her cries.
She pushes open another door and stumbles into a room, slamming the door closed behind her.
Then she is roughly shoved down, and the air is knocked out of her.
Someone is pinning her arms to the floor. He smells of fresh sweat masked by lime soap.
“State your purpose if you want to live,” the young man says. His voice is quiet, a tree in the wind, but his grip on Isbe’s arms is tense. She feels the vibration in his entire body and recognizes it: fear.
“It would . . . be easier . . . to . . . state my—” she huffs out, finally giving up.
The man rolls off her, taking his exotic lime-soap smell with him. Isbe heaves a deep breath.
There’s a rapid knock on the door, and a woman’s breathless voice comes through, the same servant who tried to stop Isbe moments ago. “An intruder, my lord!”
“I have it well in hand, Elise,” he calls through the closed door. “You may return to your duties. Now tell me,” he demands, turning his voice back toward Isbe, “the name of the person so bold as to enter the chambers of the prince without invitation. And in your condition,” he adds.
“I have been blind for sixteen years. I am quite capable of getting around in my condition,” Isbe declares, sitting up with effort.