Page 73 of The Huntsman's Heart
A sharp pain in my side is all the warning I get that the second guard was closer than I thought. On instinct I draw away from it and feel the slice of a blade through my flesh as the dagger slides out of my body. I turn.
This guard’s face is white inside his helm. He stares at me open mouthed, then down at his blade.
I approach him, weapon ready, wound already closing in my side.
He stammers. He backs away but runs into the edge of the parapet, stopping abruptly. He makes the old sign against evil over his heart, but it does nothing to stop me. Luckily for him, I have no wish to kill. I merely need him disabled so he does not raise the alarm. But then the poor man’s lips move. I lean closer to make out what he is saying. “P-princess Guinevere?”
I freeze. I had not counted on being recognized. But this poor man is simply guarding the gate. I have no cause to kill him.
I slam the hilt of my weapon into his temple and knock him out as I did to his companion. Then I climb down the ladder and make my way along the road into town, pulling the hood of my cloak over my head and hoping to remain hidden. People are already stirring in the cottages at the edge of the town. Though my outfit hides my identity, I will still be conspicuous to any onlookers from the rich fabric of my clothing and the fact that I’m traveling alone and on foot.
As the houses grow closer together, I abandon the streets and use the rooftops instead, jumping from building to building, balancing along rafters and on thatched roofs. As I approach the town square in front of the inner keep, my progress is arrested by the sight of two figures hunched beneath the doorframe of theinn. They sit incredibly still. So still I almost miss them in their brown rags. Then the larger figure lets out a horrid wailing and clutches the smaller one to her.
I drop into a crouch to take a closer look. Someone from a nearby building comes into the square to see what the commotion is, and a guard standing by the inner wall straightens.
“You could not have spared a crust of bread?” The woman wails. “For a starving child. Not even a mutton bone that you might have thrown to the dogs. And now my boy is dead.”
I’m frozen on the rooftop, my throat tight and a false heartbeat hammering in my chest, a remembered feeling from when I was alive. How has this happened? All of the extras from the palace should have been given to the poor at the end of each day. All she would have had to do was ask at the gate. Yet here she is outside the inner keep with a dead child in her arms.
Unconsciously, I reach out to the boy, trying to tell how old. The body in her arms is so small. I cannot tell if that is from malnourishment or age or both. The shape of the vessel is so tiny. The body still slightly warm; the bones seem frail.
I smother a sob with my hand at the feel of the child with my mind. I should continue. Sneak into the palace while the household is still quiet. Before the servants stir. I’ve already delayed too long. Yet this woman’s plight is unbearable.
Anger surges in me at Melantha’s greed. There’s no question in my mind that she is the cause of this. This and all the suffering in Erenvold.
The woman is still crying to anyone who will listen. People have started to gather, and the guard shifts uncomfortably in place.
A man with a cart approaches, bringing goods to the palace. The gate is open for the day. I could sneak to the secret tunnelnow while the streets are quiet, but I cannot look away from the woman with the dead child.
The bundle stirs in her arms and shock rattles through me. I didn’t call to him. I try to force my mind away, to focus on something else, but the child still moves.
The woman jumps up, dropping the child, who throws off the blankets and stumbles into the square. People are shouting, pointing. I can only stare in horror. This is my fault. On top of all that this woman has suffered.
I cannot watch any longer.
I turn my back on my people and jump from the roof into an alley full of slippery mud and trash. I try to shut out their shouts and screams, but they dog me all the way to the secret tunnel in the wall. I’ve never seen this side of the tunnel, only heard a serving maid talk about how she used to sneak out to visit her lover in the town late at night.
I scratch aside the moss and leaves on the trapdoor and drop inside before anyone can spot me.
As soon as the trapdoor is closed I’m in complete darkness, but at least I’m hidden. I should have moved sooner, while it was still curfew, while I could have relied on the cover of darkness. If I try to move through the inner keep now, I’ll be caught in no time.
I’ll have to wait down here in the dark until night falls and I can make my way to the queen’s solar to hunt for Alaric’s heart.
I shudder. That seems like an awfully long wait in the dark, alone, but there’s nothing for it. I cross my legs under me and sit, closing my eyes and trying not to think about all the small scurrying things that might be down here with me. I have traversed a forest full of monsters, but the thought of rats crawling over me makes me want to climb back out and run a mile.
Alaric
I tug against the ropes binding me until my skin is rubbed raw, healed and rubbed raw all over again, but I cannot get free. The gargoyles are solid stone, and there’s no one to hear my protests except the monsters in the woods. It makes me wonder why I’ve never seen one near the castle ruins. Come to think of it, there are always more monsters close to Blackthorn. The further you go from the settlement, the fewer you are likely to encounter.
I hate to think of Guin heading towards danger. Of course the monsters cannot kill her, but they can hurt her—make her suffer.
She should not have gone so soon and alone. She will end up passed out, consciousness spread too thin just like last time when she stretches herself too far.
She will be a sitting duck for the queen’s men to find. For my hunters. And if she’s discovered, the queen will know my treachery and call me back. My mind spirals over all the possibilities, none of them good. If I am near, then the queen can use me to hurt her, make me reveal my secrets. If I am not near, then I cannot even try to help the princess and I cannot help her untangle the web of the queen’s magic. I know she has protection spells cast over herself. She pretends to only know a few simple tricks, but I have always sensed great magic there and never found the source.
When the moon rises in the sky, gibbous and mishappen, I close my eyes and cast my mind elsewhere, searching for another solution. I’m almost jolted back into my body when I find no dead thing anywhere nearby. As I stretch further and further, the forest is barren of any host. I continue to push, searching fruitlessly. There is nothing.
That can only mean one thing.
