It was quick work when the castle slept, but Miri had to skirt several guards on her way. The king’s mistress’s sitting room was empty. Most of her ladies were asleep in their beds after so many years of going unneeded. A scattered few lay sleeping on the cushions before the windows of her bedchamber, where the cool night air brushed against a dozen sheer silks hanging from bedposts and over chairbacks. Miri crept through the room toward the massive stone fireplace, which was bare of wood. She pulled a candle, which had cracked during her climbing, from the pouch at her waist and lit it from a taper that had been left burning near the bed. She stepped through, careful of soot, and behind the hidden panel to be engulfed in the damp, stale air of the passageway.
The space was narrow, sandwiched between two walls, and left her no choice of which direction to go. She held a hand before the flame of her tilted candle, making her way as quickly as the air would allow. When she finally reached the end of the passage, she dampened her fingers and pinched the flame, waiting for the scent to dissipate as she prayed she’d been right about which corridor led to the king.
Miri listened for a painfully extended length of time, alone in the darkness and yearning for fresh, open air. She heard nothing, could see nothing, and felt no sense of movement beyond the wall. Holding her breath, she reached for the panel, pushing down the fear that the king had since blocked the way. There could be any number of furnishings on the other side, but her only other option had been climbing through the tube that evacuated his garderobe, and no one had attempted that since the uprisings following the Lion Queen’s murder. It had not ended well for the men who’d tried.
The panel came free of its frame with a wooden pop, and Miri held very still for another torturous moment. When she heard no movement from inside the room, she slid the panel aside, only to find more darkness. She reached tentatively forward, feeling the heavy woven back of a tapestry. Miri moved to her knees to peer below it and saw the bottom of a wide, open space. Its floors were covered in finely woven rugs, and its ornate fireplace was bare of wood. There was another passage on the far wall behind the massive wardrobe, Miri had been told, but that one led to a tower that held two sorcerers, something Miri hoped she would never face again.
She shook off the cold thought, crawling from the passageway to avoid shifting the massive tapestry from its place. Moonlight streamed through high windows. The air near her was still, but it rustled the sheers across the room. Her gaze roamed the far space as she searched for any dangers, trying to discern shapes that might be sleeping men. Miri eased forward on her knees, jolting and nearly screaming when she came face to face with the tangled mass of a hulking snake. She froze as it stared at her, its dark eyes unmoving and its head low. One more move, and the creature would have struck. Miri winced, silently begging the creature to let her go as she backed slowly toward the wall she’d only just emerged from. When she’d given it enough space, the snake slithered from its spot, crossing the floor at an angle and speed that made Miri’s stomach turn.
She leaned back, giving herself a moment to catch her breath, then settled on putting the panel back into place. She’d made it to the king’s rooms, clearly, and should she find the bath and complete her task, she did not want to have to come back to hide her trail.
After smoothing the tapestry with a scratched and filthy hand, she followed the wall through the room, avoiding baskets and structures that might be hiding more snakes. She stuck to the shadows, her eyes catching on a low, wide bed draped in heavy fabric. The curtains were drawn closed. She stared at it for several moments, feeling the thundering of her heart. Behind the curtains slept a king—a lord in wolf’s clothing who’d murdered to name himself king.
Miri swallowed back bile. She was a murderer too. Vengeance might have been her duty, but it did not feel entirely clean. She forced her eyes off the drapes surrounding Edwin’s bed and crept through the door to the next room.
Edwin was known for his rituals, foremost his private bath. He’d had the stone tub built when he’d only been a lord, but as king, it had been said that the servants heated and hauled his water twice a day. His oils were imported from across the sea, blends that he chose not as the king of Kirkwall—for their supposed healing properties—but because Edwin was pleased by their scents. The windowed room was sparse with furnishings, its central feature and only real purpose the tub. Miri crossed slowly to the circle of smooth stone, impressed by the detailed carvings despite herself. Rows of candles and incense lined one rim, and the other was worn with use. There, Edwin would sit, his arms spread wide, eyes closed as his tensions eased in the heated, fragrant water. There, Edwin would die.
He would lose his ability to control his muscles, slip beneath the surface, and drown, in darkness and alone, the way Miri nearly had as a child. She took a steadying breath, kneeling onto the stone to choose a vial. One was dark-blue glass, its liquid half gone, and appeared as if it could be his favorite. Another beside it was nearly gone. She considered which of the six to use, but it was all a gamble. She needed his death to wait until they’d taken care of the next king, but Edwin had to be gone before the end of summer and the festival of moons.
Miri pulled the poison from the pouch at her waist and cautiously opened the stopper. She dripped the liquid into the oil then returned each to their original positions. She had never imagined she would be a poisoner. Miri was a princess, daughter of the Lion Queen. Her fate was to wield a sword in battle, secure her sister’s rule as head of the guard, protect their blood and their name, and shore their legacy. It didn’t feel as if she was holding to her duty, but Miri knew there was no one else who could save Lettie. It was Miri’s sacrifice to make.
She had done it. Pressing her palms to the stone, she prepared to push herself to standing—and was seized by the knot of hair at the back of her neck. A blade pricked the flesh beneath her jaw, and Miri felt the line of blood run from the wound even as her head was wrenched backward. Her fingers curled against the stone, but the blade was already at her throat. Trying to toss the man forward into the pool would only get her throat cut.
Miri stared up at her attacker. His skin was tinted pale by the light of the moon, and she recognized the narrow face and bright eyes of the king of Ironwood.
Instead of feeling cowed by a man who was king, Miri felt rage at a man who had killed her mother. His eyes were not on hers but the swell of her chest. She was arched toward him, trapped by his grasp and his blade, and Miri watched as his gaze followed the line of blood that ran from the wound beneath her jaw and into her dress.
A lady’s dress, Miri remembered. She was a maid to the queen.
“She tries to murder me?” Edwin hissed into Miri’s ear. “In my own castle?”
Miri drew a careful breath, focusing on the stone beneath her palms and her knees. She could press him back, rise suddenly into him and knock the blade away—as long as she managed before he stabbed her. Edwin had always been quick. But he thought her a lady-in-waiting to the queen, not a threat or a fighter.
Edwin pressed the blade harder to Miri’s skin, angling the point right where a bit of pressure would be deadly. He would watch her bleed out slowly and likely gather the queen to make her watch. If Miri had to guess, she thought he was probably considering how to best punish his wife at that very moment.
“You’ve punished her enough,” Miri whispered. She only meant to buy herself time and throw Edwin’s attention for a heartbeat while she made her move, but Edwin jerked her closer, the blade going deeper into her skin. Gods, she was done for. She whimpered, and it was not part of the act. “She’s had to watch you make a fool of her all this time as you parade a lowborn through these halls.”
Miri knew the insult would hit him hard, but she did not expect the rage with which he would attack. Edwin slammed her face toward the stone. Miri’s arms barely protected her from a solid ledge capable of fracturing her nose. He twisted her, coming down hard with a knee into her ribs, and held her in place with his weigh
t as he pressed the knife to her stomach. Slower, he’d decided, then. He would let her guts spill over the floor and into his precious tub.
His golden eyes burned into hers, finally staring at the woman he plainly intended to kill. Miri’s fingers were already under the folds of her dress, her palm wrapping tight around the handle of a dagger. The moment his weight shifted, she would have to stab him and run.
But his weight didn’t shift. His dark brows drew together, and his gaze roamed over Miri’s features—not the blood or the disdain for a simple maid. It was different. It was the line of her face, the press of her mouth, and both of Miri’s honey-brown eyes. Edwin’s knee pressed harder into Miri’s frame, his blade pricking her skin through her dress as his free hand latched onto her jaw. He gripped hard, turning her head in the moonlight, and examined her. His weight was too much to draw her trapped dagger free, and Miri’s chest heaved beneath the burden of him and a corset that felt far too tight.
She saw the moment recognition came—the moment Edwin, self-named king of Ironwood, recalled the second daughter of the Lion Queen.
Miri gave him a feral grin. “Murderer.”
Edwin drew a breath, but Miri couldn’t know whether he was merely startled or intended to call for the guards. She’d already slid a foot from her slippers and pressed her bare sole hard against the stone, and she shoved him back so that she could free her arm. It drove his blade at her stomach closer, but the corset and the movement had twisted it from what otherwise might have been a deadly blow. He’d stopped her momentum, though, his grip on her jaw sliding in blood, but his entire body spun over her to pin her back down. Edwin was no fool. He’d noticed Miri’s prowess as a child. He’d said as much, in front of crowds of watching lords. “That girl is deadly. I pity any man who draws her ire.”
Miri was a girl no longer. She wasn’t a fragile thing, half his size. She was a lion, raging for vengeance and desperate to survive. The struggle rolled them into the carved stove edging the tub, and Miri freed an arm to slam it into the inside of Edwin’s elbow, making him loosen his grip and crash his knuckles against the stone. His blade clattered free, and he raised a fist to strike her, but she twisted beneath him, all claws and knees and teeth. Her daggers were trapped beneath her skirts and his legs. Edwin’s hand, slick with Miri’s blood, went for her neck again. She let him try then landed a solid strike to his throat with the base of her hand. He choked out a cough but did not let up, his long limbs trapping her.
She struck him in the side as he raised his fist again, and when his blow landed, it glanced off her blood-slicked jaw. Her ears rang, and her pulse hammered, and Miri twisted beneath him once more. She finally thought she might have him off balance, but his hands were knotted in her braids and her dress, and he hauled her toward the edge of the tub. To drown her or smash her head, she wasn’t sure, but he’d moved, and her hand was on the second dagger at her hip before he’d made it two steps.
Miri slid the knife across the back of his knee, the only decent spot she could reach in their struggle, and Edwin hissed and lowered automatically. The thin material of his nightclothes gave him no protection from her steel. As the blood blossomed over the material, Miri grabbed Edwin’s wrist where he held her hair and pulled herself upward with one hand as her dagger drove home between his ribs. He bit down a cry, jerking her head with him as their bodies crashed to the floor, and Miri pulled the blade free, her eyes on Edwin’s as she ran it into his neck.
The king’s blood was everywhere, a warm pool that ran over the stone too fast and too red. Edwin couldn’t draw air to call for help, but the light had not gone out of his eyes. She had to pry his fingers from her hair, then she stumbled back from him and the blood. She tripped on his legs and landed hard on her bottom, and through the tingling of her limbs and the pounding of her heart, Miri felt the first stings of pain.
Miri had been nicked in at least three places by his blade and punched half a dozen more. She pushed the hair from her face and felt the sticky mess that was matted on her cheek and in her hair. She suddenly stood, staring at the blood that coated the floor. It was her blood.
Miri remembered the sorcerers, who were only a few towers away, and her hands began to tremble again, her entire body nearly shuddering in panic. She grabbed a bucket from near the tub and upended it so that tepid water splashed over her bare foot and the blood on the floor that was hers. Then she took a full bottle of oil—one that had not been poisoned—and doused it over the mess. She hoped it worked.
Miri stared down at herself, a monster in lady’s clothes, and wanted to weep. At a gasp from across the room, Miri glanced up, the bottle in her fingers smashing to the floor when she saw Edwin’s mistress. The woman stared at Miri then the king, her slender hands going to the flesh at her naked throat.
“No,” Miri whispered, holding a bloody finger to her lips. “I don’t want to kill you. Please do not make me.”
There was a moment of silence. Then the woman screamed.
Miri burst into the corridor outside the king’s rooms, and her dagger found the thigh of one kingsman as the second ran toward the screams through another pair of doors. Shouts rang through the hallway, and her footsteps staggered, one bare, the other in a damp and bloody slipper. Both were beneath a mass of torn skirts. She’d lost a dagger, her palms were slick with sweat, and her body shook with exhaustion and fear. She would never make it out alive or even down the stairs. But she had to try anyway.
When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the second guard coming from the king’s room.
“She’s killed the king!”
His shout echoed off the stone, and Miri stumbled to a graceless stop at the top of the stairs.
More than a dozen guards were climbing the tower, fully armed and by all appearances eager to kill.
“There!” one shouted, and all eyes came to hers. Miri cursed and ran back toward the king’s rooms and back toward her death. She couldn’t escape it.
Her choices were the tower to the sorcerers or the passage in the darkness, but she could not face the sorcerers, not with the way her body reacted to their magic, and she didn’t have time to kill the mistress and the other guard with a dozen more on her heels. Miri turned into the solar, running as fast as she’d ever run. She only paused to topple a cage of vipers. As they spilled over the floor, she picked up a statue and smashed it through the window of a carved case. Something bigger waited inside, a dark and dangerous thing, but Miri didn’t waste time watching to see if it moved. She crossed the final distance and leaped onto the ledge of a high window into the strange glow of coming light.
The castle was awakening. She should be walking silently through its halls and down that long flight of stairs as if she were a lady on her way to the chapel, not perched on the edge of a tower, staring down a sheer stone wall to her death below.
“Maiden save me,” Miri whispered.
The clamor of kingsmen and weaponry was behind her, and there was only one way out. She grabbed a long silk drapery and threw herself out the window. A spear rushed through the air beside her, shaving Miri’s shoulder as she swung wide and slammed into the wall. The drapery came loose of its mooring, and Miri slid lower along the wall, her arms scraping rock. She kicked against the building and held her breath, letting go of the fabric to drop to the narrow roof of a garderobe below. It was slanted, and she managed to land, but her feet slipped over the stone, skidding as she tried to gain purchase. She could not, and as she careened downward, her body slammed into a support that knocked her wider from any decent path. She fell.
Princess Myrina of Stormskeep, daughter of the Lion Queen, was going to die on the stones of a stolen castle, covered in the blood of a bastard king.
Chapter 23
Cass watched a dark figure fly from the king’s tower window. He had moved nearer the moment the first scream had sounded then watched without breath, as it had been followed by the shouting of men. Something had gone wrong, but he hadn’t expected the woman
to fling herself out the window on nothing but a thin strip of fabric. She landed hard on the roof of a garderobe then slipped. Her descent was slowed by various corbels and lintels before her body disappeared onto the rampart.
Cass ran, though he feared her already dead. Arrows were launched through the air toward the rampart, and Cass’s frantic heart picked up pace. Terric had said the queen had friends in Ironwood. Cass hadn’t realized they would be willing to fight.
Alarm bells rang through the air before Cass reached the castle walls, but his boots were swift in their flight. It was only nearly dawn, but inside those walls must have been sixty kingsmen at the ready, two sorcerers, and gods knew what else. He rushed toward the wall, hearing the shouts and running men atop the parapet. Fighting and the sounds of swords clashing led Cass toward the castle gate. The portcullis had not yet dropped, and if he went through, he would likely never escape. But that did not slow his pace. He rushed forward, assured in his fate, and was knocked solidly from his feet by a heavy black mass.
The breath rushed out of him with a huff as the body that had landed on him groaned. Cass struggled to right himself and saw a dark figure gesture at him through the hole above. The man turned and clashed swords with another, and Cass jerked to stare at the form over him.
It was Miri, covered in blood, her eyes closed, and her head lolling to the side. They’d shoved her through a bleeding murder hole. He shifted her body, carefully rolling her to her back, but she was still warm, still limber, and thank the gods, she still breathed. Her eyes fluttered open for a moment, but she immediately winced in pain. He’d seen enough—the honey brown of her eyes had been swallowed by darkness. She was not the Miri he knew. The sorcerers were too near, and her body was too injured to run.
Seven Ways to Kill a King Page 15
