“Perhaps to keep the vermin away,” Isbe says, thinking. She’s, truth be told, a little disappointed, though she’s not sure what sort of secret she thought she’d discover.
They decide to return to the refectory, hoping to catch a scrap of bread before the meal has been cleared. But upon passing once again through the graveyard, its scent of sage and cypress and new-turned dirt gives Isbe pause. She pulls back on William’s arm, and they stop out in the open. She can feel the sun on her wrists and face.
“Is there another fresh grave?” she asks.
William hesitates, scanning the area. “Possibly.”
“Weren’t the sisters digging one just yesterday when we arrived? Is it the same plot?”
“I’m not sure.”
Isbe sighs, frustrated. She knows she should let go of the apprehensive nag in the back of her mind, but it’s like a piece of snagged cloth that won’t come loose.
William clears his throat. “Isabelle, what are you really after here? Why are you so curious about Hildegarde and the others?”
She shakes her head, feeling a lump of annoyance lodge in her throat. She doesn’t want to explain it to him. And yet the words begin to form of their own accord. “She knew the king, my father.”
“Sure, but what’s in that? Many people knew the king well, I can only assume.”
“I thought she might be . . .” Her voice is a ragged whisper. “I thought perhaps she might know something about who my mother was. Just take me to the fresh grave. Please.”
She hears William sigh quietly, as though he’s attempting to hide it. “Very well,” he says, leading her there.
She kneels down in the soft earth. She is not very accustomed to praying. She closes her eyes because that’s what one is supposed to do. She puts her hands together, and her head down. She knows she needs to stop trying to find answers. This journey isn’t about her, or finding out who her mother was. This is about saving Aurora—her sister, her closest friend, the person who knows her better than anyone in the world. The only person, in fact, who has ever cared about what happens to Isbe.
Failing her is not an option.
Isbe places her palms into the earth. Whatever soul is buried here, Isbe hopes he or she is in peace. She gives the damp ground one final pat and is about to get to her feet when she reconsiders. There had been a touch of something cold, something hard. . . .
She pats the earth near the grave again, then pushes aside loose dirt. “William,” she gasps. “There’s something under here . . . there’s . . .” She begins eagerly moving clumps of dirt aside with both hands. She feels metal. She feels . . . a handle.
She lifts her hand, dirt now caked into her fingernails. She is holding a dagger.
“Now that is odd,” the prince says, kneeling beside her.
She runs her fingers rapidly over the hilt, feeling the careful carvings in the wood. “William, it’s not just any bodkin. It’s got an insignia imprinted on it. It’s . . .” A hawk perched on a sword . . .
“The Aubinian seal.” The prince’s voice has gone cold as the blade in her hand.
“How would this have gotten here? Why would it be buried in the ground like this?” Isbe’s fingers tremble with a mix of excitement and dread.
William is quiet beside her, but she can feel his tension. Finally he lifts her by the elbow and says, “We need to leave here, now.”
“But—”
“My brothers,” he chokes out. “They were traveling with a large retinue to overlook stores of Aubinian weapons proffered to the Delucian council.”
“And they were ambushed—”
“At Tristesse Pass, not far from here. Come on, we have nothing to stay for anyhow.” His voice is urgent. “No one is by. We can slip away unnoticed if we hurry.”
Her pulse hammers in her ears. William’s right. For all they know, his brothers’ killers could still be lurking nearby, protected by locals and perhaps even by the convent itself.
They have to leave now, and quickly.
But even as they flee the courtyard in broad daylight and head for the road into the nearest village, the foolish part of Isbe—her curiosity—thinks they ought to have stayed to learn more. She can hardly imagine Hildegarde harboring murderers! Still, she feels William’s wariness as they make their way toward town, and it begins to infect her as well, starting out as a tension in her hands and wrists, evolving into a stiffness in her chest.
As they enter the village in search of horses to take them the rest of the way, they find it eerily quiet. Even in winter, there should be peasants herding goats to market, traders hawking wares, people going about their daily business with a coarse and noisy obliviousness. Instead, the tension, Isbe realizes, is not just within her but outside of her too, in the lack of busy voices and grunts and—
“Where is everyone?” she whispers to William. She clutches the Aubinian dagger, which she has shoved into her belt, hiding the seal beneath a fold of her dress. “Something isn’t right.”
No sooner are the words out of her mouth than a man’s deep voice barks out, “Halt, in the name of Queen Malfleur.”
Isbe always thought that her death would have some sort of meaning or bravery to it. Maybe she’d take a dramatic fall from a wild horse. Maybe she’d throw herself before a drawn rapier at some profound and important moment. Maybe she’d lose her mind and run naked through a frozen field, hollering until her last breath turned to frost.
But now she fears her death will be swift and unremarkable. There’s no doubt the soldiers intend to kill her and the prince. She and William are currently sitting back to back on the floor of a recently abandoned manor, tied together by the wrists. The lord who once governed over the village from this very manor is still where the soldiers left him: hanging, dead and bloodied, from the front gates of his own estate, winter flies ravenous at his eye sockets. Isbe didn’t even need William’s gruesome, whispered description to envision it. She got all the information she required from the stench as they were shoved past, before being dragged roughly inside, thrown to the floor, and bound.
The soldiers who apprehended them are just beyond a closed door, arguing in gruff murmurs.
Perhaps it is stubbornness alone that’s keeping her from succumbing to complete panic. That and the lingering question blazing through her brain like fire: How did the soldiers discover their identities? It’s not like the visages of Deluce’s bastard half princess or even Aubin’s youngest and thus, until recently, least important prince are well known across the land. Neither of their faces has made it onto any stamps or coins. The mercenaries did find the dagger Isbe was carrying, bearing the royal insignia, but that alone would not be proof of anything.