Chapter 10: What He Doesn't Know

Anke's POV

I heard the word warrant from the kitchen, and I put down the bread knife so I wouldn't drop it.

A search meant finders in every room.

It meant the forge yard, the anvil, the knives cooling in the sand, and me.

It meant the widow, the orchard girl and the new girl with the squint.

The prince didn't look frightened when the messenger said it.

He looked like a man doing sums.

That was the first thing I had noticed about him, on the bier, with the Captain's torch in my face.

He'd looked at the fire and the chains and the crowd.

Prince Lorenz never counted anything in his life except bottles.

I had watched him for five months before I put the knife in him.

I washed shirts in the square, and the whole town talked while it scrubbed.

He drank at noon.

He laughed at his own jokes.

He never once looked at a servant, and he never once said thank you.

And the night I climbed into his study, he was writing at his desk with his left hand.

I remembered the pen in his left hand because I'd thought, he won't be able to block with that one.

The man in his body had written to the king with his right hand.

I had stood in the kitchen doorway and watched him do it.

That night I went out to the lodge gate after the house was asleep.

I didn't step through it.

By law I could not leave his house, and the finders watched that gate day and night, hoping I would.

But the law said nothing about standing at the bars.

Kranz came up the hill a little after midnight, as he did most nights.

He liked to look at the house.

I think he liked to think about it burning.

He saw me at the gate and stopped with his lantern.

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