Wind whistling through the palace halls, a snowstorm descended while Rina raced up the stairs in her ridiculous heels. Her feet, past pain, shot through with tingling numbness at each step.
When she reached the top, the guards were gone, and Marco’s door was open. Her uncle was lying on his bed, over the covers and fully clothed, while a massive cloaked figure, Ulbrecht, stood watch from a dark corner.
“You all right?” Rina asked, catching her breath.
“It’s just my damn nerves,” said Marco as he struggled to sit up. “Anytime anything… distressing happens, they do this.” His fingers were quivering.
“The clock tower?”
“Everyone’s already blaming Shivar, crying for war. It’s… too fast. Something feels off about all this.” He lifted a rolled paper with a broken wax seal. “Chanda, the Shivari ambassador, came to see me, but they wouldn’t let him in. He had to send a note. He says there’s something I need to know, but he can’t risk writing it down.”
“Any idea what?”
“No. If I had known he was here, I would have made the guards carry me down to meet him. The palace is on lockdown, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Did you get in to see Scaggs?”
Rina slid her gaze to Ulbrecht. Marco might be used to having him around, but he still gave her the creeps.
Thankfully, her uncle caught the hint and waved the giant away. “Would you leave us?”
Ulbrecht yawned and made for the door, giving Rina a mock curtsey as he passed. Once his footsteps faded down the corridor, she said, “I got in.”
“And?”
“Josephine wouldn’t leave me alone with Scaggs until I hit her with a spark rod.” She shuddered. “Her head was shaved, she was half-naked, and her skin looked gray. There were wounds on her neck. She was thin… too thin, wasting away.”
As Marco went pale, his shirt fluttered, his muscles twitching beneath it. “Di-did she say anything?”
“I was with her when the bomb went off.”
“And?”
“She said it was one of her blooms.”
“Was she confessing?” Marco asked, puzzled.
Rina shook her head. “No, I think she was trying to warn me. We only had a few seconds before Josephine came back. Scaggs told me something else. She finished the first shipment of bombs and hid them. Only she and Liv know where they are.”
Marco’s brow furrowed. “She told you Liv is involved?”
“No. That’s not what she meant. She’s just worried about her. And so am I.” Rina chewed her lip.
“Me as well.” He nodded. “Any hint where she is?”
“We didn’t have time.”
Marco quieted, thinking for a moment. His eyes fell to his hands, looking frustrated as they trembled. Rina thought of her mother, of how she died of the same illness…
“I can help,” she said. “Please let me.”
He didn’t look up. “All right. I can barely stand. I need to get to the Shivari Embassy tomorrow. I… we need to see Chanda.”
“I’ll carry you if I have to, Marco.”
“Good.” Touching the inside of his eye, his fingertip came away glistening with moisture. He rubbed it against his thumb. “With these weapons, it would only take one bad actor, someone on either side, to turn us all to war. It’s going to take everyone else screaming ‘no’ to stop it.”
Rina ground her teeth.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“What is it?” he asked.
“On the way back, they were calling them ‘Shivs,’ throwing rocks at them in the street… Thank Songs, the storm came when it did.”
He nodded, sighing. “Four people died in the clock tower, but I fear that’s just the beginning. If we could get Scaggs out, she might be able to stop it, help us locate them.”
“Can’t you do anything?”
He shook his head solemnly. “Kidnapping a member of the royal family—is—a capital crime. I can’t change that.”
After a moment of Rina chewing her thumbnail, a thought struck her. “What if she didn’t kidnap me?”
Marco looked up.
“What if… if it was my sixteenth birthday, and I wasn’t getting enough attention, so I paid her to do it?”
He blinked. “We all saw it.”
She nodded. “I could go to the papers and tell them... I could go in front of the council, before the cardinal and swear to the Silent Father, I was a spoiled brat playing a prank.”
“The Silent Father?” he whispered.
“To Hells with him.”
Marco, trembling as he was, gave a slight smile. “With the bombing, most people will have other things on their minds. The wizards, however, might care about one of their own being executed, and I think they’re a bit touchy about the Church doing that in particular. Drake can work with that.”
“So, shall we visit the papers after the embassy?”
“Are you sure you can still play the part…”
She ruffled her dress, the one she’d worn to the prison, the one in Church colors, red and gold with an image of the Song Mother sewn into the bodice. “It’s all I do.”
“Any idea about Liv?”
She shook her head.
“Well, we’ll have to figure that out, but it’s… a relief,” he said. “Not having to do this alone. Thank you.”
“Tomorrow then, at first light?”
“Yes. Now, I need to rest, or at least try to.”
She slipped out the door, feeling a little less useless and not very much like a child, though the plan revolved on everyone believing her to be just that.
When Rina got to the end of the hall, she remembered Liv’s dress, the one she’d worn to the party. She’d seen work like that before and was almost certain she had something from the same maker. It seemed a trifle, but if it might help, she would stay up all night going through her wardrobe trying to figure out where it had come from.
When Rina got back to Marco’s room to tell him, his door was still open. She knocked on the frame. “I don’t—”
Marco was dangling, his legs kicking, his body twitching, his neck clenched in one of Ulbrecht’s massive hands.
The giant was pouring a vial of clear liquid down Marco’s throat. He pressed his hand over her uncle’s nose, forcing him to swallow.
Foam bubbling from Marco’s lips, his eyes slid to hers. He gurgled, “Run!”
Watching the giant toss her uncle to the bed like a rag doll, Rina staggered back. She spun, kicking off her shoes, and scanned the corridor, desperate for a guard.
A whoomphing came from behind as the air lurched.
Rina’s feet slid side to side as she ran with all her might. She glanced over her shoulder, nothing. Up ahead, nothing either. If only she could reach a guard… or scream.
She opened her mouth to do just that when Ulbrecht appeared, stuttering to a stop at the next intersection.
“Ahh!—” her wail cut off with a flash of black steel, a sword flying at her head.
Wind stung her cheek as it passed, and the giant snapped his sword back, rattling its chain, whipping it through the air.
Diving down an alcove, Rina lunged for the window at its end. She worked the latch as the sound of armored boots approached, and flung the window open.
Wind howled as she jumped through. Her feet landed on the icy roof, surrounded by twirling vortices of snow. Peering over the edge, the ground simply wasn’t there, just a white blur. But in the distance, a light flickered from the king’s suite.
She was running, sliding, stumbling, toward it when the window ahead burst open, and a massive shadow stepped forth, turning to face her.
Locking her feet to stop, she went skidding sideways. She tripped, and as her head went over the edge, her vision dizzied with vertigo. In the swirling snow below, she couldn’t see any guards, didn’t know if any were there.
Rina caught herself, clambered up, and ran in the opposite direction.
A hand, cold like iron, grabbed her shoulder, and twisted her around to a brutal face, smug with satisfaction, the way a cat looks at a mouse it’s just caught.
Rina raked her nails across that face, over its eyes, down its cheeks, and they shot through with pain, as if she had just raked an iron mask.
The giant snatched her up, lifting her from the back of her dress. She was dangling, her feet kicking as, curiously, the light from the king’s suite grew closer.
Then he stopped.
“Let me go!” she screamed to the wind, and Ulbrecht nodded politely.
His sword crunched to the snow as he dropped it. In his now free hand, he held a flask, one much larger than the vial he’d used on Marco. He gripped its stopper with his teeth, pulled it open, and doused her with it.
The smell was unmistakable. Whisky, like the shot her Grandpa had given her.
He dragged her to the edge while glimpses of the stone courtyard peeked out between flurries below.
Crap, she thought, the spoiled princess acts up, gets drunk, falls off the roof, and…
Rina arched her back, reaching for the laces of her bodice with both hands. When her fingers found them, she pulled with all her might.
Her dress tore open, dropping her to the roof. She only had an instant—
She dove away, going for the outer edge, away from the courtyard with no idea what lay below.
Then Ulbrecht’s pommel hit her back and sent her over the side.
And while the giant’s silhouette faded into the storm, Rina plummeted, silently chiding herself, Great ‘Escape,’ I just helped him kill me.
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Ever had a near death experience? (feel free to share in the comments)
