Mouse drew her elbow back and steadied her breath, letting the bowstring brush against her nose. She fixed her eye on the target and released, sending the arrow into flight, and it found a place near the center, though not quite where she had hoped.
The Foilunder let out a low whistle from the partition where he sat watching her, a small block of wood in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
“You need not flatter me, sir,” Mouse said over her shoulder, taking up another arrow. “I know how well I shoot, and I know how well I do not.” Though she had not been shooting for the sun painted in the very middle of the target, if her aim had been true, she would have struck one of the arms that extended outward from it, rather than the space between.
“Your modesty has no home here,” the Foilunder replied, returning momentarily to his work. “You shoot better than myself and better than most of the men I ride with.” Mouse shook her head in doubt. She did not believe this could be true, but she supposed it did not signify either way.
The northerner had been all but unrelenting in his attentions to Mouse in the days since the Foilunders’ arrival at Silver Lake, and his company had provided her not only an enjoyable diversion but a welcome distraction from the conversation she had overheard in the great hall a few nights prior.
Much to her surprise, she found that she and the Foilunder had a great deal in common. They both served under powerful leaders with whom they did not always agree. They both had a strong sense of duty that at times imposed upon their better inclinations. And they both had keen, inquisitive minds that delighted in learning about that which fell outside their ken.
Mouse found Torben’s company a refreshing change from the supercilious nobles she was accustomed to spending time with, and though they certainly had just as many differences between them as commonalities, she appreciated the way they seemed to complement one another. For while she possessed an extensive knowledge of politics and other courtly matters, the Foilunder seemed to have a more practical relationship with the world.
Mouse could read and write and recite from the great tomes. She could dance and shoot and balance a ledger. But she could not saddle her own horse, and she could not tell a Caraspin from a Han by the way each laced their boots.
This was not to say, however, that she had no practical knowledge of her own, for in fact, it was she who taught Torben the best place to keep a dagger in case it should be needed at a moment’s notice and how to defend oneself against someone twice one’s own size if taken hostage. The Foilunder’s eyes had lit up with something like admiration when she demonstrated to him just how quickly she could produce a blade and disable a man who tried to take her from behind. “The jewel of Aros,” he had said, as that what he had come to call her, “is forged with strength, and no man is her equal.”
Mouse was not only flattered by the notice paid her by of the Foilunder, but grateful for it. For once, she felt, someone had taken a genuine interest in her. She looked at him now, his fair hair gleaming in the early morning sun as he scraped his blade against the wood, carving out another piece for her tafl board, but found that she had to look away to still the flutter stirring in her chest. Somehow, though she could not quite understand it, it seemed as if the blue of his eyes became a shade deeper each day, the line of his jaw sharpening each time she looked upon him and the pale gold of his hair growing ever more becoming.
“A question, if I may,” the Foilunder said, rubbing a thumb against the wood and looking up at Mouse, a crease in his brow as he squinted against the bright morning sun. “Why do you shoot with your right?” Mouse looked at him in confusion, wondering what he could mean.
“I do not understand the question, sir,” she said, the bow hanging loosely at her side.
“You shoot with your right,” the Foilunder said, indicating the bow with the point of his knife. “Why?”
Mouse looked at the northerner in bewilderment.
“Is there some reason I should not?” she asked, thrown off by his unexpected line of inquiry.
Torben shrugged, stretching out his legs in front of him.
“In Foilund, we shoot with the hand that is stronger,” he replied. “But perhaps there is some Teppish superstition that prevents it,” he said, scratching a finger along his chin before bringing his blade once again against the block of wood. Mouse shook her head.
“I—” she began, though she could not seem to find the words to express her puzzlement. “That is, how—" The Foilunder looked back up at her, an expression of amusement now spreading across his countenance.
“Can it be,” he said slowly, his eyes twinkling in the sunlight, “that the jewel of Aros herself does not realize that she is stronger in her left hand than she is in her right?”
Mouse, for everything she was worth, did not understand. She had always shot with her right hand. She had always done everything with her right hand. How could this man with whom she was so little acquainted suddenly appear only to reveal some strange truth to her, to suggest to her that, despite the work of these past nineteen years, it was in fact her left hand that was the stronger of her two?
She began now to search her mind for evidence to support his theory and found herself thinking of all the difficulties she had experienced in seemingly simple tasks where others had proceeded with ease. She thought about the way she had struggled to draw her letters neatly, the pen awkward and cumbersome in her hand, of how uncomfortable it felt to draw the brush across the paper, of how even needlework had made her feel clumsy and incapable.
Perhaps, she considered now for the first time, she had been going about things all wrong. Perhaps in pursuit of imitating the Empress, of mimicking her movements as closely as possible, she had suppressed that which was natural to her. After all, was it not her left hand that she used to comb her own hair, to scrub herself in the bath, to open a door?
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But before Mouse could think any further on the subject, Elke suddenly appeared, hastening toward her from the castle step. The little kitchen maid, much to Mouse’s delight, had attached herself quite decidedly, and it was with a warm smile that Mouse now turned to greet her.
“Lady Maudeleine,” Elke said, bowing breathlessly, “You are wanted within. I went to find you in your rooms, but you were already gone.”
“Indeed, I rose early today,” said Mouse, “but tell me where I am wanted, and I shall go at once.”
“You are wanted in the great hall,” Elke said, fiddling with the strings of her apron as her eyes flicked to the Foilunder who Mouse could hear now approaching from behind her. “And you are to come alone.”
“Certainly,” said Mouse. “I am on my way.” And with another hurried bow, the girl ran back the way she came.
Mouse started at the sudden touch of the Foilunder’s hand upon her own and turned to find his blue eyes upon her.
“Go,” he said, his fingers pressing lightly against hers as he gently took the bow from her grasp. “I will see that it is properly undone.” She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, and bowed her gratitude to the man before hastening to where she had been called.
“When did this happen?” The Empress sat in her usual high seat at the table in the great hall. Mouse had come in through the side door near the front but stopped almost immediately upon entering. She had no wish to repeat her mistake of intruding upon a conversation not meant for her ears, bun there was no mistaking that this was where she had been told she was wanted.
The table had been laid with cold meats and boiled eggs, but no one was eating, and in fact, it was only the Empress who sat.
The men of the royal guard stood at intervals about the room, while Ulrich alone stood before the Empress, a grave expression upon his face. The room was so quiet that Mouse felt almost as though she should hold her breath.
“Some time during the course of the night, Your Majesty,” Ulrich replied to the Empress’s question.
“And why did you not tell me sooner?”
“I saw no sense in waking you, Your Majesty, for something which—”
“And I see no sense in anything that you say.” The Empress’s words cut like a knife through the silence. The weariness was plain on Ulrich’s face, and Mouse wondered what had passed to darken his countenance so. “You are the head of my guard,” the Empress continued. “And here lies a prisoner dead on your watch. Can you at least tell me how it is that he came to fall from the tower?”
Mouse felt a sudden shock run through her. She had forgotten about the prisoner. Six or seven days must have passed since their arrival at Silver Lake, and little had been said about what was to become of the man. Mouse had supposed that he would be brought back to court to stand trial, but it seemed that he had met an early fate.
“We must assume, Majesty, that the man jumped,” Ulrich said.
“Must you?” the Empress countered brusquely.
“Your Majesty,” Ulrich said in a measured voice, “there has been a guard posted within the tower and one posted without, every hour of every day since we have arrived. There is only one door through which a man may enter, and no one came or left except for one guard coming to relieve the other.”
The Empress sat in quiet contemplation for a moment, drumming her fingers against the side of her face. “You say there is only one way a man might enter the tower?” she asked at last.
“There is only one door, Majesty.”
“Only one door,” the Empress repeated. “But we are in agreement that a window that would allow for a man to fall from it would also allow for a man to enter through it.”
Ulrich inclined his head to this.
“It is possible, Majesty. But a man would first have to scale the wall. And that—” But the Empress would not let him finish.
“I understand that perfectly,” she said. She let out a sigh that could be heard in all corners of the room and shook her head. “I am afraid I am beginning to discover a serious lack of imagination in you, Ulrich.”
Mouse saw the tension pulse through the head of the guard’s jaw as he clenched it tightly.
“Allow me, then,” continued the Empress, “to present you with a scenario: If a length of rope was dropped from the tower window, being fixed at the top of course, could a man not easily scale the wall?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty,” replied Ulrich. But the Empress said no more, simply leaning her head into her hand, and waited.
“May I ask, Majesty,” said Ulrich at last, “how this rope would come to be fixed at the top and why, if it was so, the prisoner would not simply use the rope to make his escape?”
The Empress smiled.
“I am glad that you asked,” she said. “To this, I present you with two possible scenarios: one is that the prisoner received the rope from below and fixed it himself, under the promise that he who provided it would assist his escape. The second is that the rope was not fixed by the prisoner, but by another man within the tower.”
Ulrich made no reply to this. However unlikely the Empress’s scenarios, they were both, Mouse supposed, possible. But as she turned the idea over in her mind, she realized that there were far worse implications of either made the idea of the man jumping himself pale in comparison.
“What you say, Your Majesty,” the head of guard replied with clear vexation, “while not impossible, suggests that there is a conspirator among us at Silver Lake.” Among your own men, he left unsaid. “Does it not seem more likely that the man wished to take his own life either as a result of the overwhelming shame he felt or for fear of the noose?”
The corner of the Empress’s mouth twitched.
“You think he jumped from the tower because he felt shame for what he had done?” she asked.
“Indeed, Majesty, I think it very likely,” Ulrich replied.
“But the man claimed it was an honest mistake, did he not?” the Empress asked, dropping her hand away from her face and repositioning herself in her chair.
“Indeed, Majesty, however—”
“If it was, as he claimed, an honest mistake, what reason had he to take his own life? What reason had he to fear the noose? Is my court not a just one?” There was an antagonism in the Empress’s tone, one that was not received well by her audience.
“Not all mistakes are equal, Majesty, and his certainly was a grave one,” the blond-haired head of guard said solemnly.
“I should say,” the Empress answered swiftly. “And though he claimed to have been aiming for the horse, aiming to startle us off, those in the rear saw for themselves just how closely the arrow flew to our Mouse’s ear.” Mouse suddenly felt all the air leave her lungs. “At least someone was doing their job that day,” the Empress murmured sardonically.
No, it could not be. Mouse looked about the room, at the guard who stood scattered at all corners. Was she the only one who had not realized just how close to death she had been that day? She felt her chest tighten. No, the Empress was merely casting aspersions where she could, lashing out indiscriminately as she was wont to do. That arrow had no design to kill; Mouse would not believe it.
“The men will be questioned again, Majesty,” Ulrich said at last.
“Not just the villagers,” the Empress replied. “Your men as well.”
The young head of guard bowed to the Empress. “As Your Majesty commands,” he said.
Mouse could not seem to speak, nor could she seem to bring herself to move from the spot where she stood. Could there be some truth in what the Empress said, or did she merely seek to provoke her new head of the guard, to test him? Or could it really be that there was some darker plot afoot?
“Alright, Mouse?” one of the guardsmen asked as he passed by, stirring her from her reverie. Her eyes flicked up to his face, to the dark freckles spotting the skin beneath his eyes, a tribute to hours spent standing in the sun. She smiled weakly but could not bring herself to open her lips. For the first time since their arrival, Mouse thought with a swallow, she was beginning to think that she might be happier to be back at court.