Chapter 9: His Poison, My Hands

We came into Hollowcrest on the ninth day, sitting on sacks of turnips in the back of a carter's wagon.

Hester had paid the carter in the last of her silver spoons, and I had pulled a market woman's shawl over my hair.

The decree said the unchosen twin would hang.

It did not say how many guards at the carter's gate would be checking faces.

There were four.

They waved the wagon through with bored hands, because nobody looks hard at turnips.

Inside the wall the city rose in tiers of grey stone, with banners on every lamppost and wolf-heads carved over every door.

I had never seen it by day as a free woman.

Last time I had only seen it through a coach window, and then through a tower window.

"Don't gawk," Hester muttered. "You look like a girl who's never been anywhere."

"I've been here."

"Then don't look like you have."

She steered me down a lane behind a laundry, into a back yard with an upturned washtub and a rain barrel.

When she was sure we were alone, she pulled the folded paper from her bodice.

It was not the one from the satchel.

It was older, yellowed at the folds and brown at the edges, and it was written in a tight, small hand I did not know.

"I told you I read half a page of the twin ledger," she said. "I stole it. They never knew."

"You said it was taken away."

"I let them think so."

She smoothed it on the washtub lid.

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