Petra Navar's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Petra Navar stood two steps behind the young lord and counted the exits. Three doors, two windows, one servant's passage. She had guarded this court for six years and never once looked the men she protected in the face. She watched the room instead. Somewhere in the palace, someone planned to kill the crown, and Petra meant to find that person before a blade did. But she had a problem. The guards knew nothing. The servants knew everything, and the servants never spoke to her. They feared her armor. They feared the way she watched. When she passed the kitchens, talk stopped. When she stood in the halls, maids dropped their eyes and hurried. She could name every knife in the armory. She could not name a single friend below stairs. Tonight a scullery girl knelt by the cold hearth, crying. Petra almost walked past. Then she saw why. A small marten had wedged itself into the chimney gap, frost-tipped whiskers twitching, too scared to climb down. The girl's hands shook. "They'll skin me if it dies," she whispered. "It's the lord's pet." Petra set her helmet on the table. She reached into the gap slow, palm open, the way she'd calm a spooked horse. The marten bit her thumb. She did not pull back. She waited. Its claws found her wrist, then its warm weight settled into her hand. She lifted it out and let it burrow against her chest plate. The girl stared. Not at the armor. At Petra. "You didn't yell," the girl said. "Yelling doesn't fix a stuck animal," Petra said. She handed the marten over. "Or a stuck girl. What's your name?" The girl told her. Then, because Petra had waited and not yelled, she told her more. She talked about the strange hours in the east wing. About a young lord who paid coin for a serving boy to carry sealed notes past the guards. A lord with cold hands and a golden ring he turned round and round while he waited for answers. Petra kept her face still. Rowan Sable. The betrothed. The one who smiled only when he thought no eyes were on him. "He tips well," the girl said. "But the boy's scared of the letters. They don't go to his bride." Petra thanked her and picked up her helmet. She had spent six years earning nothing from these people. One frightened marten had bought her the first thread. She knew now where to pull. But a thread pulls both ways. If a scullery girl would talk to Petra, she would talk to others. And the man who paid for silence would soon learn that his silence had a leak.