The King Slayer by Virginia Boecker

Author:Virginia Boecker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Wizards & Witches *, Young Adult Fiction / Action & Adventure / General *, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Historical *, Young Adult Fiction / Romance / Historical *
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2016-06-14T07:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT TWO DAYS ARE a blur of walking at night and sleeping during the day. Since he dismissed me, Malcolm has said little, if anything, to me or to anyone else. He keeps to himself: sleeping alone, eating alone, walking alone. But his silence is a warning to me, and I’m always alert to where he is, what he’s doing, what he might do next.

Through Fifer, Schuyler tells us that the Watch knows we’re gone, but they don’t know where. They suspect Keagan and Malcolm have made off for Cambria, and they’ve sent a contingent of men after them. Most of Harrow believes I’ve defected, that after what I did to John I saw my opportunity to leave Harrow and took it. They believe Schuyler simply deserted, and neither Fifer nor Nicholas stands to correct them.

By the morning of the third day, we’ve passed the barrier of Harrow, marked by a dozen signs graffitied with etchings of skulls and crossbones, flames and crosses. From here it’s a single day’s walk southeast through Hainault and the southern tip of Walthamstow into the city of Upminster. We reach the outskirts just as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, and here we make camp for the night.

At dawn, we eat the rest of Fifer’s carefully packed food, drink the last of the water. One by one we dash behind a copse of trees and change into clothing packed especially for this part of the trip.

For Schuyler and Malcolm there are coarse woolen trousers, muslin tunics, scuffed boots, and unshaven faces. For Keagan and me, threadbare brown woolen dresses and plain leather slippers, our hair stuffed beneath white linen caps. We look simple, as nondescript as servants. Specifically, Ravenscourt servants.

Underneath our clothing, though, we’re anything but. All four of us are strapped with weapons: knives in our boots, tucked in belts beneath our dresses and tunics, and for me, the Azoth, secured in a sheath tied around my waist under my skirt. I can feel it calling to me, the invitation to violence hot and thrumming against my skin, not an altogether unpleasant sensation.

“We’ve been lucky thus far.” Keagan grimaces as she adjusts the ties on her cap. Without her short, wild hair on display, she looks more like a girl, a young girl at that, and she knows it. “Since we left Harrow, we’ve seen and heard nothing. I don’t mean to be alarmist, but this doesn’t seem right to me.”

Schuyler, standing off to the side checking and rechecking his weapons, looks to me. “You think Blackwell knows we’re coming?”

I consider it. I thought we had the element of surprise when we snuck into Greenwich Tower all those months ago, dressed as guests for the masque. I thought we had him fooled when all along, he knew. He was just waiting for the right opportunity.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I thought we’d run into something, at least. Troops, guards… when I was a witch hunter, Blackwell had us patrolling every night, in every village within a fifty-mile radius of Upminster.

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