Chapter 14

Adrian's POV

The black carriage turned out of the lane, and I made myself stop watching the place where it had been.

"I came by the back way for some quiet," Prince Evander said, looking at the women dusting their skirts. "Instead I've watched a thief cry thief. It's an old play." He lifted the riding crop and pointed it, without any hurry, at the maid in the green apron. "In my experience, the one who shouts loudest and points first is usually the one to look at. Search her and you'll know."

He might as well have kicked over a hive. The women who had been kneeling on the seamstress a moment ago turned on the maid as one.

"It was her, my lord! Tansy and her mother. They told us the seamstress had it!"

The girl's heart had been going hard since the Prince first spoke. Now I could hear it stumble and lose its beat altogether, and her knees went from under her.

"Mercy, my lord! It was me, I took it. It's in my room, sewn into the mattress. Please don't hang me."

Her mother dropped beside her and began knocking her forehead on the cobbles, hard enough that it left a mark. "It was me. All me. She's only a child. Take me and let her be."

"Hold them both," I told my uncle's men. "Bring the stone out of her room." I bowed to the Prince again. "Your Highness, my uncle's house has been badly run, and today it nearly cost an innocent woman her life. They'll be punished, and I'll see to it that my aunt goes herself to those two women to beg their pardon."

He gave me a small nod that might have meant anything.

If the seamstress lost her pup tonight, all Silverkeep would know by morning that the Hale house had beaten a woman with child at its gate, and the Prince would be the witness. I thought about sending a boy after the carriage to ask how she did.

I was still thinking it when the servant I'd sent for a healer came back down the lane, and behind him came the healer with his bag, and behind the healer came my aunt, and with her, my mother.

My aunt saw the maid on her knees and went straight to her and struck her across the face so hard that Tansy's head rocked.

"Thankless creature!" Then she sank into a curtsy before the Prince, pale and shaking. "Your Highness, forgive me. Punish me as you like."

He raised her with a hand under her elbow, politely and from a distance. "You were deceived like everyone else, Lady Hale. Only keep a firmer hand from now on." And he went off toward the front of the house without looking back.

"Those poor women," my aunt said. "I should go to the Green Lamp myself and beg their pardon."

"Aunt, it's your daughter's binding. You can't leave the hall now. Let me go for you and Uncle."

"He's right," my mother said gently, coming to take her sister-in-law's arm. "You stay. I'll go with Adrian. They're women; they'll talk more easily to a woman."

* * *

In the carriage my mother said, "You stay here, darling. A Lord Marshal coming at all is honor enough for them. I'll do the talking."

"It isn't so simple, Mother. The Prince never meddles in other people's households. Today he did, and sent his own man with them. That's a warning to Uncle. If that woman loses the pup, one word in the King's ear will be enough."

She went quiet, and I watched her understand how bad it could be.

Then she leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Do you know what they say about him? That he has a woman in the Lakelands, carrying his pup, and she ran off, and he's had men searching ever since. Perhaps that's why. He can't bear to see a woman in that state ill-used."

I thought it might well be true. And I thought of the seamstress on her knees on the cobbles, shaking so hard I could see it from where I stood, and still keeping her back straight while they pawed at her.

"I'll go in myself," I said. "Wait here."

The Green Lamp's keeper came hurrying out to meet me in the doorway, bowing. I saw his eyes go to my coat and then sideways, toward the back of the shop, and I saw on his face the look of a man wondering why everyone in Silverkeep had suddenly taken an interest in one country seamstress.

"The woman the Prince's man brought in," I said. "Where is she?"

* * *

Wren's POV

The keeper of the Green Lamp had taken one look at the silver crescent in Theo's hand and gone pale. Then he had looked at me, at the size of me, and his whole face had changed.

He took us himself to the quietest room at the back and sent his boy running for Master Aske, murmuring to Theo that he understood perfectly and would be discreet. I saw what he had decided I was: a prince's secret, to be hidden and well paid for.

Master Aske was old and stooped, and he had his wolf. I saw his head turn toward the yard before I heard the boy's feet out there. He washed his hands and took my wrist and held it a long time. Then he leaned over the blanket with his head tilted and his eyes shut, and stayed there a long while, listening.

"You've had a fright and a hard shaking," he said at last. "But the roots are holding. And there are two hearts in there, not one."

Two.

I had sat at a twin birth in the stillroom at Duskmere, beside Brannoch. The second child had come feet first, and the mother had bled through three sheets before he got it stopped. I had held the basin.

My hand went to my belly. Under it, both of them were moving.

"Six months," Master Aske said, straightening, "and twins. You should lie down for a month at least, and keep out of frights." He sat to write out a receipt, and said without looking up, "Your dress is rough, mistress, but your hands and your bearing aren't a farm wife's. If you've a patron who'll do this much for you, you'd be wise to let him find you somewhere safe to lie in. Two at once is no small thing."

Somewhere safe. I almost laughed. I didn't know where in the kingdom that would be.

He put three fine needles into the skin of my wrist and ankle and gave me something bitter in a cup, and slowly the fist in my belly loosened and let go. The pups settled. I could breathe to the bottom of my lungs.

"Thank you," I said. "It's much better."

Someone knocked. The keeper's voice came through the door, very respectful. "Master Aske, the Lord Marshal is here to see the lady."

My fingers caught in the blanket. Briar went white to the lips, and then she was beside me with a dry corner of her kerchief, pressing at my hairline and my temples, looking to see if the walnut had run.

Master Aske watched the two of us. "You know him?" he asked quietly.

I shook my head.

He turned to the door. "I'm in the middle of settling her, my lord. The needles are still in. She's very weak. Perhaps if you'd wait in the front shop?"

There was a pause on the other side of the door.

"No matter," Adrian said. "Take your time. I'll wait here."

He wasn't going to leave. And every moment I kept him out, the more he would want to know why.

He had seen me once, three years ago, at the moonstone, by torchlight: a thin girl in white with her hair down her back, and the messenger had come before the words were cold. Briar had been a little maid trailing behind me with my cloak. Now I was brown as a walnut, swollen at the ankles, with my belly pushed up under my breasts and my hair tied in a farm kerchief.

I patted Briar's stiff hand and nodded to Master Aske.

"Tell him he may come in."