She looked back at the man they had been pursuing. Wiry, with a square, sharp face softened by a snub nose, and tousled, pale brown hair, he couldn’t be much older than her. There was nothing remarkable in his features—not like Erec’s sculpted beauty—yet they felt vaguely familiar. He had sat down on the stairs to watch her fight, elbows on his knees, gloved hands resting loose, and he was watching her with an intense, guarded calm.
“Shouldn’t you have kept running?” she asked.
“Were you planning to lose?” He sounded politely curious.
“No.” She stepped to the nearest would-be assassin, pulled his belt loose, and started tying him up. “Does anyone?”
“You’re bloodbound. They couldn’t hurt me unless you let them.” He shrugged. “And if you wanted to hurt me, I couldn’t hope to escape.”
Rachelle moved to tie up the second man. “You think I want to hurt you?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” His voice was light and soft, but she could see the tension in his jaw, in the lines of his arms. She could feel the swift beat of his pulse beneath his calm facade.
Rachelle knew she wasn’t being fair—anyone should be suspicious of her, after the things she’d done—but even so, for a moment she could hardly breathe through the helpless fury choking her.
She pulled out one of her knives and flung it to land quivering in the wall two finger widths from his head.
He barely twitched.
“Keep the knife,” she said. “Maybe it will make you feel safer.”
His eyes widened a little and his mouth started to open.
“Don’t thank me,” she added, finishing the knots on the third man. “Go find a guard to take care of the prisoners. I’m going to get breakfast.”
She whirled and left. She made it across the rest of the palace without incident, even managing to snag a few rolls from the guard’s mess room just before the clock tolled half-past. Plenty of time, she thought.
Then she got lost. She’d hardly ever been to the royal wing, and one huge room encrusted with gold-leaf tendrils and curlicues looked much like another. By the time she got to the anteroom of the royal bedchamber, it was well past eight and the sun had finally risen.
Rachelle could remember when summer had meant that the sun would be up by seven. People said that once upon a time, the summer sun would rise even earlier, but that was hard to imagine.
The anteroom, of course, was completely stuffed with people waiting to get in, a seething mass of brocade and lace, powdered wigs and the stench of pomade. Rachelle threaded through the crowd as fast as she could, trying not to think of how the King might punish her.
Then she saw the young man she’d rescued earlier, standing near the door with a guard on each side.
“Is he in trouble?” she asked one of the guards.
“No,” he said.
“Waiting to get in,” said the young man, with the same wry calm as earlier.
“You’re coming in now,” she said, seizing his shoulder. “With me.” He could at least serve as her excuse.
“Mademoiselle—” one of the guards started.
“Trust me,” said the young man, “you don’t want to fight her.”
Rachelle dragged him inside with her. The King was putting on his stockings, and the room was already crowded—with the King’s valets, of course, but also the supremely lucky nobles who were privileged this morning to hand him his prayer book, his shirt, and his razor. Then there was a great crowd of other nobles, ministers, and secretaries, all of whom had wrangled permission to come in during one of the coveted first five entrances. Soon the King’s illegitimate children would be admitted, and then the room would get really crowded. (By tradition, the sixth entrance was for the King’s heirs, but he had only bothered to father one child on his actual wife, and that prince had died three years ago.)
This crowd was even thicker than the one in the anteroom. Rachelle shoved her way through—people muttered only until they saw her coat; then they looked away nervously. Let them. She just wanted to get inside, see the King, and please or annoy him enough that he never invited her to the levée again.
She broke through the crowd as the King stood, the ribbons on his shoes finally tied. Erec sat at his feet—the special privilege of the bloodbound—with his mouth quirked up smugly.
Rachelle went down on one knee, dragging the young man with her. “Your Majesty,” she said.
The most high, most puissant, and most excellent prince, Auguste-Philippe II, by the Grace of God, King of Gévaudan and Protector of the Vasconic territories, looked down his famous nose at her.
“A tardy servant is of little use to me,” he said after a short, brittle silence.
The back of Rachelle’s neck prickled; she knew that everyone in the room was staring, waiting to see what the King would do to her.
Well, but what could he do? As a bloodbound, she was already under sentence of death.
“I’m sorry, sire,” she said, “but I was saving this man from three assassins. I think you need to have a talk with the guard.”
“Good morning, Father,” said the young man beside her. “Well. It hasn’t been very good so far, but I’ve hopes for the rest of it.”
Wait. She had just rescued one of the King’s bastards? Rachelle darted a look at the young man, and yes, that was why his face looked so familiar: though liberally smudged and softened by his mother’s heritage, that was still the line of the King’s jaw that he had inherited.