The Black Prince: Part II (53 page)

At least, not an adulthood he wanted.

She watched the ducks, and pretended not to watch Rowena.

A fourth voice. “There you are!”

Isla relaxed a little. Greta. Greta meant reinforcements. She knew, again only intellectually, that she was supposed to suspect everybody but she could not bring herself to suspect Greta. Greta, who’d been her only friend through a long, lonely winter. Greta, who it seemed had brought Aveline.

“You’re feeding the ducks.”

Asher looked up. “Do you want to?”

“Do they bite?”

“Sometimes. But not really. They have no teeth.”

“So how do they eat?”

“They swallow their food whole!”

Greta sat down on the bench to Isla’s left. There were four benches, one placed at each curve in the quatrefoil. “I brought bread, too,” she said.

“Good. We’re about to need more.”

Greta laughed. Her laughter, and Asher’s, were good sounds. Maybe, Isla told herself, she truly had been overreacting. There was no Cariad here, and no Maeve. And what could Rowena possibly do? Strangle Asher with a duck?

The main annoyance at the moment was that she wanted to ask Greta about Rudolph, and what was going on there, but couldn’t with Rowena so close. Although she wasn’t certain that Rowena would care. Rudolph had every chance of being granted a dissolution, if he asked for one. Which he would. Then Rowena would be free to do exactly as she wanted. Which was what she wanted.

“What’s that?” Aveline asked. “Can I try some?”

Isla turned. Rowena had produced a delicious looking pastry, wrapped up in a napkin, from inside her cloak. A cloak she rarely wore nowadays, seeing as how the extra cloth hid her features.

She broke off a piece and handed it to Asher. “I stole it from the kitchens.” She smiled. A sweet, ingratiating smile, from an aunt who was struggling to regain her nephew’s good opinion. “I thought we could all use a bit of a treat. Don’t you think?”

Isla’s hand shot out, closing around Asher’s.

He tried to pull back. “What? I’m sick of broth! And no one said anything about—”

“Give it to me.” Her voice was hard. “Now.”

Startled, Asher obeyed.

Isla tossed it to one of the ducks, ignoring her son’s startled protest. And Rowena’s. The new recipient, however, was thrilled. The piece disappeared in one swallow, just like Asher had described.

Isla waited.

Nothing happened, at first.

She was about to apologize, and feel supremely stupid—and probably earn herself the silent treatment from Asher, for at least the rest of the afternoon—when the duck began to act strange. First it froze. As still as a statue. And then it began to walk around in circles, its gullet working. It opened its beak, but no sound came out. It flapped its wings. Once. Then again.

And then it toppled over onto its side, dead.

The other ducks scattered.

Aveline shrieked.

Isla’s eyes locked with Rowena’s.

She’d known. In her heart of hearts and logic aside, she’d known. As soon as she’d seen the pastry. Call it a mother’s intuition, that thing she’d been trying to suppress since the day before. Call it deduction. But she’d known. Because any act of generosity, however small, was completely outside of Rowena’s character and because Magnus, their cook, had a personal vendetta against medlars. The squashy, apricot-like things atop the proffered pastry. Refused to let them into his kitchens at all, in fact. Because he personally hated them and because he was convinced that, owing to their standard means of preparation, they couldn’t possibly be healthful.
I will not serve rotted food
, she remembered him telling her once.
Regardless of the current fashion
.

“Come with me,” Greta said. “Now.”

She was speaking to Asher. And, Isla presumed, Aveline. But her words came as if from a very great distance. Isla stood, as Aveline pulled Asher from the bench. He stumbled, leaning on her. She was much shorter, and lighter, but she held him up alright. Her own face was strained, but resolute.

A face that no one should ever see on a child.

A face that no child should ever make. Nor know how to make. But this war, this seeping sickness, had infected them all.

“Why.” Her voice sounded oddly calm in her own ears. “I just want to know why.”

Rowena was not calm. “You were going to kick me out!”

“You only got the poison yesterday.”

Rowena’s eyes widened. But Isla had made the connection. If just in that moment. That was what Cariad had given her. Something to feed Asher that would kill him, and quickly. Something no amount of parental love, nor wizardry, could counter. Something that would defy, too, even Quentin’s medical skill. For all hope would have been lost before even a diagnosis could be made.

“I knew. Long before then, I knew.”

And Isla suspected that she had.

“No one cared that I was being mistreated. It was all
go back to your husband
and do
what he says
. Just be a little sweeter, Rowena. A little more thoughtful. Just care a little bit less about your own future, so you can be happy mucking around in the mud with some peasant.”

“But why my son?” That part still made no sense. “Why not me? Or Tristan?”

Both of whom would have gladly died to protect Asher.

“Because Maeve promised that if I got rid of the little troll she’d help me!”

It came like a punch to the gut.

“She wanted to use him. But he proved too resistant, too…independent. So we were going to dispose of him and find another boy to serve in his stead. A new Asher. A better one. More amenable to our plans. And it would have worked!” she shrieked. “That thing you delusionally call your son is weak. Pale. He could easily have succumbed to infection, from his wound. Or simply to a weak heart. And then we would have won!”

“We.” The word was flat.

“Me and Maeve.”

“And Cariad.”

“Her real name is Ariadne. But you never knew that, did you.” Rowena, strangely enough, sounded so pleased. Pleased and bitter. Hope had gone but pride still remained. It burned in her eyes like fire.

“And you count yourself among them.”

It was she who’d been feeding on delusion. Rowena had been tricked. By Maeve and her cronies but more by her own conceit. Rowena was young, ill-educated, and without friends. Her only benefit to Maeve had been access to this castle. A castle that had stood unbreached for centuries, by even the most terrifying of armies, but that had nearly fallen to treachery.

Rowena might have succeeded in destroying all that Isla had. Might have succeeded, eventually, in destroying Isla herself. Certainly would have done so if she’d killed Isla’s son. But she was an even greater fool than Isla had ever suspected if she imagined that, in return for doing so, she’d be given Caer Addanc. Or a rich husband. Or whatever it was she wanted.

She’d have ended up where everyone else who’d overstayed their welcome with Maeve had: in a shallow grave.

“The guards are coming,” she said.

It felt like this standoff had been dragging on for hours but in truth it had been mere minutes since Greta had fled with the children. Less. And there was only so fast Asher could go.

Greta hadn’t cried out for help and neither would Isla have, in her place. Because neither of them knew if Rowena’s act had been meant to signal some larger catastrophe. If Maeve and, Gods forbid, Maeve’s supporters were inside the walls.

After Asher’s safety, that of the rest of the castle was paramount.

But Greta would ask for help, as soon as she found someone she absolutely knew she could trust.

And help would come.

Rowena’s laugh was hollow. It echoed weirdly in the mist. “And you think I care.”

She pulled a knife out from inside her kirtle. At first Isla thought that she was going to stab herself. But then she lunged.

Isla, startled, took a step back. As she did she pulled her own knife from inside her skirts. Just a little eating knife, the blade no more than a hand and a half long. The handle was a burled elm. Nothing fancy, but she didn’t like fancy things.

She assumed a stance that was pure reflex: hands together at her waist, protecting her vitals, elbows slightly bent, the blade pointing forward.

A stance that had become so after Hart had drilled it into her as little more than a child. A woman had to protect himself, he’d lectured her, as he’d taught her the very basics of sword fighting. Which she hadn’t wanted to learn. Weapons scared her, and had scared her more then. But a woman couldn’t always rely on a man to save her, and shouldn’t.

Time crawled slower and slower until it almost seemed to stop.

And then sped up again as Isla found herself on her back, the breath knocked out of her, staring up at the sky.

Her sister’s knife was buried in the ground beside her, a mere finger’s width from her head.

In the distance she heard shouting.

She tried to get up and found that she couldn’t. She was pinned beneath her sister, who lay face down. Silent and still.

“Isla!”

Hands on her. Tristan’s hands. She turned her head, meeting her husband’s gaze. Behind him were Hart, and Rudolph.

Rowena was lifted free.

Isla let Tristan help her to her feet. Her breath had returned but she still felt strange. Like she’d woken from a fever dream, the effects of which were lingering. But Tristan’s hands were firm, his presence grounding. She leaned against him, drinking in through every pore that sense of safety.

Hart, kneeling, shook his head. He straightened. Prone on her back lay Rowena, her sightless eyes on the heavens. Where she’d always so wanted to go. The heavens, where everything was perfect.

Isla wanted to be sad. Desperately. But she couldn’t mourn the woman who’d tried to hurt her son. And he was her son, whether that made her delusional or no. She would have gladly buried the knife in her own chest rather than see him face a moment of harm. Her life was a cheap price for his. And so were the lives of everyone else she knew. Because no bond—not between friends, not between lovers, and not between a woman and her mother, father, sister, or brother—was as strong as that between her and her child.

For a long time, no one spoke.

And then it began to rain.

“I
need to go,” she said.

Lightning flashed, bringing the contents of their shared chamber into sharp relief. And Tristan’s eyes, which bored into hers. Then the gloom returned. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A gentle rain, in the hours since Rowena’s death, had developed into a full-blown storm that bent the trees and shook the castle to its very foundations. The glass in the windows rattled as the wind beat its fists upon it. Storms like this could almost, almost make her believe in stories of vengeful ghosts.

Or gods.

Rowena lay far beneath them, where their father had once lain.

Eventually she’d have to be burned. Or buried. Or disposed of somehow. But Isla couldn’t afford to think about that now. Let her sister rot; it didn’t matter. The body was a shell. Rowena’s spirit had fled, to wherever it was that spirits went. She’d been, ultimately, a victim not of Isla but of her own greed. Her own rage at not being given, so readily, what she felt she deserved. Still, Isla couldn’t help but blame herself. For being the final instrument and for, more so, not feeling the anguish she knew she should. That was her
sister
, on that stone slab.

A sister who’d been an anchor around her neck for a long time. Who’d metamorphosed, in the space of months, from a merely hateful creature to one who was actually, arguably, evil. She’d posed a threat to Isla but, more significantly, to Asher. And that, more than anything, made Isla glad—yes glad, if she truly allowed herself to confront her own darkest corner—that Rowena was dead.

But a threat, a living threat, still remained.

Rowena wasn’t the head but the hand. The head was Cariad. Cariad, she knew now, must have enchanted the stone that Maeve delivered to Asher. Cariad had—through Rowena, through Maeve, and through who knew how many others—been manipulating them all. That Maeve was a menace in her own right no one denied; but she was also only human. Her power was dependent on the support of others. Indeed, without their funds, their weapons, their continued interest, she was just a lonely woman railing at the moon.

The cities were full of such women, many of whom claimed to be queens.

“You cannot,” Tristan said.

“Cariad wants me. I know she wants me.”

“So you propose to—what?” Tristan’s voice rose. “Sacrifice yourself?”

“I propose to do what I must, to protect this house and this kingdom!”

“No!” He turned. Stalked to the window. Stood there, staring out at the storm. “Cariad is dangerous. More dangerous than you realize.”

The opposite was true.

Cariad wasn’t a mother.

“You propose, I imagine, to have a nice little chat with her wherein you ask her to leave and, finally understanding your point of view, she acquiesces. Which is, in and of itself, insane. But even if Cariad
did
transform into a character from nursery and simply—disappear, that would hardly solve the greater problem. Which is Maeve.”