Part 15 (1/2)

”Stop that,” I say. ”You're meant to be servants. You're used to this.” I turn to Malcolm, now slumped against the cold brick wall. His hand is no longer over his mouth, but he's bent over at the waist, staring at the ground. He looks as if he's going to vomit, but I don't think it's because of the smell of fish.

”That man the birds attacked,” I say to him. ”Was that who I think it was?”

”Uncle's chaplain,” he confirms. ”He's known him since he was a child. I don't know what he could have done to deserve that.”

”He got in the way,” I say, because that's all it ever comes down to with Blackwell. Malcolm nods, silent; he's beginning to know it, too.

”We're being circled.” Schuyler's watching the blur of black wings wheel above us, those hexed red eyes searching the shadows below. ”Where to next?”

I motion them down the alley, to a green painted door at the end. On the other side of it is the flesh larder. It's where meat goes to be cured, and it's always, always empty. For good reason: It smells like a slaughterhouse in here.

In the center of the room is a large grate set into the floor, where the blood drips from the butchered parts of at least fifty carca.s.ses hanging from hooks in the ceiling. I lean down and unfasten it from its sticky moors. The smell that greets me from below is worse than the one that surrounds me.

”I knew you had a plan.” Keagan turns up her freckled nose, an expression that reminds me of Fifer. ”But I didn't think it would turn out to be so foul.”

”Not as foul as getting your eyes plucked out by crows,” I tell her. ”Now get inside.”

She reluctantly lowers herself down, Malcolm and Schuyler following behind, Schuyler spitting out obscenities at the smell. I'm unwittingly reminded of John then, of the way he would swear often and with glee, making me laugh. I wonder if he's still in Hexham, or if they let him out after our escape. I wonder if he is still free with his words, or if he tempers them for her. I wonder if he wonders about me; if he ever thinks of me, in hatred or at all.

”Sparrow.” Keagan peers up at me through the opening, breaking into my thoughts. ”Let's go.”

I fold myself through the grate. Inside, it's rancid. Sticky puddles of blood stagnate beneath our feet; c.o.c.kroaches scurry up the walls, maggots writhe in the dirt. The tiny s.p.a.ce branches off into a network of tunnels, and I lead them down one after another-the four of us crawling on our hands and knees, filthy and damp-as we wind beneath the palace.

It is foul down here; Keagan is right. I've only ever been down here once, the night I crept from my room to the docks where I hailed a wherry to take me to the stews, to a ramshackle room in a narrow, timbered building set high above the river. There was a wisewoman there; I heard the kitchen maids talk about her. A woman who could speak to the dead, who could make a boy love a girl, who could bring a baby to a woman, who could keep one away.

She was the one who gave me the pennyroyal and silphium, told me how to stew them for three days under the darkness of a new moon, to mask the pungent smell with peppermint. The one who looked at me as I left and said, ”These herbs, they'll keep you out of trouble. But they won't keep trouble away.”

A wise woman indeed.

Soon enough light begins to squeeze through the darkness, a halo around damp edges. Voices and the sound of footsteps filter down to us: the roasted smell of meat, the sweet scent of pie, and the yeasty warmth of fresh bread as we pa.s.s beneath the main palace kitchen, just where we're meant to be.

We set our bags down and prepare to settle in for the night. Keagan warms our clothes with a quick blast of heat, but we don't allow her to start a fire for fear a current will waft its way upward, warming the air and alerting someone to our presence.

The evening hours stretch out before us, made longer by the cold air, the damp, and the lack of food, made worse by the scent of dinner that lingers long after the kitchen closes. I whisper the plan laid out for tomorrow, every detail and amalgamation of it, nothing left to chance: for me to step into the tiny royal pew, no bigger than a closet, overlooking the chapel with its dark-paneled walls, lush red silk curtains, and richly painted ceilings. Where Blackwell takes matins every morning, where I will wait for him to arrive. Where I will pull out the Azoth and plunge it into his chest and watch his life's blood drain from him, along with his magic, along with the hold he's got on me, on John, on Anglia.

Rest comes uneasy for all of us. Keagan lies along the ground, s.h.i.+fting and turning for hours before finally going still. Schuyler sits against the wall, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed. He's not sleeping; revenants don't need to, but it's the closest thing to it.

Beside me, Malcolm fidgets: crossing and uncrossing his arms, pulling his cloak around his shoulders, raking his hands through his hair. He's s.h.i.+vering but I don't know if it's from nerves or cold. His distress puts me further on edge than I already am, and finally I can't take it any longer.

”What was it you were whispering?” I say. ”Earlier, when we pa.s.sed down the promenade. It sounded familiar. What was it?”

At the sound of my voice Malcolm jerks his head toward me and, as I'd hoped, stops moving.

”It's the Prayer on the Eve of Battle,” he says. ”Do you know it? To know you is to live, to serve you is to reign, be our protection in battle against evil...”

He recites the words and at once, that cadence I recognized before becomes a pledge I wish I hadn't. Frances Culpepper, another of Blackwell's witch hunters, the only other female recruit and my only other friend besides Caleb, used to recite it before our tests. She said it brought her luck; she said it kept her alive. It was the last thing I ever heard her say: Frances didn't make it through our final test.

”I know it.”

”I used to recite it before meetings,” Malcolm continues. ”With the privy council, with parliament, diplomats, councillors, chancellors, pensioners, pet.i.tioners, paris.h.i.+oners...”

”So, everyone then.”

He laughs a little. Malcolm's always been free with his laughter, but his voice cracks on it this time, making him sound boyish and vulnerable, as if all his other laughs were just an imitation. Or maybe this one is the imitation.

”It gave me courage, I suppose, and I needed all the courage I could get,” he says. ”Those men, Bess. Elizabeth. They were awful, I can't tell you. Each meeting felt like a battle, it felt like they were after my blood. Who knew? Turns out they actually were.”

I don't say anything to this. Because it's true, because I don't know how he didn't see it before. Blackwell was expert at deceiving Malcolm, yes. But by then Malcolm was already expert at deceiving himself.

”How will it go tomorrow?” Malcolm cups his hands around his mouth, blows into them, rubs his palms together. ”Your plan. Do you think it will work? Or...” He breathes into his cupped hands again.

”It will work,” I say. ”Blackwell will die tomorrow, even if it kills me.”

By my side, the Azoth thrums its approval.

INSIDE THE DISTANT CLOCK COURT, a bell chimes three times.

Schuyler nudges my foot but I'm already awake. Three in the morning. Time for us to go. My stomach curls around itself, lurching and tumbling in a dance of anxiety and antic.i.p.ation and finality.

We pull on our weapons belts and fill them, the sound of metal sc.r.a.ping on stone as we pick up dagger after dagger and stow them inside. They're all but useless against Blackwell, against his men and their magic, but it's all the protection we have.

Not all. I have the Azoth, but it's meant to be used only once: on Blackwell, to finish what I started. I don't need to use it any more than that; any more than that and the curse would set in more than it already has, and I would not be able to stop.

I slide the blade into the belt under my dress. Almost like a whisper, a call, words fill my head and my heart.

You will know the curse of power, it vows. The curse of strength, of invincibility. The curse of never knowing defeat. Of flaying your enemies, of never knowing another one. As long as you both shall live.

Schuyler jerks his head in my direction, his eyes wide in alarm. Shakes it once, hard. The voice and the warmth of the Azoth wink out, leaving me cold and uncertain.

”You're sure we'll be alone?” Keagan asks me the same question she asked at least a hundred times last night.

”We won't be alone,” I remind her. ”The scullions and pages will be there, stoking fires. Emptying chamber pots. Strewing rushes. They won't be paying attention to anything but that. Dressed the way I am, I'll blend right in.”

”Are you sure they won't recognize you?” Malcolm's voice, raspy with exhaustion and fear, cuts through the abject darkness.

”At this hour, they'll all be half asleep,” I reply. ”Plus, they're children. They've never seen me before. I haven't worked scullery in years.” Not since I was nine, not since I worked my way up to cooking and serving. The senior servants, were they to see me, would recognize me. But that's not the plan. The plan is to be long gone before they arrive.

”When it's safe for you to come up, I'll tap three times. We'll sneak up the back stairs, into the pages' chamber.”

”What about the pew?” Malcolm says. ”Are you sure Uncle won't be there already? And the magic. Are you sure-”

”I'm sure,” I say. ”And I need you to be sure of it, too. We can't have any doubt, any hesitation. That will kill this plan, and us, as sure as anything. Do you understand?”

The three of them nod in mute agreement.

With a small clank, Schuyler pops the grate open. He holds out a hand and I step into it; he boosts me up and through the opening with ease and at once, I'm in the kitchen. It takes a moment for me to adjust to this: I'm in the kitchen. Where I spent my childhood, where I met Caleb. Where this story began and where, if all goes the way I've planned, it will end. The sight of it-cold stone floors, warm brick fireplace, wide expanses of smoke-blackened, white plaster walls-combined with the smell-flour and spice, fire and hearth-is enough to fill me with happiness and sorrow, longing and regret.

It all looks the same. A row of low, rounded bread ovens. Stacks of pots and kettles. Cords of wood stacked high beside the fire. Trestle tables laid with food in various stages of preparation: loaves of bread draped with linen and ready to be baked; a boar carca.s.s impaled with an iron skewer, waiting to be roasted.