Ula had a guess but didn’t share it. They couldn’t afford to make a mistake here. The cost would be too great. She’d given Koldo and Amarande her word. To investigate, not instigate.
She got the crumpled ball open, and a piece of the parchment the length of a thumb was still relatively unburnt. Ula stared at it for a long moment. Only one word was fully visible, the ones on either side of it nibbled away by char. Urtzi squinted at it upside down. “Is that Old Torrentian?”
Ula shook her head in yet another slight movement, pushing her braid from one side of her shoulder to the other, trying to disguise the movement from anyone who might be watching them. Someone was, for sure; she felt the weight of interest upon her face just as surely as the heat from the fire.
“It’s in cipher.”
Urtzi shifted his broad body so that their shoulders touched. He wrapped a hulking arm around her, and their heads tapped together gently, as if they were in a sweet embrace. Ula’s heartbeat stammered against her ribs, and it had nothing to do with the possible issue in this parchment.
“Do the watchers use a cipher?” Urtzi’s whisper and breath were warm on Ula’s cheek. It took her more than a moment to gather herself and respond.
“That’s something we need to find out.”
CHAPTER 14
THEPyrenee party was packed and ready to head for the Hand, yet its king remained in his chambers, waiting for something he could not leave without.
Well,someonehe could not leave without.
Dunixi entered with the exalted Medikua Aritza in full bindings at the wrists, a gag at her mouth, and a blindfold over her eyes. Renard nodded, and the pirate removed each binding, one by one, checking first with the king each time to ensure he actually wanted her vision, voice, and hands unencumbered.
When the medikua was devoid of all her shackles, Dunixi kicked out a chair and gestured for her to sit. Surprisingly, she did—Renard had expected a fight. As the ancient woman sank to her seat, Dunixi placed her kit of tinctures upon a chest beyond the king’s shoulder.
Here, Dunixi hesitated. Renard knew the boy expected a compliment, given he’d been the one to lead the retrieval of the medikua from Ardenia. He wouldn’t get it. A hot spark of fury dropped onto Renard’s tongue, causing him to draw a whistling breath between his teeth. In that instant, Dunixi remembered himself without a verbal reproach, and sped out of the king’s chambers.
When he was gone, the medikua leaned back in the chair and folded her withered hands one on top of the other on her little round belly. There was too much mirth in her gauzy eyes for her predicament or the temper coursing through him, charging the air like a thunderstorm gathering over the Divide. Renard didn’t like this reaction—the old woman wasn’t scared of the obvious threat of her situation—kidnapped, bound, forced.
It was as unnatural as what he believed she knew about his current state.
Anger flared his nostrils as the king approached the medikua. Renard knelt so that they were on the same level, his whole body tense as he searched her wrinkled face, his jaw tight and patience short.
“Tell me exactly what happened the night I died, old woman.”
THEbuilding smelled of melted wax and blood, the antiseptic tinge of distilled herbs and cork-free tinctures running a current under the heavier scents. The pews were empty, housing nothing but flickering shadows as the sconces on the walls struggled to light the space.
The only light that mattered was at the front of the room.
There, the body of Crown Prince Renard was in the center of the dais, laid on a table that had once held silver platters of celebratory fruits and cheeses and sweets. Now, it was bare, remnants of the fine foods ground into the rugs at the chapel’s entrance, tossed and trampled in the chaos after the vows. The wooden platform below Renard’s body was stained with blood, oxidized in the day since, now a storm cloud of black—solid where the shadows ended.
Dowager Queen Inés entered, watching, as Medikua Aritza stood over the table, her fingers, hooked with decades of arthritis, combing paths along the prince’s bare chest, his ornate wedding outfit folded neatly atop the organ bench in the eastern corner. She poked and prodded, clouded eyes skimming close to his skin at times.
“Is the body prepared yet, Medikua Aritza?”
The healer had been hired to attend to the queen’s moon cycle. It had been unreliable of late, and if one of this woman’s many plans were to work, it needed to be as robust as it had been when she was first married to Louis-David. Not an easy thing to manage. But Inés, and all the royalty of the Sand and Sky, understood that if anyone could ensure that the stars would allow royal blood to produce an heir, it was the famed medikua, installed for ages at King Sendoa’s Itspi.
Thus, Inés had paid handsomely for the healer to gather her necessary tinctures and board the royal carriage to the Bellringe in the moments after Renard insisted he would venture into the Torrent to “rescue” his “fiancée.”
Now, in addition to the Dowager Queen’s daily moon cycle treatments, the exalted Medikua Aritza’s talents were being put to use elsewhere.
The medikua frowned and removed her hands from Renard’s body,puttering over to her tincture basket as the queen leaned in to have a look at her firstborn. The stab wound was in the unprotected center of his chest, beneath where both halves of his ribs met at his sternum. It had been an upward thrust—puncturing his heart and both lungs with a single blow. Precise. The type of strike that was practiced and perfected. That was meant to kill.
The Dowager Queen’s annoyance flared—so used to immediate answers, she was—just as the medikua’s gravelly voice closed the short distance between them. “No, not quite, Your Highness.”
“Not quite? How long must this take?” She waved her hand at her eldest son’s body, attention pointedly not lingering on his form.
The medikua smiled so that her eyes were closed so tightly they were but lashes laced together by lines. “The stars have been kind to you, Your Highness.”
“Kind?” The Dowager Queen scoffed. “How so?”
