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say something to prove your loyalty to the King’s heir very quickly.’
    She stepped into one of the nearby cottages without replying and I motioned for Kest and Brasti to follow me inside.
    A few dim rays of sunshine snuck through cracks in the walls of the room but they barely illuminated the darkness within. As the three of us entered, the Tailor motioned for me to close the door. ‘You’ll keep your voice calm and quiet in here, all of you.’
    I didn’t want to be calm or quiet. I wanted to scream my frustration, but then the Tailor pointed towards the far corner of the room. At first I saw nothing but shadows, my eyes not yet having recovered from going from darkness to light to darkness again. Slowly edges and lines became clearer and the shadows resolved into a figure sitting in a chair. A girl.
    I started to shout her name, but Brasti put a hand over my mouth. His vision is better than Kest’s or mine and he must have seen her a moment before we did. She rose from the chair and came closer. Now I could see the shoulder-length, messy brown hair, the worn and faded green dress, the pretty face with the features that, like her father’s, were just a bit too sharp to be called beautiful.
It’s her, thank all the Saints. It’s Aline.
    Brasti removed his hand from my mouth and I knelt down and embraced her.
Gods, stop the world from spinning
, I thought, relief washing over me.
Let me feel this happy for just a few moments more.
    ‘I was scared,’ Aline whispered in my ear.
    ‘Really?’ I asked, my own voice shaking. ‘I can’t imagine what you had to be scared about.’
    She let go of me and her eyes met mine. ‘I couldn’t be out there with you, keeping hold of your throwing knives for you like in Rijou. I was afraid you’d get hurt without me.’
    It always surprised me – the way that Aline, despite her keen intellect, could sometimes sound so much younger to me than her thirteen years.
    Brasti snorted. ‘That’s a smart girl we have here, Falcio. Terrific survival instincts. Can’t wait to put her on the throne.’
    ‘All right,’ the Tailor said, ‘enough of the lovey-dovey. The girl’s safe and we’re all friends again. Now let’s go back out there and you lot keep your mouths shut. Some of the village men are still alive and we can’t trust any of them any more.’
    ‘But who did the Knights carry off?’ I asked. ‘Your man said they took Aline.’
    ‘He saw them carry off a girl,’ the Tailor said, ‘one they think is Aline. That’s all you need to know.’
    ‘You gave them a girl they think is Aline? They’ll kill her!’
    ‘A few minutes ago you challenged my loyalty to the King’s heir. Now you say I do too much for her? Listen to me, Falcio, and listen well. There is one thing and one thing only that matters: Aline must be protected so that she can take the throne. Nothing else can stand in the way of that. Nothing will.’
    I thought back to the dead girl in the village, her pale hair dyed crimson with blood. Had she been another of the Tailor’s pawns? Had she died to try to put Trin’s Knights off the scent? How far would the King have wanted us to go to protect Aline?
Not this far
, I told myself. He would never have done this. Very carefully I said, ‘There was a child in the village. She was close to Aline’s age. Was she—?’
    ‘I had nothing to do with her. That idiot Braneth knew Celeste hated to be left alone. He should have made sure someone in their mountain hideaway kept an eye on her. The fool reaps the wages of betrayal now, may some forgiving saint guard him.’
    The memory of the man’s grief as he held his child’s destroyed body filled me with equal portions of sorrow and confusion. ‘You prepared for this attack,’ I said. ‘You must have. But how could you have planned for
this
? How could you have known they were coming for her?’
    ‘I didn’t,’ the Tailor said as she walked over to the chair Aline had previously occupied and sat