The guards shouldered into the room and grabbed her. She wailed and tried to worm away from them, but there was nowhere to go. Helena spit at them and hit them with her shackled hands and shouted at Maris that she loved her as the men dragged her out of the room.

The door shrieked closed on their screams.

TWENTY-SIX

NOMI

NOMI FOUND A small café near the Bellaqua train station and hid in the back with a cup of espresso. She placed her book on the table and pretended to read, keeping her face deep in the cowl of her cloak. She couldn’t walk through Bellaqua in midday without attracting suspicion. It was hot and sunny out, not wool weather at all. Even here in the café, she sweat inside the cloak’s heavy folds.

All through the long afternoon, Nomi waited. When the proprietors of the café started giving her looks, she moved on to another establishment. If she’d brought her dress, she might have walked more freely through the city. Then again, soldiers loitered on every corner, and she saw no women walking alone, so perhaps not.

The day slowly, inexorably tilted toward twilight. When the streets had started clearing and Nomi felt as if she might crawl out of her own skin, she headed out into the heavy, humid early evening.

She skirted the central piazza—too busy—and snaked down twisting cobbled streets and arching bridges toward the palazzo.

Malachi had spoken of a bakery, somewhere near the grand canal.

At last she made it to the waterfront. She studied each shop she passed. A tiny yarn store, a butcher with hare and hog carcasses hanging out front. She bought an apple at a little fruit market, keeping her head down and her voice low.

Few shoppers were out this close to nightfall, and the ones who were moved quickly, almost furtively. The only women Nomi saw were elderly wives with baskets for the goods their husbands would buy. No young female servants, no young daughters, no young wives. Bellaqua was keeping its girls close.

Nomi remembered the spectacle of Malachi’s selection ball. There’d been little girls throwing flower petals, dreaming of becoming Graces as the beautiful prospects floated across the canal on golden gondolas. Serina had worn a gown, had smiled as if she could never want for more than the Heir’s attention.

A group of soldiers turned onto the street a few yards down. Nomi’s stomach twisted. She ducked into a shadowy stationery shop, just before the shopkeeper could lock up.

“Excuse me,” he muttered.

“I—I apologize,” Nomi said in her deepest, gruffest voice. “I’ll just be a moment.” From the corner of her cloak, she kept her gaze on the street outside the window, waiting for the soldiers to pass.