“I’ve been saying all along that she’s hiding something,” Gretta says.
“What? No you haven’t.”
Gretta lets out a breath in a huff. “You all think I’m mean, so you never listen to me when I’m making a good point.”
“We don’t think you’re mean, Gretta,” Ness says.
“Sure we do,” Katla says.
I take Gretta’s arm to draw her attention back to me. “Why do you think Ella is hiding something?”
“Well, for starters, sometimes when she walks into the kitchen, she turns straight around again.”
I’m reminded of what Sebastian said last night.
“Second,” Gretta says, “I caught her snooping around the library.”
I draw my brows together. “When?”
“You were all off with Pippa.”
“Maybe she likes to read,” Katla interrupts. “Truly, the highest of crimes. Sofie, come on, let’s go.”
Katla walks out the door. Sofie pauses a minute. She looks at me. “I’d let it go, Tasha. The storms make everyone a little strange from time to time.” And then she follows Katla.
Tasha. She called me Tasha, like we’re friends again.
After the door closes behind them, Gretta says, “Well, I still think Ella is suspicious.”
“Hmm,” I say. Maybe I should stop asking her questions and seek answers myself.
“Where are you going?” Gretta says.
I open the door. “Out and about.”
38
ELLA
When Maret opens her door, she’s bleary-eyed. Her breath bears the faint sweetness of old wine.
“Come in,” she says. There’s no love, no hello, darling! I’m nervous before I’ve even begun.
I sit stiffly on the pink couch beside her. A bruise has appeared on the ceiling, drip, drip, dripping water into a bucket below. Out the window, the street is a stream.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Tired,” she says. “But happy we’re done with Storm Four.”
“You’re not feeling strange?”
“Strange?” Maret says.
“Like you promised someone you’d meet them somewhere, but you’ve forgotten when and where.”
She presses her fingers to her temples. “Did I promise I’d meet someone somewhere?”
I shake my head. “Never mind.”
“You’re acting odd today.”
I settle my hands on my lap and take a breath. “What if I didn’t want to die?”
Maret’s face is impassive. “Pardon?”
“I know why I’m such a valuable assassin. Because it’s a lot easier to send someone into the palace to kill Nikolai if they don’t care whether or not they get away with it.”
She leans back in the sofa. Her lips are thin as she lets silence settle over the room. “Well, you always said I’ll die for Cassia, I’ll do anything to kill Nikolai.”
I listen to the drip, drip, dripping.
“Right,” I say. “But what if I wanted to survive?”
A scraping at the window. I look up and give the glass a frown. Then I look back to Maret and find her staring stonily at me.
“Explain,” she says. “Everything.”
39
NATASHA
I manage to catch sight of Ella just before she disappears into the maze of New Sundstad. I follow her from a distance, always keeping a street behind as she zigzags through the city. The whole way, I fight with myself. This is an invasion of privacy. But also, where could she possibly be going? She claims to be an orphan with no connections, no friends outside the palace.
So who is she going to see?
She stops at a creaky-looking building in Eel Shore a few blocks south of the university and disappears inside.
There are no windows on the first floor, but I catch a glimmer of light from the second. And something red, waving. Silks?
I don’t dare follow Ella into that building, but the adjacent building has a board nailed across the doorframe. Abandoned.
I look up at the window with the silks, then I stride purposefully toward the boarded-up door. The wood is only nailed to the frame, so when I turn the handle, the door opens. With a glance over my shoulder, I duck inside.
It’s dark and the stairs squelch and bow under my feet. The floorboards on the second story look ready to cave in, but I’m not interested in the room. I’m interested in the window. I step lightly across the perimeter and open the window, wincing when the frame shrieks.
When no one comes thumping up the stairs after me, I lean on the moldering frame.
Ella’s window is just below, and I see her sitting on a tattered pink sofa, crossing her arms and pursing her lips. On the other side of the sofa sits a woman, old enough to be Ella’s—or my—mother. Her face is in profile to me. She looks . . . familiar? I scan her bony face. She’s wearing a thin headband around her forehead, the kind I’ve seen stylish noblewomen wear.
The windowsill digs into my ribs as I lean a bit farther.
Ella’s mouth moves. I can’t hear what she says. I lean farther out the sill.
If either of them looks up, they’ll see me.
40
ELLA
“Maybe I’m reconsidering this suicide mission,” I say.
Maret stills. “You don’t want to kill Nikolai for what he did?”
“No! I do. I still want—he deserves to be dead. He does. I just . . . I don’t want to die.”
Maret makes her hand into a fist and tilts her head to rest on it. Her mouth curls.
Finally, I say, “Is it so bad? To want to live?”
“No,” she says. “I’m just curious what caused your change of heart. I mean, it’s wonderful. I’m happy for you. When we made this plan, you were a bottomless abyss of a girl.”
“I’m still prepared to kill Nikolai. That hasn’t changed.”
Maret considers me. Her faint smile never wavers. “It’s not as if I wanted you in unnecessary danger. I’d rather you didn’t die too.”
“So we’ll change our plan?”
“What did you have in mind?”
All the words come out in a rush. “Well, I just have to figure out a way to catch him when no one else is around. So instead of waiting for one of the guard parties—instead of trying to do it in front of all those people—I’ll just have to sneak into his bedroom while he’s sleeping, or something.”
“You know there’s a reason that wasn’t the plan all along, don’t you?” Maret asks. “Because when Nikolai is asleep, he’s surrounded by guards. He doesn’t just wander the palace unattended.”
“But—” I can’t keep the hurt out of my voice. “You should want this. You should want me to survive.”
“I do!” She takes my shoulders. “I do want you to survive. Very much. But if you try and fail to kill Nikolai, all this will have been for nothing. Cassia’s killer sails away into the New World. Hundreds of thousands of Kostrovians—Kostrovians who could’ve been helped, saved, by a better ruler—will drown. You are incredibly dear to me, Ella. But the crown means more than either of us.”
“What if I can come up with a plan? Something you approve of. A way to kill Nikolai and get away with it.”
Maret is quiet for a long moment. Finally: “If you’re serious about this, we need time to plan for every detail. Can you come up with something by the bear season festival?”
I count the days in my head. “That’s only two weeks away.”
“Then you’d better hurry.”
I nod.
“Come back after the festival,” Maret says. “Everyone will be distracted, so it will give you a chance to slip away. You can tell me your new plan then.”
“I will.”
“The crown is everything,” she says. “Don’t for
get that.” She lifts her chin toward the door.
I let out a mouthful of air. I head for the door before she can change her mind.
“Oh, and Ella?”
I turn back to Maret. She’s outlined by hazy light, her hair a golden crown. In the window behind her, a flash of something, a movement.
“You will tell no one who you are,” she says.
“Of course not,” I say.
“No one,” she repeats. “I don’t care if you think you’ve made friends or allies in the palace. I am your friend. I am your ally.”
I nod again.
She dismisses me with a wave.
41
NATASHA
Much as I strain, I can’t hear what they’re saying. I almost think Ella sees me at one point, but I duck out of the way before her eyes can focus on me.
When I peek through the window again, Ella is gone. The older woman lifts a sheet of paper from a side table and frowns. I squint at the paper, straining to decipher any of the cramped letters.
“Natasha?”
My breath catches dry in my throat.
I turn slowly. Ella is coated in shadows.
“I thought I saw you,” she says.
My heart pounds.
“What are you doing here?” I point to the window. “Who is that?”
“You don’t have the right to ask me that,” Ella says. Her voice is edged. Gone is the soft, breathless girl from the lantern-lit hallway last night. She frowns at the window, like the woman on the other side might be able to hear us. If I felt like being useful, I could tell her that room is soundproof, but I’m not feeling so inclined.
“Come on,” she says, taking my wrist.
I jolt at her touch, the roughness of her grip. She pulls me down the stairs and out the door, under the board. We both spare a glance back at the pink building. Then Ella drags me away, far and fast, into the depths of the city.
When we reach an empty street, quiet save the movements of water left behind from the storm, I say, “Why do you seem so scared?”
“I don’t seem scared,” Ella says. She sloshes through a puddle.
“But who was that woman?”
Ella looks over her shoulder at me. Her eyes are narrowed and sharp. “Why did you follow me?”
“Because you were acting suspicious,” I say. “I wanted to know where you were going.” Stubbornly, I add, “I’m the principal flyer. I’m allowed to do that.”
“You’re allowed to follow me?” she says. “Well, good for you. Did you find it illuminating?”
“Just tell me who that woman was.”
“A family friend,” she says. “She’s a family friend, and my parents knew her from Terrazza, and I would’ve mentioned her before, but I didn’t know it was so important that I told you every facet of my life. All right?”
I feel heat beginning to flush my cheeks. “Why are you so evasive all the time?”
She stops walking. She looks at me.
For a long moment, she says nothing. Her mouth opens. No words. And then, finally, soft, cold: “I am not your puzzle to be solved.”
She turns on her heel and walks away.
I don’t follow.
42
ELLA
Walk.
Don’t look back.
Just keep going.
To admire Natasha’s cleverness but never suspect that it would turn against me? Naïve.
Seas. I’ve been a fool.
She’s Nikolai’s friend. She wants to marry him. If she can talk to Nikolai and not feel the deepest, darkest repulsion, then she’s clearly a fool too.
This isn’t about Natasha. This isn’t even about me. This is about Cassia, and it always has been.
There is no Natasha and me. We’re not friends, or allies, or anything else. We stand on opposite sides of Nikolai. She wants to be his queen. I want to kill him. Only one of us will get what we want.
It will be me.
43
NATASHA
I force myself to think of anything but Ella on the walk back to the palace. Nikolai. The queen’s crown. The Flood. Not Ella. Not Ella.
It doesn’t work.
When I reach the palace, I head straight for Adelaida’s room. Inside, I shut the door behind me and cross my arms.
“I don’t trust Ella,” I say.
“And I don’t trust Gretta,” Adelaida says. “She always looks like she’s watching all of us to compile a report for her father, doesn’t she?”
“This isn’t a joke,” I say. “I followed Ella today. She went to visit this woman, and she said it was a family friend, but she was acting suspicious.”
Adelaida, sitting in her desk chair, leans back. The hem of her cloak dusts the floor. “Now you sound like Gretta.”
“I’m serious,” I say. “I followed her all the way to Eel Shore, and—”
Adelaida holds up a hand. “She’s a seventeen-year-old girl. Forgive me if I’m not overwhelmingly nervous about her suspicious doings.”
“I’m a seventeen-year-old girl,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, honey-sweet, “and you’re very capable of all sorts of nefarious deeds. Now.” She turns to a stack of papers at her desk. I’m prepared to protest more, but I stop when she fishes out a folded sheet of paper and hands it to me. “I think you’ll find this more important than whatever the other flyers were up to this morning.”
I take it. It’s a letter. The paper is creamy, the golden seal already broken.
“What’s this?”
“From Nikolai,” Adelaida says. “It’s addressed to you, but as your future advisor, I took the liberty of reading it first.”
Natasha—
I kept hoping I’d run into you in the library again, but Adelaida must be keeping you too busy. Meet me there at four? I have something for you.
—Nikolai
When I lower the note, Adelaida grins.
“You failed to mention you and Nikolai ‘ran into’ each other in the library,” she says.
“Did I?”
She shoos me. “Go. It’s almost four. And for seas’ sake, brush your hair first.”
Though I make it to the library right at four, Nikolai isn’t there yet. It’s empty. I light a fire in the hearth and glance at the grand-father clock in the corner.
I drop into a velvet armchair. A lynx and crane board covers the table in front of me. I pick up one of the white crane pegs and roll it between my thumb and forefinger. When I was little, I spied on Nikolai and Cassia as they sat here, playing this game. Cassia always won.
The door opens.
Nikolai strides in, flanked by guards. His hair is windswept. Pink blotches brighten his usually pale cheeks.
I leap to my feet. “Your Royal Highness.”
“Sorry I’m late. Everything is madness after the storm.”
I wait until he sits to lower myself onto my armchair again. He glances at the board. “Do you play?” he says.
“I can play,” I say. I can play, yes, but do I want to play? No, I want you to give me whatever it is you have for me, and then I want you to propose, and then with my newfound queenly power, I’ll send a platoon of guards to figure out who Ella Neves really is.
“Oh, good,” Nikolai says. “You be the cranes.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and start slotting the crane pegs in the board.
He takes off his rings and sets them on the table, just like he did at the hot pools. What an odd habit, to be so bothered by your own rings, you have to take them off every time you want to use your hands for anything.
“So,” he says, adding his lynx to the board, “you want to be queen.”
It’s so abrupt, the way you’d say: So, you want porridge for breakfast?
I move my first crane slowly, tryi
ng to give myself time to come up with a good answer. “Doesn’t everyone?”
He moves his piece quickly, then waves a hand to erase my question from the air. “That’s not an answer.” He stares at me for a minute. “It’s your move, by the way.”
I move another crane. Swallow. “I mean, if you handed me a crown . . .”
“My council made a list for me.” He shifts his lynx one spot closer to my crane. “Of people they want me to marry.”
“Let me guess. I’m not on it.”
“No,” he says. “But I asked Gospodin to add you.”
I feel a surge of hope. “Really?” I sound too eager. Like a child.
He meets my gaze over the top of the board. “I can’t do anything unilaterally,” Nikolai says. “You get that, right?”
“So what should I do? How can I convince your councilors?”
“Make friends with Gospodin,” he says. “Convince him you’d be the best queen. Not just for me, but for the Sacred Breath. For the whole country.”
My jaw twitches. Each turn, I march my cranes forward one by one, encroaching on Nikolai’s lynx in a neat line.
He frowns down at the board. “You’re good.”
A memory tickles the back of my head. Nikolai and Cassia, playing this game as I spied from the tunnels. Cassia teasing him when she won, time after time. What if you take the first three moves? What if I played with my eyes closed? Sometimes, after she’d flounce out, undefeated, I would watch young Nikolai kick the table dully. “Cheater,” he’d say, like even he didn’t quite believe it.
We make the next few moves in silence. Nikolai slips free of my knot of cranes and manages to gobble up half of them before either of us speaks again. I watch his face as my cranes move. When he takes one of them, he smiles.
He thinks he can play better than me, but we’re playing different games.
He moves his lynx across another of my cranes. “I win.”
Girls at the Edge of the World Page 21
