Page 107 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

It was easy to find the most recent designs, most of which were attire for the festival. Nore frowned—nothing for a wedding gown. There were gowns, yes, but all were noted in other richly colored fabrics, and none had the drama required. Plus, they were labeled with events: Harbor ball, one read; Receiving ceremony stated another. Nore flipped back through the sketches, searching for anything else. She skimmed over the measurements on the dresses, all consistent; there was nothing else ordered by the High Lady over the summer, and only a few supplemental items in the spring. Clearly, the High Lady was not fussed with her own day-to-day dress. Then, there, at the end of last year, an order caught Nore’s eye.

She pulled the illustrations out. It was simply a new set of clothing, three dresses and a slip, but her eyes narrowed when she saw the discrepancy; then another—

“Finch,” Caspian said. She glanced up. He was looking down at a file, a frown etched between his brows. “There’s an order for a wedding dress. From Locke.”

She replaced the patterns and went over to where Cas stood. Relina was organized to a fault: the invoice was there, plus the orders she’d placed for imported fabrics from the mainland, all marked as delivered. Nore flipped through it—and then froze when she saw the date.

“This is…”

“This was placed over two years ago,” Caspian agreed. “And paid for.” He cocked his head, thinking. “You don’t think she was just very prepared, do you?”

“Hold on,” Nore said, handing the papers back. She returned to the large drawers of patterns, going back chronologically to find the assortment from two years ago. There, she found the illustrations.

LOCKE–Ceremony 1.

Nore leaned against the cabinet as she studied the illustration. It certainly was a wedding gown, with notes explaining the symbolism of some of the motifs on the gown: flowers native to the Isle and leaves that were emblematic of Scaela, where the High Lady had grown up, plus notes on preferences. This was not just something arranged by an attendant: Locke had consulted on it, or at least given enough information for someone else to provide details.

“What’s this?” she asked Caspian when she flipped over the design to see a note for the embroidery on the inside of the bodice.

Caspian glanced at the illustration. “It’s custom, in Idistran nobility,” he said. “The sigil of the partner’s family is sewn into the lining of the bodice for luck. Against one’s heart.”

Nore’s heart thudded as she frowned down at the illustration. If Caspian was right, then this was the sigil of whomever the High Lady had chosen to marry—or at least whomever she’d nearly married two years before.

“Do you recognize it?” Nore asked.

Caspian leaned over to take a closer look. It was a rough illustration of two outlined hands cradling the impression of an anatomical heart, blades crossed behind. She hadn’t seen it before, but perhaps he knew it.

While he studied it, Nore went to the drawer of invoices, looking at the orders from the beginning of the year. For anything that would be relevant.

“I…” Caspian shook his head. “It’s not any noble family that I recognize. It shouldn’t be hard to find, though—the sigils are obviously well-documented.”

Nore nodded. If she could only find the meaning of the sigil, she could perhaps find out if there had been a suitor previously—and, if they still lived, if they were still on the Isle, perhaps she could understand why they remained unmarried.

Caspian went to put away the invoices. Nore glanced again at the other patterns, pausing once more to study the discrepancy. But when Caspian finished, she made no note of it—she recovered the Karathak stone and followed him out.

It was well past dinner by the time they made it back to the lower reaches of Maerin, and the rolls Nore had bought were not substantial enough for a full meal, so they diverted to a pub instead of going straight back to the inn. They sat across from one another in the pub, nursing drinks as they waited for their food.

Nore went to take a sip of her ale and caught a glimpse of a dark smear on her fingers—ink, she realized. Probably from grabbing Caspian’s arm, where his marking was smeared. They were probably past the time of hiding, past the time when it would be okay to know something of who he was now.

“Your training,” she said finally, “with the Inkmen.”

“Mm?”

“When did you go?” She traced a whorl in the wooden table. “I confess: you probably told me in a letter, which may or may not have immediately combusted.”

Caspian sighed. He looked over at the bar, crowded with those who had decided it was better to not join the festival’s merriment for the evening. “After the war,” he said. “I went to visit my father in Nadira, and I traveled from there. Spent eight months training with them in the mountains.”

Nore swallowed hard. She had suspected his mother had died since she’d read Celestine’s report of his father traveling alone. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About… about your mother.”

He looked down at his hands. “It’s an old wound. It happened a few months after I returned to Luthar. But there was nothing left here for my father, and the only kind thing I could think of was to arrange his journey home—then visit when I could.”

“And you chose not to stay with him? Or with the Inkmen?”

Caspian was quiet for a minute. “What do you remember of the Inkmen, Finch?”

Nore shrugged. She knew they were powerful, and that the system was inherent but the ink was constructive. It was one of very, very few systems that had two layers of magic linked together that worked in tandem. “It’s both a system and a religious order, is it not?”

“It is,” he said. He rolled his sleeves up, exposing his forearms. “They have a strict way of life, but any who are capable are able to join them for training. It was… difficult. Painful to master the ink. Brutal some days. But at the end, they ask you a question: Will you shirk all other power and take up the orders?”