“Eight bells,” Isabela murmured as the last peal faded away. “I have only an hour left. I cannot save myself, but I must try to save my daughter.” She paced feverishly back and forth in her bedroom, pulling at her fingers.

“Surely, they will not!” Sarra, her daughter’s nurse, sputtered.

“Surely, they will, Sarra!” she snapped. “When they found me with Davin it was treason. You know that perfectly well.”

“It’s barbaric!” Sarra protested. She was certain there would be a last-minute pardon, some reprieve.

The verdict kept repeating in Isabela’s mind like a torturous echo: “The queen has been found guilty of treason by infidelity and the sentence imposed. The execution will be held at nine bells on Garrenday.”

She remembered every word as though it was engraved in granite. It echoed over and over in her mind as though it had been bespelled to torment her. It was that upstart priest Jaarven who said it, she seethed. He’s not even a canon, who is he to pronounce a verdict? Her pacing became more frantic. There was no escape; it was too late. She would be executed within the hour.

“But who would betray you?” Sarra asked, placing a hand to her mouth. She hadn’t been allowed in the proceedings and was hearing the details only now.

“Father Jaarven, of course. He pronounced my sentence: Jaarven Hilde. He enjoyed it. Oh, I know it! He was the one who found us! We were in that house Davin had rented near the guildhalls on Oulu Street.”

Davin thought he had been so careful! Isabela’s eyes filled with tears. During the trial, she found out that the house belonged to Jaarven. We were played for fools from the very beginning.

A doleful chant rose from the castle courtyard below. “Listen to them pretending to be sad at the death of a queen,” she said, her face a mask of disgust. “Hypocrites all. May they all die a pitiful death.”

Sarra’s gasp of shock at her blasphemy went unnoticed.

Isabela paused in her pacing and looked squarely at the nurse. “Sarra, you must save my daughter. You must do this for me. She won’t survive once I’m gone, and I can’t protect her from the grave. Jaarven will arrange for her death just as he has mine.”

The child was playing at Sarra’s feet. Her daughter’s hair shone like gold in the morning sunlight. The glow of it spilled over to make the room bright, alive, vibrant, and full of meaning. Isabela’s hand went to her throat as if this awareness of the fullness of life might save it.

But that same window held horror on the other side—she was afraid to look, yet a morbid curiosity compelled her—was it true? Her hands scrabbled at the catch and she opened the leaded panes. Was Davin, her lover, really dead, or had she gone insane, imagining horrors that could not be real?

Far away, the raven curls of Davin’s hair hung limply, ball-shaped on the tip of a spike, but mercifully at such distance she could not see the contorted features of his face. She closed the window abruptly, her hands shaking uncontrollably as her stomach heaved.

“M’lady, don’t,” Sarra said, her face puckered in sympathy.

“We shall die in the same manner, at least, if not together,” Isabela moaned.

Would her head, too, be displayed over Traitor’s Gate? She hoped the king could force some decency into the proceedings and forbid that. He had already permitted her a sharp sword rather than the headsman’s ax, or so the Lady Greenwood had whispered to her last night. The king refused to see her but had mercifully allowed her to wait in her own quarters rather than being cast into a cell in the Red Gaol.

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She resumed her pacing, the jeweled rings on her fingers glittering as her hands trembled. Her lustrous dark hair had been swept up to clear her neck for the sword edge. Her delicate features were pale and sharp, even with the rouges and powders she had insisted her ladies-in-waiting apply after helping her into her best gown. All those ladies had been taken from her now. All except for Sarra, the nurse who came with her from Castabal and who had once cared as diligently for Isabela as she did now for the little Princess Cianalas.

 The princess was hopping and twirling in a patch of sunlight, unaware of the tragedy about to befall her mother. Isabela called her “my little greylin” after the tiny birds who hopped about the garden and fed from her hand.

There was little time left. Soon a priest of ELIEL would arrive to purify the queen’s spirit before its departure from her body. He would surely be one of Jaarven’s henchman whose sharp eyes would miss nothing.

“Why does no one question why it was Jaarven who found us?” Isabela wondered aloud. “Can’t anyone see what he is doing? Sterren is such a fool, a blind man could see that Jaarven was stealing his power, usurping the kingdom bit by bit.”

She considered throwing herself from the window and saving them the trouble of executing her . . . but first, she must get the child away, but she didn’t want to let her go.

“Sarra,” she said, almost whispering, “it’s time.”

“M’lady . . . I . . . my Bela, I don’t think I can leave you like this. Please come with us,” Sarra pleaded, her voice breaking.

“Sarra, we’ve been through this. Jaarven would be able to find me. He’s placed a spiritfinder spell on me that I cannot remove.” She lifted her wrist to show a dark band of iron. “I have tried to no avail. With all eyes on me, you will have the time you need to get away. Jaarven will not move against the child so soon. By then, I hope you will be well hidden. Take her and go. You know what to do.

“Here.” She began pulling jeweled rings off her fingers. “Take these in case you need them. They do me no good now. You have the gold?”

“Yes, m’lady. Greylin, kiss your mother, like a good girl,” Sarra clucked to the child, wiping her tears.

Isabela bent down to hug the little girl. She had never felt what she thought she should for her daughter; the baby had seemed too messy a creature, and she was content to have Sarra care for her. The child hardly knew her, she realized, and she ached for what might have been, and would never be.

It would be cruel to take Sterren’s only heir, he was her husband and king, and she regretted the final pain she must cause him, but she had little choice. There was one last thing to do before they left. Her skirts rustled as she knelt before the girl.

“Tyttö pieni, neiti nuori,” she sang in a keening chant in the old language, placing her hand, palm first, before the child’s face. Then she began to sway a little and her eyes half closed:

Lapsonen siniverinen

Saakoon piirteet poikalapsen

Talonpoijan jälkeläisen.

Greylin’s features thickened, becoming uneven and coarse. Her delicate coloring flattened to a dull pallor and her hair turned from shining gold to a dry, dun color. Few magic users knew what the old words meant, even high-ranking mages used them without knowing their meanings, but she had been trained as a princess of Castabal and knew what she was casting:

Young girl, little miss

Child of royal blood,

Will have the look of a boy child

An offspring of a peasant.

Sarra looked away and stilled a shudder. The use of magic and song was forbidden to women and it embarrassed her to see Isabela commit such wanton blasphemy. Women and magic brought plague! Isabela knew this, yet still she practiced. It was dangerous and irresponsible. The people knew and hated her for it! Sarra had begged Isabela to stop, but she had just laughed at her saying, “That’s for peasants, Sarra. Besides if I’m the only one who does it, what can it matter? I’m not enough to start a plague!” Isabela had always done as she pleased, and now it would cost her her life.

“Remember to cut her hair short before you leave the gates,” Isabela reminded the nurse. “She should pass for a boy easily enough. No one should take much notice of her with the spell upon her. I can do the same for you.”

Sarra’s wide-eyed look of horror was answer enough. But before she could protest, they heard the sound of the long bolts being thrown back on the outer doors leading to her chambers.

“They come. Good-bye my Sarra,” Isabela whispered, holding her close.

“I will keep her safe and hidden, my ‘Bela. I love you,” Sarra cried as she kissed her hand.