NINE

CRADLING THE BOWL, I turned and headed for the corner Leise had indicated. Away from both the pantry and the ovens, it was the corner most favoured for sitting and chopping in the heat of summer. A wickerwork cage stood there. Inside it, slung in a cotton hammock and blinking in her banded face, was a ferret kit. At the sight of me she scrabbled to her feet, back arched and tail stiff. The movement set her hammock to swinging, but she kept her balance, eyes fixed on the bowl.

I didn’t crouch before the cage to feed her, however, because a boy was hunkered there already.

For a single, glorious moment my heart soared with hope – Sepp had survived! Then I registered the rich dark blue of the tunic, the narrower breadth of the shoulders, the absence of a thrall’s collar, and grief smothered my short-lived joy. Guilt followed quick in its wake, that I hadn’t yet thought to check on Helena’s other son. Serpent-born he may have been, but he was still kin.

The boy looked up and over his shoulder, following the ferret’s line of sight. Then, drawing his fingers out of the cage, he stood. He still wore the silver circlet in his dark curls.

My mind spun through possibilities. He hadn’t been at the service, of course; the initial slaughter would have passed him by. But since? He was obviously free to wander the palace. Had he slipped through the net? Or had his importance gone unrecognised?

‘Ren, isn’t it?’ I asked, choosing the abbreviation his mother had used when speaking of him.

‘Renatas,’ he corrected with a scowl. ‘I’ve long outgrown Mother’s doting nicknames.’

Renatas: born anew. I knew enough Ilthean to recognise the roots of his name. The boy wore a talisman around his throat, a winged serpent. Son of the swan, son of the serpent. This was the symbol Grandmother had spoken of at the Aestival dinner, and its amalgamation of the crest of my House and that of the Ilthean emperor showed Helena’s political ambitions for the boy. I know the future you hope for him, Grandmother had accused her.

‘My name’s Matilde,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he replied, measuring me up and down with an authority far beyond his age.

To escape his look I bent to unlatch the cage. The kit streaked out, scrabbling at the bowl before I could put it down.

‘Have you been well looked after?’ I asked the boy, though I kept my eyes fixed on the kit so as not to spook him.

He shrugged, squatting beside me. ‘I suppose. The soldiers were smart enough to recognise the emperor’s name, at least, and their general told me he’d make plans for my ransom,’ he said, dashing my hopes that Dieter did not yet know of Renatas’s presence. ‘It’s not exactly civilisation, though, is it? Even your bread has meat in it. And what do the cooks keep shoving at me? Milk!’ he said, with a disgusted shake of his head.

I smiled. ‘If you have your sights set on the ale, you’ll be disappointed. You won’t find anyone willing to serve ale to a boy your age, I’m afraid.’

He looked at me as if I’d sicked all over his foot. ‘I wouldn’t touch your beloved ale even if milk were the only alternative.’

His tone minded me of Cassia’s sneering views. Maybe he’d learnt disdain at his aunt’s knee. Then again, he was at an age for bravado. Slender and short as he was, from this close it was clear the boy was surely into his twelfth year, not ten as I had earlier guessed. Or perhaps his scorn was simply a shield for a heart tender with grief.

‘Renatas, you don’t need to worry,’ I said impulsively, holding his gaze. ‘I’ll look after you. I won’t let Dieter or his men hurt you, and I won’t let them use you as a hostage. I promise.’

He didn’t smile, just stared at me, mouth downturned and eyes dark beneath a gathering frown. He looked so like his mother.

‘After all,’ I said, ‘we’re family, you and I.’

Again he looked me over as if measuring me. ‘You plan to keep me safe using … what? The kitchen maids? Your fearsome ratter here?’

‘That’s right.’ I refused to be baited. ‘I’m not entirely powerless. Come on. We’ll start with the doves.’

Tucked high under the eaves of the pitched roof, the slatted walls of the loft let in slim planks of light. From the shadows, doves and pigeons murmured and rustled in their nesting boxes, with an occasional flash of feathered wing or the glint of small, dark eyes through the gloom. The air was thick with their fungal smell, and a dry, chalky odour rose from the soft wood of the floor. I took small, shallow breaths through my mouth.

Stooping to avoid a low beam, I stepped off the ladder. Renatas clambered up behind me. One breath and he set off with a coughing which made the birds startle, wings beating and scaly toes scratching at the lip of their boxes as they launched into a feathery torrent above us.

The dovegirl came running, her bare feet raising clouds of dust but nary a sound. Sigi clapped a hand over Renatas’s mouth. ‘Quiet!’ Even her voice was muted, as if she’d spent too many years caged up here, until the accumulated debris, grit and moulted feathers, and the endless powder of birds on the wing, had filled her lungs.

She glared at me. ‘There’s been disturbance enough this week already.’

Once Renatas had stopped coughing she released him. Instinctively, he sucked in a deep breath. His eyes bulged and tears streamed down his red cheeks as the clouded air tickled his throat again, but he didn’t cough.

‘Good,’ Sigi said, as the birds began, with many false starts, to resettle.

‘Which drightens do we have birds for?’ I asked her.

She gave me a distrustful look, and calculations ran quick behind her eyes. Granddaughter of the seneschal and apprentice to Oren with his network of information and contacts, Sigi was no simple dovegirl. She had a quick grasp of politics.

I hesitated, uncertain where her loyalty now lay. Still, what other choice did I have? The chatter of dovegirls wasn’t highly regarded, as a rule. Maybe I’d be lucky.

‘I need their help to drive Dieter out, Sigi.’

‘Your husband,’ she said, eyes narrowing.

‘Not by choice.’

She didn’t believe me, but it was enough to make her relent. ‘The three Houses Somner, although we’ve only the one bird for Lady Helma. House Raethn and House Saschan.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s all.’

Five drightens out of a possible eight, and three were Somners – most likely to have lent their soldiers to swell Dieter’s ranks. Had Raethn and Saschan likewise allied with the new Marsachen drighten, or could I rely on their aid? What I needed most was one of House Falkere’s birds, or a bird for House Vestenn.

Sigi gestured to a small table positioned in a fall of sunlight. ‘There’s paper and ink over there. If you leave me copies of the message, I can send them out when birds for the other drightens come back to roost.’

I sat at the table and searched for the wording I needed.

Sigi turned to Renatas. ‘I suppose you want your mother’s birds?’

I swung back in surprise. Helena must have brought birds in order to communicate with the army camped along our southern march. The army under her husband’s charge.

Sigi already had her hands in the wickerwork cage wedged in the space where the steep-pitched roof met the floor. I looked at Renatas, who answered my question before I could phrase it.

‘I want to send a message to my father so he can send an escort for me to go home,’ he said.

His simple honesty won me. ‘I know how you feel,’ I said, resisting the urge to reach out to him. The boy was fractious and distrustful, and of an age which mistook affection for coddling. ‘But what will he do when you tell him your mother’s dead at Turasi hands?’

Renatas shook his head, but I gave him no chance to answer.

‘He’ll march to the walls of the Turholm and he’ll raze it, and sow the ground with salt. I can’t afford that.’ I glanced at Sigi, crouched by the wickerwork cage, watching us. ‘An invading Ilthean army would only strengthen Dieter’s position. The drightens would ratify him in a heartbeat – there’d be no unseating him.’

Renatas’s mouth curved down in what seemed to be its customary expression. ‘Father needn’t know she’s dead.’

‘You don’t think he’d ask why you want to come home without her?’ I said, tamping down my irritation. The boy only wanted to go home – I couldn’t fault him for it. ‘I don’t mean you can never go home, Renatas. When Dieter returns, I’m going to convince him to send me to the Skythes. They’re my mother’s people. Then I can send you back home myself.’

He hesitated. ‘You’ll still have to explain Mother’s death. And the deaths of my uncles Flavian and Varis, plus my aunt Cassia.’

‘Yes.’ My heart thumped hard against my ribs. ‘But I’ll have the head of the man who killed them. It should be enough to avert any impulse to retaliate.’

Pray to the ravens it would be – but that was a problem for later.

Renatas fidgeted, looking over his shoulder at Sigi and the birds. She had given up waiting and sat cross-legged by the cage, chin in her hands, staring out at the free blue sky.

‘When?’ he demanded, turning back to me. ‘When will you go to the Skythes?’

‘I’ll talk to Dieter as soon as he’s back.’

‘When is he coming back?’

‘A couple of days,’ I said firmly, as if I had no doubts. ‘At most.’

He was silent awhile, considering. At last he said, ‘Okay. I’ll wait.’

The breath whistled out of me, taking the pain of tight lungs with it.

‘The army will come anyway,’ he added, cool and distant again. Helena’s son or not, this boy was Ilthean to the core. ‘Whether they hear from me or not, they’ll march to retrieve me.’

I swallowed my fear and turned back to composing my message to the Houses Raethn, Vestenn and Falkere. I just needed time.