“Is that what I think it is?” Osana leaned so far over the shoulders of her horse it was a wonder she could stay in her saddle.
Ula drew in a deep breath. “The sign of someone beholden to the Otxoa. There are not many of us left. Not everyone in the resistance has a tattoo like this, but as a general key to open doors, it is a good one.”
Luca’s mouth went dry. “Beholden?To the Otxoa?”
Ula’s golden eyes, which Luca had always thought looked so much like his own, did not flinch. “My parents served the royal family.”
CHAPTER3
THEREwas no funeral at the Bellringe. Not yet.
The people of Pyrenee did not mourn Crown Prince Renard.
The chapel bells did not ring in the prescribed song they’d last performed four years earlier after the final, pained breath of King Louis-David.
In fact, not a letter had been sent. The rulers of the Sand and Sky had not been notified. The wedding guests were quarantined within the castle. And the servants to the grounds. The gates were closed tight, and with them, the stories of what had happened that night.
All at the order of Dowager Queen Inés.
No one questioned any of it. Which was good for them, because Inés did not have a moment’s patience for anyone who would endanger her very carefully laid plans.
Her son had been murdered, the assailant and her merry band of pirates were still on the run, and she must stave off war long enough to have everything fall into place.
Rather conveniently, the only person who would bother to defy her was missing and dead to her anyway.
The Dowager Queen lit the candles within her council room. That morning as she’d received her moon cycle treatments from Medikua Aritza, clouds had rolled into the mountains from way off on the Divide, full of rain and heavy air that seeped into the walls of the Bellringe and fit her mood.
As she lit the last taper, the jewel of a room flickering with light, a procession of maids arrived from the kitchens, trays filled with thick cuts of venison, parchment-thin slices of cheese, plump grapes, and crusty bread, still warm from the hearth. Ice clinked from within frosted pitchers as they plunked the heavy crystal on the runner bisecting the long, marble-topped table.
As if hearing the dinner bell, the councilors began to trickle in.There were ten in total—the Dowager Queen did not skimp on advice. Today, though, she planned to accept none.
“Please, fill your plates,” Inés said, gesturing to the food before her. “This will likely be a long meeting. Captain Nikola, once you are ready, please give an update on the whereabouts of Princess Amarande.”
Word had come as expected from the group of Bellringe guards in pursuit after the disastrous wedding: The princess was nowhere to be found. The leader of Renard’s guard, Captain Nikola, was seated at this very table to formally relay these matters, as well as to discuss next steps. The captain was not much older than Inés’s sons—he eschewed food to speak right away, nerves clear as he got to his feet to be better heard.
Brave boy, standing within her line of fire empty-handed.
“Most likely, the princess slipped past the lines of our soldiers at the border, and made it safely back into Ardenia,” he was saying. “There is a possibility she is in the Torrent, given she’d managed to escape with her stableboy and at least two of the kidnappers who escorted him across that wasteland.”
With either outcome, the Dowager Queen needed to be prepared, but it frustrated her to no end that she couldn’t put a finger on the location of the princess. War was a much easier possibility to stomach with a hostage from the other side.
Councilor Laurent cleared his throat—he was the oldest of the group, bald, with milky eyes and failing teeth. “The princess and her stableboyleftwiththe people who kidnapped said stableboy in the first place? What are we to make of that?”
The Dowager Queen answered quickly. “Either they inspire loyalty or the kidnappers were never truly on the opposing side.”
“Don’t we have one of the kidnappers?” asked Councilor Menon, who was the youngest of Inés’s advisors but still a good decade older than herself. “An Eritrian was found unconscious in the stable and taken into custody. I believe he has been relegated to the dungeon, along with the others who were in Prince Renard’s hired party.”
The Dowager Queen had given that order, yes—that anyone who had been traveling with Renard and was not a sworn member of the guard be detained. She did not realize that a kidnapper had been one of them. “Has he been interrogated?”
“Of course, Your Highness. I questioned him personally,” Nikola answered. “He had no immediately useful information. He was already unconscious and therefore not in the chapel when his companions helped the princess escape.”
Inés blinked at the captain. “But surely he knows where they might have gone?”
Nikola was slow to nod but did. “The kidnapper specified that he had a ship at the Port of Pyrenee but could not produce a harbor slip. Still, we followed up by sending a party to the port. The harbormaster had no record of the ship in question.”
She stared at the boy. He was a good informant, but occasionally his youth was a tremendous problem. “Did the kidnapper give you the name of the ship?”
“Yes. TheGatzal.”
