“Perhaps they’ll stay up playing cards or dice.” This had been a pastime of the apprentices at Docendum Castle. Ronan complained more than once about the way the other apprentices cheated.
Gwenyth surveyed my embroidery. Pitiful little flowers. “You’re fretting over nothing, the same way you’re fretting over that gown.”
“It had holes from the weight of the handle.”
“Tiny ones, I reckon.”
My needle flashed in and out of the fabric. “Even tiny holes can cause problems.”
She gathered one of the gowns I’d left draped over the trunk. “It’s fear you have, not caution. You’re searching for an excuse not to act at all.” Her words were spoken well above a whisper.
I sent her a severe look.
She smirked at me and in an even louder voice added, “One can never be certain when choosing a husband, but if you keep rejecting the men Lady Edith puts before you, you’ll die an old maid.”
Anyone who’d heard her earlier comments would think she was simply advising a reluctant charge. I rolled my eyes. “I can’t help preferring my judgment to that of others.”
She gingerly plucked a blade from the basin. The gems slid off. “Are you going to take this to supper? You might not have time to come back here afterward.”
“Why wouldn’t I have time to return to my room?” The feasting and celebrations wouldn’t start in earnest until the morrow when the wedding took place. No official activities were planned for the guests who arrived today.
Gwenyth assembled one of the daggers with practiced ease. “Because some of the court ladies are bound to invite you into their society so you can join in gossiping about the gentlemen here. You’re likely to be occupied right up until bedtime with that task.” She lowered her voice again. “And if you can’t make it back from the stables in time, the castle doors will be locked, and you’ll have to shimmy up the wall to our window. Might prove difficult in a gown.”
My first choice in this string of treason: did I risk being caught with a dagger tucked into my dress or risk being detained after supper and locked out of the castle? “I can’t imagine any of the court ladies seeking out my company.”
“You’re a newcomer. They’ll want to know your prospects and judge what sort of competition you are.”
That, I could imagine. Although I didn’t enjoy the thought of a bunch of falsely friendly women prying me for details about how much silver Lady Edith’s estate brought in each year.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
I finished with my embroidery and gave the dress to Gwenyth. We still had time to spare before dinner. Instead of strolling around the gardens as so many of the nobles were doing, I used the invisibility enchantment to explore the castle. One could only glean so much information from sketches of the place.
Most of the servants and soldiers slept on the second floor in wings of windowless rooms with only small fireplaces, if any. I’d seen worse quarters. I’d been in castles where the servants slept in damp, leaky basements.
All the king’s guests had rooms on the third floor, as did the steward, an assortment of other senior staff, and several knights. The more important guests slept closer to the main staircase in large rooms with beautifully carved beds. I imagined, with a bit of indignant pique, that the mattresses were softer than those in the more distant rooms as well. Meaning, mine.
I located the servants’ staircases, although I had to take care using them. The stairways were so narrow that I had to shadow in the wake of a servant in order not to jostle other people as they passed.
Guards were posted at the entrances to the fourth floor, even on the servants’ staircase. Silent sentinels that stood as erectly as the feathers in their helmets. Fortunately, so many servants carried things to the fourth floor, it was easy to follow after them, undetected.
A trail of servants led to Princess Marita’s chambers, the woman who would tomorrow become queen. She had a receiving room to meet with guests, a lavish bed chamber—I’d seen peasant huts smaller than her bed—and a dressing roomlarge enough for a choir. Her attendants were in a frenzy, making alterations to her wedding dress, a gown of rich blue satin trimmed in white fur. They were presenting things to her—candles, silver bowls, flowers—for her approval.
She had the blonde hair her country was known for and a ruddy complexion I’d noticed on her father’s portrait, one of many that hung in the castle’s sitting rooms. It had been the only portrait besides King Leofric’s that our guide pointed out to us.
Princess Marita had also inherited a prominent chin from her father but had a pleasant enough figure, straight teeth, and eyes the murky blue color of the sea. She stood in front of the largest looking glass I’d ever seen, draping different necklaces around her throat. She was nineteen years old, a year younger than me, and I’d expected her to be wistful and uncertain about her upcoming arranged marriage, perhaps even tearful at being sent to a foreign country to marry a stranger. She showed only agitation as she snapped out orders in her native tongue.
But then perhaps agitation was also a valid response.
I’d heard she spoke our language, but if that was true, she wasn’t using it for the benefit of the palace servants who watched her in bewilderment and waited for her lady’s maid to translate her commands.
The castle sketch had told me that one of the doorways of the king’s secret passageways was a panel in her dressing room. I saw no sign of it but supposed I would have no need of it. The wizards wouldn’t be in here, and they were my quarry.
I left the future queen to terrorize her attendants and went to explore the rest of the floor. I couldn’t enter the king’s chambers. Two guards stood without, so even invisible, I dared not open the door myself.
Two hallways flanked the king’s chambers, each with three doorways. No guards were stationed in these hallways. No one took note of me softly opening the first door. It was a libraryof sorts. A buzz of magic hummed over the doorway, the same sharp magic that had protected Mage Wolfson’s library of spell books.
I itched to go inside and see the books there, but I was here to find and assess the wizards’ chambers, not browse through their tomes and perhaps inadvertently alert the wizards that someone of magical abilities had trespassed in their wing.