THE ATTENDANT WAKES

Elaris's POV

The council observer stays in the room for the duration of the visit.

He sits near the writing table, taking notes on the beginning and end of every conversation as if the number of breaths between Averic's sentences could be used against us.

Averic stands near the door.

He doesn't request permission to sit.

He doesn't have to.

I understand that this is a council matter more than a personal one.

"The attendant regained consciousness late this afternoon," Averic says.

The words pull me forward.

"Is she awake now?"

"Yes."

"Can she speak?"

"Somewhat."

Averic hesitates before replying, choosing each word with deliberate care.

"She is weak. Her memory is inconsistent. The healers are keeping her under observation."

"Does she know where she is?"

"She knows she survived."

The answer hits me harder than I expect.

I turn to the observer.

He is writing.

"What does she remember?"

Averic hesitates.

"I can't discuss the investigation in detail."

Of course.

Even now the council finds ways to stand between us and the truth.

He gives me only the information he is allowed to give.

"Joint healers are attending her."

" Council healers? "

"Both."

At least there are witnesses from both sides.

Averic studies me.

He wants to say something else.

He doesn't.

Not with the observer in the room.

The quarter-hour is up.

The observer closes his tablet.

"Time."

Averic nods.

He turns to me.

For a moment we are both motionless.

I want to ask a hundred questions.

Did she name anyone?

Does she remember the room?

Did she see the drafter?

Was Virelle there?

Was the night healer present?

Instead I ask the one question that won't put him in danger of breaking the council's laws.

"Does she know what happened to her?"

"She knows someone tried to keep her from speaking."

The words are quiet.

A pain tightens in my stomach.

Averic reaches the door.

He stops.

Then turns back to face me.

"I'll come tomorrow."

The observer says nothing.

The door closes behind Averic.

I sit in silence.

The attendant is alive.

I should be grateful.

I'm not.

Because I've learned something else as well.

A living witness can be controlled just as easily as a dead one, and right now I'm not near her at all.

The night creeps slowly through the guest wing.

This wing holds none of the sounds I grew familiar with in the private wing.

No healer calling for Maevra's medicine.

No servants' chatter as they pass through the hall toward the Luna's chamber.

No Neryss's soft murmurs just outside my door.

No footsteps that I know belong to Averic.

The palace guards change shifts with military precision.

One guard leaves.

Another takes his place.

They speak in careful, measured tones.

"Do you require water?"

"No."

"Are you comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Good night."

The door shuts.

I sit near the window.

The lights of the palace are visible through the glass.

Inside that great building, the attendant struggles to piece together her memories.

Inside that great building, Maevra remains unconscious.

And inside that great building, someone who knows what happened is still free.

I press my hand against my stomach.

The child responds, moving slightly.

"I know," I whisper.

I'm not entirely sure whether I'm speaking to the child or to myself.

Perhaps both.

Sleep eludes me.

Every time I doze off I wake up, sometimes because of a noise in the hall, sometimes because the child stirs.

Once I'm certain that someone is in the room outside my door.

I sit up.

The guards are present, their shapes outlined against the narrow space between the floorboards and the door frame.

Nothing happens.

I lie back down.

I think of the attendant, bound and silent when she was found.

She was silenced after naming Virelle.

Now she is awake, but the waking isn't a cure for what was done to her.

I remember the words scrawled beside her when they found her.

The second mate's blood is the price.

I press my palm against my stomach.

If the person responsible for this truly believed my death to be a worthy goal, then everything that has happened leading up to this moment has been no accident.

The altered medicine.

The poisoned tea.

The carefully staged fall.

The herbs under my door.

The attendant.

Each move has placed me in greater danger, but it has also brought me closer to the end they want.

My removal from the inner wing may have been for my own good, but it has also removed me from the only people who could stop this.

I close my eyes.

The attendant is awake.

That is the most important thing.

She survived.

Perhaps she remembers enough to make someone stop and listen.

I try to sleep again.

Light seeps through the cracks in the shutters when Averic returns in the morning.

The same council observer accompanies him this time.

The guard outside the door steps inside and shuts it behind him.

Averic remains standing.

"She remembers more," he says.

I wait.

" Not everything."

"What does she remember?"

"She remembers being given the calming draft."

My fingers clench around the blanket.

"Was she willing to take it?"

"No."

The answer is immediate.

"She remembers resisting."

I study him.

"How?"

"She remembers being told it was necessary."

"Who told her?"

"She doesn't know yet."

Averic pauses, glancing at the observer before he continues.

"She remembers the taste. The room. Someone standing beside the bed."

"Was it the person who gave her the draft?"

"She isn't certain."

The uncertainty is maddening, but then I remember that the woman was barely conscious when she was taken.

Her memories of that night aren't likely to be clear.

"What else?"

Averic watches me closely.

"She remembers hearing footsteps after the draft took effect."

"Whose?"

"She couldn't identify them."

The observer writes everything down.

I realize that Averic is giving me only the information he knows I will be able to repeat in the council chamber.

He isn't hiding the truth from me.

He is protecting what little truth the attendant has managed to uncover.

Averic's expression changes.

"There was one question she asked when she woke up."

I wait.

He looks toward the observer and then repeats the question the attendant apparently asked.

"She asked if the second mate was still alive."

Something tightens in my stomach.

For a moment I can't breathe.

The question says more than if she had accused me outright.

It isn't a question of where I was, or if I was gone.

It isn't a question of the council or of the healers.

The question is about whether I had survived.

"Why would she ask that first?"

Averic doesn't answer.

He doesn't need to.

I already know.

Whatever happened before she was silenced, someone had made her think my death was an inevitability.

Perhaps they made it a certainty.

Perhaps they ordered it.

The walls seem to close in around me.

The observer continues taking notes.

I glance at Averic, considering.

"Did she say why she thought I would be dead?"

"She doesn't remember."

"Yet."

He nods.

"Yet."

The single word is enough to fill my chest with something close to hope.

Her memories aren't returning in full, but they are coming back.

And whatever she remembers could be enough to tie everyone involved into one chain, instead of leaving us grasping at separate pieces of the whole.

Averic leaves me alone after that.

I sit for a long time, staring at the wall across from me.

The attendant is alive.

But the question she asked stays with me.

Is the second mate still alive?

I think of the night she was found, of the way someone had been trying to erase her voice, and I realize how that single fact changes everything.

If she is awake, if she can identify the people involved, than every one of those people has reason to fear for her life.

I turn toward the door.

The council guards are still there.

They are meant to protect me.

Who protects the witness?

Who protects the healer?

Who watches the people who serve her?

Who examines the people who examine her?

The thought twists in my stomach, turning it into something like ice.

The network around Virelle has been disrupted, but the damage it caused didn't disappear with my removal.

It only spread out, taking root in new places.

I lay my hands over the child.

"I am still alive," I whisper.

The words sound more like a threat than anything else.

By midday a council notice arrives.

A guard places it on the table and waits while I sign to indicate that I have received it.

I read it carefully.

Both women must appear before the council the following morning.

The reasons given are Maevra's continuing medical crisis, the implications of the recent testimony, and the final preparations for the blood-moon examinations.

My escort will be provided by the council.

Averic may attend.

He will not have control over the proceedings.

I read that last part twice.

The council is making the distinction clear.

Averic may stand beside me, but he cannot stand between me and them.

I fold the notice and hand it back to the guard.

"Will Maevra be there?"

"No information has been provided."

The reply is almost as disappointing as if she had been confirmed present.

If she is still unconscious, her absence will only be used as another piece of evidence.

If she recovers, the council may demand another statement.

If she continues to decline, Virelle gains another advantage.

It seems that everything will come to a head in the morning of the blood moon.

The council hearing.

The testimony.

The two pregnancies.

One palace full of people waiting for someone to survive.

I am allowed a short walk that afternoon, escorted by four guards.

I almost laugh at the extravagance of it.

A walk down the hallways of the palace requires an escort of soldiers.

I keep my pace steady as we travel the length of the guest wing, past doors and rooms I have never seen, past servants who move aside when they realize I am passing.

At the far end of the hall I see two familiar banners strung across the front of a staircase.

I remember standing here with Maevra, laughing despite the weakness in her body.

She had said the palace looks different when you stopped being afraid of it.

I wonder what she would say now.

The guard indicates that we should turn back.

I do so, and as we pass through the wing I realize something.

The palace didn't change when I was moved.

It changed because everyone else was watching me move.

That shift is significant, but Averic's evening visit is shorter than ever.

The council observer is even more attentive this time, interrupting Averic as soon as he begins to explain the condition of the attendant.

"She is remembering in fragments," Averic says.

"What kind of fragments?"

"The council will receive the formal account if the attendant is deemed fit to give one."

"You requested it?"

"Yes."

"Did they agree?"

"Not yet."

The answer is more meaningful than the words themselves.

Averic is requesting an appearance before the council in order to prevent the council from altering the account given by the attendant.

He looks tired, but he still manages to keep his voice steady.

"She knows the night healer may be involved," he says.

The observer's hand pauses over the page.

Averic corrects himself.

"She has remembered the healer's presence."

I understand what he is doing.

He is separating suspicion from statement, ensuring that whatever the council decides to do with the attendant's testimony, they will have to consider the possibility that the night healer may be responsible for her injuries.

The council observer signals that the visit is over.

Averic looks at me.

"Tomorrow matters."

"I know."

He leaves.

The door closes behind him.

I sit in silence, but I am not thinking about the solitude.

I am thinking about the attendant and the possibility that she might finally be able to speak.

The palace is quiet as I sit on the edge of the bed, watching the moon through the cracks in the shutters.

Tomorrow's council appearance won't just decide anything else that needs deciding.

The council will test me, see if I am as broken as they want me to be.

They will watch how I stand beside Averic, how many times he looks at me, if he speaks for me at all, if I refuse to let him.

They will watch Virelle just as closely, if the attendant's testimony becomes part of the proceedings.

Every word the attendant remembers will be examined, twisted until someone finds a reason to believe she isn't telling the whole truth.

My child moves inside me.

I press my hand against the tightness in my stomach.

"You are not a shield," I whisper.

The child responds, shifting again.

"You shouldn't have to be."

But the truth is, the child and the pregnancy and my body holding it all together is the one thing the council cannot take from me.

They can move me wherever they want.

They can decide who watches me and who speaks to me.

They can end conversations I don't want to have.

They cannot remove me from this.

I close my eyes.

For the first time I understand why Virelle has always wanted to make me feel alone.

She isn't interested in proving that I'm unfit to stand beside the second mate.

She only wants to ensure that no one stands beside me at all when the moment comes.

A sound in the hall startles me.

The guards move away from the door.

It opens.

Not with the usual announcement.

A different council guard steps inside.

He doesn't announce himself, only studies me for a moment before he moves to the table and places a sealed note beside me.

The door closes again.

I stare at the envelope.

The seal is unfamiliar, though it certainly isn't the council crest.

It isn't Sennik's mark either.

It belongs to Averic.

My hands shake slightly as I break the seal.

There are only two lines of writing inside the note.

I read them once.

Then again.

"She named the night healer.

They are already moving to silence her again."