Poison

by Bridget Zinn

  By the time Kyra realized her mistake, it was too late.

  Arlo had gone rigid, gasping, flinging his arms out so stiffly that they’d snapped the chain linking his manacles to the table.

  And then he’d fallen over onto the ground, blind, and his breath so shallow that Kyra wasn’t sure he was breathing at all. She’d pressed her ear to his sweaty face and heard nothing, then pulled a mirror from her bag and held it against his open mouth.

  The faintest fogging against the glass.

  “Has he turned to…wood?” the scribe asked in a horrified whisper.

  Kyra sat back on her heels and looked at Arlo, and indeed he looked like a wooden statue of himself. Whatever the mixture was that she’d created, it had given his skin a yellow, grainy texture like polished pine. He was cool to the touch, too, like a well-carved dummy.

  “What have you done?” the scribe said.

  “Nothing I can’t undo,” Kyra had replied with more conviction than she felt. And then she got to work.

  The next two hours were spent administering every healing potion Kyra knew, plus other remedies people found in medicinal books.

  She’d saved him. He’d lost all of his hair, and his eyes had bulged out and never gone back to normal, but nonetheless, Kyra had managed to resuscitate him. She recorded her mistake in her notes and forgot about it. By that evening, he was conscious again, though looking like someone who’d been to death’s door and back.

  Through it all, Arlo had maintained his innocence. And true to the letter of the law—and no longer trusting Kyra to get the truth from Arlo—the king released him.

  Arlo had joked about it. “Well, Master Potioner, I don’t know whether I should thank you or put a contract on your head. It seems I owe you my near-death and my life.”

  “Maybe the two acts cancel each other out?”

  “Maybe.” Arlo’s smile had been mirthless. “I suppose you’ll find out one day.”

  That day had come.

  Kyra felt like a fool. A complete and utter fool. How could she have been so stupid as to go to Arlo for help? To believe he’d forgive and forget?

  Kyra sank down onto the bed. Disappointment didn’t begin to describe the feeling flooding her—it was like someone had filled her insides with heavy, sticky glue. Her search for the princess was nowhere.

  A sense of urgency filled her. Kyra needed to get out of the hermit’s room and back to finding the princess. “Come on,” she said to the pig in her arms. “We’re leaving.”

  Ellie was still on the floor, grumbling and picking invisible bugs off himself as Kyra departed.

  Hearing the voice of the concierge, she stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “No, fold them this way! If you fold them like that, they’re going to be horribly wrinkled! Our customers don’t want wrinkled pillowcases.”

  Kyra waited while the concierge continued to explain how to fold linens. Apparently, this new person needed to know every little detail about folding every type of fabric that could ever possibly be used in an inn. When at last she heard the sound of the cart rolling down the hall, Kyra dashed out the door with Rosie in her arms.

  How much time before it was too late to kill the princess and save the kingdom? She had no idea. Kyra needed a new strategy, and she needed one fast.

  She had to get out of town. Wexford had never seemed like a likely place to find the princess, and it was the most dangerous place Kyra could be.

  But first she had to find a family who would take Rosie as a pet. Kyra had a job to do, and she couldn’t be weighed down with an animal that needed care and feeding. She stopped at the Saturday market.

  The towheaded little girl at the fruit stand promised to take care of her and to bring her everywhere with her. “Maybe she’ll like jugglers and carnival games, and even fair candy!” the girl said, eyes round and eager. Kyra wasn’t sure pigs liked fair candy or carnival games, but at least it sounded like Rosie would have a happy-ish life.

  As happy as a pig could be while living with a little girl.

  Rosie was a tool whose purpose had been to lead her to the princess, nothing more. If Kyra felt a sinking feeling in her stomach as she handed over Rosie’s leash—well, it was something she’d have to ignore.

  After buying some food and quickly refreshing her old-lady glamour, Kyra made her way out of the city. As she trudged down the majestic evergreen-lined road, alongside those departing Wexford, she did her best not to walk half bent over as the full weight of her failure descended on her. She had no idea what to do next. Contacting Arlo had been a last resort.

  She had been walking on the road for a good hour when she remembered: 07 211, Peccant Pentothal. What had that potion been doing in Ellie’s apartment?

  Kyra stopped in her tracks, almost falling flat on her face as the people behind crashed into her. She stepped to the side to get out of the way.

  What if her pig hadn’t been misled by Arlo? What if Rosie had taken her to the owner of the piece of cloth in her basket—not its first owner, but its most recent one? It was just too much of a coincidence that Ellie had the poison in his flat and that the Katzenheim pig had led her to him. Had Ellie somehow gotten a piece of Ariana’s clothing? How? Why? How was the hermit mixed up in all this?

  And he’d acted so weird. Ellie had to know something he hadn’t told her. How could she have let him slip away like that? And who was he really? His antisocial tendencies took on a new, more sinister edge. He’d always seemed perfectly harmless. A little odd and grumpy, sure, but…

  Kyra turned back toward town, slipping between the carts and foot traffic, walking twice as fast as she had on her way out.

  At the Sleepy Boar, she snuck past the concierge and his new assistant and lumbered back upstairs to 302. She knocked, and when no one answered, she opened the door.

  The room was completely empty. No pile of old-man clothes, and no Ellie the hermit, either.

  Kyra ran down the stairs and stopped at the front desk. The concierge, his wispy hair combed over the top of his head, glanced up from a pile of papers and squinted at her. His face was wrinkly and old, but it was the dark purple droops under his eyes that caught Kyra’s attention. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “May I help you?” He adjusted his half-spectacles.

  “Yes, I’m looking for the, uh, gentleman in 302.”

  “I’m pretty sure”—the clerk ruffled through his papers—“that he’s checked out.”

  Of course he had, because he knew someone was after him.

  Kyra had never felt so stupid in her entire life.

  “We’re family, and I have an urgent message for him.”

  “You’re his family?” The clerk looked genuinely confused. “He told me that he was all alone in the world. He said it often.”

  “He exaggerates,” Kyra said, improvising. “I’m his cousin. Second cousin. Or third.”

  The clerk was watching her. “If you say so.”

  “I really do need to speak with him.… Do you know where he went?”

  The concierge’s assistant, a young man close to Kyra’s real age and a bit broad around the shoulders for desk work, had crept up. He now waited at his boss’s elbow, staring at Kyra.

  The concierge turned to him. “Dulo, did you fold all the towels the way I showed you?”

  “Yes.”

  Kyra could feel the assistant staring at her. When she met his eyes, they seemed to grow black. She blinked, and when she opened her lids, saw only the assistant’s gray eyes looking at her curiously

  “Good. Now, please tally our receipts for yesterday.” The concierge handed the assistant a small book with papers sticking out, then shrugged at Kyra. “Sorry, but I’m afraid the guest you’re looking for—your cousin—didn’t leave a forwarding address. Maybe he went home?”

  “Maybe! Thank you,” she said, turning to the door.

  Kyra walked away from the inn with a horrible buzzing in her head.

  There was no way Ellie the hermit ha
d gone back home to Newman House. Not if he was involved with hiding the princess.

  Kyra had been so close. She could just kick herself. How could she have been so dumb?

  She needed to find Ellie. And Ariana. Or both. Which meant she needed Rosie back.

  There was nothing else but to yank Rosie away from the little girl she’d left her with.

  Except that she couldn’t even do that.

  By the time she got to the market, the daytime stalls had closed up and the evening vendors were moving into their places. The fruit stand was gone, and the Saturday market wouldn’t be back for another week.

  Frantic, Kyra ran down the length of the street searching for any sign of the girl or her family. The street ended in a city park with a giant fountain in the middle. Kyra sat down heavily beside it. This was hopeless. Although…

  She jumped up. There was one last chance.

  Juggler, carnival games, and fair candy echoed through Kyra’s head. The little girl had mentioned all of them. Which could mean only one thing: she’d be going to the festival.

  In the distance was a sparkling of twinkling lights, and as Kyra drew close to the fairgrounds, she could smell the savory-sweet scent of roasting meat, fried bread, and caramel. Inside the gate there were jugglers surrounded by children; donkeys with children riding on top of them; throwing games with lines of children eagerly waiting for their turn; and children battling each other with giant turkey legs as weapons at the food carts.

  Children were everywhere. And at least a third of them were blond. Just like the little market girl. The crowds were so thick that she had no hope of spotting Rosie’s pink face.

  So Kyra would have to check each one. She pushed into the crowd by the jugglers, grabbing and spinning each blond child around as she worked her way down the line. No little market girl. Next was the donkey ring—no luck there. By the time Kyra reached the food stalls, children were squealing and running to avoid her. One brave boy poked her with a turkey leg and shouted, “Get off!” when she spun his little sister around.

  She was never going to find the market girl. Or Rosie.

  In desperation, she turned at last to the lines for the outhouses—the smell wafting from that direction was less than appealing, but Kyra couldn’t let that deter her. Hustling her old bones, she shoved into the crowd, raising a bunch of shouts and curses in her wake.

  That’s when she overheard it. A little girl voice that sounded familiar.

  “Mum, I don’t feel good. I’m never eating so much fair candy again.”

  Kyra spotted the girl from the market standing with her mum.

  Rosie was nowhere in sight. So much for sharing her fair candy. No wonder the girl felt sick.

  “Excuse me,” Kyra said. “I’m looking for Rosie—my pig?”

  The girl immediately burst into tears. “I coulda shared my treats with her,” she wailed.

  The girl’s mother looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, ma’am. It was too good of an offer. We don’t make so much at our stand that we can turn down good money like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We sold her.”

  “Can you tell me who you sold her to?”

  Please don’t say the butcher, please don’t say the butcher, please, please, not the butcher.

  “Well, he seemed like a nice young man.”

  “Did you get a name?”

  “I didn’t catch his name, sorry, ma’am.” The woman looked sincerely apologetic. “He seemed to know the pig and wanted her so much.…”

  Kyra shut her eyes for a moment, wishing that somehow there was a different annoying pig lover in the world. “Rumply brown hair?” she asked, dreading the answer. “Green eyes, kind of gold in the light?”

  “That’s him exactly!” the woman said, happy and relieved that Kyra knew who she was talking about. “Good-looking fellow too.”

  FRED!

  He’d been nothing but a pain in Kyra’s behind since she’d met him. And now he had her pig. How he could tell one pig from another she didn’t know. Though she had to admit Rosie did have a distinctive way about her. He probably hadn’t gone far. Not with the big festival tomorrow. Beltane Eve was almost impossible to resist.

  On Beltane Eve, the most festive celebration of the year, kids dressed up as horrors to scare the cold of winter back into hiding. They wandered the city all day, eating sweets and playing games. When it got dark, there was a solemn parade in honor of the dead Winter King, but once the straw-stuffed Winter King effigy was alight on the bonfire, the kids were sent to bed and things really got rowdy, with dancing until dawn.

  Kyra decided to switch glamours—if she ran across Ellie while she was looking for Fred, she didn’t want him to recognize her as the old woman who’d broken into his hotel room. Who knew how the possibly evil old hermit would react? Better to keep her problems separate. Fred first, then Ellie. Her new glamour was a round-cheeked young blond woman, looking every bit the dairymaid Kyra had pretended to be earlier.

  But searching for Fred and Ellie would have to wait: Kyra’s eyelids were drooping from fatigue. She decided to call it a night and start fresh the next day.

  She checked into a second-floor room at an inn called the Winged Dragon and took a long bath, the hot steam enshrouding her and seeming to clean away months on the road. Then she crawled into her first real bed in ages, the mattress so light and fluffy that she slid directly into a deep sleep.

  The early morning sounds of the city through her window woke her all too soon.

  Kyra could smell fresh bread baking somewhere, mixed with the scent of spring blossoms growing in the box outside her window. The bed was so unbelievably wonderful—she rubbed her feet under the sheets, reveling in the feel of her clean body against clean linens.

  A brisk knock sounded on her door.

  Kyra jumped up and realized she’d washed away the milkmaid glamour. Frantically, she looked around for her potions bag, but realized there was no time for that. Draping her sheet over her head and wrapping the rest of the cloth around her body, she stepped to the door and opened it a crack.

  A maid was walking away down the hall. At Kyra’s feet was a basket filled with something wrapped in cloth, which smelled tantalizingly good. Kyra put her hand on the bundle. Still warm.

  What a wonderful, wonderful woman to have brought this to her. Kyra felt a giggle coming on. Warm baked goods. Breakfast!

  She brought the basket back to bed with her. After polishing off two blueberry muffins, a crescent-shaped almond pastry, and two chunks of brown bread spread with butter, Kyra toyed with the idea of staying there forever—snuggled into bed, living off the delightful things that would come to her door every morning.

  But no: it was time to get back to the real world and find Fred. And her pig.

  Kyra put on her dairymaid glamour and hit the streets. She walked from one end of Wexford to the other—checking every shop she thought might appeal to Fred, watching outside of inns, peeking in pub windows.

  Around noon, Kyra made her way to the central park for a break. The smell of hot savory pastries wafted from a stand near the fountain. She bought two fist-sized pies stuffed with new potatoes, peas, and spices, and sat down on a bench to eat them.

  Streets led away from the park like spokes on a wheel, and Kyra had a view of the open-air market and the shop-lined street. She watched the ebb and flow of people as she finished her first pastry. She was feeling drowsy in the sun, her belly full, her eyes threatening to close. But they widened when she saw a man with two animals—a small pink pig and a wolflike dog.

  Fred.

  He had a loaf of bread under one arm and a shopping bag in the other. Kyra rose and followed him. Despite her dairymaid glamour, she tried to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  Fred turned and went inside an inn called the Thorny Rose. The place was nicer than she expected of Fred. But not so nice that it would be difficult to break into. Kyra watched the dark empty windows until a
small pink pig face appeared in one of them, then turned to go.

  She’d wait until that night to steal Rosie. Surely, even Fred wouldn’t be dim enough to bring a pig to the parade.

  Her glamour fading, she went back to her inn for a nice afternoon nap. It was going to be a long night. And she had to take advantage of that soft mattress while she could.

  At dusk she peeked out the second-story window of her room. The streets were filled with people in costumes—that, she expected. What she was surprised to see, however, were soldiers in full military gear. She’d never seen soldiers decked out for combat at a festival.

  Why would they be so heavily armed on Beltane Eve? Were they looking for her?

  Then she spotted a man in black on a street corner: Dartagn. And the man Dartagn was talking to—the too-handsome face and perfectly coifed black hair were unmistakable.

  Kyra ducked down under the windowsill for the space of two breaths. Then she peeked over again.

  Her mind hadn’t been playing tricks on her: it was Hal. What was he doing here? And why was he in such deep conversation with the black-clad elite soldier?

  Ned came out of the pub behind them, a turkey leg in one hand, and joined in the conversation.

  The remaining two members of the Master Trio of Potioners were here. And they were working with Dartagn.

  Kyra tried to get a grip on herself. There was no way they could have tracked her here. If they had, surely they would have found her already. More likely they’d lost her in the forest and had come to Wexford in case she showed up.

  Did the Master Trio and the King’s Army think she would plan an assassination on Beltane Eve? Did that mean the princess was in the city?

  Kyra needed that pig.

  When she checked again a few minutes later, they were gone. But in their place were three shrieking little girls. One was dressed as a lady ghost with white powder dusted all over her, and the second was a thief in raggedy clothing.