Mouse sat on a bench in the courtyard, watching the Cherith birds hop about, digging in the flower beds in search of worms and courting one another in the trees. The scent of lilac and phlox was thick in the air, tickling her nose with their sweet fragrance.

  This was like to be one of the last quiet moments for the next several weeks, and Mouse knew that it would not last long. With the start of the Feast now only eight days away, the tents surrounding the castle were springing up like wildflowers, and the halls within the keep were becoming as crowded as the inside of a cataman’s barrel.

  The days leading up to the tournament were often quite tense. The kitchens were overwhelmed in preparation, the constable likewise, and the Council was certain to be in a panic over something that just as often turned out to be nothing. For as useless as they were, they certainly had a way of working themselves up into a frenzy when it was least convenient.

  Mouse had endured another night down on the rushes, huddled next to the hearth, and woken as the first fingers of dim grey light crept in through her window. That stubborn monolith of enmity, the worry stone, still claimed her bed, and until Agatha was willing to admit that she was the one who had placed it there, Mouse could do little more than shiver and pull her wool cloak tighter around herself.

  However, rising unnaturally early, as she was persuaded to do by the discomfort of her makeshift bed, was not without its advantages; in fact, Mouse had been able to steal for herself a quiet hour on the archery butt before anyone else had appeared, something which she had not dreamed of being able to do until after the conclusion of the tournament.

  As she stood there in a woolen frock, the chill of morning dew clinging to her feet, she felt with each draw of the string her muscles tense and release, such that little by little, she felt some of her frustrations begin to drain from her. She had left the pitch in a mended mood, grateful for the quiet hour she had stolen, and had met on her way out Leifr, whose only greeting was a probing glance.

  Rather than going directly back to her rooms, Mouse had then proceeded to the stables, where she paid a visit to Passavant, her favorite grey gelding, and offered him a few sugared dates and a handful of peppermint leaves from her pocket. It was then that her thoughts went to Jasper. She supposed that she assumed he would be freed now that Osgar had taken the blame for Silver Lake, but there had been no word as of yet to confirm it. Soon, Mouse told herself, soon things would somehow or other be set right.

  Mouse now sat on a bench in the courtyard beneath a Prusian silk tree, and as the delicate pink tufts shook loose in the breeze and drifted to the ground around her, she was reminded of a scene from Silver Lake: a man with golden hair sitting beneath a tree like the one she sat beneath now, plumes of pink falling onto his shoulders as he sat carving. She thought of the light dancing in his vivid blue eyes as he listened to her tell the story of the Cherith bird, and all at once, she felt the weight of his absence.

  She brushed away a tear from her eye as she thought of the letter he had written her. Where was he right now? she wondered. Certainly not sitting under a Prusian silk tree listening to some silly girl tell him a story about a knight and bird. Perhaps he was traveling north, she thought, on that stocky yellow horse with a mane as light as his own, singing to himself all the while. She felt a smile tug at her lips as she thought of the songs he used to tease her with, his thick northern accent bending the words into something unfamiliar and beautiful. How she longed to hear the sound of his voice now, to hear him call out to her across a field or sing to her those teasing verses.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined him, recalling the line of his jaw, the whiskers on his chin, the plait woven into his hair. It was something she did often, afraid that if she did not, she might forget some part of him, some piece of the splendor that was Torben. Perhaps, she thought, if she imagined him hard enough, she would open her eyes and find him there beside her, his blue eyes shimmering as Prusian silk fell into his hair and across his lap.

  But another memory came into her mind then, one that was not so welcome. It was that of the conversation she had overheard at Silver Lake, the one between the Empress and the Dietric in which the latter attempted to persuade the former to abandon the Chatti, to forsake the oath the Empire had made to them and leave them vulnerable to invasion. Mouse tried to push the thought away; she did not wish to allow it to intrude upon her peace. But the thought persisted.

  Mouse had come to the courtyard that morning in the hopes of meeting the Val. The tense exchange between the Chatti girl and the Empress the day before, the Empress with her threats and the Val with her secrecy, had urged Mouse into a state of profound unease. It was then that the conversation from Silver Lake had first resurfaced in her memory, and it had been difficult to banish since.

  If Val Hector continued to meet the Empress’s stubbornness with tenacity of her own, she may very well be risking more than she realized, and though Mouse had no intention of repeating to Val Hector what she had heard between the Empress and the Dietric, she did mean to warn the girl against further provocation.

  As the sun began to paint the sky alight, so did the sound of voices and footsteps begin to drift out into the open air, like chimes stirred in the breeze, and little by little, people began to trickle out onto the walkways and into the halls, and no longer was Mouse alone with her thoughts. Indeed, the gardener had been there with his trowel nearly as long as Mouse had, but there were now a number of people making a great deal more noise, and Mouse, with a yawn and a stretch of her arms, told herself that it was time to go, or at least time to find a quieter corner to inhabit.

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  Despite the advancing hour, Mouse thought she might wait for the Val a while longer. She knew that she like would not be wanted by the Empress any time immediately; the woman did not often rise early, and contrary to what many people believed, Mouse’s status often precluded her from morning ceremony such as dressing. That was left to the other ladies, the ones with money and titles and rich uncles. The reason Mouse usually went in the mornings at all was because one never knew the sort of temper Her Majesty would wake in, and besides that, the other ladies were often lazy and unreliable, and Mouse did not like to leave a job with no one to do it.

  However, it was just then that Mouse happened to catch sight of Ulrich passing along the eastern wing. Her eyes followed him as he went, his steps quick and purposeful, before she sprang from her seat and hastened in pursuit of him.

  She knew that he was likely busy, but she was eager to hear any news she might about Osgar. There had been a plan submitted between herself and the Captain, in that vague and clandestine way of his, to suggest to the gaoler that Osgar’s symptoms might be telling of something catching. Those were about the last words someone would want to hear in a castle packed full to the brim in a country where not five years ago the population had been ravaged by sickness. The hope was that under the persuasion of fear, Osgar would be removed from his cell and placed under the care of one of the traveling physicians, allowing him to recover away from the reach of his poisoner. With any luck, he would recover and be allowed to make new testimony, but whether such a hackneyed contrivance could succeed was difficult to say.

  Mouse walked quickly after the Captain, pushing past a group of women playing tickle willow and calling out as loud as she dared, but to no avail. She quickened her step, breaking into a run as he disappeared around a bend. However, as Mouse rounded the corner herself, she was met by an immovable force that sent her reeling backward; in her haste, she had collided directly into someone coming from the opposite direction.

  The man took her by the shoulders to steady her, and Mouse blinked in the recovery of her senses. Her eyes searched the hall for the Captain a moment before she turned her attention to the man presently holding her and found herself looking up into a familiar face.

  “Sir Conrad,” she said in surprise, too dumbfounded to utter anything apart from his name.

  The knight looked down at her, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  “Your Majesty,” he said.

  Mouse stole a sidelong glance at the knight who walked beside her. In truth, the word “surprised” did not do justice to what she had felt the moment she realized who he was. “Mortified” was more accurate, but she could hardly say as much to Sir Conrad. She had been dreading their next encounter ever since she had heard rumor of him writing in bid for her hand. But she had not accounted for the added awkwardness of having pretended to the man’s face for a fortnight that she was the Empress, dining, drinking, and conversing with him under the guise of being someone else, and she found that the compounded effect was that she now prayed for a swift death. An errant missile, a bolt of lightning, nearly anything would do, so long as its effect was quick, and preferably permanent.

  Mouse felt a blush creep into her cheeks as she stole her glance away from the knight. He wore a tunic of pale lilac-grey, a color she had seldom, if ever, seen. And though it was nothing like the bright colors that knights most often wore, she found that it rather suited him. Sir Conrad was a judicious and unpretentious man, at least to Mouse’s measure, and he had no need to draw attention to himself. However, the contrast of the pale fabric against his sun-darkened skin and sandy blond hair seemed to do just that.

  “I hope you do not me ill-mannered for coming without announcing myself,” the man said, his hands clasped behind his back as the pair strode around the outer walkway of the courtyard, “only I found myself growing rather…impatient.”

  Mouse felt the color rise further in her cheeks. She was not certain what to make of such a statement. It had not occurred to her until that very moment that the man might have come specifically for her, and she found herself now hoping against hope itself that that was not the case. She swallowed down the lump in her throat, trying to think of something to say.

  “I am glad to see you, sir,” she said at last, “announced or otherwise.”

  The knight looked down at her, a quiet intensity in his gaze that forced Mouse to look away.

  “You do not wear your lord’s colors,” she observed lightly, endeavoring to change the subject. “Can it be that you mean to ride in the joust after all?”

  Sir Conrad smiled, his eyes traversing the gardens before him.

  “I suppose it is not entirely out of the question,” he said, “even if I am a bit out of practice. But that is not the reason I have come.”

  “Oh?” Mouse said, her voice quivering nervously. Please do not say you have come for me, she prayed as her stomach twisted itself into knots.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve brought someone who’s quite eager to see you,” said the knight, “but I’m afraid he’s busy chasing peacocks and filling his pockets with lemon tarts at the moment.”

  Mouse’s brow drew itself together in confusion before softening under the realization.

  “You’ve brought Leopold?” she asked in surprise.

  The knight gave a short laugh.

  “I know that I took a great liberty in doing so, but I found I could not help myself,” he said. “The boy’s never been to the capital, and I suppose there’s a part of me that hopes I might be able to orchestrate some sort of replacement, an exchange of prisoners, so to speak.”

  “I see,” said Mouse, her stomach unraveling at the words. She heaved a quiet sigh of relief, glad to know that she alone was not the cause of the knight’s visit. “Well, I suppose it’s possible,” she nodded her head slowly. For while she did not think it likely that the Empress would change her mind on the matter, she had certainly been known to be wrong on more than one occasion. “It certainly never hurts to be optimistic.”

  A smile flickered across Sir Conrad’s lips as his eyes met Mouse’s with that same quiet intensity as before.

  “No,” he said, “I suppose it does not.”