She didn’t need to name names. Kylian, Baron Uti, maybe even King William would be happy to have his greatest rivals in the sea trade occupied with something other than seafaring. Then he would pounce, snag Li Han’s business and the iron ships.

  They arrived at the bottom of the stairs.

  This was another part of the palace that had been relatively unaffected by the carnage upstairs, but that was also in need of repairs and freshening up. Originally, these were servant quarters. At the moment, there were not enough servants in the palace to fill up all the rooms, and this was where the extra influx of less important visitors had been put up: any of the travel companions who had no ship to sleep on, and who would not stay in their master’s rooms.

  So far, the Lurezian party was the main one that had come overland, and Lurezian was the main language spoken in the passage, by the men in the livery of King Benito who stood talking in groups and who greeted Johanna with bows when she came past.

  Like many basement corridors, including the one in her familiar old house, the basement had a low ceiling barely high enough for the tallest of men. The kitchens were here—on the other end of the hallway, as well as the servants’ bedrooms.

  The hallway was quite wide and well-appointed, with little benches along the sides, as well as some statues and ornamental vases that had probably been received as presents by King Nicholaos and Queen Cygna and had been deemed not good enough to be displayed upstairs. Johanna remembered walking through the storeroom containing all this material, dusty and soot stained but strangely untouched by the bandits who had occupied and plundered the palace. They must not have known anything about art because they had left many priceless items: paintings and vases, gold-rimmed plates and carved statues.

  Natalya knocked on a closed door at the end of the passage.

  A young woman in a maid’s dress opened and spoke to Natalya in a language that Johanna didn’t recognise. She looked at Johanna and dropped into a curtsy, then she stepped back, opening the door further.

  Johanna went inside. It was dark in the room, which was a typical servant’s room, with enough space for a bed, a chair and small table and a clothes rack.

  A nun rose from the chair, in a habit that covered her arms and went all the way to the ground. Her cap and veil were white and blue, her habit dark blue. Johanna had no idea what order that represented.

  She curtsied. “It is good to see you, Your Majesty.” She spoke with a southern accent.

  The woman’s face was unfamiliar, if perhaps a little too well-fed to be in a monastery.

  The woman went on, “Thanks so much for seeing me at this time of the day in your condition. Do take my seat, Your Majesty.”

  Johanna wanted to protest. She got a little sick of situations when people treated pregnancy as a debilitating disease. Farmers’ wives worked in the field right up to the moment their children were born. But this game of being the most polite in the room was going to go on forever, so she sat, and let the nun take place on the bed. Natalya shut the door, cutting off the view of the corridor and a couple of curious maids standing there.

  Then there was a small sound, and Johanna saw that the nun hadn’t been the only one in the room.

  At her foot of the bed stood a bassinet with an infant.

  That was . . . odd. Nuns didn’t marry, they were married to the church. Any “fallen” nun who had a child wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the order, let alone travel with a royal party of any kind dressed in a habit, while bringing her infant.

  Unless . . .

  The nun gave another little bow. “My name is Francina. You might have heard about me. I have joined the Sisterhood of Forgiveness recently.”

  “There is only one Francina I’ve heard of.” But certainly this woman couldn’t be the same person as King Benito’s latest wife?

  She nodded, her eyes glittering. “He chose me, because I was a widow and I had two children by my first husband.”

  King Benito had succession problems, Johanna remembered, and that might have been the reason for such an odd choice as a wife. But why the nunnery and why wasn’t she upstairs with her husband?

  Francina reached out for the infant in the bassinet, who was fast asleep. The prince or princess was wearing a little bonnet, which Francina pushed down. The infant’s hair was fox-red.

  Not the king’s obviously.

  Johanna felt cold. The child inside her squirmed. She looked from Natalya to Francina to Duchess Carlotta, who was frowning and didn’t appear to understand the implications.

  Johanna whispered, “Is this. . . ?”

  Natalya nodded. “The necromancer is spreading magic through all of the western lowlands by means of his children. It doesn’t matter if the woman is a princess or a farmer’s daughter, if she is married or not, if she is young or old, if she comes to his bed because she wants it, or if he has to rape her. Many infants are born that are his.”

  “Yours, too?” Francina asked, meeting Johanna’s eyes.

  Johanna looked down. “I’m not sure.”

  “Yes,” Natalya said. “I can feel it. Here.” She put her hand on her chest.

  Johanna’s cheeks burned.

  “There are others. Princess Maribelle of Burovia has little girl. There is no father. Queen Margit of Montania has little boy, the heir to the throne. He is eight years old and quite possibly the oldest of all the necromancer’s children. They are everywhere.”

  By the Triune, this was also what Loesie had been talking about, but from the perspective of the poor farmers’ daughters who, cast out and frightened by magic, ended up on her farm. “What is he trying to do?”

  Duchess Carlotta was looking on, her face pale.

  “Are any of your children the necromancer’s too?” Francina asked her.

  Duchess Carlotta gasped. “Heavens, no.” Her cheeks went red.

  “He bewitched a lot of us, so there’s no shame.”

  “Well,” the duchess huffed. “That would not be an excuse in the eyes of my husband. If I said anything of the sort to him, he’d accuse me of seducing another man and being unfaithful.”

  “Pah,” Francina said. “While being unfaithful themselves?”

  “Husbands are useless,” Natalya said. “They sleep, they get drunk, they act like they are important. They are not.”

  Francina nodded sagely. “My husband kicked me out. He allowed me to come here, because he is still hoping that the boy will turn out to be his son. He’s not. Husbands try to control our lives, but they can’t.”

  Duchess Carlotta didn’t look too sure but eventually nodded as well, her face set. She repeated, “Husbands are useless.”

  “I cannot blame my husband for anything,” Johanna added. “But his condition means that he does not help me at all. He is not interested in anything other than gardening and horses.”

  Francina asked, “Does he even . . . you know how to do it?”

  “He does. He’s not terribly interested anymore.”

  “If I were you, I would take a lover. Do you have one? Or more than one?”

  “I don’t,” Johanna said.

  “Well, that’s a pity. As long as you’re with child, there can’t be any unfortunate consequences.”

  “Oh!” Duchess Carlotta exclaimed. “Your talk is really quite scandalous, for a nun. What sort of order is the Sisterhood of Forgiveness?”

  Johanna had a feeling what was going on. “This isn’t a real order of the Belaman Church, isn’t it? I have never heard of the Sisterhood of Forgiveness.”

  “Oh, it’s a real order, but not one that the Belaman Church agrees with. The order helps the women who have been unfortunate, who have fled from their husbands, whose husbands have cast them out or have run away, leaving the wife with the children and without money. The mothers take the habit as protection, and the children live in the convent.”

  What an excellent idea.

  Francina continued, “Magic is very often the reason that the women were cast out. I started to notice a lot of children with red hair, all born of noble women. Their stories were all similar: they were seduced by a handsome red-haired stranger who did not mention anything except his name. Few know that he is the son of Baron Uti. For myself, I’m not ashamed of what I did. My parents brokered the marriage, but King Benito is a smelly old man, much more interested in horses than in people. He never gets violent when he’s drunk, but he drinks so much that he doesn’t get it up, if you get what I mean. I wasn’t like some innocent noble girl. I know what’s required to make an heir, and he can’t do it, simple as that. He’ll never have an heir. He knows that, and he wants the little boy to become his heir anyway, because otherwise the throne would go to his nephew, and King Benito hates his brother. So that’s why I’m here. He wants me to take off the habit and pretend the boy is his son. I’ll look after the boy, but I’m not going to pretend to be his wife and deal with his filthy habits anymore. But he is so afraid that something will happen to his heir that we had to come on this trip.”

  Magic. This was the thing that Natalya had been speaking about. Making up excuses to visit Saardam. That would have been Loesie’s excuse as well.

  A chill made the hair on the back of Johanna’s arms stand up. All these people were here because of the magic she had unleashed.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  JOHANNA WOKE UP, her heart thudding.

  It was dark in the room. Pale moonlight slanted in through the window, silvering the cabinet with the water jug and the bedpan.

  Johanna lay back on the pillow, waiting for her breath to calm, wondering what it was that had woken her and given her such a fright.

  She remembered leaving Francina’s room in the servants’ corridor quite late. Upstairs, it looked like the raucous drinking party had continued as if Celine’s ghost had never been there. Clearly the two young guards had been unsuccessful at putting a stop to it. She had peeked into the room, but the stench of liquor and vomit had been even stronger than before, and she had simply decided to go to bed alone.

  There had been a dream, she remembered vaguely. Something in which the gnarled tree in the market place came to life and started strangling people.

  In the dream, she’d been leaning into the wind, gazing at the tree, while people rushed past in the market place.

  Johanna was the only one who appeared to have noticed the mangled and bloody body of Johan Delacoeur in the branches.

  As the tree had dropped Johan’s lifeless body at her feet, a throbbing red light had risen over the roofs of the city, coming from the Shepherd’s house . . .

  A stab of magic had gone through her, knotting into a hard ball in her stomach, making it glow from within. It wasn’t painful exactly, but gave rise to a sensation of pressure of something that needed to get out.

  She sat on her straight-backed chair in the ballroom, and all the men were looking at her.

  Helena was in the room, yelling at her, “Push like you’ve got to shit really badly and you’ve been waiting for days to get it out.”

  Johanna wanted to say, “Not here,” but she had no voice.

  The child was coming and she was not ready for it. The meeting hadn’t finished, they hadn’t agreed on anything, and—

  Then she woke up, gasping for air.

  Her heart had calmed somewhat. She reached next to her, and found that the bed was empty. By the Triune, where was Roald? She sat up, but it was too dark to see if he had been in the room at all.

  Johanna pushed herself from the bed to use the bedpan. It took a long time these days, and the cold edge of the metal bit into her legs.

  The window stood open a crack, but she couldn’t hear any sounds that indicated that the drinking party was still going.

  Johanna found her slippers, pulled on the only dressing gown that still fit her—it was Father’s—and waddled to the corridor. Ouch, her feet were so sore these days.

  It was quiet in the hallway as well. The door to King William’s guest quarters was closed, and when she listened at the door, she could make out the sound of snoring.

  Now she was getting really worried. Where was Roald?

  A young guard called Dirk—like Father—stood in the guard station in the foyer. He bowed when Johanna approached. The light from the oil lamp showed his surprised expression.

  “The king?” he asked, his eyes wide when Johanna asked. “I wasn’t on duty. I haven’t seen anyone come this way since I started. It was all quiet, the other men said.”

  Seriously, what had those young guards been drinking? “Let’s go and check it out.”

  The garden room was deserted. The floor had been cleaned—at least the part that Johanna could see in the pool of light from Dirk’s torch—the glass removed and bottles and cups taken away.

  There was no sign of Roald.

  “When did you last see him?” Dirk asked.

  Johanna had to think about that. It had been at dinner, because even when she came in here, after the Shepherd had broken the window, Father had told her that Roald was fine but that it was probably best if she didn’t see him.

  Probably he’d been blind drunk. Probably he had felt ill. Likely he had realised that she or Father would not be impressed.

  What did Roald do when he thought she would be angry with him? He hid somewhere. In the garden usually.

  “Come with me,” she said, and crossed to the doors that opened onto the terrace.

  The Moon had moved to bathe the western side of the palace in a pale glow that was bright enough to make out paths and hedges. Johanna grabbed the rake, just to be sure, and set off for the little gate that connected the old rose garden with the private garden where Roald grew his vegetables.

  And there, something was definitely happening. A dark-clad figure was climbing out the window of her study. Now she realised what had woken her up: the breaking of glass.

  Dirk yelled, “Stop, intruder!”

  The man dropped himself out the window and ran through the garden. Dirk went after him.

  When he had vanished, Johanna realised there was a second figure in the garden, on the path between the beanstalks and the carrots. He sat on his hands and knees, coughing. No, retching.

  Johanna knew who that was. “Roald!”

  She ran to him.

  He coughed and coughed.

  “Stop it. Calm down.” He stank of stale liquor.

  “He was . . . trying to break . . . into your workroom.” He slurred his words. “I tried to . . . stop him.”

  She bent over, putting her hand on his shoulder. He felt cold and was shivering. Who had left him alone so that he could have wandered into the garden? Why had no one seen to it that he went to bed?

  He coughed, bringing up nothing more than slime. He rocked from side to side on his hands and knees.

  Dirk came back into the garden. “He was too fast.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  Johanna didn’t think it could have been Kylian. She would have felt it.

  “Take him inside.” She nodded at Roald who still sat on his hands and knees, and let out a large wet burp. By the Triune, if she could play a trick on King William, she would. This was disgusting. “Make sure that someone washes him and puts him in bed.”

  Dirk nodded.

  Johanna hoped that he wouldn’t ask Nellie, but he’d go to one of the maids instead. Nellie didn’t deserve to have to deal with this.

  Johanna needed to check her study. She lit a lamp from the firebox in the grate and walked around holding the light aloft.

  The place was a mess. Glass and other rubbish crunched underfoot. Books and papers lay strewn everywhere. The ink had fallen over, leaking onto the rug.

  Was anything missing?

  The drawers that contained money were closed, and indeed the money was still there.

  Then she lifted the lamp to the shelf where she kept Li Fai’s box.

  It had sprouted roots that covered most of the shelf.

  Johanna gasped.

  She reached out for the box. A spray of magic enveloped her hand. As she touched the wood, the roots evaporated, the box came loose from the shelf and it returned to its usual appearance.

  The wood showed her a flash of magic too bright for her to see anything else. When she opened the lid, the little tree unfurled itself as it usually did. But the leaves seemed unusually bright and it was as if they trembled.

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  JOHANNA’S HEART THUDDED like crazy. Someone had tried to attack the box.

  That box was the symbol of her developing magic. She needed it. The box connected her with Li Fai. Apart from the tree, it contained memories.

  She knew for certain: Kylian was stalking her and waiting to make his move. He was not interested in talk and civilised meetings. He would use magic. He probably wanted the box to cripple her ability to fight against him, maybe even to free Alexandre’s spirit and the Church relic’s magic from the tree. Kylian did not have wood magic, but he had brought all the magical tools that he had. He had brought Celine’s ghost and a flood of other ghosts that would frighten the citizens—who were unused to magic—so much that they would either run or hide.

  Last time, he had sent Alexandre with men and animals. Alexandre had been defeated, so this time, he had brought a magical army. Saardam had no ability to fight this invasion.

  There was no time to waste. She should see Li Fai—rumours be damned—and also Loesie, to warn them. She should ask Loesie to call whatever assistance she could muster into the city. She should find Duke Lothar. He would not want to be found, but she could use her magic to track him down. The longer she waited to do this, the more time Kylian had to set up his plans.

  But, first, she needed him to check if her box had been damaged or compromised, make sure it was still all right to use it.

  Johanna went to change into her clothes. The dressing room looked out over the east, and a faint glimmer of daylight coloured the sky over the roofs of the city.

 

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