Nobody's Lady (22 page)

I pretended to pay attention as I cautiously flipped the page open just enough to see a new set of feet in front of the bars. Master Tailor stood, shaking Jaron beside him. I tucked the paper quickly into my sash and made a show of tossing the too-long bit of hair over my shoulder, even though it swung right back into place. “A little company might do you some good. Even if it is just some sheep.”

“I have tried company,” Ailill sneered as he looked away. “I did not find it worth the trouble. And I do not think you have found company much worth the trouble, either.”

I resisted the urge to cross my arms and instead pulled the coin out of my sash, leaving the gold bangle tucked in beside it. I tossed the coin onto the table, kicking up a small cloud of dust. “Did you send this to me?”

Ailill seemed hesitant to move, but he looked back over his shoulder, keen to see what I’d tossed on the table. It glistened in the dark, just like his veiled curtain’s rings. He frowned and dropped his arms, crossing the room to step beside me before I could blink. “Where did you get this?” he asked, holding it up to the firelight.

“From you, I thought.”

Ailill pinched his lips into a thin line, his eyes mesmerized by the flicker of flame over the golden coin. “Is this the coin you have been playing with? The one you got from that girl and showed to your consorts?”

I snatched the coin from his fingers, a shiver running down my back as his leather-coated fingertips scuffed against mine. My wounded finger stung. “You’ve been watching me. On that paper.”

Ailill’s gaze darted down to my hand, to the coin that glistened there. “Yes. It gets rather boring.”

I tucked the coin back into my sash, not sure I wanted to part with it now if it wasn’t some part of his scheme. “So why are you surprised I have it?”

“Because I do not see the goings-on in full color, now do I?” He reached forward, and I stepped back, determined not to let him touch my hand. But he was after the paper tucked in my sash. I felt almost faint from embarrassment, thinking he’d noticed my injured fingertip and wanted to fix it, like he did that first time we met. Or the first time
I
met
him
. He unfolded the paper and examined it thoughtfully. “I wondered why you paid such close attention to the coin, but I did not dream it was anything but a copper.”

I tried pulling the paper from his hands—
Jurij
—but Ailill lifted the paper higher, out of my reach, still examining it. “No. No color.” I paused in my attempt to grab the paper, my heart stilling.
Of course. Jurij would have had to find a key to unlock the cells. They’re probably still in there, waiting.
“See?”

Ailill held the paper up so I could see the moving drawing. Master Tailor was no longer in his cell. He and the rest of the men—even Luuk—were in a place I didn’t recognize at first. A sparse room on the third floor that contained the lord’s throne. It hadn’t had a hole in the back wall when I’d last seen it.

Ailill turned the paper back around and studied it, his face hardly registering any surprise.
He’s not that stupid
.
He
planned
to let Jurij free them.
“Ah,” he said at last, his eyebrows raised. “You were wondering about the Ailills? Here they come. Just in time to stop them.” He turned the paper back to the other side, and I saw Master Tailor jolt as a score of specters circled around him. The men drew near each other, back to back, and Jaron’s fists went up like he expected a fight. Several specters pushed the throne back over the hole, sliding it perfectly in place beneath the sole decoration on the wall, a blade hanging downward, its tip pointed to whoever dared sit in the chair below it.

Elgar. Back above the throne. But how?

Ailill nodded and crumpled the paper, tossing it into the flame beside him. I jumped as the fire sparked outward. “Well, that is that,” he said, putting his hands on his waist, his elbows akimbo. “A night in my cells for trespassing just became a lifetime sentence.”

“What?”

“I do not make all the laws, Olivière.” He raised a finger to stop me from speaking. “I do not wish to hear it, considering the laws you passed yourself. Just be content I had the Ailills stop them from proceeding. A step into that hole carries the penalty of death.” He turned and walked out of the room.

Even though I rushed after him, Ailill was nowhere to be found. “Ailill!” I hadn’t addressed him by his name in perhaps a thousand years. “Ailill! I’m not done with you.”

A blast of cold air flew into the entryway through the open garden door. I had to hold my skirt down. “Ailill?” He wasn’t to be found in the garden. “Ailill!”

Forget it.
Ailill had an annoying habit of making himself vanish or appear whenever you wanted the exact opposite. I stood on my tiptoes to grab one of the unused torches from the wall. If the entryway was an example, I’d have to expect the rest of the castle to be equally dark. The fire from the dining hall breathed life into the torch. I stared at it, remembering the fire in the men’s eyes before I’d uttered my curse.
The men may have explored the castle in darkness. But I’m not concealing my presence here.

Let him come.

Ailill clearly had no intention of stopping me, as not a single specter appeared to block my path. I climbed first one set of stairs and then the next to the third floor. The disarray continued as I climbed. Open doors creaking in the cold dampness of the hallway were the only obstacles in my path.

He won’t frighten me.
It was as much a message to myself as it was to him.
If he does mean to frighten me.
There was more to this darkness, this disarray, than Ailill let on. It was almost like he’d lost all fire, all fight—all reason to carry on and live.

I stopped as I reached the third floor. Elgar was there, just a few steps away. How? It should have been gone, lost to time. How did Ailill … ? I shook my head. It wasn’t the time. My friends were at the end of the hallway.

No sense in going in unarmed. The blade is more mine than his.

I strode into the darkened throne room. A blast of absolutely frigid air turned my breath into puffs of white smoke. I resisted the urge to shiver and held the torch higher.

The faintest violet light glowed from behind the throne, now that I knew to look for it. I wasn’t sure if the shiver that ran down my back was due to the cold or the familiar glow.

Pushing aside the throne got my friends sentenced to his dungeon for life. But whose life? Theirs or his? What if he died first?

I shook my head.
You’re not going to hurt him again. You’ve seen what fighting can do.
I swallowed, too embarrassed to dwell on my thoughts any further.

I strode up the patched carpet to the throne, my hand already outstretched for the blade, when I heard a rustle beside me. I swung the torch in that direction. There was nothing. Nothing but that book on the stand Ailill kept, open and yellowed.

The book. I strode over to the stand. It was open to the page I’d so recently held, the wrinkled page Ailill had tossed into the fire. Impossibly, it was there in that book, bound within it, showing Master Tailor back in the cell. The writing was still there on the back. I shivered and flipped forward more pages, each with a drawing of a person. My eyes quickly darted from one to the next until I found an ink silhouette of my sister, lying in bed, her eyes wide open. Almost as if she knew I was watching her.

I jumped back. So this was the source of the pages. The lord who was “always watching.”
Where did he get this book?

I felt a burning at my waist, and I reached inside my sash, withdrawing the golden bangle. The coin grew hot as well, but I left it there. Once I held the golden bangle over the book, the metal burned my hand, and I cried out, dropping it. I bent over, about to pick it up.

“You ought to have kept hold of that. It could have saved you from prison.” Ailill, the ever-watching lord, stepped out from the shadows. He snatched the bangle up from the floor before I could grab it. “But as you are so keen to find your friends, I would be glad to let you join them.”

He waved a hand at the doorway, and a dozen specters entered the throne room. He turned his attention to the bangle in his hand, dismissing me as a dozen pale hands reached out to take hold of me.

***

“He expects us to stay here for life?” Tayton paced back and forth, back and forth, his footsteps on the cold stone floor echoing miserably in my head. “And he doesn’t have the guts to tell us that? Just pass a message along through you, and we just accept that?” He gripped the bars of our shared cell and did his best to shake them. They barely moved, but they made a terrible clatter.

I cradled my forehead. “Tayton. Stop that. Please.”

“Ugh!” screamed Tayton. He kicked the bars, causing more of a racket. The specter guarding us didn’t even flinch. Tayton had already tried sticking his hand through to grab him, but of course, he was just out of reach.

“Tayton, you’re not helping.” Jaron’s voice was recognizable from the cell beside ours, even if I couldn’t see anything more than his arm sticking through the bars. I found out he’d been locked up with Luuk and Darwyn, and that the specters had to pry Darwyn and Tayton apart. “Quiet down. Some of us are trying to think.”

Tayton kicked the bars one more time for good measure before plopping down on the pile of hay beside me. He scowled, as if daring me to comment on the last kick.

Jaron cleared his throat. “Thank you. Noll, please explain again. Without outbursts from the audience this time.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t
know
. He’s being stubborn. And secretive. And frustrating. As he
often
is. He knew you were coming. He knew Jurij had left to go free you. He let it all happen so he could catch you in his throne room.”

Jurij’s frustrated snort came from the other side of my cell’s wall, where he, Sindri, and Master Tailor were imprisoned together. “For what?”

I crawled closer to the bars to make my voice carry more clearly. “You tell me. You somehow knew to move the throne.” I eyed the specter in front of my cell as I spoke, but he continued to stare straight ahead, oblivious to the prisoners in front of him. Some of Ailill’s contempt was etched deeply into his wrinkled face.

“That book.” Jurij’s hand appeared out from his cell, as if to confirm I was speaking with him. “We found the source of those moving pages.”

“I saw.” I didn’t mention I’d seen Elfriede. “It looks like everyone in the village has his or her own page.”

“Yeah, well, we flipped through it. We found what must have been one of our pages because we saw ourselves there in the throne room, looking at the book.”

Another hand appeared out of the cell with Jurij’s. “Only, on the page, there was something strange about the throne in the throne room.” Sindri. “There was a hole in the wall behind it. We could see it on the page, clear as day.”

“And what about that … it was a sword, wasn’t it?” asked Tayton. “Above the throne? I didn’t think those things were real.”

I wondered if Jaron remembered giving me the same blade, in a time that did and didn’t exist.

“It was all suspicious,” added Darwyn. “So I thought we should see if the hole was really there behind the throne. Some of his servants were waiting behind it.” He laughed miserably. “I didn’t think … that is, I’m sorry if that’s why we’re here.”

Tayton plastered himself against the opposite wall, holding out his hand toward Darwyn’s cell. “It’s not your fault! You couldn’t have known.” Another hand appeared in place of Jaron’s. After stretching and bending awkwardly, their fingers grazed one another’s.

“It’s my fault!” The trembling wail from Darwyn’s and Jaron’s cell reminded me that Luuk was still half a child, even if he’d grown taller and spoke deeper. “I shouldn’t have come alone. I knew I’d mess it up.” Despite his physical differences, Luuk really seemed the least changed by the curse’s breaking.

“Enough!” thundered Jaron. “We all agreed to this risk. Let’s just figure out why the lord let us get as far as we did, and what exactly we did to get thrown in here.”

“You mean besides entering his castle against his edict?” Master Tailor asked.

I shook my head, even if he couldn’t see it. “That wasn’t going to be a lifelong offense. He purposely baited you to the throne room.”

“Not because of the book,” added Sindri. “I mean, he gave us pages from it. That can’t have been something he’d jail us for.”

“Then the throne. And the hole,” said Jurij.

I gripped the nearest bar. I’d seen the hole, and he hadn’t stepped out of the shadows until I’d read the book. No, until I’d dropped the golden bangle. I patted my sash, looking for my golden coin. I panicked. There was nothing there. I shot up and removed my sash, shaking it out.

“What are you doing?” Tayton twisted away from his attempted handhold with Darwyn to stare at me. “Is there a mouse in your clothing?”

“What’s she doing?” Jurij’s voice sounded panicked. “Is she undressing?” I can’t say if he was panicked or angry about that.