Chapter 14: The Royal Wing

Jessamine's maid met us at the service stair of the royal wing at ten the next morning.

She was a small, frightened woman with a folded note in her fist.

She had come to Northcrest by train the night before, and the note was why.

It said: Aldous is at Council until noon. Come before he is back. Bring the Queen Mother.

I was not the Queen anymore.

Hester walked in front of me anyway, in her black wool suit, and the two Crown guards at the end of the corridor stepped aside without being asked.

Torin walked behind me.

I could feel him there the whole way down the long carpet, and I did not look round.

We had not spoken about the roof.

The maid opened a door at the end.

Jessamine sat on a pale sofa in a pale room with the baby asleep on her chest.

She was dressed, and she had a clean white bandage on her wrist.

She looked up and did not seem surprised.

"You came," she said.

"You said to ask," I said. "I'm asking."

"Whose boy is this?"

Hester shut the door and went to stand at the window with her arms folded.

Jessamine stroked the baby's back, slowly, with two fingers.

"He's Magnus's," she said. "Of course he's Magnus's."

"The moon will say so at the basin."

"The moon will say whatever Aldous has arranged for it to say," Hester said.

"Madam..."

"Don't. I've known that man nineteen years. I know his handwriting on the crate slips."

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