StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  Impossible. Tiboran didn’t love me this much. I glanced toward Lyll, but her back was to me, so I lifted the rug as high as I dared, and reached my hand under.

  My searching fingers found something that was not a lost seed: a cold smooth curve of iron in a recess big enough for my hand. I pulled my hand back and gave it a look to be certain. In Lady Lyll’s stillroom, set into the flagstones and hidden under a rug, was the iron pull ring of a nice-sized trapdoor.

  I love trapdoors. They mean secrets and hiding places and the thrill of discovering things you were never meant to see. Of course, this one might be nothing more than a cold-box, set into the chilly floor and the cool stone beneath to keep perishable medicines fresh. But then why hide it with a rug?

  I could find out right now — flip the rug back, grab the handle, and haul it open with Lady Lyll watching, there to explain away its very mundane purpose. And lose my chance at anything that might really be hidden down there.

  I folded back the edge of the rug and smoothed the fringe. Tonight, I promised it.

  PART III

  DON’T GET INVOLVED

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The hours until Bryn Shaer fell asleep were an agony of mindless impossible boredom in the stillroom and solar and Round Court. I felt edgier than I had since that first nob banquet at Favom Court — was it only a month ago? Though we’d been ticking off the days until Meri’s kernja-velde, my sense of the time passing had been buried by the barricade of snow, added to almost every day, that trapped me here in Bryn Shaer.

  Finally, finally, the family and guests all went to bed, and by some miracle Meri fell instantly asleep beside me. I slipped out of bed and crept down the servants’ stair to the kitchens. I had timed my hour precisely; the kitchen staff was asleep and I passed no servants on my way.

  I slipped my lock pick from my seam and tumbled the stillroom lock. With the door shut behind me, the light from the hallway was swallowed up immediately. Inside the stillroom it was dark and freezing; the moons light filtering through the small, high window didn’t help much, but I had some good idea where I was going.

  I knelt on the floor by the workbench, flipped back the rug, and, cringing against the possible shriek of stubborn hinges — and the possible disappointment of a cavity full of chilled medicines — heaved hard on the pull ring. It came open easily, revealing a square opening large enough for a person to fit through. I flattened myself to the floor and reached a hand down into the hole. I don’t know what I expected — a cache of documents, perhaps, maybe valuables — but my outstretched fingers found nothing, brushed nothing but darkness. I scowled. Nobody took this much care to hide an empty hole.

  I peeled myself from the floor and rolled a scrap of paper into a taper that I lit from the tinderbox on the workbench. Carefully I lowered the burning taper into the hole and found what I was hoping for: stairs. Moving slowly so the taper didn’t blow out, I slid feetfirst over the polished edge of the opening and dropped easily down onto the stone floor below.

  Well. I was in it now. The opening above me glowed with square silver light, making it easy to see the distance I’d have to climb to get out again. One good jump, and I’d be able to grab the edges. But that was for later. I gathered my skirts in one hand and edged downward, the flickering taper throwing the passage into uneven light.

  The stairs twisted downward in a tight spiral, each tread barely wide enough for even my small feet; this passage had been constructed for secrecy, not for convenience. There was no dust on the stairs, but I didn’t know if that was because they were used often, or just that no dust ever found its way this deep.

  When I found myself on flat ground once more, I paused for a moment, feeling the darkness press all around me. When I was small, I’d spent a lot of time hiding in dark spaces like this — tucked behind shelves in a root cellar, or curled up tight in a catacomb. I felt safe in the dark and silence; the world went on, however wicked or righ teous, far above, never touching the lives of the mice and spiders below.

  The little landing was hardly big enough to turn around in, let alone conceal anything as bulky as a stash of firearms. I moved the taper in a slow arc, showing up the space I’d found myself in. Shadows flew out of its range, up into the darkness above me and against stone walls barely an arm’s reach away. After turning three quarters of the way around the space, I came face-to with a smooth wooden wall.

  Wood was good — it could conceal hinges, a squint with a view to the room beyond, a catch for a secret door. . . . I shone my dubious light over the wall and found a seam, tracing along it with my fingers until I felt the notched-out hollow of a latch. Just an easy toggle with my finger, and the door eased open, inching toward me with a click.

  The overwhelming silence of the passage pressed in on me, making my rushing heartbeat feel as loud as stomping feet and slamming doors. Something was behind that door — something somebody didn’t want found — and I was on the other side.

  I grinned. Perfect.

  I squeezed through the door, ready at any moment for someone’s great hand to grab my shoulder and yank me bodily into — wherever. The taper lifted high, I squinted into the darkness. It seemed to be a relatively ordinary Bryn Shaer chamber, maybe a little smaller and less drafty than most. Bare stone floors, half-paneled walls, hardly any furniture. I stepped a little farther into the room, watching beneath the shadows, but could see nothing suspicious. No hidden cache of documents or weapons, no Sarist priestess tucked away under an eave, no secret alchemical laboratory.

  I sighed. I was getting ready to shake out the taper before it burned my fingers, when I heard something.

  I froze, listening. Was someone on the stair behind me? Or in the stillroom above, getting ready to close the trap? No — the sound was closer than that, and quieter.

  Whoever had gone to the trouble to hide this room had also done me the favor of hanging a lamp beside the doorway. I lifted it down and lit it with the taper, and the chamber sprang into bobbing light.

  The shadows in the far corner revealed themselves to be heavy woolen curtains draping an alcove, parted slightly in the center. I crept closer and lifted a hand to move the curtains aside. But my hand stopped midway, and the lamp swung as I stared at what lay behind the drapery.

  It was a bed. With a man in it, fast asleep and breathing in fitful, gaspy breaths as his fingers curled and uncurled around the hem of his blankets. He was pale and sweaty, with dark curls sticking to his damp forehead. I sprang backward, nearly tripping on my own hem, and clamped my mouth tight to silence my own breathing. The light made a wild streak of brightness on the walls; I hastened to steady it, but not before it threw its light across the sleeping man’s chest and abdomen, tightly wrapped in bandages seeped with blood.

  Abruptly, I saw every thing — the basin and sponges on the table behind his head, the roll of linen for bandages, the vials and packets of herbs. This wasn’t a laboratory — it was a sickroom. And its injured occupant? The light also showed up the massive signet ring on his thumb — a rampant stag crowned with ivy — the mark of the House of Hanival, Llyvraneth’s royal family.

  My heart flew into a crazy rhythm, and I squeezed my fingers tight on the handle of the lamp to stop their trembling. Only a handful of people would wear such a sign. And only one of them was famously missing.

  I should have turned back, rehung the lamp, climbed back up the stairs, pulled myself through the trapdoor, locked Lyll’s door, slipped into bed beside Meri, and thought no more about it.

  But I didn’t.

  Because in the next moment, exactly the wrong thing happened.

  He woke up.

  A muffled snore turned into a moan, and as the lantern light swung across his face, he winced and turned his head away. I lowered the light and shaded it behind my skirts, but I was too late. The flickering eyelids parted, and a frown formed on the sweaty forehead.

  “Hullo,” he said in a breathless voice, still thick with sleep.

  I bob
bed a curtsy.

  “Are you supposed to be in here?”

  One might ask the same question. “Of course,” I improvised. “They’ve sent me to . . . see to your wound . . . s.”

  He tried to sit up, but grimaced. Impulsively I stepped closer to him, set the lantern on the table, and reached one arm behind him for support. Well, if this was the role I was going to play, I might as well fling myself into it. He had clearly once been a big man, but injury, sickness, or inactivity had wasted him, and he was not difficult for even tiny me to lift. Now propped up, he made a sound that was half sigh, half groan.

  “Water?”

  There was a pitcher behind him, and I poured out a cup, realizing, as I had to crack the ice on the surface, just how cold it really was in here. Shouldn’t he have a fire going, hot bricks in his bed at the very least? Trying very much not to care, I lifted the cup to his lips. His own shaky hand came up to meet mine, steadying the vessel. He managed a sip or two before his head fell back, his eyes closed, breathing heavily.

  “Thank you.”

  My mind raced. What had I stumbled onto this time? And what was I going to do about it? This was worse than finding the love letters Lord Keran had written to his squire. Worse than uncovering the plot to assassinate the Brion ambassador. This man, in this condition, in this castle, was more kinds of danger than I could count.

  “Milady?”

  I blinked and wrenched my thoughts back to the present moment.

  “I —” He waved a hand weakly in a vague direction. I shook my head, not understanding. “I need the chamber pot.”

  Oh, gods. I won’t record the details of the utter absurdity of me, Digger the gutter rat, dressed up like a nob, helping one of the dueling princes of Llyvraneth take a piss. But I’m sure I heard Tiboran laughing at me.

  I finally got His Highness lowered back into his bed, with entirely too good a view of his bandages as I was maneuvering him about. Well, my cover was that I was here to see to his wounds, so see to them I would. Fortunately or unfortunately, I had cleaned up after enough bar fights to have a pretty good idea of what I was doing. I bade him sit up so that I could unwind the old wrappings, which I did as gingerly as possible. He was short of breath and too pale. And all the while, he looked at me out of deep brown eyes that harbored their own share of secrets, as if he wished to ask me something.

  “What?” I was a little short, I admit it. He was leaning heavily against me as I peeled the linen strips from his bare chest.

  “What’s your name?” It came out in a gasp as I stripped the last bit of cloth from his skin, and he seized my hand and squeezed until I thought my fingers might break.

  “Celyn,” I gasped back. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, freeing my hand. “It’s just — stings a little.”

  The beads of sweat that had sprung up on his brow in this frigid room said it hurt a little worse than that. “Sorry,” I echoed. “I’ll try to be gentler.” Under the bandages, his body was a horror. One giant gash, obviously a sword wound, stretched from his breastbone almost to his pelvis. Sickly green-and-violet bruising spread all across his flank, and one shoulder bore the marks of an arrow — or a musket ball — that had pierced straight through. His body had once been well-muscled, but now his skin hung slack and sallow. The largest wound had been stitched closed with neat, competent stitches that threw a brief, insane image of Lady Lyll and her embroidery into my mind. What in the name of all that was holy had happened to this man?

  And how, by Marau, did he get here?

  “This wound is inflamed,” I said, indicating the sword gash. “What have they been treating it with?”

  “There — there’s a powder, in a packet —” He tried to gesture, and I reached behind him before he could strain himself. Inside the pouch was glittery gray dust.

  “Silver. Good.” It wasn’t a treatment we’d had much access to in the back rooms of the Mask & Barrel, but of course one spared no expense when treating a prince. According to Lyll’s herbal, the metal fought poison in a wound. I sprinkled a liberal amount down the length of the wound, wishing I could do more. If he didn’t die from the injury, fever would take him. It was beyond a miracle that he was conscious and alert.

  “Don’t look so optimistic,” he gasped out when I had finished rebinding the wounds and had him laid back as gently as I could. He tried to smile. “It’s not that bad.”

  I stared at him. “You’re dying. You must know that.”

  “Impossible. I’d be disappointing too many people.” He winced. “Besides, I have this.” His hand fumbled for the chain around his neck, with a bronze pendant like a small coin suspended from it. He held it out with shaking fingers, and I was just about to touch it, to see the design stamped in the metal, when he said, “It’s magic.”

  I curled my fingers back. “Right.” He had to be feverish to tell a total stranger that.

  “I’ve worn it all my life,” he said. “My nurse gave it to me. I guess I should thank her, shouldn’t I?”

  “Don’t be premature,” I said. “Those wounds are serious. How long have you been here?” The bruises weren’t fresh, and the wound had had time to become infected.

  The prince shook his head carefully. “If I had to guess, probably a couple of weeks.”

  Frowning, I pondered this. Before the avalanche? It had to be, but who had brought him here? There hadn’t been any other new arrivals since then, and this man certainly hadn’t gotten here on his own.

  This is not your business. That voice was a very wise warning, and if I was smart, I would heed it. I rose from the side of the bed a little too quickly, and a shadow of pain flashed across the prince’s face. “I — I have to go,” I said. “They’ll be looking for me.”

  “Don’t go.” The voice was a hollow thread, a weak plea from a man used to being obeyed.

  “I have to. You’re right — I’m not supposed to be here.” A question crossed his eyes, and I forced a little smile. “I bribed the other girl to let me come in her place” — praying that there was another girl — “and she’ll get in trouble if they find out. Please, don’t tell anyone?”

  He eyed me steadily, but I could see he was flagging. “On one condition,” he breathed.

  Damn. It was never good when your betters put conditions on things. I nodded.

  “You’ll come back and see me again?”

  “Why?” His face had taken a grayish cast I didn’t like. I rummaged among the vials until I found one that smelled right. Poppy. It was a dangerous decoction for a man in his condition — like I needed the death of the prince on my hands — but I feared pain would keep him awake. I dipped my little finger in the vial and held it to his lips. He shook his head.

  “Not unless you promise to come back,” he whispered, so softly I could barely hear him. His face was twisted with pain.

  “Oh, all right!”

  The prince parted his lips and allowed me to smear the poppy juice inside his mouth. “Tomorrow?”

  I yanked my hand back. “Certainly not.” But I caught a glimpse of something familiar in his dark eyes — something that all too often went with fatal wounds. Fear. Who was I to try and alleviate this man’s pain and fear? Nobody, but he kept staring at me, damn it. “All right,” I said. “Tomorrow. If I can get away.”

  His head sank back against the bed. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Oh, gods. I got out of there as fast as I could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I didn’t sleep that night, and by the time the mountains outside were tinged pink from the rising sun, I was in a rage of panic. I’d thought I’d understood what I was piecing together about the Nemair — the cryptic embroidery, their magical daughter, Bryn Shaer’s new defenses, the possible gathering of weaponry — but this shook my neat stack of secrets into a pile of rubble and made every thing else seem minor by comparison. They were hiding the missing prince, literally beneath our feet. Who else knew about him? Hardly anyone, surely, or w
hy keep him down there in that freezing cell, instead of up in a guest room, where Lyll could tend to him properly? I’d seen Prince Wierolf’s wounds; they weren’t the wild random mess of cuts and bruises you’d pick up in a casual fight — even a bad one. They were made with skill and deadly intent. Everyone had heard the rumors, and I had seen the order, signed by the king, that put a price of five thousand sovereigns on his nephew’s life. Clearly someone had tried to carry it out.

  And I had given that order to Daul. Oh, hells. However the prince had come to be hidden down there, Daul was the last person who should find out about him. It didn’t take much to figure out what his Greenmen friends would do with that information. As if Meri and her Sarists weren’t bad enough, now I had the biggest secret in all of Llyvraneth to keep from him too.

  This was getting exhausting.

  I paced from the window to the bed. Meri was fast asleep, her breath a swirl of shimmer in the half-light. On another night, she’d have been the one awake, writing in her secret journal. I glanced back toward the window seat. Maybe I could use one secret to cover another.

  Obviously the prince was worth more than the journal — more than any of the Nemair’s secrets put together, for that matter — whatever it was that Daul was so interested in. Was there any chance Daul might back off and let me go if he finally got his hands on that book? Or would he keep pushing me until I gave up every thing, turned over every loose stone in this castle until the secrets crawled out like beetles? Could I say, Stop, enough, I won’t do this anymore? I couldn’t risk it. I’d have to find a way to steadily dole out smaller secrets to him, or —

  I knew what the “or” was. It wasn’t just the pressure of revealing my deception to the Nemair anymore. Lady Lyll liked me. She’d be disappointed, but she might not kill me. But if Daul really had the connections he claimed —

  Or.

  I held my fingers just above Meri’s fanned-out hair and let the thick, watery air waft between them. He was not going to find this out. The Inquisition would not have Meri. Maybe there was a way to give Daul exactly what he wanted, without risk to anyone else.