Page 5

“We need,” Yudit muttered when she looked up, sweaty from exertion, “to come up with a better way to climb a wall.”

Winifred huffed out a quiet snort. “Or you need to be quicker. We’re knights. Stop skipping leg day.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not cursed.”

“You’d think by now you’d have learned how to—”

“I’ll bring a rope next time,” I said. “If none of us are injured, we still have a job to do. Argue later.”

I gave the ivy a quick pat before I left the window. Just enough to repair the damage without regrowing any of those conspicuous blossoms. Goodbye, little flowers. The beauty I add to the world is always ephemeral, no matter the circumstances. Although much more so when Yudit is around, of course.

The chamber was small and empty, the stone walls bare of decoration. A single doorway led beyond, the door itself long gone, only a pair of rusted iron hinges remaining. I stuck my head through and found the landing of a narrow spiral stairway. Voices echoed from below, too faint for me to make out what they were saying. We headed down, one silent step at a time.

Even in the dim moonlight that filtered into the stairwell, I could see that Yudit was out of sorts. She was twitchy, her weight shifting back and forth from one foot to the other whenever we paused.

“Something wrong?” I whispered. Maybe she’d been hurt in her near-fall after all. I was still feeling the effects in my shoulders and hip.

Yudit grimaced, putting a hand to her guts. “I don’t suppose this place has a working privy, do you?”

“You can’t possibly be serious,” Winifred said.

“I was about to take care of it when everything started to happen.”

“Is this going to be a problem?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

I said nothing more, taking Yudit at her word that our mission wasn’t about to be interrupted by an unpleasant accident. The sounds from below were still indistinct, but louder now. The risk that they might overhear us was growing, no matter how low we kept our voices.

When we reached the base of the stairs, we found a door still intact, if riddled with dry rot and woodworm holes. The three of us pressed our ears close, Winifred crouching low so we could all fit. The conversation on the other side was barely muffled by the decaying wood. The conspirators couldn’t have been more than a few feet away from us, only the thin planks of the door keeping us concealed.

“…already said you’ll be paid as soon as we gather the funds. You can’t expect us to do any better than that.”

Yudit and I exchanged a surprised glance. She’d recognized the speaker, too. Winifred looked up at us, her eyebrows lifting in a question we couldn’t answer without giving away our presence.

Baron Trebalh was the leader of the conservative wing of the Council of Nobles. He was often at odds with the king and queen but not someone we’d expect to be involved in some sort of conspiracy.

Of course, what we’d overheard so far wasn’t proof that he was doing anything of the kind. At this moment, all we knew for certain was that he’d met someone to discuss a financial transaction.

In an abandoned building. After dark. So there was some reason to be suspicious.

“You expect me to trust in your goodwill?” The voice that answered Trebalh had a foreign accent I couldn’t immediately place; the vowels were flat and the words were clipped. “Payment in advance is standard for this sort of work.”

“It is imperative,” Trebalh replied, his voice rising in pitch, “that you rid us of our deranged king and his presumptuous wife the moment their child is born. Lest Tailliz fall further into ruin.”

Well, that certainly settled any lingering questions. This was a conspiracy, all right. One which had plans to assassinate the rulers of Tailliz. The king and queen my sisters and I served.

The foreigner sounded bored. “I couldn’t care less about your petty local politics,” he said. “As long as I’m paid my fee, your motivations do not interest me.”

“You’ll have your payment before the time comes,” a different voice assured him. “We’ll raise the money somehow.” I couldn’t identify this new voice right away. Could it be another noble? He had a native Tailliziani accent, like Trebalh. We needed to identify as many of them as possible before we made our report to the king and queen. I tried to peer through one of the wormholes, but I couldn’t see much.

Trebalh weighed in again before I could put a name to the third voice. “In the meantime, we’ve yet to hear your plan. It won’t be easy. Our king and queen have a diabolical cabal of women serving as their defenders. Nearly a dozen, all with magic powers. Half of them have mighty powers indeed.”

The other half, of course, being my sisters and myself. Yudit smirked when Trebalh described the queen’s knights as a “diabolical cabal,” but I grew more worried as a dismissive snort answered him.

“I doubt I’ll find that a problem,” the foreigner replied. “It’ll be no great trouble to eliminate them all.”

“In a manner your emperor won’t hear about? Wizardry is seldom subtle.”