A Song for Orphans

“No, your majesty,” the priest said, “but there is a matter of the utmost importance.”

The Dowager sighed at that. In her experience, matters of the utmost importance to priests mostly involved donations to their temples, the need to punish the sinful who apparently weren’t being sufficiently afflicted by the law, or requests to interfere in the affairs of their brethren across the Knifewater. Justina had learned to keep those matters to herself, but her underlings sometimes buzzed around, irritating her like black-clad wasps.

“He’s worth listening to, Mother,” Rupert said. “He’s been spending his time around the court, trying to gain an audience. You asked where I was before? I was finding Kirkus here, because I guessed that you might want to hear what he had to say.”

That was enough to make the Dowager reconsider the priest. Anything that was enough to make Rupert pull his mind away from the women of the court was worthy of her attention, at least for a short while.

“Very well,” she said. “What do you have to say, second secretary?”

“Your Majesty,” the man said, “there has been a most callous assault on our House of the Unclaimed, and then on the rights of the priesthood.”

“You think I haven’t heard about it?” the Dowager countered. She looked over to Rupert. “This is your news?”

“Your majesty,” the priest insisted, “the girl who killed our nuns suffered no justice. Instead, she found sanctuary in one of the Free Companies. With Lord Cranston’s men.”

The name of the company caught the Dowager’s interest, a little.

“Lord Cranston’s company has been most helpful in the recent past,” the Dowager said. “They assisted in fighting off a force of raiders from our shores.”

“Does that – ”

“Be silent,” the Dowager snapped, cutting the man off in mid-rebuttal. “If Justina really cared about this, she would raise the issue. Rupert, why have you brought this to me?”

Her son smiled like a shark. “Because I have been asking questions, Mother. I have been very thorough.”

Meaning that he tortured someone. Was it really the only way her son knew to do things?

“I believe the girl Kirkus seeks to be the sister of Sophia,” Rupert said. “Some of the survivors from the House of the Unclaimed spoke about two sisters, one of whom was trying to save the other.”

Two sisters. The Dowager swallowed. Yes, that would fit, wouldn’t it? Her information had concentrated on Sophia, but if the other was alive as well, then she could be just as much of a danger. Perhaps more, judging by what she’d managed to do so far.

“Thank you, Kirkus,” she managed. “I will deal with this situation. Please leave me to discuss it with my son.”

She managed to turn it into a dismissal, and the man hurried from her sight. She tried to think this through. It was obvious what needed to happen next. The question was simply how. She thought for a moment… yes, that might work.

“So,” Rupert said, “do you want me to kill this sister of hers as well? I take it we don’t want something like that seeking revenge?”

Of course he would think it was about that. He didn’t know the real danger they represented, or the problems that could result if anyone found out the truth.

“What do you propose to do?” the Dowager said. “March in and take on Peter Cranston’s regiment? I’m likely to lose a son if you do that, Rupert.”

“You think I couldn’t beat them?” he shot back.

The Dowager waved that away. “I think there’s an easier way. The New Army is gathering, so we will send Lord Cranston’s regiment against them. If I choose the battle wisely, our enemies will be harmed, while the girl will die, and it will look like no more than another unmarked grave in a war.”

Rupert looked at her then with a kind of admiration. “Why, Mother, I never knew that you could be so cold-blooded.”

No, he didn’t, because he hadn’t seen the things she’d done to keep the scraps of her power she had. He’d fought rebels, but he hadn’t seen the civil wars, or the things that had been necessary in their wake. Rupert probably thought that he was a man without limits, but the Dowager had found out the hard way that she would do whatever was necessary to secure the throne for her family.

Still, it wasn’t worth thinking about. This would be over soon. Sebastian would be safely back with his family, Rupert would have avenged his humiliation, and two girls who should have been long dead would go to the grave without a trace.

CHAPTER SIX

“It’s a test,” Kate whispered to herself as she stalked her victim. “It’s a test.”

She kept saying it to herself, perhaps in the hope that repetition would make it true, perhaps because it was the only way to keep herself following after Gertrude Illiard, keeping to the shadows while she sat on the balcony of her home for breakfast, slipping silently through the crowds of the city while the merchant’s daughter walked with friends through the early morning markets.

Savis Illiard kept dogs and guards to protect his property and his daughter both, but the guards had been at their posts too long and relied on the dogs, while the dogs were easy to quiet with a flicker of power.

Kate watched the woman she was supposed to kill, and the truth was that she could have done it a dozen times over by now. She could have run up in the crowd and slid a knife between her ribs. She could have fired a crossbow bolt or even thrown a stone with lethal force. She could even have taken advantage of the environment of the city, startling a horse at the wrong moment or cutting the rope that held a barrel as her target walked beneath.

Kate did none of those things. She watched Gertrude Illiard instead.

It would have been easier if she had been an obviously evil person. If she had struck out at her father’s servants in pique, or treated the people of the city like scum, Kate might have been able to see her as just a step away from the nuns who had tormented her, or the people who had looked down on her on the street. Instead, she was kind, in the small ways that people could be when they didn’t think too much about it. She gave money to a beggar boy as she passed. She asked after the children of a shopkeeper she barely knew.

She seemed like a kind, gentle person, and Kate couldn’t believe that even Siobhan would want someone like that dead.

“It’s a test,” Kate told herself again. “It has to be.”

She tried to tell herself that the kindness had to be a façade masking some deeper, darker side. Perhaps this young woman showed a kind face to the world to hide murders or blackmail, cruelty or deception. Yet while someone else might be able to tell themselves that, Kate could see Gertrude Illiard’s thoughts, and none of them pointed to a predator lurking beneath the surface. She was a normal enough young woman for her place in the world, made wealthy by her father’s business, perhaps a little unconcerned about it, but genuinely innocent in every respect Kate could see.

It was hard not to feel disgusted at what Siobhan had commanded her to do then, and at what Kate had become under her tutelage. How could Siobhan want her dead? How could she demand that Kate do this thing? Was she really asking it just to see if Kate had it in her to kill on command? Kate hated that thought. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, do such a thing.

But she had no choice, and she hated that even more.

She had to be sure, though, so she slipped back to the merchant’s house ahead of her prey, slipping over the wall in a moment when she could feel that the guards weren’t watching and sprinting to the shadows of the wall. She waited another few heartbeats, making sure that everything was still, then clambered up to the balcony to Gertrude Illiard’s room. There was a latch on the balcony, but that was an easy thing to lift using a slender knife, letting her pad inside.

The room was empty, and Kate couldn’t sense anyone nearby, so she quickly searched it. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find. A vial of poison saved for a rival, perhaps. A diary detailing all the tortures she planned to inflict on someone. There was a diary, but even at a glance, Kate could see that it simply detailed the other young woman’s dreams and hopes for the future, her meetings with friends, her brief flash of feelings for a young player she’d met in the market.

The truth was that Kate couldn’t find a single reason why Gertrude Illiard deserved to die, and even though she’d killed before, Kate found the thought of murdering someone for no reason abhorrent. It made her sick just to think about doing it.

She felt the flicker of an approaching mind and swiftly hid under the bed, trying to think, trying to decide what she would do. It wasn’t that this young woman reminded Kate of herself, because Kate couldn’t imagine this merchant’s daughter ever truly knowing suffering, or wanting to pick up a blade. She wasn’t even like Sophia, because Kate’s sister had a deceptive streak when she needed it, and the kind of hard practicality that came from having to live with nothing. This girl would never have spent weeks pretending to be something she wasn’t, and would never have seduced a prince.

While a servant went around the room, tidying it in preparation for her mistress’s return, Kate put her hand to the locket at her neck, thinking of the picture of a woman inside. Maybe that was it. Maybe Gertrude Illiard fit with the picture of well-born innocence Kate had when it came to her parents. What did that mean, though? Did it mean that she couldn’t kill her? She touched the ring that sat beside the locket, intended for Sophia. She knew what her sister would say, but this wasn’t a choice that Sophia would ever be in a position to have to make.

Then Gertrude came into the room, and Kate knew that she would have to make her choice soon. Siobhan was waiting, and Kate doubted that her teacher’s patience would last forever.

“Thank you, Milly,” Gertrude said. “Is my father home?”

“He isn’t expected back for a couple of hours, miss.”

“In that case, I think I will take a nap. I woke too early today.”

“Of course, miss. I’ll see that you aren’t disturbed.”

The servant walked off, shutting the door to the room behind her with a click. Kate saw embroidered boots pulled off and set down next to her hiding place, felt the shifting of the bed above her as Gertrude Illiard sat down on it. The timbers creaked as she lay down, and still Kate waited.

She had to do this. She’d seen what would happen to her if she didn’t. Siobhan had made it clear: Kate was hers now, to do with as she wished. Kate was as tightly bound to her as she would have been if her debt had been sold to another. More tightly, because now it wasn’t just the law of the land giving Siobhan power over Kate, but the magic of her fountain.