One Dark Throne

by Kendare Blake

  Sara and Luca stand on the deck already, but Mirabella walks quickly past them, tugging Billy behind her before either has a chance to speak. This is her crowd. Her moment. She opens her mouth with every eye upon her.

  “No doubt you have heard what happened in Wolf Spring,” she says, loudly. “The death of my sister, the naturalist Queen Arsinoe, at the hands of the poisoner Queen Katharine.” She pauses to let the grumbling build, the disdainful whispers about the poisoners. “Now she thinks to come to Rolanth for the festival of the Reaping Moon. To have her triumph before all of you.”

  The people start to shout, and she lets them, talking louder over the tops of their furrowed brows and shaking fists.

  “She thinks to parade into our city—my city—and kill me as if it is sport. But she will not!”

  Mirabella feels the whisper of robes at her shoulder, and Luca’s calm voice cuts through the noise.

  “Mira,” she says. “What are you up to?”

  Mirabella reaches back and takes Billy by the hand.

  “Today I choose my king-consort! And he chooses me, uniting Wolf Spring and Rolanth under one crown!

  “And today I challenge Queen Katharine to a duel!” she shouts. “A duel in Indrid Down! I would have you join me there, and we will put an end to this poisoner at last!”

  Her people cheer. She raises Billy’s hand in hers, and the people cheer louder. This is what they have wanted. To see their chosen queen rise up and seize her throne.

  “Mirabella,” Luca says. “This is not wise.”

  “Perhaps not, but it is done,” says Mirabella. “Katharine thinks she will celebrate the Reaping Moon here. But by the time the Reaping Moon comes, she will already be dead.”

  WOLF SPRING

  Joseph wrings his rag out in his soap bucket and wrinkles his nose. Someone has thrown eggs against the windows of Gillespie’s Bookshop. A whole clutch of them it seems. And in the midday heat, the sticky, running yolks have already started to smell.

  Joseph starts at the top and wipes down, the cloth and water not doing much but smearing the whole mess together. He should have brought a brush. And more buckets.

  “Such a waste of good eggs.”

  Joseph looks up and sees Madge, hawker of the best fried clams in the market, reflected in the window, a basket covered in blue cloth hooked over her arm. He nods to her, and her wizened eyes squint in disgust.

  “If they had any brains in their head,” she says, “they’d have used rotten eggs. Then the smell’d be bad enough to have you throwing up on your own shoes.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Could have been anybody.”

  Joseph dunks his rag again and goes back to cleaning. It could have been anybody. Barely a week has passed since Jules disappeared with Arsinoe’s body. Since the town learned about her legion curse. But how quickly they have turned on her. Her and everyone who loves her.

  “He might not have even heard the eggs,” Madge says, her eyes on the black cloth Luke hung up inside to cover the windows. Black and crimson, for his queen. “It’s not like he’s peeked out here or left that house since it happened. He hasn’t even left his bed except to piss.”

  “How would you know?” Joseph asks, and Madge flips back the cloth over her basket to reveal fried oysters and fresh baked bread. A little bottle of ale.

  “Not up except to piss, I said, so who do you think’s been feeding him?”

  Joseph smiles at the basket. Good old Madge.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he says. “They’ll see. My family’s had boats pulled out of slips at night, people too cowardly to revoke business face-to-face. They might stop coming to your stand.”

  “Let them. Who needs them.” She pauses and sneers over her shoulder at anyone who might be watching. “The cursed deserve compassion. Understanding. Not to be pecked to death like a chicken with a dark spot.” She points a finger at the smearing of eggs. “And not the sentence the Council’s going to give her when she returns.”

  Joseph scrapes eggshell from the window and says nothing. After a moment, Madge squeezes his shoulder and steps past him into the shop, quieting the cheerful brass bell with one hand.

  It takes him nearly two hours to scrub the mess from the windows. When he is finished, his rag is ruined, mostly slime, and the water in his bucket is foul-smelling sludge. No matter how many times he rinses it, Gillespie’s will still smell slightly on very hot days. But it is better.

  Joseph is stretching the knots out of his back and shoulders when a pretty black crow lands beside his bucket and peers inside.

  “Aria,” he says, and she caws.

  He looks around for Madrigal and finds her walking calmly toward him from the square. Her white shirtsleeves are rolled against the heat, and her black skirt is tied with a crimson sash.

  “Still no word from Jules?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought she would be back by now.”

  Madrigal shrugs.

  “Digging a grave or building a pyre takes time,” she says. “Our Jules is all right. She’ll come back when it’s done.”

  “And what if it isn’t done? What if Arsinoe is alive?”

  “The Arrons took Braddock. Arsinoe never would have let them if she were alive. And they found her blood. Right where Queen Katharine said they would.”

  “I didn’t say she wasn’t shot,” Joseph says, trying to explain without having to tell Madrigal the truth about Arsinoe’s poisoner gift. “I just don’t know where Jules would go. If she needed someplace safe.”

  “There’s nowhere Jules feels safe,” says Madrigal. “Not since the Ascension started. Or maybe ever. She’s always been watchful. Ready. That was the war gift, even then.” Madrigal takes a breath, and her face falls. “Only someones have ever made Jules feel safe. You used to, Joseph. And my sister, Caragh.”

  “Caragh,” Joseph whispers, and Madrigal’s eyes brighten as she realizes what he means.

  “The Black Cottage. But that’s so far.”

  “You know our Jules. She would have tried.”

  Flustered, Joseph picks up his bucket and sloshes filth across his shoes. He feels like a fool for not thinking of the cottage before. He wants to run for it immediately, so sure that he will find her there.

  “We have to be careful,” Madrigal says. “The Council has spies here now. They will be watching. We have to wait for cover of dark.”

  GREAVESDRAKE MANOR

  The Arrons hold a grand party at Greavesdrake Manor in honor of Katharine’s victory. Small celebrations along the road from Wolf Spring were not enough. Nor was the parade back into the capital, with Katharine riding point before the revived and roaring bear.

  “The beast was such a spectacle,” Renata Hargrove comments to several gathered guests. “Thrashing against the ropes and swinging its head back and forth. Even though it had just been poisoned and badly bled!”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Caged in the courtyard of the Volroy. I can barely look at it without shivering.”

  “Wait until I parade it into Rolanth for the Reaping Moon,” Katharine says. She reaches for a flute of champagne and does not bother to sniff for toxin before draining nearly half. “Poor Mirabella will probably faint.”

  Nicolas slips his hand around Katharine’s waist and pulls her onto the dance floor. He holds her very close and whispers things that make her heart pound. And Pietyr watches from their table, clenching his jaw so hard his face looks like it is about to shatter.

  “Why do you look at him?” Nicolas asks.

  “At who?”

  “At Pietyr Renard. There has been something between the two of you. I can see it in the way he watches us.”

  “If there was before, it is over now.” But even as she says so, Katharine’s eyes flicker toward Pietyr. Nicolas is handsome. He is bold, and he wants her. But he has not replaced Pietyr, and she fears bitterly that he never will.

&
nbsp; “Send him away,” Nicolas whispers.

  “No.”

  “Send him away,” he says again. “Soon I will be in your bed, and I don’t want to look over my shoulder and find him standing there.”

  Katharine pulls back. She gazes at him coolly. It was a request. But it sounded like an order.

  “Pietyr will stay as long as he likes,” she says. “He is an Arron. He is family.”

  Nicolas shrugs, and his voice returns to its normal softness.

  “As you wish. But will he take part in the Hunt of the Stags?”

  “He may.”

  “And will he try to poison me there? Cut me with a poisoned blade?”

  “Will you try to put your knife in his back?” Katharine counters, but Nicolas only laughs.

  “Of course not, my sweet,” he says. “When I kill a man, I look into his eyes.”

  Katharine forces a smile. Of course he is joking. He must be. No one must ever be allowed to harm Pietyr. No one but her.

  Something across the room catches Nicolas’s attention, and he steps away.

  “One moment, Queen Katharine. I have a gift for you, and it has just arrived.” He excuses himself and cuts through the guests toward the main doors, where Natalia’s butler, Edmund, is waiting.

  Pietyr approaches her from behind.

  “He leaves you in the middle of a song?”

  “He says he has a gift for me.”

  He turns her into his arms, and they begin to dance. It is easier and more natural feeling than with Nicolas. She and Pietyr are matched. When she looks into his eyes, she sees herself. Her better self reflected back at her.

  “Whatever gift it is, it will not be worthy of you. He does not know how to treat a poisoner queen.”

  Nicolas returns, with Edmund following and carrying a silver tray. A vase at its center holds a small bundle of greens capped with tiny white blossoms, and along the outside edge several cups stand filled with a white liquid.

  Nicolas leads them off the dance floor to Natalia’s table, where Natalia sits talking with Genevieve, their brother Antonin, Cousin Lucian, and other members of the Black Council.

  “If you will permit me,” he says, and they look up. “I have brought a gift, in honor of Queen Katharine’s victory.” He sets a glass before every poisoner at the table, even shoving a cup into Pietyr’s hand, before serving Natalia and Katharine last. “I hope you don’t mind my use of your staff, but . . . I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  Natalia looks at the plants in the vase.

  “White snakeroot,” she says.

  “I don’t believe you have it here,” says Nicolas.

  “We do not.” She adjusts her heavy black mamba as its drugged head slides down her arm. “But I know it well. Grazing on as little as a small bundle can toxify an entire mother cow, rendering the meat, and the milk, completely poisonous.”

  “Serving a poison known to cause milk-sickness in a glass of milk,” Pietyr says, and sniffs his glass. “You are quite a student, Nicolas. Soon you will be an expert in it.”

  “Renard,” Nicolas replies, “what talent you have for making a compliment sound like a threat.”

  Katharine glances between them, and Natalia lifts her milk, knowing as usual when to diffuse a situation.

  “A truly exotic poison,” she says. “A fine gift. We will savor it, slowly.” Her eyes find Katharine’s. Slowly and in a minute amount. Katharine has been exposed to white snakeroot only two or three times.

  Katharine raises her glass and drains it. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand and listens to the gasps.

  Natalia’s eyes tremble above the rim of her cup, but she sips.

  “You will be drunk on that, Queen Katharine,” she says. “It is too potent. You should retire now to your rooms.”

  But Katharine is not brought to her rooms. She is brought into Natalia’s study. By the time she reaches it, the poison is already breaking into her body. She barely has time to remove Sweetheart from her wrist and hand her off to Pietyr before she falls to the rug.

  The convulsions are violent. Painful. Her teeth clench, and she bites her tongue. The blood tastes of the poisoned milk.

  She listens to the fear in Natalia’s and Pietyr’s voices as they scurry to invoke the other side of their gift, the healer’s side, combing their memories over old lessons. Remedies. Antidotes. Bottles rattle on Natalia’s shelves as she fingers through them. Drawers squeak open and slam shut.

  “Put your hand down her throat,” Natalia orders. “Make her void her stomach.”

  Pietyr kneels at her head. He tries.

  “I cannot get past her teeth!”

  “Katharine!” Natalia looms over her. Her only mother, and her face is full of fear. “Kat, throw it up now!”

  The convulsions ease, and she relaxes, though the pain remains. It feels as though someone has reached through her ribs to squeeze her heart.

  Pietyr gathers her into his lap. He kisses her forehead and pushes damp black hair from her cheeks.

  “Katharine, please,” he whispers. “You will kill yourself if you keep on this way.”

  Katharine’s head swivels loosely on her neck. When she speaks, her voice is rasping and strange, hardly her own.

  “Do not be ridiculous, boy. You cannot kill what is already dead.”

  THE BLACK COTTAGE

  When Arsinoe wakes, her first sight is Jules and Camden sharing a chair. She smiles weakly and blinks against the brightness, every muscle in her body groaning and stiff. But she is warm, and alive, and the bed she is in would be comfortable were it not for the throbbing sewn-up hole in her back. She has no idea where they are, but there is something very familiar about this room.

  “Jules?”

  “Arsinoe!” Jules and Camden jump up from the chair. Camden leaps onto her feet, purring, her tail winging back and forth.

  “Water,” Arsinoe croaks, and swallows for what feels like forever after Jules pours her a cup. Her mouth tastes terrible. Like old blood.

  “Aunt Caragh!” Jules shouts. “Willa! She’s awake!”

  “Willa?” Arsinoe rubs her eyes. She knows where they are now. The Black Cottage, where she was born.

  Caragh walks into the room with Juniper, her dark brown hound, and immediately comes to kiss Arsinoe on the cheek. Arsinoe can only stare. Then old Willa pushes Caragh out of the way to press the back of her hand against Arsinoe’s forehead.

  “No fever,” Willa says. “Your luck is holding.”

  “She has more luck than anyone I’ve ever heard of,” Jules says. “How many times have you almost died? Three? Four?”

  “Try ten or eleven.” Arsinoe pushes up off her pillow. Caragh and Jules inhale, but Willa quickly stuffs another behind her back.

  “Let her sit up,” she says gruffly. “It is good for her lungs. And her poisoner gift will let her heal faster than you would.”

  “Poisoner gift,” Arsinoe says. “My secret’s less of a secret.”

  “She already knew,” says Jules.

  Arsinoe reaches out and strokes Juniper’s brown head. Looking into the dog’s sweet, dark eyes, she almost wants to cry. She has missed them so much.

  “You must be surprised to be here,” says Caragh.

  “I’m surprised to be anywhere.” She pauses as she remembers the Queens’ Hunt. The vicious look on Katharine’s face. “Braddock?”

  Jules shakes her head.

  “I don’t know, Arsinoe. We had to run so fast. . . .” She says no more, but Arsinoe knows that the poisoners would not have left the bear alive. They could not have, as angry as he was. Poor Braddock. She had been a fool to think she could protect him.

  “Billy,” she says suddenly. “He must think I’m dead. Everyone must.”

  “Everyone does,” says Jules. “Or at least no one has come looking.”

  “I am going out for more yarrow.” Willa trudges around the bed and heads for the door. “And now that she is awake, there are vegetables that need picking.
I have not forgotten what it took to feed her when she was a child. I can only imagine what she will eat now. Come, Caragh.”

  Caragh nods. But before she goes, she touches Arsinoe’s scarred cheek.

  “I’m sorry you took an arrow to the back,” she says. “But I’m still glad to see you.”

  She smiles, closed lipped and almost grim as she rolls up her sleeves. Nothing about Caragh is free and easy like her sister, Madrigal. But there is more in a single gesture than a dozen of Madrigal’s embraces.

  “The way she looks at me,” Arsinoe says when she and Jules are alone, “it’s like she doesn’t see any scars at all.”

  “She hasn’t changed,” Jules says. “Not in that way, anyhow.”

  “In what way, then?”

  Jules leans her head back.

  “It’s just strange to see her here. So calm. Like she’s at home. I know, she is at home, but—”

  “I know what you mean,” says Arsinoe. “I want her home again, too.”

  Jules grasps the tip of Camden’s tail and rubs the fur until Camden swats at her. “Tell me what happened. I only remember being shot in the back. And then you, pulling me into the saddle.”

  “I used the war gift,” Jules replies. “I pushed Katharine right through the air. She must’ve rolled three times.”

  “Wish I could’ve seen that.”

  “I don’t know how I did it. The curse is bound. The war gift isn’t that strong. I just . . . did it. Because I had to.”

  “Could you do it again?” Arsinoe asks.

  “Not for all the cakes in Luke’s oven.”

  Arsinoe almost asks how Jules feels. If the curse is taking its toll on her mind. But she does not. Jules is fine. Safe. The question would only add to her worry.

  “Jules.” Arsinoe squints one eye. “When I was drifting in and out . . . did I confess to you that I used low magic on you and Joseph?”

  “You did.”