Page 61 of Hemlock & Silver

The captain of the guard was an amiable man with a face like an elderly bloodhound.

His duties mostly consisted of breaking up fights between visiting servants and making sure no one got too drunk.

There were fewer than a hundred people at the villa, after all.

Kidnapping was an astounding break in his day, and judging by his face, he didn’t know whether to be excited or horrified.

I had demanded that Javier go to the healer first, and he had said that you reported in to your commander first and that we’d already strained that by going to Snow.

We compromised on me yelling, “Rinald!” as we passed the stable, and he appeared a moment later and began stripping Javier’s shirt off him while he gave his report.

The bruises that had just been starting when I’d examined him were starting to turn spectacular colors now. I couldn’t believe he’d been climbing with his ribs in that state. Rinald let out an appreciative whistle, and the captain stopped mid-word and stared.

After a minute, he recovered and said, “I’m going to guess you engaged the enemy, then.”

Javier made a self-deprecating gesture at himself. “The enemy beat me bloody, sir. Three against one. But not quite as bad as they thought they did, and they threw me in with the healer here, so once they were gone, I managed to secure our escape.”

The captain’s bloodhound jowls trembled as he shook his head. “You did the right thing, man. Can you lead us back there? All… well… four of us?” I could tell by the deepening wrinkles that he didn’t think much of their odds, but presumably he had to do something .

“We’ll roust a few lads from the stables,” Rinald put in. “Can only horse eight, but that should even the odds a bit.”

This did not make the captain look much happier, but he nodded. I was suddenly glad that there wasn’t an actual camp for them to stumble across.

“I’ll be honest, sir, I don’t know,” Javier said. “I can try, but I was following them, not looking for landmarks, and I’m a city boy. But I’ll do my best.”

“If they were smart, they’d clear out as soon as they knew you escaped,” the captain said. “But maybe we’ll get lucky. Healer Anja, did you get a look at any of them?”

I shook my head. “Just heard their voices. I might know them again if I heard them, but I can’t swear to it.” If being a healer has taught me anything, it’s that memory is desperately fallible, so that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

“Right. Well, guardsman, it sounds like you performed above and beyond the call of duty. I could wish you’d gone for backup, but… well, I understand why you didn’t, all things considered.”

“I would have if I’d had more than a few seconds,” Javier promised. “There’s a reason we usually work in pairs.”

“Right.” The captain rubbed his hands over his face.

“Healer Anja, let me extend my deepest and profoundest apologies. This should never have happened. This never has happened. If I’d thought for an instant that there might be a chance of someone being snatched, I’d have written to the king himself to demand more men. ”

I felt a stab of guilt. The poor man was probably worried about what had been his retirement post. “No, no, Captain. There was nothing you could have done. I don’t doubt that they’d been biding their time since the king left.

No one had any reason to believe that matters would escalate like that.

” Which was true, more or less. Witherleaf’s safety lay in its remoteness and the fact that everyone knew everyone else and an outsider would stick out like a sore thumb.

“I’ll tell the king that to his face if he asks. ”

That did ease one of the creases in the bloodhound face. The captain nodded, tapped the table, then rose to his feet. “Rinald?”

“Nothing broken,” Rinald said, in deep disgust, “though not for lack of trying. Your man here has bones like an ox. I’m binding those ribs, though. And if we do find these miscreants, you are not to engage them, you hear?” He leveled a finger at Javier. “You’ve done quite enough of that.”

“Yes, Healer Rinald,” said Javier meekly.

“You’re never that obedient with me, ” I muttered.

“Healer Rinald doesn’t get into trouble every time I leave him alone for five minutes.”

I rolled my eyes and left them to their preparations. I didn’t envy Javier a long ride on horseback, but our story seemed to have gone off without a hitch, and I could feel nothing but intense relief.

I limped back to my room, feeling like laundry that had been dropped on the floor wet and had dried out into some fantastically wrinkled shape.

Eloise had already bespoken a bath, and she clucked over the bruises on my arm.

They were a nasty shade in the shape of fingers with a tight grip, but I was pleased, since it sold the story better.

“It’s shocking is what it is,” Eloise told me, while her hair made inroads on one of the towels. “We’ll be murdered in our beds next.”

“Saints, I hope not. I intend to spend a lot of time in my bed in the near future.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Are you all right? Truly? They didn’t… ah… take any liberties?”

Damnation, we hadn’t thought our story through that far. “Other than the sack on my head and dragging me along, no. I don’t think they were interested in that. I think they just wanted to know if I’d figured out what was wrong with Snow and, if so, to make sure I didn’t tell anyone about it.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Figured out what’s wrong with Her Highness.”

“Oh. Uh. Not exactly. I’ve got a pretty good idea, though.” I sank deeper into the water, until I was up to my chin. “If we can just get through the next few days, I think everything will be fine.”

And it was fine.

For about three days.

Javier came back from his wild goose chase stiff but in good humor.

“I think the captain was relieved we didn’t find them,” he told me.

“We decided they must have run off.” Patrols were organized, pulling in half the people at Witherleaf, but of course they didn’t see anybody.

I felt even more guilty for putting so many people to so much work, but since the alternatives were much worse, I squelched it.

Lady Sorrel actually came to see me and made a fuss, which was horribly awkward.

The shame over having suspected her of being the poisoner made me want to writhe in my chair, and I couldn’t even begin to think about her other self, all alone in the villa except for her enemies.

Another side effect of our adventure was that Rinald put Javier on extremely light duty, so Aaron shadowed my every step for three days.

I didn’t feel like I could protest, under the circumstances, so I went out and gathered herbs and tried to pump him for information about his partner.

This might have been more successful if Aaron weren’t demanding to know the identity of every insect he saw and how venomous it was likely to be.

Well, I had no one to blame but myself.

I desperately wanted to talk to Javier about what had happened—the mirror-geld and Grayling and everything else—but without the excuse of him guarding me, I didn’t have any chance.

Even when I went to check on him in the barracks, telling myself that I was a healer and healers got to do that, we weren’t alone, so all we could do was give each other meaningful looks.

“Rinald says I can get back to work soon,” Javier said. His black eye had achieved its full magnificence and was starting to fade.

I wanted to say something about how I would be glad to have him back and that it had felt strange without him, but what I blurted out was “I miss you.”

“Anja—” he said, but I was already stammering out something about needing to go check on Snow and fled.

“Javier’s fine, you know,” Aaron told me, as we walked up to the villa.

“What?”

He gave me a sidelong look. “There’s nothing wrong with him. No real reason that he hasn’t married. Hard to invite women home when you live in the palace barracks, though. And not so many women interested in what passes for married housing up there.”

Married? I temporarily lost all power of speech.

“He thinks highly of you.”

I grunted.

“Saints, you even sound like him.”

It was with some relief that we reached the villa and I saw one of Snow’s maids come running. “ There you are,” she gasped out. “Do you know where Snow is?”

The villa was in an uproar. As far as I could tell, nobody had seen Snow for at least an hour, and panic was starting to set in. Maids scurried about like mice, checking and rechecking closets and privies and all sorts of places that a twelve-year-old could possibly conceal herself.

I checked my room. To no one’s surprise, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in my workroom either, or in the pocket garden where I’d seen her eat the apple. I had a pretty good idea where she was, but with Aaron on my heels, I couldn’t follow. I joined the kitchen staff in staring down the well.

“She probably wouldn’t fit down there,” the cook said dubiously.

“Had a dead rat down there last year,” said one of the scullions.

“A girl’s a lot bigger than a rat.”

“It was a big rat…”

Aaron was called away to help search the grounds. I thought that meant that I was getting away without a guard, but to my surprise—and mild mortification—Javier came limping into the kitchen courtyard and made a beeline for me.

“Oh… ah… hello,” I mumbled.

“I am provisionally returned to duty,” he said. “As long as I don’t get into any wrestling matches with any kidnappers.”

Our eyes met, and even through my embarrassment, I could muster some humor at the situation.

“Let’s… err… check the workroom again,” I suggested. We left the kitchen staff to their discussion of the relative sizes of girl versus rodent and retreated somewhere we could talk without being heard.

“You know where she’s gone,” I murmured.

“Almost certainly. But why?”

I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know. Or how she got there. According to the maids, she was right there in her room, and she can’t have jumped through in front of them.”

Javier frowned. “Let’s check her room. It’s possible she just wanted some time to herself.”

“I hope that’s all it was.”

Snow’s room was the villa in miniature, full of people running around, looking into the closet and under the bed as if she’d somehow been invisible the previous dozen times.

“She’ll turn up,” Nurse said, a tower of calm amidst the chaos. She didn’t look terribly pleased to see either of us, but given what had happened the last time, I couldn’t blame her. “She slips out sometimes, but she wouldn’t just run off.”

“When did you last see her?” Javier asked.

“Ah—well—”

“She was using the necessary,” one of the maids spoke up, pointing to the privy door. “But she didn’t come out, and when I opened it, she wasn’t there no more.” She had an East Counties accent that thickened on every word, until by the end, there wasn’t an r to be found.

“She must have slipped out when you weren’t looking,” said Nurse sternly.

I swung open the door to the privy. Two things struck me simultaneously:

The first was that someone had hung a mirror on the back of the door, which was profoundly bizarre. Who wanted to watch themselves crap? It was tall and rather thin, and I couldn’t have fit through it, but someone as skinny as Snow… Yeah. I knew exactly where she’d gone.

The second thing that struck me was that the floor was littered with apple cores.

I bent down slowly and picked one up. The remaining fragments of skin were silvery. The flesh beneath had only just begun to brown.

A shadow blocked the light. Javier looked down at me, and his eyes looked like I felt. “How many?” he asked.

“Five,” I said.

His grunt sounded like a man taking a mortal wound. “What was she doing?”

I stood. My heart was thudding as if I’d taken a dose of adder venom. “Enough to push an adult through. She’s gone to kill the Mirror Queen.”