Dearest

  “Almost home?” asked Bernard.

  “Magic,” answered François. “It’s the only explanation.”

  “I wish she had magicked a different cologne,” said Rene.

  “She smells like dead people,” said Bernard. “Has she always smelled like that?”

  Elisa nodded. “Be glad you were swans those last days in the palace.”

  “But what does she want with us?” Christian asked again.

  “I think I know.” Elisa eased the swan off her lap and moved to the center of the cage. She lifted a hand, and the porthole opened a crack; not enough to afford an escape, but enough to send a breeze through the hold to rid it of Gana’s ghastly stench. Bernard was right—it did leave that lingering odor of rotting carcass. Finished with her bit of magic, Elisa folded her hands before her. “She’s going to kill us.”

  “If Mordant wanted us dead—” started Bernard.

  “—he would have killed us already,” finished Rene.

  “Not Mordant,” said Elisa. “Her. She needs magic. Killing people is how she increases her power.”

  “Of course,” breathed François. “That’s why she smells like a graveyard.”

  “The lost children in the palace,” remembered Tristan. Elisa’s punishment for not accepting Mordant’s proposal of marriage had been to see to the well-being of a group of orphaned children whose parents had died in the uprising—nothing so large as Friday’s army, of course, but enough that it was noticed when the children began disappearing, one by one. Tristan and his brothers did not know what had happened to the children, so they had not been able to tell King Rumbold the truth when their sister’s life was at stake.

  But Elisa could tell them now. “Yes, the children were murdered, and yes, I knew they had been murdered, but it was not I who took their lives. One by one, Gana stole them away from me, making it look like I had lost track of them. When people began asking questions and the magistrate discovered the bodies in that shallow grave . . .” The rest of the story was lost in Elisa’s sadness and guilt of the past.

  “They blamed you,” said Tristan, “but they shouldn’t have.”

  “Shouldn’t they?” she asked. “I might not have been able to speak, but was there really nothing I could have done to save at least one of them?”

  Christian stepped forward, took her into his arms, and let her cry. She gasped, hiccuped, and expelled such great, heaving sobs that Tristan was afraid she might pass out from the effort. But none of them tried to stop her—there was near a decade’s worth of tears in that release. Elisa cried for the children, their parents, the loss of their old home, the loss of their new home, the loss of control of their destiny, and who knew what else.

  Finally she regained control of herself, taming the weeping into sniffles. “She drinks the blood,” Elisa said. “Or bathes in it; I’m not sure which. But it’s definitely something to do with blood.”

  “That’s why she needs us alive,” said François.

  “We are walking, talking blood bags,” said Rene.

  “Pleasant thought,” said Bernard.

  “And our family possesses the power of the Four Winds in our veins, though Elisa may be the only one able to harness it,” Christian added. “I suspect that makes our blood particularly . . .”

  “. . . attractive,” finished François.

  “. . . delicious,” added Rene.

  “Tristan,” said François.

  “What?” asked Tristan.

  “We need to cause a distraction and find some way to set you free so you can fly back to the mainland.”

  “First of all, I’m not even sure I can fly. Glide, sure, but fly? And over such a long distance? I’d most likely end up in Troll Country.”

  “I’d rather take my chances with Gana,” said Bernard.

  “Sebastien can fly,” said Rene.

  “But would Sebastien know where he was going?” asked Christian. “And how would he pass along a message once he arrived?”

  “He’ll be human again at the full moon,” offered François.

  “We’ll be dead by the next full moon,” said Elisa.

  “Let’s keep thinking,” said Christian. “François is on the right track. Let’s not lose faith.”

  None of them contradicted their elder brother, but neither did they rally. Trouble was, they didn’t have much faith to begin with. Their dreams had gone from the beaches of Arilland to the palace ballroom and no further. Faith was a thing sewn into the patchwork skirts of a girl on another shore.

  Tristan tired of standing and curled back down onto the hard floor. Bernard and Rene took over François’s task of trying to pull the boxes to the cage to see what was in them. Finally, their fingers found purchase enough to inch one forward. After a lengthy period of prying and kicking and pounding and cursing, they managed to smash into the side of the box. The two men removed handful after handful of packing material in search of the contents . . . until they realized the packing material was the contents.

  An enormous pile of spun yarn stared at them all from the edge of the cell.

  Elisa gagged.

  But Tristan smiled. Gana’s little prank would be her downfall.

  “See if you can pry the lid off,” Tristan told the twins, “and don’t break the frame. I want to do a weaving.”

  “Are you mad?” asked Philippe.

  “In the finest sense of the word,” Tristan said proudly.

  The twins managed to remove the box’s cover and slide it through the bars of the cell. They broke out the inner plank so that only the frame remained. Tristan wiggled the boards—nothing as sturdy as a picture frame, but they would do. He tied one loop of yarn around the bottom corner of the loom and began creating a warp.

  “I can’t watch.” Elisa huddled back into her corner of the cage beside Sebastien. If she wasn’t already shaking, Tristan could tell she was about to start.

  “You don’t have to, dearest,” he said. “Rest yourself. Pay your featherbrained brother no mind.”

  The comment was meant in jest, but as soon as he said it, he realized that a feather would be the perfect tool with which to thread the weft strands through. He tried pulling out one of his own, but he couldn’t force himself to do it, nor did he have the proper angle.

  “Help me,” he asked of his brothers. Christian stepped forward.

  “Turn around.” Christian stuck his hand into the patch of feathers Tristan had indicated. Tristan turned his body away and braced himself for the pain. It was not insignificant.

  Tristan collapsed on the floor, biting back a scream that would have brought Gana back to the hold—or worse, the Infidel. When he recomposed himself, he stood and faced his brother. Christian held out one bright feather roughly the length of his forearm. It would do.

  “I tried to make it quick.”

  “And for that I thank you,” said Tristan. “Let’s hope it’s not necessary again.”

  Tristan leaned back against the bars, selected a separate yarn for his weft, and began to weave. It would be difficult, but he wanted to incorporate some sort of message into the cloth if he could. A more talented man would have sewn the words she had taught him into the border or hidden some longer, more complex message, but his skills were crude at best.

  After a while, Elisa overcame her disgust and eased over to help guide Tristan’s hand. Between the two of them they managed to incorporate something that looked more like a swan and less like a giant white blob—at least, Tristan thought so. They added green spots to represent the Green Isles, and a red ship of sorts. Elisa had her doubts. But if even a scrap of fabric got to Friday at all, she would know who had sent it, no matter what the pattern or the quality of the work.

  “You should probably work faster,” suggested Bernard.

  “He’s working as fast as he can,” said Rene.

  “I just wish I knew how much time I had,” said Tristan.

  “She’ll stay on the deck to maintain the spell on the boat,” sai
d Elisa. “Though judging by the smell, she’s close to the end of her strength.”

  “Have you thought about how you’re going to send this?” asked Christian.

  Tristan nodded as he wove the quill through the warp. “My shirt,” he told his brothers. “We can use the buckles to strap it to Sebastien.”

  Rene considered their cage. “He probably could fit through the bars.”

  “He’s not going to like it,” said Bernard.

  “Do you think he’ll be able to fly all that way?” asked François. “Or know where he’s headed?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Tristan said. “It’s the only plan I’ve got.”

  “I can help him,” said Elisa. “I can summon the wind beneath him so that his wings don’t tire as fast, and I can set him on a current that will take him as far west as he cares to go. We’ll have to trust him to find the palace on his own.”

  Christian unbuttoned Tristan’s collar and set to unfastening the buckles of his shirt. Tristan never stopped weaving. Elisa had done this for all their sakes, for three straight days.

  “If I didn’t appreciate you enough before, sister dear, then I certainly do now,” he said as he pulled another strand through the warp.

  Elisa kissed him on the cheek. “This will work. I know it will.”

  “Oh yes? How’s that?”

  “Destiny,” she said confidently. Tristan didn’t argue, mostly because he was too cold to do so. Elisa saw him shivering and called a breeze from warmer climes in through the porthole to thaw his frozen fingers.

  When the crew began to cry the sight of land, Tristan stopped weaving. Bernard and Rene sawed at the warp threads with broken boards from the crate until the weaving fell away from its frame. Christian wound it up in Tristan’s shirt and buckled the bundle tightly across Sebastien’s back. The swan did not struggle, which gave them hope that, somewhere inside that body, their eldest brother had heard the plan and intended to fulfill it.

  As expected, the swan did not enjoy being squeezed through the bars, but the twins made it happen, apologizing the whole time. Then Elisa set to blowing the porthole open as wide as she could. She managed a few more inches before it wedged against another crate and budged no farther.

  Suddenly there was a great honk, and a substantial white body came hurtling through the porthole, knocking the crate aside and throwing the window wide open.

  “Odette!” cried Elisa.

  “I bloody love that woman,” said Bernard.

  “Quickly!” cried Christian.

  Elisa stirred the air in the room, setting the two swans aloft. In a whisper, they had cleared the porthole. Tristan watched them speed into the horizon with the fate of Kassora strapped to their backs. Silently he wished them well, and prayed that Fate wished the same thing.

  15

  Wild Swan Chase

  FRIDAY DIDN’T EXACTLY run from the base of the tower to her room, but her brisk walk left her almost breathless by the time she arrived. She removed Monday’s fancy ball gown with some difficulty and shoved it into the back of the wardrobe. She put on a clean linen shirt and a patchwork skirt and ran her hands through her hair, haphazardly scattering the ribbons and fading flowers onto the floor.

  She paused by the window to frown into the sunrise. Arilland still looked the same as it had before the heirs of Kassora had arrived; there was no reason to expect it to appear any different now that Tristan had stood her up. Surely he’d had his reasons for not being there, first and foremost his family. Friday, too, might have abandoned her liaison with a new crush for the sake of her family, if it came to that. He would find her this morning; he would come to her and apologize and she would forgive him, just as she forgave everyone.

  This was the greatest disadvantage of seeing the best in people: for the most part, they inevitably disappointed you. But sometimes, rare times, faith in a person was all it took for him to achieve greatness. Those times were why Friday never stopped believing. Determined as ever, she straightened her shoulders and went to collect the children.

  As she opened the door to leave, Conrad came rushing through, almost toppling her over in his haste. “I’m sorry, milady, I can’t find him anywhere.”

  She could feel Conrad’s exhaustion, a sapping of strength that meant he had run from one end of the castle to the other, possibly more than once. This wasn’t exactly what she’d expected.

  “Gone? Surely he hasn’t just vanished. Have you asked the rest of his family?” He was a smart boy; of course he had. “What did they say?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. None of them—not Elisa nor her brothers—are anywhere on the castle grounds. I’ve searched everywhere.”

  Stunned, Friday plopped down into the chair closest to her. “Maybe they went after Philippe. Tristan told me that he’d walked out on them earlier. He was incredibly mad, and hell-bent on exacting his revenge on Mordant immediately. I could feel the hatred pouring out of him when we were on the shore, after the curse was broken.”

  “They all went after him?” asked Conrad. “Even Elisa and the swans?”

  Her squire was right. Friday closed her eyes to think, and then snapped them open again. “You don’t suppose they’ve gone home already, do you?”

  Conrad shook his head. “With no preparation? With no word to anyone? Especially you . . .” Friday put up a hand, and whatever else Conrad meant to say faded into nothing.

  “I fell asleep,” he said instead.

  “As did I,” said Friday. “It was a long night.”

  “Friday, I’m a trained messenger. I don’t just fall asleep. Especially when I’m tasked with keeping an eye on a particular subject.”

  That much was true; even Mordant’s Infidel had not managed to disappear from beneath Conrad’s watchful gaze, and Friday had asked her squire to watch over Tristan when she could not. Friday wondered how a young man acquired such training. And where. And why. “I warned you that extraordinary events surrounded my family.”

  “You did,” admitted Conrad.

  “Do you not think it reasonable that we both succumbed to exhaustion after the events of the past few days?”

  “Yes, but Friday—”

  John, Wendy, and Michael burst into the room. Wendy threw herself into Friday’s arms in greeting; Friday hugged the enthusiastic girl back tightly, wishing that some of Wendy’s innocent hopefulness would rub off on her. Friday winced at Ben the Extremely Loud’s enthusiastic barking.

  “Good morning, Friday.”

  “Good morning, John.”

  “Did you sleep all right? You don’t look well.”

  Friday attempted to distract both herself and the children by standing Wendy up and straightening her dress for her. “I imagine it will take me a bit before I’ve caught up after . . . the excitement of the past few days. Would you all help me collect the flock and get work started this morning? I would be ever so grateful.”

  Michael wasted no time. “Where’s Tristan?”

  Friday answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s gone,” Conrad said.

  “No, he’s not,” said Michael.

  Friday’s heart skipped a beat. “You’ve seen him?”

  “No, but he’s not gone. He can’t be. You would know if he was.”

  Friday cocked her head. “Why do you say that?”

  Michael shrugged. “Because he promised.”

  Friday froze. Tristan had indeed made that exact promise to the boy, right in front of her. He wasn’t the type of man to go back on his word. And if that were true, if he and his brothers hadn’t left to chase Philippe or return to the Green Isles of their own accord . . .

  . . . then something was very, very wrong. She turned to Conrad. “You and I falling asleep. You think it was magic, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “So do I.” Friday stood and made her way to the door of her chamber. “I’m sorry, my darlings. I have to go.”

  “Can I come?” aske
d Michael.

  John held his brother back. “We’ll see that all the children wake up and get started on their chores. Go.”

  Friday didn’t need much prompting. She turned on her heel and sped down the carpet to the Great Hall with Conrad close behind.

  Sunday and Rumbold were very awake and very occupied upon her arrival, settling a particularly vociferous dispute between a merchant and a landowner. The Grand Marshal ushered her into the salon and promised to get word of her arrival to their majesties with all due haste. Friday sent Conrad to fetch Monday, Peter, and Papa while she waited. And then she paced. And paced. And paced some more. After a while, she began to tidy up the room, fluffing pillows and shaking out the curtains to keep herself occupied. She was moments away from rearranging the furniture when the door opened and the Woodcutters came pouring in.

  “What is it, Friday?” Rumbold asked, eager to get to the point.

  Sunday held up a hand. “Before that, let me first thank you for rescuing us from that never-ending battle. If those two men waste any more of this country’s time, I’m ordering them both to . . . to . . .”

  “Clean the dungeon,” Conrad offered as he entered the salon, followed by the rest of the Woodcutters.

  “Perfect.” Sunday snapped her fingers. “Exactly that.”

  “Where’s your boy?” Peter asked Friday. At Papa’s stare he continued more politely, “I assumed you’d be spending the day with him.”

  “Tristan is gone. They all are.” Friday’s comment was met with the same stunned silence she’d felt all morning. “There’s something wrong. There must be.”

  Rumbold and Sunday exchanged looks.

  “He didn’t strike me as the sort of person to vanish off into the night,” said Sunday.

  Rumbold folded his arms. “Think about it, though. What would you do if you suddenly had the chance to save your kingdom from a madman and his gang? Would you wait patiently to consult with your new friends? No offense,” he said to Friday, who felt her face flush.

  “I did hear that his younger brother ran off last night in quite a huff,” said Sunday.