After that, the goose boy threw me occasional dark looks and mutters for the rest of the morning. But when a midday meal failed to appear, he forgot entirely about my transgressions, all his ire directed toward the kitchen staff.
“Fluff for brains the lot of them,” he assured me. “Don’t they realize the guards are there to protect us all? It’s like they want to be poisoned.” His brow darkened. “Unless it’s a guilty conscience they’ve got.”
I looked at him sharply. “Do you think it’s possible? That one of them was involved with the poisoning?”
He looked over at me and reluctantly shook his head, deflating somewhat. “Who in the kitchen would have it in for that old codger?”
“Maybe someone paid them to do it?” I suggested.
But he shook his head even more emphatically at that. “Cook runs a tight ship, and she wouldn’t have anyone in there she couldn’t trust. Watches over them with an eagle eye, she does. Jobs at the palace are highly prized, you know.” He puffed out his chest proudly. “No one would risk losing their job and likely their head as well over such a thing.”
I didn’t actually think King Henry would chop off anyone’s head, even if they were found to be involved, but I didn’t mention that. I wasn’t convinced that every single member of the palace staff was above suspicion regarding a bribe, but I was more swayed by his argument that the cook knew her people well and watched them closely. With everyone talking of nothing else, they’d have to be a cool player indeed not to give themselves away.
Just as we had both despaired entirely of any meal—my stomach reminding me angrily that it had been a long time since I consumed Philip’s bread roll—the man himself appeared.
“Philip!” Colin leaped to his feet, rushing to snatch one of the food packages from his hand.
“You’re welcome,” Philip said with a humorous lilt to his voice.
He turned to me, a warm smile lighting his eyes as he held out the second pack. “And yours, Lark.”
“My stomach and I thank you most gratefully.” I took it from him. “It was starting to sound as if wild animals had taken over the forest with all the noise it was making. The geese would have been honking in fright at any moment.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad I could rescue you today, even if you didn’t need it last night.”
I looked over at Colin who appeared engrossed in his food. Philip followed my gaze.
“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked.
I nodded, jumping up. “Colin, Philip, and I are going walking.”
Colin grunted and didn’t even look up from his food. I exchanged an amused grin with Philip as we made our escape.
“I can’t believe Damon turned out to be a prince!” I exclaimed. “I’m sure King Henry must have been glad to meet him.”
“It seems so indeed,” Philip said evenly.
Thoughts of the returned prince reminded me of Philip’s task that morning. So much had happened since then I had almost forgotten the way I had run off on him.
“I’m so sorry about this morning,” I said. “Arvin was behaving strangely, and I could tell he wouldn’t come calmly into the park with us.” Not that it had required any great perception on my part considering he had told me so directly.
“Where did he want to go?” Philip asked, still in that even tone I didn’t like.
I grasped at Alyssa’s explanation. “He spotted another horse from the stables leaving the palace, and he wanted to follow.” I hurried on, hoping my news would distract him from the strangeness of my departure. “It turned out it was the princess! She had ridden out in disguise to visit her cousin at the Blue Arrow.”
Philip raised an eyebrow. “In disguise?”
“She said they thought guards would be too conspicuous. She decided a disguise would be safer.”
“So that missing squad has them worried,” he murmured quietly, as if to himself.
“The one from up north, you mean?” I asked.
He nodded.
I couldn’t blame them. It must be uncomfortable indeed to know that an enemy operated within your kingdom, unseen, unknown—but with the strength to disappear a whole squad, without leaving any sign of a skirmish. I had lived far too many uncomfortable days with that feeling, alone with Celine and Oliver in a sea of cold, enchanted people. I shivered. I could still call back the fear that had driven me up the mountain with them on their famous journey—I couldn’t bear the thought of being left alone while my people turned to ice around me.
“Lark?” Philip’s voice pulled me back from the memory. He sounded concerned. Had he spoken to me? If he had, I hadn’t heard.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just remembering something I’d rather not. I have no desire to relive my own kingdom’s dark time from four years ago.”
“This isn’t a curse,” he said quickly. “Nothing like that will happen to us here.”
I only just kept myself from retorting that I was already under another curse. I was as much bound now as I had been then. I shivered again. Although at least I had kept my mind this time.
I couldn’t tell him about Sierra, but I could still tell him the conclusions I had reached at the Blue Arrow without mentioning her.
“I think the person who killed the viscount did it because of his role as Lord Chamberlain. Now the flour shipment hasn’t arrived—that’s part of the reason for the guards in the kitchens and storerooms. All the supply lines are falling apart. I think they killed him for the same reason they did everything else—to sow confusion and upheaval and a sense of danger.”
Philip frowned off into the distance. “But why? What is their end goal?”
I deflated a little. “That I don’t have a guess for.” I bit my lip. “So what did you discover? Could you find the spot?”
He nodded. “There was no trouble with that, especially with that distinctive fig tree. The ground was trampled and several of the bushes have snapped branches and missing leaves. But I couldn’t find any trace of where they went.”
He ran an irritated hand through his hair. “There were no tracks leading away, and I paced the whole area. It’s too far from the wall for them to have gotten there without our noticing, especially given the shape they were in.”
“No convenient drops of blood, then?” I asked, disappointed. “At least one of them was bleeding.”
“Not a drop,” he said. “Unless someone came back after we left and cleaned their tracks.” He gave a frustrated growl. “I should have gone back with a torch while it was still fresh.”
I shook my head, placing my hand on his arm. “You can’t blame yourself. They were all injured. We have no reason to think one of them came back. We were all there and saw the way they were just gone.” I hesitated. “I’ve wondered if perhaps they had an…enchantment.”
Rather than scoffing, he looked down thoughtfully at where my hand rested on his arm. I quickly snatched it away.
“An enchantment is a distinct possibility. I don’t know how else they could have managed it. But neither do I know how they could have gotten their hands on the sort of godmother object that would allow them to move unseen like that.”