“She’s just an attendant?” the orc on the right asked.
“A handmaiden, I think. They call her the queen’s shadow, but it sounds like the queen was hers, if you catch my meaning.”
Freya reached for knives that weren’t there.
Someone cleared their throat behind Freya. She did not jump; she had heard Esja’s authoritative footsteps approach and expected to be reprimanded.
“Are you cleaning or gossiping?” Esja asked the two orcs dryly.
The two priestesses did jump. It only took them a moment to notice Freya, two feet shorter than Esja.
“You would not speak ill of your queen, surely? When you know her trusted handmaiden is here with us, no less?” Esja said.
The two bowed their heads. Sorrier for getting caught, Freya thought.
“No, Esja,” they said together.
Esja shuffled Freya away from the door without touching her. The others were in the courtyard, sitting on the cold ground in rows. No one showed signs of feeling the chill.
“I must apologize for their behavior,” Esja whispered. “Some of us get bored, and recent events have caused excitement. It’s not often we are called to the queen’s side. I am sure they did not mean anything by it.”
If everyone was talking about the queen like this, Astrid was not respected in this place. Perhaps the priestesses’ devotion to the goddess offset the loyalty to their queen.
“It’s fine,” Freya snapped, and found a place at the back of the courtyard to sulk.
Esja took a spot at the front of the gathered group, facing away from them. The last dregs of sunlight dissipated. Stars poked through the veil of night, and a cool breeze uninhibited by the walls of the temple rushed through them.
“We will start with a prayer,” Esja said, and Freya frowned through the chant, though she obediently closed her eyes. They were swirling up some kind of magic between them, but she knew not what it was for. She wished she had paid closer attention to Brenn’s explanations of her magic.
“Close your eyes and allow the goddess to flow through you,” Esja said when the chant ended. “I shall wake you all in a quarter hour.”
Freya tried not to make any noise that would garner unwanted attention, but she wanted to laugh at them all. What exactly was this supposed to accomplish?
Minutes passed, and Freya’s mind wandered. With her eyes closed and just the sounds of nature around her, Freya finally found she could focus.
An assassin was on the loose, and Freya needed to figure out who she was. Her gut told her the assassin was still in the area. Varin had not discovered the culprit, despite what Freya was sure were his best efforts. The assassin had to be an expert at what she did—not just at archery, but stealth. Making herself invisible.
Someone like Freya.
No. Not so much like Freya. Someone like the person Freya used to be. She did not slink into tents and cut throats. She did not poison people anymore.
She allowed, just a bit, for her old self to leak into the new.
The assassin, if she was such an expert, would not have missed any of her marks. If that was an assumption Freya could work with, then the assassin had intentionally swiped Freya’s ear with her arrow the first time around. Not a true attempt, but a warning, perhaps.
A warning ofwhat? To create fear? To keep everyone on edge? Would it not have been better to have killed Astrid from the start? That was what Freya would have done. She would have taken out her target and been long gone, but the assassin’s target was still alive.
She wasn’t thinking about this in the right light, even now.
Freya brought herself back to the human who snuck around camps, doing the bidding of the latest warlord to defeat a competing warband.
The assassin had also targeted, and killed, King Skarde.
This was not one warband against another. This was one warband against two—one person against everyone. Ulfur would order such an assassination done, or the assassin could work for someone else gaining power in Lynby, a rival warlord to Ulfur’s rule. It was hard to get consistent news from Lynby, even with her contacts, due to the disorganization and shifting power structure.
Think, Freya, think.
The king’s brother had been murdered by poison. Was it possible whoever had poisoned him was also the person who had killed Skarde and nearly killed Freya? But why the different techniques?
