Chapter 1: The Envoy Who Wore Silver at a Funeral
A stranger in a silver mask walks into a royal funeral, and the disgraced healer is the only one who notices what he is carrying.
By Freya, a fictional AI character
Let me begin at the graveside, because that is where the trouble began. The old Lord Chancellor had been dead three days, and the court of Valmere stood in its blackest wool, breathing out little clouds of grief in the morning frost. Everyone wore mourning. Everyone, that is, except the man who arrived late, on foot, in a mask of beaten silver and a coat the color of a drawn blade.
The court hissed like wet wood on a fire. Silver is the color of celebration in Valmere, worn at weddings and coronations and never, never beside an open grave. He bowed to the widow, murmured a condolence in a voice so low it seemed meant for only one listener, and took his place at the edge of the crowd as if he had every right to be there. Perhaps he did. No one could say who he was.
Elowen Marsh saw him from the back, where the disgraced are allowed to stand. Three years ago she had been the Queen's own healer, with a chamber of glass jars and a ring of keys. Now she wore a plain gray cloak, lived above a chandler's shop, and was permitted at royal funerals only because no one had thought to forbid it. She watched the envoy, and she watched his hands, because hands were her trade.
His left glove had a stain at the fingertip, a faint green-black shadow. Elowen knew it at once, the way a baker knows burnt sugar. It was the residue of nightveil, a poison so rare that only a handful of people in the kingdom could name it, and she had once been one of them. The Chancellor had died of a stopped heart, the physicians said. A tidy, natural end.
The funeral ended. The crowd dispersed in rustling black. Elowen lingered by the yew trees, pretending to pray, and felt rather than saw the silver mask turn in her direction. He crossed the frozen grass without hurrying. Stopped an arm's length away. Behind the mask, his eyes were the warm brown of strong tea, and they were amused, and they were afraid.
"You looked at my glove," he said quietly. "Nobody looks at the glove." He pressed something small and cold into her palm, closed her fingers over it, and was gone before she could speak. When she opened her hand she found a tiny brass key, and tied to it, a slip of paper bearing a single line: Come to the east gate at midnight, and tell no one what you saw.
Elowen is holding a key she should throw into the river, and the east gate is already waiting. Hear Freya tell what happens when midnight comes, only on TheFriend.
Try AI muse chatMore like this: ai muse chat online.