Violie

Violie stifles a yawn as she peeks through the linen curtains drawn shut over the single window in the inn room she is sharing with Leopold, watching the late-morning light cut through the village's quiet streets.

"You should try to sleep more," Leopold says as her yawn triggers one from him as well. She glances over her shoulder to see him sitting up on the threadbare sofa he insisted on sleeping on in order to give her the narrow bed. Though, really, given the time that stretched from when the innkeeper led them to this room and when bright morning light woke them, napping is a more accurate word.

"Do you think I'd have an easier time of it than you?" she asks, stepping away from the window and into the center of the room, exhaustion weighing her limbs down.

"I suppose not," he admits, rolling his shoulders and tilting his head this way and that—trying to rid himself of the crick that surely took up residence in his neck after hours of contorting his body to fit on the sofa. "But I expect you'll hear the baron's arrival long before you see it through the window."

Violie crosses her arms over her chest and looks at him. "You're saying it the same way everyone else seems to now," she points out. "The baron. Like he's a villain in a folk song."

"Are you so sure he isn't?" Leopold replies.

No, Violie isn't sure about that at all. After what Helena, Sam, and Louis told them about the baron yesterday, she's sure the baron has inspired plenty of monsters in the imagination of those whose paths he's crossed. She remembers a tale Helena told, about the last time the baron had visited the village and how the smell of burning flesh had lingered in the air for weeks after he'd left.

"You're sure you don't know who he is?" Violie asks. "They did say he was a Temarinian who'd allied with the Bessemian army."

"I knew plenty of barons," Leopold said, shrugging. "And I can't say I have difficulty imagining any one of them turning against Temarin to save themselves. But that level of depravity? I'm not sure how any of them could be capable of it."

Violie bites her tongue, not pointing out the obvious fact screaming through her mind, but Leopold realizes it anyway, a flash of red stealing over his cheeks—embarrassment and anger.

"But then, I'm not very good at seeing threats for what they are, am I? My own mother was capable of far worse than I could ever have imagined," he says quietly. "And Sophie—she had a change of heart, but I didn't see her for who she truly was either."

"And me," Violie adds quietly.

Leopold's eyes find hers and he considers that for a moment, leaning back against the arm of the sofa. "I didn't see you at all when you were pretending to be a servant, I'll admit," he says. "But from the moment we met in the cave after the siege, I've known who you are, Vi. And I've known exactly what you're capable of."

Violie holds his gaze for a beat longer, a protest rising up in her throat—he doesn't know half of the terrible things she's done now, and he certainly had no idea of them in the cave, before he saw some of them firsthand—but then, he isn't claiming he knows what she's done. He's saying he knows who she is and what she could be, and she wonders if he might be right about that. How can he be, though, when Violie feels like she doesn't even know herself that well?

Then who am I?she wants to ask him, but she forces the question down, afraid the answer will either hurt her or disappoint her. She drops her eyes from his and clears her throat.

"Let's go over the plan again," she says instead, perching on the edge of the bed, facing him.

He turns toward her, placing his bare feet on the wooden floor and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "We know the plan, Violie. It isn't a terribly complicated one," he tells her. "The simplicity is the point."

That doesn't make her any less nervous. She's no stranger to plots and plans, but all of her plans used to involve her alone, and there was comfort in knowing that she had total control over every piece. Then she had to bring Sophronia into a plan, and from there she couldn't go back. Her plots involved Leopold and Beatriz and Daphne and all the people they were plotting with. Even then, though, she understood who she was putting trust in and knew they were capable of doing what they needed to.

This time she doesn't have that luxury. All it will take is for one person in the village to break, one person to fail, one person to betray them, and everything will be ruined.

The sound of a trumpet breaks the silence—coming from a distance, but still loud enough to make Violie and Leopold both startle.

"I told you we'd hear him before we saw him. I may not know who he is, but I've never met a nobleman who didn't insist on drawing attention to himself," Leopold says when the trumpet finishes, pushing himself to his feet with a heavy sigh. "The baron is almost here."

Heart still racing from the shock, Violie stands and goes back to the window, once again peering through the space between the curtains carefully so that no one realizes the room is occupied. If she squints and stands on tiptoe, she can only just make out a cloud of dust rising in the distance, beyond the village's wall.

"Then we'd better get ready," she tells Leopold.

Twenty minutes later, Violie is downstairs, behind the bar of the tavern and dressed in a borrowed shift and apron, both a size too big for her. Janellia, the barmaid they belong to, stands beside her, walking Violie through a hasty tour of the bar. It isn't the first time in Violie's life that she's had to pretend to be a barmaid, and she knows she can find her way around with little trouble, but she can tell by Janellia's rambling words and shaking hands that she's nervous, and Violie decides it's best to let her continue on and distract herself from the baron's imminent arrival.

"And the pistol?" Violie asks when Janellia has shown her the contents of every cabinet and drawer.

Janellia's face goes a shade paler, and she swallows before bending down to open a wooden crate beside a keg of ale, revealing a pistol nestled among loose hay.

It turned out that before Daisy and Hester were caught vandalizing the Bessemian army's armory, they managed to steal ten pistols, six shotguns, five broadswords, ten daggers, and two crates of bullets, storing them deep in a cave outside the village. When Helena, Louis, and Sam led Violie and Leopold there the night before, they were both stunned. Violie understood precisely why the soldiers in the tavern had been so proud of themselves for apprehending the two girls—they'd caused more than enough trouble.

If the plan works, she is very much looking forward to meeting Daisy and Hester.

Violie reaches for the pistol, turning it over in her hands. Her own is already holstered at her thigh, but this one she hands to Janellia. She hopes the barmaid won't need to use it, though given how much interaction they'll be having with the baron, it seemed prudent to be sure she could defend herself.

Janellia is eyeing the pistol like it's a hissing snake. She reaches out a hand, but it shakes even more now than it did before, and Violie pulls the gun back.

"I can do it," Janellia says, making a valiant effort to force confidence into her voice, but Violie shakes her head.

"No," Violie says softly. "All you have to do is wait for them to arrive and introduce me as your visiting cousin whenthey ask who I am. After that you can excuse yourself."

Janellia frowns. "Won't they be suspicious?"

Violie laughs despite the tension heavy in the air around them. "Not if you blame female issues," she says. "Men are usually too uncomfortable to be suspicious when those are brought up."

Janellia's cheeks redden, but she gives a small, fierce nod.

"Then you retreat to the kitchens and let me deal with them. Stay close to Ferris," Violie says, naming the cook she met briefly at dawn, bleary-eyed and bone-tired. "I think he may be more dangerous with his paring knife than you'd be with a pistol."

Janellia gives a brief, wan smile as Violie puts the pistol back into the crate, hoping she won't have cause to require a second pistol, but grateful to know it's there if she does. She watches Janellia busy herself with polishing glasses, feeling vaguely unmoored—the Violie of six months ago wouldn't have wasted time and energy coddling a frail-nerved barmaid. She would have rolled her eyes and snarled at Janellia to sort herself out and stop being cowardly. It strikes her suddenly that Leopold has had just as much of an impact on her as she's had on him these past weeks.

I've known who you are, Vi. And I've known exactly what you're capable of.

Leopold's words come back to her, but before she can decide how she feels about them, the sound of more than a dozen heavy boots approaches the door of the tavern and Janellia's eyes find hers across the bar.

Violie sucks in a breath and gives the girl a final encouraging smile just as the tavern door swings open and a man who can only be the baron walks in.

He's flanked by soldiers, all of them dressed in gold armor, emblazoned with the Bessemian sigil of the entwined sun, moon, and stars over their breastplates, but even though he's of utterly unremarkable height and build, Violie knows the baron by the way he walks, with an air of nobility and grace that the soldiers around him couldn't match if they practiced every day for a decade. Her eyes find the heavy gold chain that hangs from his thick neck, dangling down over his breastplate, then the small charm that hangs from the chain. That, Violie recognizes instantly, her vision floods with red and it's all she can do to remain still, behind the bar, with a pleasant smile pasted to her face, when she wants nothing more than to launch herself across the tavern and claw the chain from the man's neck, even if she has to decapitate him to do it.

A gold ring, set with a sapphire the size of a quail's egg. She watched from the crowded servants' balcony as Leopold slipped that ring onto Sophronia's finger in the palace chapel beneath the light of the Lovers' Hands. She saw it every day after, winking at her from Sophronia's left hand as she signed letters and sipped tea and folded together ingredients to bake cakes. The baron is wearing Sophronia's wedding ring like a trophy, and Violie knows he would only display it so proudly if he was the one who removed it from her cold, dead finger.

An elbow digs into Violie's ribs and she jumps, realizing Janellia has nudged her.

"Are you all right?" Janellia whispers, but Violie doesn't know how to answer that. She gives a nod anyway, not taking her eyes off the baron as his group seats themselves at the largest table in the tavern, placing himself at its head. It's only then that he reaches up to remove his helm, followed a beat later by the other soldiers, though Violie's eyes are stuck to the baron, the dread in her stomach congealing as he lowers the helm and looks her way with beady dark brown eyes and a sneering mouth and recognition hits her like an anvil to the head. The baron is Duchess Bruna's husband—Leopold's uncle, by marriage, not blood, and Violie's former employer.

She finds herself holding her breath as his eyes slide over her and to Janellia beside her, no sign of recognition in them. It isn't surprising, she reminds herself as she tries to calm her mind: the baron was rarely at court and when he was, he was drunk more often than not. He and Duchess Bruna hated each other and took no pains to hide it—he resented that she'd kept her title when she married him, and she resented that he'd lost the bulk of her dowry and allowance at the gambling table.

The baron isn't drunk now, though—his eyes are clear and sharp as he looks around the tavern, saying something to the soldier at his right.

"You don't look all right," Janellia whispers.

Violie forces herself to breathe, her mind working quickly. She doesn't think the baron recognized her, but she can't be certain of that, or that his memory won't be jogged when she takes their order and serves them ale laced with poison.

"I'm fine," she tells Janellia in a rush of air. The soldier the baron spoke to is making his way over now, and she doesn't have much time. "Get a message to the king—tell him the baron is his uncle, that he may know me. Mind your face," she adds, snapping more than she means to because the look of horror that has come over Janellia could very well give their game away. Obediently, Janellia smooths a smile over her face, and Violie hopes she's the only one who notices the tension in it.

"Jennie, who's this?" the soldier asks as he comes to stand on the other side of the bar, leaning his elbows on the waxed wood. His eyes travel over Violie, but not with suspicion, merely curiosity.

Janellia doesn't correct him about her name, instead reaching beneath the bar to start counting out flagons for the twelve soldiers and the baron. Thirteen in all.

"My cousin," she tells him as she sets the flagons on the bar top. "Violet is newly widowed and staying with me while she gets back on her feet."

In times of war, young widows aren't a rarity, and sure enough, the soldier accepts this without question. "We'll take the usual, but make it quick—the baron is in one of his moods."

One of the flagons slips from Janellia's fingers, clattering to the stone floor with a sound that echoes through the tavern, loud enough that everyone seated at the baron's table looks over. Janellia swallows, hurrying to pick it up, but when she rises again, flagon in hand, Violie puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh, cousin, you really ought to be resting in your condition," Violie says.

"What's wrong with her?" the soldier asks, eyes narrowing.

Violie summons a blush to her cheeks, lowering her voice to an embarrassed murmur. "It's her monthly courses, sir," she tells him. "She took a tincture for the pain, but it hasn't done much good, apart from making her nauseous."

The soldier's suspicion gives way to confusion, then discomfort. He clears his throat. "You—what was your name?"

"Violet," Violie tells him.

"You'll bring us our ale—and keep our flagons full for the evening. Can you manage that?"

Violie nods. "I may be new here, but I've worked at taverns before," she says. "I'll be over in a moment."

The guard glances at Janellia, then back at Violie. "Hurry," he says, the word curt and dismissive before he turns and goes back to the baron, leaning down to speak in the man's ear, likely recounting the conversation with Violie.

Unease slithers through her—what if he does recognize her? But even if he does, it changes nothing. The plan is too far along now, and she has to do her part so that Leopold and the others can do theirs. She thinks again about how fragile their plan is, how one person can ruin it all. She refuses to let that person be her.

"Go," she tells Janellia, keeping her voice a whisper. "Get word to Leopold if you can but keep yourself safe."

Janellia doesn't need to be told twice. She presses the empty flagon into Violie's arms and hurries through the door that leads to the kitchen, leaving Violie alone with the baron and his soldiers, who are now watching her with impatient eyes, but not wary ones. Not yet.

Violie busies herself with filling each flagon from the keg of ale, watching the sheer, iridescent film that covers the bottom of each flagon disappear into the amber liquid, the remaining rainbow sheen covered by a layer of fizzing white foam.

The apothecary was bleary-eyed and bewildered to find that Violie, Leopold, Helena, Louis, and Sam had let themselves into her kitchen just past midnight, but when Violie explained to her what she needed, she was eager to help, fetching vials of galling root, dried frostberries, and crypt snake venom. Violie watched the woman with interest as she mixed the ingredients together in a mortar and pestle and boiled them in a pot of water over an open flame before straining the clear liquid into a jar and passing it to Violie with instructions on how to use it.

As Violie sets each of the thirteen poisoned flagons on the tray and carries them to the table, though, she worries she didn't use enough in each flagon. If it had been up to her, she'd have taken no chances and doubled the dose, but when it had come to a vote, she'd been the lone voice in favor of killing the lot of them. Leopold had a good point in that the baron would make a better hostage than a corpse, but that was never Violie's concern. In her experience with poisons, it's much better to overdo the dose and be left with a body than underdo it and be left with thirteen armed men who are ill enough to know they've been poisoned and conscious enough to retaliate.

She concentrates on the feel of her pistol holstered to her thigh as each man takes a flagon of ale from her tray while she makes her way around the table—small comfort as it is, given the odds at play. The final flagon goes to the baron, but as he reaches for it, pale fingers curling around the brass handle, his eyes meet hers and his gaze lingers.

"Have we met before, girl?" he asks. His voice is barely recognizable now, not slurred or shouted but somehow even more dangerous.

"No, my lord," Violie says, dropping her eyes. "I only arrived yesterday to stay with my cousin."

"Hmm," he says, but he doesn't lift the flagon from her tray, and she can still feel his eyes searching her face. "And where were you before?" he asks.

Violie prepared for this question, memorizing the name of a village in the Alder Mountains where few traveled and even inventing a name and occupation for her dead husband, should anyone ask, but rather than give the name she planned, she decides to improvise. If the baron believes he's seen her before, perhaps she can sate his curiosity without raising his suspicions.

"I grew up in Kavelle, my lord," she tells him.

"In the palace?" he asks, his grip on the flagon tightening slightly.

Violie laughs. "Oh no, my lord, but my mother was a seamstress and sometimes the nobility hired her for odd jobs and she would bring me along for an extra pair of hands."

"Hmm," the baron says again, but his grip relaxes and he lifts the flagon from the tray. "Perhaps that was where I saw you," he says, shaking his head. "My late wife required a new ensemble for each hour of the day, it seemed. We'll require stew as well—your cook knows what I like."

Violie bobs a quick curtsy, relief surging through her, and she turns away and retreats.

She steps into the kitchen and relays the message about the stew to the empty space, the cook disappeared along with Janellia, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard by the baron and his soldiers. She takes a deep, steadying breath, trying to calm her racing nerves. Then she returns to the tavern's main room and finds the baron's pistol pressed to her chest.

"You," he says slowly, his voice low. "Oh, I remember you."