Mist-Torn 01 - The Mist-Torn Witches (21 page)

So now he was back in the cellars beneath the
castle larder, looking down at the bodies of the four dead girls again.

He didn’t have to wait long before hearing the sound of light, clicking footsteps. Master Feodor walked in with an annoyed expression. “You sent for me, Lieutenant? I do assure you that I cannot tell you anything more about how these girls died, and I’m a busy man this morning. The prince is not well.”

“I’m aware the prince is not well.”

Something in his voice caught Feodor’s attention—as the man stopped walking. Jaromir looked him up and down, noting how Feodor clearly appreciated the finer things in life: silk tunics, heeled boots, jeweled rings. Jaromir had never paid much attention to this before, but he did now.

“The prince has just had Inna placed under house arrest,” he said.

“Arrest? Don’t you mean protection?” Feodor’s lower lip twitched, and he glanced around, as if looking for anyone down here besides Jaromir and the four dead bodies.

“No. She was caught with a powder that contained opiates and hemlock. She’s been putting it into his wine every night, and she said you gave it to her.” Jaromir said this calmly but did not bother keeping the hostility from his voice. “Conspiring to poison the prince is a capital offense.”

Feodor stiffened and looked back the way he’d come, seeking an escape. Jaromir had succeeded in
blindsiding him. He’d been caught completely off guard.

But to Feodor’s credit, his expression shifted to one of righteous indignation. “Poison? How dare you. I gave the powder to Inna because she’s the one who sees to him at night. I also gave her instructions to only use it on the nights when he had trouble sleeping. If she abused the privilege, then your quarrel is with her, not me, but the prince does need his rest.”

“From hemlock?”

“It is commonly used in sleeping powders, as you would know had you spent time studying anything other than how to use that sword on your belt.”

Jaromir tensed, but the taunt didn’t rattle him. He’d known men like Feodor before. They always tried to turn the tables with insults. This man standing before him was frightened.

“Anton said he’d stopped taking any of the draughts you assigned him,” Jaromir went on, “that they weren’t helping. Is that you why you had Inna feeding him the powder? Because he wouldn’t take it from you anymore?” He dropped one hand to the hilt of his sword. “What exactly did you tell her to make her start putting it into his wine?”

Feodor sputtered and took a step back. “Touch me and I’ll report you to Prince Lieven! You have no authority to tell me how to best care for the prince’s health. I gave Inna instructions which she
did not follow.” He half turned toward the doorway. “Am I under arrest, Lieutenant?”

The question was mocking.

To Jaromir’s anger and worry, he’d not managed to learn anything by which to justify Feodor’s arrest. But he didn’t believe the physician’s story about having told Inna to use the powder sparingly and only on nights when Anton truly couldn’t sleep. There was something more going on here.

Master Feodor had been slowly weakening Anton on purpose. Jaromir was convinced of it. “No,” he admitted. “You aren’t under arrest.”

Feodor turned on heel to stride toward the stairs.

Jaromir couldn’t help adding, “Not yet.”

A
s Céline and Amelie walked into the great hall that evening, Céline quickly noted that an unusually small crowd of castle residents had turned out for dinner.

Lady Karina was in attendance, but Anton was conspicuously absent—as were Inna and Master Feodor.

Jaromir and Corporal Pavel were standing near a table chatting with a few soldiers who were just beginning a game of cards.

Amelie walked over, and Jaromir moved easily to give her room to take a place at the bench. His great wolfhound shoved her nose under Amelie’s hand, seeking attention.

“Hello, Lizzie,” Amelie said, scratching the dog’s ear.

Although Amelie and Jaromir could hardly be considered friends, Céline marveled at how nothing had changed in their treatment of each other. His jaw looked worse than it had that morning, and Amelie had bruises up and down both
arms—hidden under her shirt—from the fierce way he’d had to pin her the night before. But she’d given him little choice, and he’d simply fought back. They both seemed to accept this, and a bit of mutual violence did not appear to have affected them much.

However…Pavel was staring at Céline with an almost wistful expression. There had been no military repercussions for him from the events of last night. He’d not been punished or demoted.

In fact, Jaromir seemed to have forgotten about the whole event—though Céline knew he hadn’t. Jaromir was smart enough to know Pavel’s lesson had been learned and any further words were useless. The relationship between the two of them remained unchanged as well.

Not so for Pavel and Céline.

Last night, in his anger, he’d used fear as a weapon, and he’d shown her a side of himself that he normally kept hidden. She had seen it.

Nothing was the same between them.

He took a step toward her, and she took a step back. His expression changed to open regret, but he couldn’t change the past. That was the tragedy of the past. It couldn’t be changed.

“Céline,” a smooth voice said.

She looked to the left to see Lady Karina coming toward her. Karina was especially lovely tonight, with her chestnut hair piled high, a few loose curls hanging around her face, wearing a silk gown of seafoam green.

“Will you walk with me to the fire?” Karina asked.

“Of course, my lady.” Céline welcomed the interruption and fell into step, heading toward the hearth and the typical crowd of wriggling dogs that always seemed to gather there.

“Anton has informed me of what occurred this morning,” Karina said, “about Inna, I mean.”

Céline kept silent. She didn’t know if Anton had informed his aunt about the other discovery—the woman in the painting that Céline had seen in her vision.

“I wanted to tell you that I’ve never been comfortable with Inna as his personal attendant,” Karina went on. She sounded slightly defensive, as if perhaps Céline might blame her for not having taken action herself. “This business of her putting hemlock into his wine has left me most distressed.”

“There is no way you could have known, my lady,” Céline said diplomatically.

Karina stopped walking when they reached the hearth, and she looked into the crackling logs. “Anton has given me great license in the decision making here at court, but I’ve never interfered with his personal choices. I came here…a great distance from the south, when his wife died and he was unable to manage things.”

Listening to her, Céline realized that life could not have been easy for Karina when she’d first arrived four years ago—functioning neither as Anton’s
wife nor as his mother—and yet she’d launched into managing a vast household for a grief-stricken nephew. The fact that she was beautiful and only five or six years older than him probably hadn’t helped.

“It must have been difficult,” Céline said, “you being…well, so young and filling the role of his aunt.”

Karina nodded. “Yes, I was still a child myself when he was born. I was what you might call a ‘late surprise’ to my parents, when my siblings were reaching adulthood and my mother thought herself past conceiving.”

Céline couldn’t help wondering why Karina herself had not married. Could she be content to go on living with her nephew, basically filling in for his dead mother? But that question was far too personal.

“I simply didn’t want you to think that I’ve been neglectful of Anton’s welfare,” Karina said. “I should have found a way to send Inna off years ago.” Something in her green eyes changed as she spoke these last words. There was an anger, a hardness that Céline had not seen before. Karina always appeared so composed, so serene that she seemed above real anger.

“The prince would have objected had you tried,” Céline said, thinking on her conversation with him that morning. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

Karina turned from the fire and left the topic
behind as she looked across the hall at Amelie playing cards. “I do wish your sister would let me lace her into a proper gown and put up her hair.”

Céline tried not to laugh. “That would be a feat indeed, my lady.”

Jaromir was walking toward them.

Upon reaching the hearth, he gave Karina a short bow. “May I have a word with the seer, my lady?”

Karina looked him up and down. “To do with castle security?” Her tone was colder than Céline had ever heard it.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Then I should be informed as well.”

His jaw tightened ever so slightly, possibly in surprise. Perhaps Karina had never asked such a thing before.

But he bowed slightly again and turned to Céline. “If I gain permission from Anton to detain Master Feodor, will you read him for me? I don’t know what you can tell me by looking at his future. But I need to know what he’s really doing here.”

“Tonight?” she asked.

“No, tomorrow. It’s already dark out, and tonight I don’t want to get far from Inna’s room. We’re going to run watches in three-hour shifts.”

She bit the inside of her mouth, trying not to argue with him. She still felt they should get Inna out of the castle and away from the village.

“Will you read him for me?” Jaromir asked.

Céline studied the bruise on his jaw and his somewhat outgrown goatee. Helga’s words echoed in her mind.
Two sides of the same coin. The future and the past
.

“I may have a better idea,” she said.

Lady Karina watched her carefully but said nothing.

*   *   *

Jaromir and Pavel stood through the first, uneventful three-hour watch at Inna’s door that night. Though Jaromir had filled Pavel in on the story of Céline’s vision, he remained skeptical that the murderer was an illusory ghost woman who could step outside of a portrait or walk through walls.

It wasn’t that he doubted Céline’s word. He believed she’d described exactly what she’d seen in the vision, but it just wasn’t in him to accept her descriptions at face value. What if someone had dressed up like the woman in the painting? Someone who knew how to use tricks of light for appearing and disappearing? He’d heard of such things. How the woman could get past him or his guards was something else, but he didn’t believe they were dealing with a spirit.

However, he didn’t discount Céline’s belief that the woman was being controlled or driven onward by someone else, for he was still certain that someone here was determined to undermine Anton and make him appear weak.

“Reporting for duty, sir,” a voice called up the passage.

He turned to see Guardsmen Winshaw and Stiva coming toward him. Rurik was still recovering from the blow to his head—delivered by Amelie—and so Jaromir had enlisted Stiva, whom he knew to be a steady man.

Pavel glanced through the open door at Inna, who had been lying on the bed with her face to the wall since she’d been delivered here earlier in the day.

“All quiet, sir?” Stiva asked.

“Yes, but stay sharp,” Jaromir answered. “One of you keep your eyes on her at all times.” That afternoon, he’d already filled them in on Céline’s vision. “Remember, you’re watching for a pale young woman dressed in black who may know tricks of light that can make her seem able to appear and disappear.”

Both men nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Then Stiva asked Pavel, “Have you got the money you owe me? You lost that last hand on credit.”

He grinned, and Pavel grinned back. The young corporal might have a hot temper beneath the surface, but he was always good-natured about paying his gambling debts. “Not on me, but I’ll go to my room and come back with it.”

“Don’t get lost,” Stiva joked, moving to the open door with Winshaw.

“You two stay sharp,” Jaromir said again. He
normally didn’t mind an easy camaraderie among his men, but right now, he wanted Stiva and Winshaw at full attention, watching Inna. “Pavel and I will relieve you again in three hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pavel headed off, and Jaromir went down the passage to his own apartments. Although he’d never admit it, he was looking forward to lying down for a while. Both his stomach and his jaw still hurt from last night, but he’d been impressed with the speed at which Amelie had moved. If she’d landed that last blow, she would have put him down. There weren’t many men who could get the jump on him like that.

Once inside his rooms, he took off his sword but left on his armor and lay down on the bed, not intending to go to sleep, just to rest for a while…so he wasn’t certain how much time had passed when he was awakened by the sound of Pavel pounding on his door and shouting.

“Sir! Sir, wake up. Get up! They’re dead. Sir!”

In a flash, he was off the bed and across the room, jerking the door open.

“What are you saying? Who’s dead?”

But Pavel was running back down the passage. Confused and still groggy, Jaromir ran after him and saw two forms lying prone outside Inna’s door. Shades of the previous night flashed by him, but he could tell this was different even before he skidded to a stop.

“I wasn’t gone long,” Pavel babbled, “and I
came back with the money I owed Stiva.” He dropped to his knees. “Look at him. Look at Winshaw.”

Both Winshaw and Stiva were lying faceup, their flesh shriveled and dried against their bones, just like the dead girls in the cellar. Jaromir couldn’t let himself feel anything. He ignored Pavel and walked into the room.

Inna lay on the bed, dead, dried to a husk.

Strangely, the first thought in his mind was that Céline would blame him.

The next thought was that he blamed himself.

*   *   *

By noon the next day, Amelie felt as if she’d lost all control of her own world. Jaromir was escorting her and Céline down to the great hall, and she still couldn’t believe what Céline was asking her to do.

The tension between the three of them was so thick she could have cut it with her dagger.

Céline had taken the death of Inna rather hard, and she refused to look at Jaromir or speak to him unless necessary. His face was haggard, and his eyes were hollow. While Amelie wasn’t prone to jumping to his defense, she knew he’d only been doing what he thought was right. He’d lost two of his men, who might have been his friends, and Céline was treating him as if their deaths were his fault.