We’re to meet the girls in the alley behind a dockyard pub, Vœrtshus Havnestad. But when we cut around the building and into the alley that beelines to the back of the warehouse, only Agnata stands there.
She gasps at the sight of us and rushes forward. Her face shines with tears, her dark eyes shot through with red.
“What’s happened?” Will whispers, tugging her into the shadows of the building, against a rubbish barrel brimming with molded bread. “Where’s Sofie?”
“I—I don’t know.” She sniffs into his shoulder.
Will pries her off so that she can face us. We’re huddled together in the shadows, our rucksacks providing necessary cover, our backs to both the warehouse and the rest of the alley.
She presses on, careful not to use names—this is something we discussed. “We were together on the mountain when she said her stomach hurt. Nerves, you know—she didn’t eat any of her bread this morning. And then,I waited. And waited. And when I checked on her, she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she got lost and had found another trail. I thought she’d be here waiting for me and she wasn’t.”
Agnata begins crying again, and I nearly press a hand to her mouth to keep the noise down, but I fear it might make her even louder. “What if someone caught her? What if they’ve taken her to the castle to interrogate her about the murder? Or this plot or something else?”
She finishes in a near shriek, and I try to counter that by keeping my voice calm and near a whisper. “Or she could simply be working her way here, as you said.” I glance to Will. “Should we wait?”
Will immediately shakes his head. “There’s no time. We have a very small window. We’ll have to go on without her.”
Agnata’s eyes grow big, those nerves we saw earlier nearly shooting fireworks straight out her eye sockets and into the dank of the alley. Her lips drop open, and I dig deep in my brain for a spell to silence her, but it’s too late because she’s already screaming. “Watch ou—”
Blunt and unforgiving, something metallic comes crashing into my skull. The blow is nasty enough to knock me forward into Agnata, the surprise and the weight of the rucksack on my back ruining my balance. My hands are slow to react and protect Agnata or myself. But then she’s gone; the plaster of the tavern wall scrapes againstmy cheek, and I slide into a sandbag heap, half prone, half curved against the building.
The head wound I suffered in Niklas’s royal chambers, scabbed over the last two days, is busted and liquid again, blood seeping from my wound into my hair and down my neck as I scream at this new body of mineto move.
But it won’t.
Next to me there’s a giantwhoosh, and Will’s body hits the cobblestones, blood slinking across his hairline. Somewhere behind me, Agnata is screaming until there’s a metallic whomp and she’s quiet.
My hands finally react, and I try to push myself off the wall. But as soon as I shift an inch, my vision swells and then contracts, all the blood seemingly rushing out of my body through the newest hole in my head.
I’m banked in the shallows, beached, and fading fast.
As the color slips away from my eyes and the world goes dark, I hear my name come from Sofie’s tongue. “Runa’s the most dangerous. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
29
Runa
IWAKE TO THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER AT MY EXPENSE.
“She’s a witch. Maybe we should burn her. Who’s got a stake?”
More laughter. Close by, maybe even close enough to spit on, though I can’t see them.
I’m somewhere dark and small. There’s room enough for just me and the chair I’m tied to with the types of rope sailors prefer. There’s a gag at my mouth, and it tastes vaguely like iron, the blood from my head wound leeching into the fabric. I’ve been relieved of my rucksack and Niklas’s ring, and even worse, of my friends—Will and Agnata are somewhere else altogether.
“Hold your horses. No one is burning anything. Open flames near my father’s boats before he inspects them is definitely not going to earn anyone brownie points.”
Sofie.
The men laugh again. Throaty. German. Yes, clearly German.
Great.
Sofie’s speaking again, and the men’s laughter dies off as they listen. “Let’s record her confession of King Niklas’s murder first. After that, burn at will—away from the U-boats.”
Footsteps head my way, and then there’s suddenly light, streaming in on my face, a door unlocked and thrown open.
Two burly men in green uniforms pick up the chair I’m sitting on and plop me into a room twice the size of any I’ve seen on land, even in the castle. One rips the gag off my mouth, my hair caught in it, a fresh prickle of blood tinkling down the scoop of my neck and into the collar of the coat still sitting on top of my blouse and breeches.
