The innkeeper and his wife snorted in laughter, but the two younger men only reached for more food, evidently unconcerned with keeping company in the talk of treason.
Cass drew his hand from Miri’s. “I’m afraid my lady and I should retire for the evening. Good company is rare, but we’ve a long journey ahead of us on the morrow.”
Ginger smiled up at him. “We’ll be off tomorrow as well. Fancy that. Perhaps we’ll see you on the road. Heading north?”
Cass took Miri’s elbow as she stood, ostensibly distracted by the task. “Yes, Ironwood, should the grace of the maiden allow it.”
The stocky man gestured with his mug. “Ironwood is where we head as well, lad. Let us ride together!” Ale sloshed over the rim of his mug and splattered onto the empty platter before him.
Ginger waved him down. “Look at them, Hugh. They don’t have need for the likes of us impeding on their newly wedded bliss.”
“There you are with ‘the likes of us’ again. What exactly are you getting at, woman?”
Cass tightened his grip on Miri’s elbow, and she managed to look embarrassed—or at least she hoped the mortification she felt at the idea of travel mates came across as such. She could not be sure she’d pulled it off, because Hugh and Ginger had taken to bantering over the likes of Hugh.
Cass grabbed the satchel and the sword he’d stowed beneath the bench and said good evening before talk of traveling together could carry further. But as Miri and Cass made their way to their room, she could hear Ginger reminiscing about the days she and Hugh had been newly met and the things they’d done alone in the woods.
“Seven hells,” Cass muttered as he closed the door to their small room behind them.
Miri only nodded, because between the kingsmen, the shock of seeing Terric, and the closeness of the inn, she felt very much like she was dropping through several levels of hell. She sighed and sat heavily onto the bed to unlace her boots. It was going to be an entirely new level of hell figuring out how to escape for the morning’s murdering without those two on their heels.
Cass tossed the satchel onto the bed beside Miri and took a seat on the stool as he lit a lantern and a second candle, and she suddenly recalled that she still had work to do.
Miri rubbed a hand over her face. “I don’t suppose you’ve trained in sewing?”
Cass had not trained in sewing, but he was excellent with a knife. By midnight, they’d managed to make a workable costume that fit well beneath her cloak. Before dawn, Miri had tied her long hair into a knot at the base of her neck and covered her head with a scarf. Cass wedged her small sword against the door, and they escaped out the narrow window of their room. Miri had left her mother’s locket in the straw mattress inside that room, as much as it pained her, because she needed to be able to leave her current wardrobe behind. They traveled swiftly across the rooftop to a rickety ladder that took them to the street. Dark alleys, still damp with runoff from too much rain, led them through a maze of the city until they could blend with the slew of servants and laborers headed toward the center of the city and the castle grounds.
It felt like an endless journey, but the sky was just lighting red when the castle walls came into view. Miri drew a steadying breath then glanced at Cass. His eyes were already on her, his brow set and his mouth a determined line. She inclined her head, and he responded with a sharp nod.
Miri slipped into the crowd. She walked amid a cluster of black-garbed women whose robes were clean but faded with age. They were not the servants who worked within the castle. Those resided inside its walls. But the group would certainly serve as Miri’s way in.
Long shadows were cast across the cobblestones that led to the castle walls, and Miri slipped from among one group to another, carrying baskets and hauling goods until she reached the gates where supplies entered. She loosed the ties of her cloak and let it fall to the ground among the shadows as she hung tight to the stone wall and away from the king’s guards who watched the gate. A sudden commotion came from the opposite direction, a cart overturned and a horse’s cutting scream.
Miri darted through the gate with several other women, keeping her stride as even as she could manage against the desire to run. She did not look behind her or even raise her face. She was a servant, a maid, no one of consequence to the watching guard.
She knew she was being ridiculous. Not a single kingsman would be alert to her there. No one could reach the king from that part of the castle. A lone woman could not possibly be a threat to them. They would be watching for men of the queensguard, for loyalists, but not for a maid. Miri drew another breath.
“Simon is far from the vainest,” Miri could remember one of the ladies saying when she’d only been a child. Simon was not then a king, only a lord, yet to be etched on Miri’s list as one of seven murderous kings. Vainest or not, Simon had been, apparently, quite concerned about his virility. And that information had not come from a single source alone.
Miri’s mother had held no compunction with regard to explaining the faults of men to her daughters. Her acquaintances had relayed information quite the same. But neither was the source of the particular information that Miri planned to use. That had come from Lettie’s giggling ladies-in-waiting. Miri would not normally risk her neck over rumors spread by girls, but her time in Smithsport had proven valuable for information as well. Thom had taken note of any shipments destined for the kings, so that he might be aware of the kingsmen’s movements ahead of time to keep Miri hidden away.
She felt a pang of loss at the idea of him and the month she’d been apart from Nan and Thom both. Then she felt a strange sort of emotion when she realized Thom’s information on the deliveries had likely come through Cass. There were perks to being the harbormaster’s spy, after all.
Miri snuck through the castle corridors, her head bowed in the posture of a maid, one hand wrapped about the scratchy rope of a bucket handle, the other holding a dirty rag. She had studied each of the castles in hand-scratched maps she’d made when devising her plans, alone in her room at Nan’s, a single candle lighting her work. But actually being there was different. It was real. The hard lines she’d drawn as walls had sometimes been slightly wrong, and the short, sharp hatch work of doors faded with ink, always open, were sometimes blocked by man or construct or wrong by a few lengths. She knew the layout, though, and which direction would get her where she needed to be. No one paid her mind, just as she’d expected, and the corridors were filled with the early-morning busywork that the upkeep of the castle required.
Eventually, the sweat on her palms dried, and her racing heart gave way to a steadier beat. She found the rooms where the king’s ointments and potions were stocked.
Two guards moved through the doorway, and Miri dropped to her knees, sloshing water over the rim of the wooden bucket and onto the stone-tiled floor. They did not even glance at her, but she kept her head low, her knuckles white at the pressure with which she brushed the floor.
It was a long while before the patterns of movement through the room became apparent and longer still before she managed to pick the lock. Once inside, though, she worked quickly, and she found each vial of the black glass shipped from a sandy isle far away, the tonic Lettie’s maids had tittered so brutally on about. They had not been wrong. Thom’s notes had not been wrong. Simon was stocked with more of those vials than a man needed water.