The Black Prince: Part II (51 page)

Trying to seem as normal as possible, she straightened up and walked through the gate. No one gave her a second glance. Not because she’d suddenly become such a master of disguise but because they were too intent on their own business. And really, who expected to see their duchess skulking around in the middle of a commercial district?

The few people who even noted Isla’s existence probably thought she was chasing down some errant husband. She wouldn’t be the first. And large inns, at least if the bawdier songs were to be believed, attracted broken-hearted or at least furious women like flies to rotten fruit.

Knowing that she couldn’t very well walk straight into the barn, she skirted the outer edge until she reached a window and then knelt down, peering in. She was protected from casual view by a rain barrel that had been placed to the right-hand side, facing the courtyard. Someone would have to almost walk into her, to discover her there.

At first she couldn’t see anything in the gloom and worried that she’d missed her sister altogether. That maybe Rowena had gone into the stables and come out again before she’d had a chance to see. Or that, even if Rowena was in the barn, she was on the far side. In which case Isla would be so far away from the action that she might as well have remained at the jeweler’s. But then there was a sudden movement and Isla realized that the reason the interior of the stables was so dark was that she wasn’t seeing it at all but someone’s cloak.

Rowena, and whoever she was with, were
right in front of her.

Isla had missed the first part of their conversation, and so the first thing she heard was an answer to an unknown question. “No,” said Rowena, “she’s as trusting as ever.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Isla almost jumped out of her skin.
Cariad
. She’d know that voice anywhere.

“No, truly.” Rowena’s voice took on a cruel, mocking tone. “She’s just
dying
to forgive me. Because she’s my
sister
and we’re
family
. The dumb chit.”

“Do not underestimate her.”

“All she cares about is being a good wife and having babies.”

“And yet here you are, still with no results.”

Results? What results? Were they talking about Rowena’s—by some lights—failed plan to seduce Tristan? The fact that Rudolph still lived? Asher?

Was this meeting, or was it not, connected to Maeve?

“What?”

Cariad’s tone was dry. “Clearly she’s interested in a little more than that.”

Silence. Isla could imagine the face Rowena must be making. Her sister didn’t take kindly to disagreement.

“Or,” Cariad continued, “are you suggesting that the only thing thwarting you is your own incompetence?”

Isla couldn’t help but smile at that. Even though, at the same time, her heart was breaking. A knowledge she could scarcely access through her fear, but that was still there nonetheless. Later. She’d mourn later. For the loss of a friend but, more, for the loss of her memories of that friend. Over the past almost year, stone by stone, her foundation had crumbled. Her father. Her sister. The people she’d thought were friends. Even her brother. All were gone, if in their own separate fashions.

Rowena she’d known about. But Cariad? They’d parted on difficult terms but that was because she’d been afraid of Tristan. Or so Isla had thought at the time. Cariad, who’d been more than a friend. Isla, since as long as she could remember, had looked up to the witch as a protector. A mentor. Someone who loved her and wanted the best for her, even if no one else did.

Had she…caused this somehow? By marrying Tristan? Isla was torn between wanting to trust her own judgment and wanting to believe that she’d been fooled. Except…trust her judgment then or now? Cariad and her own sister were talking about her like she was some sort of joke.

The pain was so intense, it left a taste in her mouth.

“Just give it to me,” Rowena said. “I can get it done.”

“And soon.”

“And soon,” Rowena echoed.

There was a rustling of fabric as the women parted. Rowena made noise wherever she went, through one means or another. Isla, meanwhile, barely dared even to breathe. She felt gripped by the same sense of impending doom that the rabbit must feel, when it sensed the hawk. A knowledge, not of the specific danger, but that there was a shadow moving. Spreading out, over the land. A shadow, the touch of which brought a doom that defied conception but that nonetheless turned one’s bowels to water and one’s mind to a blank, screaming hole.

And then a hand came down on her shoulder.

S
he started. Turned. Ready to fight.

It was Tristan.

Wordlessly, he hauled her to her feet and away from the window. His grip was iron, and it hurt. She stumbled and would have fallen save for his support, but he didn’t stop. Only dragged her on, half tripping and half walking and biting her lip against the pain.

No one noticed them. Or at least, no one cared. A man and a woman fighting were also not such a strange sight, outside of an inn. If fighting was even what they were doing. She didn’t know.

They cleared the courtyard and were out in the street. Isla, stumbling again, almost fell into the path of an oncoming cart. Tristan swung her about at the last minute, ignoring an oath by the frightened driver. And then they were across the street and in an alley and then they were in a small room.

No. A hall of some sort. Lit by a single torch.

Tristan slammed the door shut, cutting off the outside world. “Come.”

She followed him through another door and past a man in strange regalia carrying a sword. Who only nodded. No one spoke. She rubbed her arm. She could already feel a bruise beginning to form, tender and soft. She tried to steady her breathing, and to fight back tears.

Tristan opened a third door. Into a sitting room of sorts. It, too, was dimly lit.

She felt another stab of fear.

“This is where the head of the lodge meets with guests. It’s not part of the lodge proper, but it’s under the guild’s protection.” Shutting this door, he barred it. “You’ll be safe here. From prying eyes as well as daggers.”

“Daggers?” Isla’s eyes widened.

“Sit down.”

She sat. The bench was hard and uncomfortable but she scarcely noticed. Tristan leaned against the desk, his arms crossed over his broad chest. The arms, the chest of a bowman. The eyes, boring into hers, of a demon. They flashed red in the glow of the single torch. The room had no windows. Isla felt like she’d been trapped in a tomb.

It had never occurred to Isla, right until that last moment, that she herself might be in any danger. From Rowena or anyone else. But seeing her husband so tense, like a thousand bow strings waiting to snap, dried the last bit of moisture from her mouth and made her heart beat so fast that she thought it might explode.

“I’m…sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t apologize.”

“I saw her and….”

“I know.”

Isla swallowed. “I didn’t realize,” she said lamely, “that you had business in Barghast.”

Gods, could she be any more inane? What would she ask him next, what he’d felt about his choice of belt? Here they were, hiding in some sort of dungeon after she’d just discovered that her supposed friend was plotting against her, and with her own sister, and all she could think of to say was that she’d been confused about his schedule.

“I didn’t, either.”

“Oh.”

“I left shortly after you. After receiving an emissary from this lodge. There is,” he added, “some ill will between the guild and a group that’s recently arrived in Barghast and is acting without a charter.”

All the different craftsmen, from masons to farriers to locksmiths and knife-makers, belonged to guilds. Each of which provided support and benefit to its members and each of which operated under a grant, or charter, from the king. Defending that charter was essential, not simply for the economic wellbeing of the craftsmen who depended on it but for the public good. Guilds ensured standards: of training, of quality and, therefore, of safety.

Who knew if, in a house built by these men, the roof might collapse? Tristan had a reputation, at least in some quarters, as a dictator. But Barghast, under his direct leadership, had become one of the safest and most prosperous cities in the known world.

Let people complain about what they understood.

And let her think about anything,
anything
, except what had just happened.

“You’re fortunate that I was so close. We both are.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” She sounded plaintive. Stupid. Even to her own ears.

“I should have told you about Cariad.”

Isla jumped up. “What? You knew?”

“That she wasn’t as she appeared? Yes.”

“You—you
lied
to me!”

“No. I thought, at the time I made the decision, that I was sparing you from further pain. I had no reason to believe—or again, so I thought—that she would ever leave her cottage. Let alone come here. Now please sit down.”

“Don’t tell me to sit down!”

She didn’t want to do what he said. She didn’t want to so much look at him, the miserable man. In that moment, indeed, she could cheerfully have killed him. He’d known that Cariad was some kind of monster and he’d
lied
to her about it. Let him feel what she felt, through their bond. Let him know what agony he’d caused.

“I would never intentionally cause you harm.”

And he hadn’t. Not really. She was mad at the wrong person. Because he was there and he was safe.

She realized that she was very, very tired.

“Cariad is…not what she seems. In many ways.”

So Isla had gathered.

“She is, to begin with, much older than she appears. The span of her years have, at their core, been a quest for youth. A single quest that has dominated her every waking thought, now, for decades.

“There was a time, I believe, when she was once as a common woman. With the wants, and needs, that one might expect. But something happened to her, something that warped her. By the time she and I met, she was already an adept at the dark arts. She’d sought me out for a mentor. A teacher.

“I accepted. And, over time, we became lovers. Yet, as time wore on, it also became increasingly obvious to me that her studies were entirely self-focused. She sought knowledge, not for the sake of knowledge nor even to help others. But in the hopes of staving off her own death. She and I parted company. Because I took issue with certain of her…hobbies, and because I would not give her what she so craved.”

What Isla had.

“She has managed, nevertheless, to somehow avoid what should have been inevitable. And before your father’s first birthday. I do not know the means she’s used, but I can guess.”

“So this…is jealousy?”

Cariad had turned on Isla because
she’d
wanted to marry Tristan? When Isla thought of Cariad, she thought of grandmothers. Or at least mothers. Cariad had always looked, and acted, old enough to be Tristan’s mother several times over. That she still apparently thought of herself as a young girl came as a complete and utter shock.

Even so, in Tristan’s recounting lay an odd kind of sense. Isla thought back, once more, to how Cariad—loving, trusted Cariad—had all but banned her from the cottage. She’d believed, at the time, that Cariad had merely taken issue with her choice of husband. Along with everyone else.

But no. It
had
been jealousy. Pure and simple. Cariad might have aged, outwardly, but when she looked in the mirror she still saw that young girl. Still thought like that young girl. A spurned maiden, chasing after her Prince Charming.

She’d chased him for so long, chased what he represented, or at least what she believed he represented, for so long that her life had passed her by.

Now she had to live, so she could start over.

“She doesn’t deserve your pity,” Tristan said.

“She was my friend. Or at least I thought she was.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

She crossed the room to him and he held her. He was warm this time. As warm and solid and full of life as the man he’d once been. In his arms, she felt whole. She felt safe.

She was lucky that he’d been so close. She could see now that his reaction had been one of concern, not anger. They couldn’t have very well stood in front of the stables, arguing. Had he merely asked her to come with him, she would have refused. She’d been too upset, and too desperate to figure out what was going on, to exercise common sense. But she couldn’t argue with the sudden sense of doom that had gripped her, right before Tristan found her. Something she now recognized as a premonition.

From where it had come, though, she couldn’t guess.

That Tristan saw a threat meant the threat was real. Initially, Isla’s concern had been all for Rowena—for Rowena not finding out that Isla had tracked her there, and listened in on her conversation, lest she cause trouble at the castle. Entirely overlooking the fact that Cariad, unlike Rowena, was a witch. And a powerful one at that. A witch who apparently bore her not the least shred of goodwill. Had she stayed, and had Cariad found her, what would have happened?