The Hollow Crown: A Novel of Crosspointe Read Online Free Page A

and looked like nothing more than a lean-to storage shed. As she unlocked the door wards, the first drops of a chill rain pattered against her cheeks. She made a face. Halfway through summer and it felt like late fall.
    She slammed the door and sneezed as dust swirled up from the floor in a thick cloud. The place was cold and damp and smelled of brine and moldy bread. From the undisturbed dust in the rest of the room, it was clear no one had trespassed here since her last visit six months ago. Margaret’s stomach growled in the silence of the room. She hadn’t eaten since she’d stolen a half-eaten sandwich that had been hidden in a maid’s workbasket. That was more than a day ago.
    She yawned, her jaw cracking. She lifted her skirts and unbuckled the satchel. She stepped forward and turned back to the door and knelt. She placed a splayed hand on the middle of the warped wood floor. White light ran around the edges of her palm and fingers and a feeling like a mass of sticky squirming worms engulfed her hand. After a moment, the sensation dissolved and the light spread across a rectangle of the wood-slat floor. The boards shimmered and then melted downward.
    Inside the space below was an iron box with no visible lid. Margaret traced a sigil on the top. It flared orange and the top of the box turned into a layer of oily, thick smoke. She pushed the satchel down into the box. The touch of the smoke was greasy and cold. She pulled her hand back out and traced a different sigil across its slow-swirling surface. Immediately it firmed back into solid iron. Next she closed the wood floor and stood, scuffing the dust to make it less obvious she’d disturbed it. Then she slid her hand over the door to reactivate the locking wards.
    She turned around and longingly eyed the potbellied stove in the corner. There was a full bin of coal beside it. But if she lighted a fire, Markham, her landlord, might come to find out if someone had broken in. He was discreet enough and loyal to the crown, but now was not the time to take needless chances. The satchel was too important.
    She crossed to the bed in the corner and carefully peeled the sheet off the top, folding it back along itself to keep the thick layer of dust covering it from erupting into the air. Beneath, the straw mattress was swathed in a thick layer of blankets. Margaret took off her boots and apron and crawled under, falling almost instantly asleep as she ignored the loud protestations of her stomach.
    She woke after dusk. The room was pitch-dark, and outside the wind whined and the rain pelted the slate roof like pebbles. Margaret sat up and stretched. Her ankle throbbed, and when she examined it with the tips of her fingers, she found that it was swollen twice as large as it should be and was hot to the touch. She sighed and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Her breath caught hard in her chest as the pain throbbed through her ankle like a deep-rung bell.
    She fumbled for a striker in her bed table drawer. She found it and scraped alight the thick candle on her bed table. Flickering light melted the darkness away. She breathed slowly in and out, then reached for her boots. Lacing them on her hurt foot was an exercise in self-torture, but eventually she succeeded. She pulled the bed right and slid the dust sheet over it again. A few minutes later she had retrieved the satchel. She started to buckle it on beneath her skirts, then hesitated.
    Her father had made Ryland prelate until their brother Vaughn could be crowned king, following a proper election, of course. Margaret was to serve as their weapon and spy, the same as she had done for her father. But her father had confided in her—trusted her. Ryland thought she needed protecting and kept far too many things from her.
    With a decisive movement, she unlatched the satchel and dumped its contents onto the bed. Quickly she sorted and scanned the letters,, flipping through a journal and a ledger. There was so much