Chapter Twenty-Four

The next morning, I found a map.

It sat in the dew-coated grasses outside the door to my tent, a brittle parchment tied with a blue ribbon. I picked it off the ground and unrolled it, the paper thick and soft, the coastline painted with faded greens and muted blues, the sea speckled gray like a fulmar egg with marked points, not stones, but pen and ink—Cobble Cove, North Beach, the farthest point of Saeby…

Erik sat around the campfire, a cup of tea by his hip, his gaze tipped to the pearly sunrise. His fingers tugged at the two beads braided on the cord around his neck almost as if he was nervous.

I dropped the map into his lap.

His eyes flicked up.

“It’s a better route,” I explained. “One that will help us lose whoever is following us.”

And one that would take us through Esbern.

Esbern was a tiny town that teetered on the edge of the metallic sea. Houses lined the streets, steep A-frames and stone siding painted in shades of thistle, beet, and blue. A few seabirds wheeled and chirped, their bodies slicked with sea mist. Whaling ships drove in and out of the harbor, sails snapping.

Erik had sent most his men west, hoping to throw off whoever was following us, and opting to take a tighter group for the rest of the scouting trip. Bengt and his friends were in the decoy group, so was Tyr.

“We’ll stay one night in the city,” I said, hitching my dress to jump over a puddle. Rainwater pooled between the speckled beach stones and ran, shimmering, through gardens of rhubarb and wild thyme. “Leave in the morning.”

After getting the Volds settled, I needed to find the post office and pick up the minister’s letter, but I didn’t have any information to send to him, and this would be my only chance before we returned to the castle.

So, I had until the end of the day to get the key off Signey’s neck and look in the box.

No pressure.

A few whalers sat on a low retaining wall, puffing pipes and feeding cats scraps of salty fish. A woman carried a stack of hatboxes through the street. Laundresses. Fisherman. Merchants. A dozen others dressed in thick wool sweaters and knitted caps.

Erik had only kept five of us—himself, Kaspar, Bo, Signey, and me—but even with the smaller number, we were drawing stares.

“This is fine,” I said, grabbing the handle of the inn and pushing myself inside.

A soft bell tinkled.

Paintings decorated the walls—an austere woman, a pair of sheep, a red-gold sunset in a driftwood frame. A book lay overturned on a chair with a curly goatskin throw, and a cup of cold tea sat on a narrow side table, the porcelain stained a dark shade of brown.

The Volds shifted behind me, out of place in their rough canvas and thick cottons.

“Hello?” I called.

A woman brushed around the corner, slight and swanlike, a mountain of linens in her arms. Her blonde hair fell in ringlets down her back. “Sorry about that,” she said, easing the linens stack onto the ground behind the desk. “Now what can—” She blinked once, blinked again. A smile cracked across her face. “Isy Moller, is that you?”

Now it was my turn to blink. Delicate, slender, a dapple of freckles across her nose. Her orchid-purple sweater brought out the pink in her cheeks, a color that usually came from standing on windy bluffs and running through grassy meadows, but it sat so naturally on her. It had always sat so naturally on her.

Helene.

Helene who’d worked in laundry with Katrina, who’d dangled boys off her arm like bracelets, who’d traded kisses like secrets. Helene who’d quit her job six months ago and went home to care for her sick grandmother.

Home to Esbern. Home to here.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, pulling me into a hug, the gesture so warm, so alien because we weren’t friends. We’d never been friends.

I squirmed away.

“You’re here for rooms?”

Erik nodded.

“We’re pretty full right now.” She squinted at the Volds as if trying to place them. “The Merchant’s Market is this weekend. They’re setting up on the docks.”

“The Merchant’s Market?” Erik asked.

“Shopkeepers come from all over the Sanokes to buy inventory for the year.” She withdrew a brown notebook and ran a slender finger down the ledger. “We have…two rooms. You can stay here if you’re okay sharing.”

Sharing. Which meant—

“We’re not sharing,” Signey hissed. She must have had the same thought. We were the only two girls. If we had to share—

Her thumb circled the hilt of her knife.

I will carve out your heart and leave your body to rot.

“We might check another inn,” I said.

Helene closed the ledger book. “Wayfarer’s full. Driftwood might have space, but they look over a fish market. It has a smell.”

Signey’s thumb fell from the knife. “I don’t mind a smell. Everything has a bit of a smell.”

Erik reached for his coin pouch. “We’ll stay here. All of us.” The way he said it, maybe he’d decided to stay here because Signey didn’t want to.

Kaspar grinned. “It’s one night, Sig.”

She ground her teeth. “Signey.”

Our room was narrow and small, containing only a medium-sized bed, a tarnished looking glass and a tufted chair angled toward the window. A yellow stain bloomed over the ceiling.

Signey set her bag on the bed. “I assume you’ll be sleeping on the floor?” When I didn’t respond, she gave me a hard look. “Let’s ignore each other.”

“Fine with me.”

“But I get the bed.”

I slung my pack onto the ground by the armchair and tried not to stare at the little snip of leather cording popping out from under Signey’s collar. I could use s?ven to knock her out, but she’d remember when she woke up. There wasn’t really a subtle way to s?ven someone. So, that plan was out. I could see if she’d take another bath…

Signey’s lip curled into a sneer. “What are you looking at?”

My heart leapt into my throat. “Nothing. I’ll, um, check if Helene has an extra sleeping mat.” I pulled the door open and was grabbed by a flurry of orchid-purple and blonde curls.

“What are you—”

“Shh.”

Helene’s hand clamped over my mouth. She dragged me down the hall and into a bedroom at the top of the stairs.

The door clicked. Dim sunlight filtered through mauve curtains, illuminating a four-poster bed and rosy pink wallpaper painted with strawberries and duck eggs.

This must be Helene’s room.

No. The sweet stink of sickness, the open jars by the bed, the old woman laying in a tangle of blankets, feathered lips ajar, chest rising and falling, rising and falling. Helene’s grandmother looked so much like Queen Margarethe with her crop of white hair and the lacy nightgown that went all the way to her neck.

Dying. Helene’s grandmother was dying.

“Have you been giving her dandelion root?” I asked. “White willow?”

Helene stepped in front of the woman. Her eyes burned fever bright. “Who are they?”

“The Volds?”

“They’re Vo—” She grabbed my arm and glanced at her sleeping grandmother. “They can’t be Volds. I mean, I’d heard rumors, but I didn’t think—” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Volgaard has been closed for hundreds of years.”

“I know.”

“They cut out our ambassador’s heart.”

“I know.”

“Sent it back stuffed in his mouth.”

“I know.”

She glanced over her shoulder again as if Erik and the others might come through the door. “What are they doing here?”

My heart skipped a beat. Helene and I had never been close, but Hans was dead, and Katrina and I were fighting, and Stefan was Stefan, a brother and a rival. So, I sank onto the corner of her dying grandmother’s bed and told her everything. Hans’s murder, Larland’s letters, the search for the weapon.

I’d meant to keep it short, keep it sweet, to keep it muted like spring’s pastel colors, but once I started, the words spilled the same way water rushes from a broken damn.

I reached for the washcloth and the basin, the water frigid against my hands, and damped sweat away from her sleeping grandmother’s brow. This felt natural too, the rhythm of it strong and familiar, like a lifeline or a heartbeat.

Helene listened as I told her about the magic, the illusions, and Signey’s small, black box.

When I finished, she wiped her palms on her skirts. “So let me get this straight. You took the Volds through Esbern, hoping you’d have some sort of information to send the minister. This is your one shot to send something, but you don’t know what’s in the mystery box and you don’t have any other clues about the weapon. Do you know what they’re scouting for?”

“Three locations,” I said. “All coastal. But I don’t know beyond that.”

She took the rag and scrubbed her grandma’s skin like a washboard. “So, you need information,” she continued. “We should figure out why the Volds are scouting those particular locations. You also need to figure out what’s in this box.”

“Correct.”

“You don’t know how you’re going to do any of this.”

“Also correct.”

She straightened, her eyes brightening. “Well, Isy Moller, you’re in luck. I have a plan.”