The Witch Queen's Secret by Anna Elliott

know. I don’t know anything for sure.
But where there’s one, there could always be more—that’s what Lady
Isolde said.”
    The man looked at her a moment, like he was
trying to make up his mind about something. Then he nodded, eyes on
hers. “Look, I know you’ve no reason to trust me. But do you think
you could just pretend to yourself that you do? Long enough, say,
for me to get some answers here? I swear if you stay here and don’t
try to run away until I come back, I’ll either get you to safety or
give you the chance to make a run for it, whatever you’d like.”
    Dera
still felt like her blood had been turned to ice water. But she
studied the serving man’s face and then said, “I suppose if you can
pretend to be a fool, I can
pretend to trust one.”
    The man’s teeth flashed in a grin, white
against his beard. “Fair enough.”
    The smile had gone, though, by the time he
made it to the front of the line where Glaw was lying on the
ground. And his face was grim enough to have been carved out of
stone as he hooked the toe of his boot under Glaw and rolled him
onto his back.
    Dera dropped down onto a fallen log, hugging
her knees to her chest and blowing on her hands. She’d have
expected the blue-eyed man to bully Glaw. But instead he talked to
him, quiet and straight. Said he was dying, and it was likely to go
on for some time and hurt something fierce. But he’d give him a
quick death and a warrior’s end if Glaw’d tell him what he wanted
to know.
    Dera couldn’t hear what Glaw said. She was
too far away for that. And besides, one of the men on the ground
was thrashing, crying out for his mam. Dera couldn’t remember
deciding anything. All of a sudden, she was just there, on the
ground, holding the poisoned man’s hand. Which was lucky, maybe.
This wasn’t the kind of thing she’d have wanted to think about for
long.
    He seemed like he quieted a bit, though, at
her touch. So she put her hand on his forehead the way she’d seen
Lady Isolde do. And she started to tell the story Lady Isolde had
told weeks ago, when she was stitching up Cade.
    Lady Isolde was right. Dera shivered, and
wiped sweat from the man’s brow with a corner of her sleeve. She
didn’t know whether this man especially wanted to hear about a
Water Horse. But it was better than sitting in silence, all alone
with your own thoughts and a dying man—or trying to think up what
you could say.
    She’d made it halfway through the story when
the serving man came back. His knife was out—and even though he
must have cleaned the blade on leaves or dry grass, he’d missed a
smear of blood on the hilt.
    “ Are you
all right?” He crouched down next to her.
    She rubbed her eyes and realized there were
tears on her cheeks, though she didn’t know quite why. The man
whose hand she’d been holding was unconscious—or dead.
    She looked around at the bodies on the
ground. Even the cold couldn’t mask the smell of vomit, or of the
ones who’d lost control of their bowels. But they’d died quick,
anyhow.
    Dera
stood up. Her head felt
funny and light, like it was about to roll off her shoulders, and
her hearing buzzed. She sat down again on the fallen log and looked
at the man in front of her.
    “ They
were … they were bad men.”
    The blue-eyed man shrugged. There were tight
lines around the corners of his mouth. “No worse than many
others.”
    “ Doesn’t
make what they did—what they would have done to
me—right.”
    He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck,
like the muscles ached. “And if God knows whether that makes giving
them all nightshade right, I’ve yet to hear an answer from Him.” He
turned away, picking up the traveling pack he’d dropped on the
ground, re-sheathing his knife. Then he turned back to her. “I’m
sorry.” He reached out, like he was about to put a hand on her
shoulder, then thought better of it and let his arm fall back to
his side. “I said I’d get you to safety—and I will. If