The Oracle Queen (Three Dark Crowns #0.1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,24
had never moved so slowly. He could not stop thinking of what was happening at the Volroy. Of Elsabet and how he might be of help to her. “Blast,” he said, and stood. “I cannot just wait.”
He threw open his door and went down the steps, hurrying up the alley toward the square. Bess might frown when she saw him, but Elsabet would not be angry. And besides, if it was as Bess said, Elsabet needed all the friends around her that could be summoned.
When he turned the corner into the square, he stopped short. A crowd was gathering across the street. People, standing around and staring at something on the ground. His heart thumped as he walked closer and elbowed his way through. Then he saw the edge of her brown cloak.
Bess lay on the stone street, facedown, her arms at her sides. The arrow that had killed her stuck straight out of the back of her head, pinioning her cloak hood to her skull.
“Bess!” He fell to her side and turned her over. Her face was broken and bleeding from striking the stones when she fell. Her pretty eyes stared at the sky, and as he held her, blood soaked through her red-gold hair and into the hood. He drew the cloak hood back slightly and moaned. Whoever had done it had been a fine shot.
“Poor girl,” the woman muttered. “Such a lovely thing. Who would think to do it on such a morning?” She looked at Jonathan sadly as he wept. “Was she with you, young man?”
“Elsabet,” Jonathan croaked. Then he set Bess gently down. He got to his feet and ran for the Volroy, wiping her blood onto his tunic.
“Wonderful,” Sonia said sarcastically to Francesca as they watched the Denton boy fuss over the dead maid. “We’ve killed the wrong commoner.”
“You killed the wrong commoner,” Francesca corrected.
“What was she doing, leaving his apartment at this hour?” Sonia asked, and Francesca wanted to slap her. That did not matter. The girl was dead. The queen’s dear friend. And someone would have to pay. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” Francesca whispered angrily, “we use it.”
Stepping out of the morning shadows, she drew her hood down nearly completely over her face. She walked lightly and quickly, moving through the back of the crowd, slipping between people in that way that was natural to all poisoners, that way that made it easy for them to sink a poisoned dagger into a thigh or drop a poison-coated berry into a drink. But that morning, it was poison of a different sort that needed to be spread.
“Oh,” she murmured in a gentle voice. “That is one of the queen’s girls. One of the queen’s maids! And she was coming from the queen’s lover’s apartment!”
That was all it took. The people latched on to it and filled in the rest. “The queen is often jealous,” someone said. “How foolish of the boy,” said someone else. “But who could blame him? Look how lovely this girl was. Lovely as our queen is not. That’s why she’s so jealous in the first place. Poor queen. Poor girl.”
“Poor queen? This is murder! Murder over a lover’s tryst!”
Francesca smiled. When she returned to Sonia she nearly laughed as the two of them walked out of the square unnoticed.
“How did you know to do that?” Sonia asked.
“You know what they say. An Arron is ready for anything. Now let us go. Our plans have changed.”
THE VOLROY
Elsabet ordered Bess’s body brought to the Volroy. She ordered healers and priestesses to look upon it, to provide her with what answers they could. But there was only so much that could be told about an arrow to the back of the head.
“Get away from her, then,” Elsabet said, and draped herself over her friend. Her cheeks were red and wet with tears. She kissed Bess’s cold hands. “What good am I?” she asked, wiping her eyes. “What good is an oracle queen who cannot see enough to protect those she loves?”
Rosamund, Jonathan, and Gilbert stood by helplessly. They too were full of sorrow. Even Rosamund had wept when she heard the news. Wept and raged when she saw the arrow struck through Bess’s pretty head. Now they were alone in the throne room, the healers dismissed, the priestesses’ prayers said. No other members of the Black Council were brave enough to show their faces with Bess’s body stretched out across the council table.
“How could this happen?” Elsabet stalked back and forth,