Lilith Saintcrow: The Hedgewitch Queen

Did he think me some featherbrained ninny? I took the keys and put them in my skirt-pocket. Alarums now could only mean one thing — the conspiracy the Minister Primus had spoken of was now loose, and the Princesse was at risk even as the King was.

Lisele. I must protect her. I nodded.

Footsteps, shouting voices, and steel clashing now resounded through the deserted hall. I gasped, for d’Arcenne’s hands tensed even more. I would be bruised both on knees and shoulders, come morning.

“Take care, Duchesse.” His expression was very strange as he gazed down at me. “Take exceeding care. Promise me you will.”

I was now beyond words. I nodded, my cheeks flaming. Even at that moment I did not think a conspiracy could matter. It was serious, of course — the conspirators would be locked in the Bastillion, then beheaded, their bodies buried turned away from the West and the home of the Blessed.

But a conspiracy could never truly affect the Court or the King, could it? The King was eternal. He was Arquitaine itself, the seal of the gods in flesh and blood, no matter that the Blessed left us largely to our own devices here on the imperfect earth.

“You.” The word caught me by surprise; I found what I wished to say. “Take care yourself, d’Arcenne. My thanks.” I managed to sound calm, and lifted my chin so I could gaze directly at him.

He swore again, and did another passing-strange thing. He shook me so hard my head spun, then leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead. The touch sent a scorching flush through my every limb, my dress suddenly rasping-tight against me.

He released me, turned, and ran lightly the way we had so recently come. I knew where he went — he was called to the King’s side.

As I was called to Lisele’s.

I stood there, dazed, for a few moments, hearing the clamor of alarum bells and shouting. Those moments I later cursed myself for, though I sorely needed them to quiet my racing heart and laboring lungs.

When I could think again, I shook myself and ran along the corridor. My skirts dragged, weighing me down.

I found the third door on the left — twas a narrow aperture with a slim wooden panel, hardly qualifying as a door —and slipped through it, finding myself indeed in the deserted Blue Hall, still hung with the traditional cour bleu tapestries; someone would have to take them down before the Fête of Sunreturn. The Blue Hall is little used in spring and summer, being stifling, but in winter it was where the Princesse’s retinue gathered on long evenings to read aloud, or perform plays and songs. Now it was hot with late-afternoon spring sunshine, and I sweated even more as I ran, keeping to one side so I could duck into a window- couvre if anyone happened along.

I reached the hall that housed the Princesse’s suite not long after, with a stitch gripping my side and bringing me tears.

There I had my first horrible intimation of utter doom.

The Guards on duty all afternon— Chivalieri di Tatancourt and di Belletron — both lay slain at the door to the Princesse’s afternoon chamber. I gasped and clamped my hand over my mouth. Blood washed the floor where they had fallen — di Tatancourt, who had a splendid waxed blond mustache and who was courting Lady Arioste di Wintrefelle, had a horrible gaping grimace under his chin. A slit throat. Di Belletron was gashed and terribly torn; I supposed he had put up a stouter resistance.

Hot sourness rose under my breastbone. It was a lucky thing I had taken no chai, for the slice of bread and jam was demanding to be released from the confines of my stomach. I resisted, and heard myself give a dry barking sob instead.

Lisele. She will be terribly frightened. Where is she? “Lisele?”

I had to gather up my skirts to go over the fallen Guards. The door — a door I had passed through hundreds of times, I hardly noticed anymore its carved bunches of grapes and the royal crest worked in gold and blue — was hacked apart as if by axes, and spattered with dark fluids I dared not think on too closely. I ducked through, my garden-boots slipping in blood, and I am not too proud to say that just inside the door the long-resistant slice of bread escaped me at last. I vomited, having enough presence of mind to pull my skirts back so I did not foul them more.

There was Lady Arioste, sprawled in a corner, graceless in death as she never was in life. And beside her a stout headless body I recognized from her pink and gold as Baroness di Vonstadt. Dama Elaina di Cherefall and D’mselle Courceline di Maritine lay tangled together by the gilt fireplace grate — they must have been clutching each other as they died. D’mselle Robertine, Dama Pirial, Baroness Iliana di Chantrour et Val, the Marquise di Valancourt, and the Comtesse di Cournburiene—

I lost count. I looked for one face, and did not find it.

I followed the trail of destruction. Not one of the Princesse’s attendants remained alive.

Except me.

The door to Lisele’s inner receiving-room was hacked open as well, and the Comtesse Rochburre lay across it, fearfully wounded and with her eagle eyes closed. I stepped over her, miserably determined to find Lisele. Please , I begged, not knowing which god I pleaded with, since I was fashionably irreligious like most of the Court. We laughed at the pious, but never too loudly. After all, Arquitaine bore the mark of the Blessed, just as other countries had their own gods…

I found my Princesse, my Lisele, lying across a half-couch of watered-blue silk we had been wont to sit giggling upon in our girlhoods, and later. Her harp lay cast aside, its strings cut. Had she tried to defend herself with it?

I cast myself to my knees, bruising them anew, and shook her. “Lisele— Lisele !” She was covered in blood, and there was an awful wound to her breast, dewing the pretty pale-green silk. She had been dressed without me.

I sobbed, repeating her name, and when her dark eyes opened and she drew in a terrible tortured breath I actually recoiled. Those eyes fastened on me, and I heard a horrible sucking sound. A punctured lung. I had read enough treatises to know, though I had never treated more than a fever or pneumonia, or a wound on a scullery maid’s hand.

Treatises? Of course. A healing charm, anything to stem the flow of blood.

“Vianne,” Lisele said, in a choked whisper.

“A healing charm. Oh, Lisele.” Cease, you ninny. Find a healing charm in that warehouse of oddities you call a brain.

I did. It was the same simple bit of hedgewitchery I had used on Jirisa’s hand, meant for binding a small wound and staving off infection, but I repeated it quickly, flattening my hand against the bloody hole. I repeated it again, heat draining through my palm — hedgewitchery draws its power from the witch when it cannot draw from a bit of free earth. A tree, the open sky, or even a clod of dirt, none of which were to hand.

I repeated it a third time, my vision blurring with exhaustion, before Lisele’s fingers came up and gripped my wrist with surprising strength. “No…Stop, Vianne…too late.”

“I can heal you, I can .” Remember a charm, Vianne. A stronger one. A better one. Think!

“Do not be a silly goose.” She looked so weary . A smear of blood marred her pretty cheek, and her dark hair lay tangled over blue watered silk. She must have been waiting for me to braid it. Guilt twisted my heart. Was she dying while Tristan d’Arcenne kissed my forehead? “Listen to me, Vianne…carefully. I…command it.”

So rarely did my Princesse command anything from me, I swallowed my tears. “Lisele…” I ceased to speak. The spell still worked through my palm, its power coming from my already weary body. Her grasp curled around my wrist, cold and waxen.