“Not even the best master from Rolanth could be trusted not to sabotage the portrait so soon after a contentious Ascension.” Pietyr follows her to the west-facing window and slides his arms around her waist. “A poisoner painter is best.” His arms tighten, fingers sliding across her bodice. “Do you remember those first days at Greavesdrake? It seems so long ago now.”
“Everything seems so long ago,” Katharine murmurs. She remembers her manor bedroom, all the striped silk and soft pillows. How she sat as a child with those pillows pulled into her lap, listening to Natalia tell stories. She remembers the library and the floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes, whose folds she used to hide behind whenever Genevieve was sent to poison her.
“It feels like Natalia is still there, does it not, Pietyr? Like if we looked hard enough we could see her standing with her arms crossed before the window of her study.”
“It does, dearest.” He kisses her temple, her cheek, nibbles her earlobe so a shiver runs through her. “But you must never speak so to anyone but me. I know you loved her. But you are a queen now. You are the queen, and there is no time for childhood longing. Come and look at these.” He leads her to a table and lays out a sheaf of papers for her to sign.
“What are they?”
“Work orders,” he says. “For the ships we will provide as gifts to King-consort Nicolas’s family. Six fine ships to ease their pain.”
“This is more than just ships,” Katharine says. But whatever they give is a small price to pay. The Martels had sent their favored son to become the king-consort of Fennbirn Island, and he had not even lasted a week before being killed in a fall from his horse. A bad fall, thrown down a shallow ravine. It took most of another week to find his body after his horse came back without its rider, and by then, poor Nicolas had been dead a long time.
If only they knew exactly how long. The story of the fall was a lie. A fabrication, worked up by Pietyr and Genevieve, so that none would ever know the truth: that Nicolas had died after consummating his marriage with Katharine. That she is a poisoner in the most literal sense, her whole body toxic to the touch. No one could ever know that. Not even the island, or they would also know that she can bear no mainland-fathered children. That she cannot bear the next triplet queens of Fennbirn.
Whenever she thinks of that, she nearly freezes in fear.
“What are we doing, Pietyr?” Her hand hangs over her half-finished signature. “What is the point, if at the end of it all, I cannot provide my people with new queens?”
Pietyr sighs. “Look at this with me, Kat.” He takes her hand, and they return to the portrait. There is not much to it yet. Shapes and impressions. The blackness of her gown. But the painter is gifted, and even at so early a stage, she can imagine what the finished painting will look like. “‘Katharine, the fourth poisoner queen,’ it will be called. Katharine, of the poisoner dynasty. Who follows in the footsteps of the three previous poisoners: Queen Nicola, Queen Sandrine, and Queen Camille. It is who you are, and we have plenty of time to put things in place to ensure the future of the island.”
“My whole long reign.”
“Yes. Thirty, perhaps forty years.”
“Pietyr.” She laughs. “Queens do not rule that long anymore.” She sighs and cocks her head at her unfinished image. Barely begun and unknown, much like she herself is. Who knows what she might do during her years as queen? Who knows the changes she might make? And Pietyr is right. The people will know what they need to know. Already they do not know that she was thrown down into the Breccia Domain, saved from death by the spirits of the dead sisters who were thrown down similarly when their Ascensions failed. The people do not know that she has no true gift of her own, and what strength she has is borrowed from those same dead queens, who even now race through her blood in a rotten current.
“Sometimes I wonder whose crown this is, Pietyr. Mine,” she whispers, “or theirs. I could not have done it without them.”
“Perhaps. But you do not need them anymore. I thought . . . ,” he says, and clears his throat. “I thought they might be gone. That they might leave you alone now that they have what they wanted.”
Katharine’s stomach flutters. Her hunger for poison and her lust for blood have slackened since her sisters sailed into the mist to drown. So perhaps Pietyr is right. Perhaps the dead queens are finished. Perhaps now they will grow quiet and content.
She finishes signing the orders Pietyr brought and takes up her empty bottle and rope as the painter returns.
He wraps the rope again around her wrist, over and over until he has it just as it was. “We must work quickly now, before I lose the light.” He lifts her chin with a finger and gently positions her head, daring one moment to look into her eyes.
“How many sets of eyes do you see?” she asks, and he blinks at her uncertainly.
“Only yours, my queen.”
The next morning, Genevieve arrives at the door of Katharine’s chamber to escort her to the Black Council.
“Ah, Genevieve,” says Pietyr. “Come in! Have you had your breakfast? We are just finishing.”
His voice is bright and smug; Genevieve’s smile forced and closer to a grimace. But Katharine pretends not to notice. Natalia’s murder has left a void that must be filled, and all Arrons will bicker among themselves to fill it. Besides, despite the hatred she still feels for Genevieve, Katharine has determined to judge her anew. She is Natalia’s younger sister, after all, and now the Arron matriarch.
“I have already eaten.” Genevieve studies the queen’s empty plate: a mess of cheese scraps and bits of boiled egg. Smears of a jam of poison fruit. “I thought we had decided to limit her poison intake after what happened to the king-consort.”
“It is only a little jam.”
“Two days ago, I saw her shove belladonna berries and scorpions into her mouth faster than she could chew.”
Pietyr glances at Katharine, and she blushes. The dead warriors made her hands itch for blades, and the dead naturalist queens drew her to stroll in the garden. Sometimes the dead poisoners had their cravings.
“Well,” he says, “limiting her intake may not reverse the condition anyway.”
“But it is worth trying, since we have time. And that is the only thing we do have, is it not?”
Katharine slips away to feed Sweetheart as they argue. The coral snake has molted and grown and has a lovely new enclosure filled with leaves to hide behind and rocks to sun herself on. Katharine reaches into another small cage and scoops out a baby rodent. She loves to watch Sweetheart race across the warm sand of her enclosure after it.
“Is there a particular reason you have come to escort me this morning, Genevieve?”
“There is. High Priestess Luca has returned.”
“So soon?” Pietyr wipes his lips with his napkin and stands. It has been only two weeks since the High Priestess departed for Rolanth to move her household from her quarters in Rolanth Temple to her old ones in Indrid Down. “Kat, we should go.”
One on each side, Pietyr and Genevieve escort her down the many stairs of the West Tower, down and down until they reach the main floor of the Volroy and the council chamber. The other members have already assembled, chatting quietly over their tea. High Priestess Luca stands apart, drinking nothing and speaking to no one.
“High Priestess Luca,” Katharine greets her. She takes the old woman’s hands. “You have returned.”
“And so quickly,” says Genevieve with a frown.
“My household is traveling slowly behind me by wagon,” Luca replies. “I have beaten them by a day or two.”
“You should install some of your belongings here in the West Tower.” Katharine smiles. “It would be good to have another floor in residency. From a distance, it looks very grand; imagine my surprise to discover how many floors are taken up by kitchens and storage.”
She and the High Priestess both refuse to acknowledge the sour looks on the faces of the council, as well as their own discomfort. Kathari
ne cannot say that she likes the old woman, and from the way Luca’s eyes follow her, she knows the High Priestess neither likes nor trusts her either. But Natalia struck this bargain. Her last bargain. So Katharine will honor it.
She gestures to the long dark table, and the Black Council takes their seats as servants leave two fresh pots of tea, one poisoned with Natalia’s beloved mangrove, and refresh the sugar and lemon bowls. They clear old cups and saucers littered with biscuit crumbs and brighten the lamps before closing the heavy doors. An extra seat has been added for Luca. Pietyr sits in Natalia’s old seat, though he has not replaced her as Head.
As Cousin Lucian goes over the day’s accounts—tax collections from the merchants for the Queens’ Duel were higher than expected, and there is a fear over a lack of crop production in Wolf Spring—Katharine does her best to pay attention. But day-to-day matters on the island are not what is on everyone’s mind.
“Oh, how long will you make us wait?” Renata Hargrove exclaims.
“Renata, be calm,” says Genevieve.
“I will not be calm! Natalia promised the temple three council seats. And you know whose seats those are.” She looks at Lucian Marlowe, Paola Vend, and Margaret Beaulin. They are the only other members of the council who are not Arrons. Marlowe and Vend at least are poisoners, but Margaret is war-gifted, and as for poor Renata, she is completely giftless.
“How can you know whose seats they are,” Katharine says mildly, “when I do not?” She studies Renata from her chair, and Renata shrinks back. It is a good feeling, to be able to command such a reaction. Katharine does not look like much, small as she is from so many years of poisoning. Forever scarred and forever pale. But there is more to her than that. More to her even than the boost of a thousand years of vanquished queens, and the entire island will come to know it.
“However, Renata does have a point.” Katharine turns to Luca and smiles, all teeth. “You have returned. And you must have given some thought to your choices while you were away.” She had hoped that the High Priestess would not be able to stomach staring into the eyes of the queen who had bested her beloved Mirabella. That Luca would not be able to bow to her and would never return. But she should have known better. Before Mirabella and Arsinoe sailed into the mist, Luca had agreed to preside over Mirabella’s execution, after all.
“I have,” says Luca. “And my choices are myself, the priestess Rho Murtra”—she lifts her chin—“and Bree Westwood.”
The cousins, Lucian and Allegra, make small pained noises.
Pietyr scoffs. “Never.”
Katharine frowns. The only real surprise is Bree Westwood. She had expected that Luca would choose Sara, the head of the elemental family. Not Bree, the flighty girl who played with fire. And of course, Mirabella’s best friend.
“The High Priestess cannot serve on the Black Council,” Genevieve spits.
“It is uncommon, but in the old times, it was not unheard of.”
“The temple is meant to be neutral!”
“Neutral to the queens. Not to the affairs of the island.” Luca’s gaze slides over Genevieve dismissively, and Genevieve’s lip quivers with rage.
“So,” the High Priestess goes on. “Queen Katharine. These are my choices. Who are yours, to be replaced?”
Katharine looks at the faces of her council. But they are not really her council. They are Natalia’s. A few are even Queen Camille’s. She feels the hostility coming off them, and beneath her skin, the dead queens prickle.
The Arrons expect that she will remove three of the others; the others would say that she ought to keep them, to better represent all interests. Even the giftless. Genevieve would tell her to throw the High Priestess’s selections back in her face. And no doubt they all think that she should replace Pietyr. She has seen the way they look at him, how their eyes narrow whenever he touches her.
But they can think what they like. Her Black Council will be hers alone.
“Lucian Marlowe and Margaret Beaulin, you are released. You have both been faithful servants of the crown, but Lucian, we have no shortage of poisoners here. And Margaret, I am sure you can understand my feelings about the war gift, given what happened to me at the hands of Juillenne Milone. Besides, there will be a war-gifted priestess on our council now, to look after the interests of Bastian City.”
Margaret stands and shoves her chair back from the table. She does not use her hands, but the movement is too quick for Katharine to tell whether she used her mind to push or her heel.
“A priestess has no gift,” she growls. “Rho Murtra’s voice will be for the temple and the temple alone.”
“Indeed,” says Lucian Marlowe. “Do you mean to have an entire council of only Arrons and priestesses?”
“No,” Katharine replies, her tone clipped. “Renata and Paola Vend will stay. Allegra Arron will yield the last place.”
Allegra opens her mouth. She looks at her brother, Lucian Arron, but he will not look at her, so finally she rises and bows her head, so low that Katharine can see the whole of the ice-blond bun piled high atop it. She looks so much like Natalia. And it is for that reason as much as anything else that Allegra is leaving.
“Will you stay on,” Katharine asks them, “until my new council members arrive?”
Lucian Marlowe and Allegra nod. But Margaret slams her fist against the table.
“Do you want me to shine my chair for the priestess as well? Give her a tour of the Volroy? This is not the way to rule. Allowing the temple to invade the council space. Keeping your boy by your side as though it is his advice that you’re interested in!”
Katharine reaches into her boot.
“Guards!” Genevieve calls. But Katharine leaps to her feet and throws one of her poisoned knives hard toward Margaret, so hard that it sinks into the tabletop.
“I need no guards,” she says softly, sliding another knife between her fingers.
“The first was a warning, Margaret. The next will go into your heart.”
BASTIAN CITY
Jules Milone places her hands on the stones of the city wall. Beneath her palms, the mortar is rough, warmed by the sun but cooling now in the early hours of twilight. Before her lie the sea and the beach, cast in gray by the stretching shadow. The sound of the waves and the smell of the salt air are a little like home, but nothing else is. The wind in Bastian is less wild, and the beach is not dark sand and flat black rock for the seals to lie on, but pale, fading into a beach of small red and white wave-polished stones. It is pretty. But it is not Wolf Spring.
Camden, her cougar familiar, rubs along the back of her, hard enough to press her to the wall, and Jules winds her fingers deep into the big cat’s soft, golden coat.
Their companion on this walk is Emilia Vatros, the eldest daughter of the Vatros clan, warriors who have led Bastian City for as long as anyone can remember. Emilia looks at Camden and frowns. She would have rathered the cat stay behind, in hiding. But Jules is a naturalist, gifted to make fruit ripen and fish swim into her net. And she does not like to go anywhere without her cougar.
Camden hops up and places her good front paw atop the stones, to look out at the waves like Jules is. Jules moves quickly to drag her back down, careful to avoid the cat’s bad shoulder, injured the past winter by an attacking bear.
“It is all right,” Emilia says. “No one is here, and with the sun at her back, anyone looking will mistake her for a big dog.”
Camden cocks her head as though to say, Big dog, my eye, and swats at Emilia half-heartedly when the warrior girl leaps up onto the wall’s edge. Jules gasps. The wall is high, and the ditch below full of unfriendly rocks.
“Don’t do that,” Jules says.
“Do what?”
“Just jump up there like that. You’re making me nervous.”
Emilia raises her eyebrows and hops from stone to stone. She spins on one foot.
“Be as nervous as you like. I’ve been running these walls since I was nine. The war gift gives bala
nce. You could do it as well as I. Perhaps even better. Faster.” She smirks at Jules’s doubtful face. “Or perhaps you could had your naturalist mother not bound your war gift with low magic.”
Emilia spins away, miming sword slashes and dagger strikes with imaginary weapons. She has the grace of a bird. Of a cat.
Maybe Jules could do what Emilia does. She is legion cursed, after all. Cursed with two gifts: naturalist and war.
“Had Madrigal not bound the curse, I’d have been driven insane and been drowned a long time ago.”
“Yet you can use your war gift now. It is weakened, but it is there. So maybe you would have been fine all along.” Emilia spins again and thrusts an imaginary sword at Jules’s throat. “Maybe the madness of the legion curse is nothing but a lie spread by the temple.”
“Why would they lie?”
“To keep anyone from being as powerful as you could be.”
Jules narrows her eyes, and Emilia shrugs.
“I see you think it is not worth the risk.” She shrugs again. “Fine. You have the war gift, however muted, so I will hide you however long. Until you no longer want to hide.”
On tiptoe now, Emilia jumps to another stone. But the stone she lands on is loose, and she wobbles precariously.
“Emilia!”
Emilia grins and lowers her arms.
“I knew it was loose,” she says, and chuckles when Jules scowls. “I know every step of this wall. Every crack in the mortar. Every creak in the gates. And I hate it.”
“Why do you hate it?” Jules looks back at Bastian City, the light and shadow slatted across it by the setting sun. To her it is a marvel, fortified and ordered, built-up buildings of gray brick and timber. The marketplace with stalls covered over in red cloth, the shades as differed as the offered goods as the dye fades with age.
“I love Bastian,” says Emilia. She jumps down. “I hate the wall. We keep it up now because of the gift, because to be ever prepared is our way. But a wall isn’t needed when we have the mist. So it just seals us off.” She clenches a fist and pounds the stone. “Until we forget the rest of the island. The wall makes the people turn their backs, lazy and safe, and who cares if the gift grows weak? Who cares that another poisoner wears the crown?” She watches Jules run her fingers along the mortar lines. “I suppose there are no walls at all in Wolf Spring.”
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