“Your duties didn’t involve having a marriage thrown at you,” Annette snapped. “Or being dragged along on a diplomatic envoy for the sole purpose of being paraded about like a horse before a race.”
“Please,” Viola said. “What’s done is done. Theodor, you have no more power to force Annette and me to go back to Galitha than we do to keep you here. And there are things far greater than where we’re living to worry about, in any case.”
“I should say so,” I said. My voice, silent for much of the conversation, had the effect of a tolling bell ending a service at the cathedral.
“We should leave,” Annette said quietly. She pressed a paper into my hands. “We were going to send this to you after we’d left, but since we had the good luck to happen into you, take it now.”
Names I didn’t know tripped in Annette’s neat handwriting across the page. “The location of our villa,” Viola said. “Province, town, name of the property.”
I embraced them both, wishing them well in the same hushed whispers our conversation had been conducted in, hollowly unconvinced this trick of theirs would work yet fervently hoping it would. Theodor wavered but eventually kissed each of them on their cheeks.
“And if things ever degenerate to the point that you can’t go home,” Viola added, “you’ll know where you can find us.”
35
WHILE THEODOR TOOK EXTRA MEETINGS LATE INTO THE EVENING and tried to push the work of a week or more into our last remaining day and a half, I returned to my room. I was surprised to find a tray waiting on my table. I lifted the cover and found fruit, cheeses, and the thin bread the Serafans favored. Theodor must have taken the liberty of ordering something for me, I thought, and appreciated his thoughtfulness.
I untied my hat and kicked off my shoes, and decided as I peeled off my stockings that there was no reason I couldn’t change into my dressing gown and take my hair down. I wasn’t expected at dinner; I upset, Lady Merhaven was clear, too many other guests. Very well. I was tired, wilting like a plant left out too long in the sun. I sat at my dressing table and extracted pins from my hair, rubbing sore spots where my hair had been pulled taut and shaking freedom back into the pomaded sections.
Rattling silverware interrupted me. “Onyx!” I shouted as he wrestled a cube of cheese to the ground and mawed it. “You thief.” I hurried to the table and covered the tray again, not before realizing that the cat had already devoured another piece of cheese.
I nudged him with my toe, annoyed, and returned to my dressing table. A round of cold cream and I felt refreshed, just in time to hear a horrid coughing sound coming from under the table.
Onyx was in the process of vomiting on the carpet. “Shit,” I muttered, not sure how to extricate the cat from under the table before he stained the fine—and pale-colored—wool carpet. A thin drizzle of bile trailed from his mouth, but then he began to shake.
I backed away. I didn’t know cats well, but I knew they hacked up the occasional hairball. This seemed different, as though he were truly sick.
I glanced back at the tray. Cheese couldn’t make a cat ill, could it? Cats, I knew, famously drank milk. “The cat is the milkmaid’s friend while her bucket is full” was a Galatine proverb. Nothing else on the tray had been touched, including the fruit, which I supposed could be poison to cats.
Poison. Impossible, I insisted, as Onyx finally finished vomiting on the floor, leaving a pile of what had very recently been neatly cubed cheese. He backed away from it and mewed at me piteously.
What to do for a poisoned cat? One of my neighbors in Galitha City had told me a story about her niece, who drank half a bottle of laundry bluing. They had made her throw up, I recalled—very well, that was already done. But then? I couldn’t remember. Gave her water? Kept her warm?
Shaking, I poured water into a shallow jewelry dish and set it next to Onyx. He lapped a few sips and lay down tentatively before beginning to shake.
I exhaled—what was I doing? Fussing over a stupid stray cat while I was, I slowly began to appreciate, in real danger. Someone had brought this tray here, bidden by Theodor or not. What was I supposed to do? I closed the balcony doors, latching them securely and setting the lock, and checked the rest of the locks. It couldn’t do much good, I knew, if someone had a key to the room—and if someone had delivered the food here, I had to assume they did.
Onyx vomited again. I retreated to the other side of the room and clambered to the far side of my bed, as though I could distance myself from the danger.
Then I realized that, if I left the room, whoever had tried to poison me would know they had not succeeded. Perhaps it was better to wait, listen for Theodor’s return, and emerge unscathed in the morning.
Sleeping was, of course, not an option. I stared into the darkness pressing against the door, filling the balcony. What else lurked outside, or, worse, inside the compound? I felt cold, the evening cool washing over my clammy sweat in waves.
I waited in silence long into the middle of the night until I heard Theodor return, the clack of his shoes and the scraping of the door audible through the wall separating our rooms. I lit the candle next to the bed. Surprising even myself, I checked first on the cat, still curled by the carpet, which had taken on a distinctly foul odor. He looked as though he was sleeping, paws curled under him, but as I approached I saw that he wasn’t breathing. I laid a trembling hand on his soft fur, the body beneath already cool.
Then I pounded on Theodor’s door until he woke and let me in, and burrowed next to him for the rest of the night. I could almost pretend nothing was amiss, the cool breeze filtering in through the screens in the balcony door, the sheer bed curtains breathing in and out with its movements. Sunlight punctured any illusions I might have laid out in the night—I could no better hide a dead cat than try to pretend I hadn’t been the target of an attempt at murder. I showed Theodor Onyx’s silent form and the tray, which Theodor confirmed he had never ordered.
“But what can we do?” I whispered against Theodor’s rightful rage. “Accusations might only make things worse—and we haven’t anyone to accuse.”
“Too many to accuse, I imagine,” Theodor said, already well entrenched in his pacing, following the edge of a richly colored rug. He trod methodically on the fringed edge.
“Lovely to imagine that so many people want me dead.”
“What’s changed in the past days?”
“News of the breakdown in Galitha. Or…” I sucked in a breath. “If anyone knew I’d discovered that Serafan sorcery is, well. Real.”
“Who might know?”
“Lady Merhaven and Siovan saw me in the hall, after the sorcery exhibition. And in the garden after I saw the music lesson.”
“Lady Siovan is the highest Ainir’s wife. If anyone would know how Serafans use casting, it would be her.” He shook his head. “And that’s a grave accusation—that our hosts might try to kill a guest.”
“I don’t imagine we can do anything about that,” I said, “certainly not throwing accusations at anyone. So what do we do? Do I skip on down to breakfast and pretend nothing happened? Join a tour of the water gardens or the museum of antiquities or whatever is on the schedule for today?”
“That’s not a terrible idea. Isolation is a threat here—we can’t truly keep anyone out if they’ve keys to our rooms. And clearly someone does.”
My brow creased. “Not only do I have to playact that no one tried to poison me, it’s entirely possible that whoever did—or was involved—is two feet from me the whole time.”
“I hope your acting skills are up to the task.”
“You’re the one who told me that—what was it? ‘Never gamble for real money, you have a face that doesn’t lie well’?”
“I hate to contradict myself, but you did manage to lie about the whole business with Pyord, rather effectively.”
“That’s not exactly a compliment,” I said, surprised by how much it stung.
“I know. It’s not what I want to re
member, either, but—I know you can hold out. Less than one day left,” Theodor said. “I’ll have our trunks taken to the Gyrfalcon. We can spend the night on board ship.
“Perhaps,” he said, almost an afterthought, but I could tell he’d considered it carefully, “would you at least consider that you might benefit from a charm now?”
I had all of my old retorts ready, but I was shaken enough to admit I could question even the strictest prohibition on casters, even my mother’s strongest exhortations. “I haven’t time to make anything in any case,” I said weakly. Then I remembered the kerchief, wrapped in plain paper and ready to be sent to Corvin. I pulled it from the desk drawer.
Theodor picked it up, examining the glistening strands of light that clung to the minutely rolled hem. “It’s lovely,” he said blandly.
“I made it for the scholar who helped me at the university. And it’s not charmed for safety. Just luck and calm and success. For his examinations.”
“Better than nothing. Consider it out for delivery, on your person, if it makes you feel better.”
I hesitated, knowing that skirting a rule on purpose was as bad as breaking it, but I tucked the kerchief into my pocket anyway.
Theodor nodded. “Stick to large groups, and…” He paused, weighing his words. “Be careful around food.”
36
EVEN WITH A SUN OBSCURED BY HAZY CLOUDS, THE AFTERNOON was still relentlessly hot. I surreptitiously daubed sweat from my brow. My straw hat was already damp on the inside brim. The acres of channels, pools, and waterfalls making up the water gardens had been remarkably engineered and particularly striking given its location on a high plateau overlooking the sea. From some angles it looked as though the gardens meshed with the ocean, one continuous display of water, perhaps all created, perhaps all part of the natural landscape.
I kept to myself, never too far from the group, never quite in the middle of it, either. For once the distance I had been treated to by many of the delegations’ women worked to my advantage. I tried to at least look as though I were enjoying the scenery and the scent of water lilies and flowering trees punctuated by the salt of the breeze, tried to look as normal as possible.
But I found myself starting at each sound, whipping my head around at each flicker of movement in my peripheral vision.
As our tour guide began a lengthy lecture on the history and architectural significance of the water gardens, I settled on a bench next to a pond teeming with multihued fish.
Alba, still wearing her Kvys religious order’s plain gray clothing, joined me. She hadn’t been with the tour group. I edged away, instinct driving me from sharing space too closely with anyone. “Variegated carp,” she said.
“What?” I asked, cautious. She could be hiding a dagger in her skirts, a vial of poison in her pocket. She could be a distraction, drawing my attention so someone else could stalk me. She might have been the informant who spread the half truth of my curse research at the library, after all.
Or she could be a harmless Kvys nun.
“The fish. They’re variegated carp.”
“You didn’t come here with the group,” I said. There was a question there, hanging over the still water of the fishpond.
“I did not. I had some business at the compound, and it brought me here.” She traced a finger in the pool. The fish, contrary to my expectation, flocked around it, some aqua and blue, others peach and orange, and a few flecked with black, like pepper flakes. “They’re used to being fed, I think.”
“Giving a new meaning to ‘spoiled fish,’ I suppose,” I said, watching one royal-blue carp circle Alba’s fingers. “They won’t bite, will they?”
“If they do, they haven’t much in the way of teeth.” She glanced around us. “That’s more than can be said of plenty in Isildi.”
I started, but Alba had gone back to swirling the water with a fingertip. Was she voicing a threat, solidarity, or was her comment unrelated to what had happened to me?
“Why did you come here?” I asked quietly.
“I needed to find you.”
She couldn’t know. No one knew. Everything around me continued as though nothing was amiss. The man giving the lecture, a short Serafan with tufts of white hair over his ears, continued speaking, now explaining the use of pipes and siphons in creating the ever-flowing water in the gardens. The ladies in attendance listened, eyes trained on him politely. I scanned past them, around the gardens.
“It was Merhaven,” she said quietly. “The poison.”
I edged away from her.
“Not directly, he paid one of the servants, of course.”
“How—” I clamped my mouth around my questions. She couldn’t know. She could be trying to pit me against my own countrymen for some Kvys gain.
“I would advise returning to the compound as soon as you can,” she added in an impossibly gentle voice, “because my inquiries also revealed that he was leaving. Today. Your ship is called the Gyrfalcon, yes?”
“Impossible,” I breathed. “Suppose you’re telling the truth—why?”
“Not here. You look like you’ve seen a jimji—that’s a wicked little Kvys water sprite,” she said with a placid laugh and a pointed glance at two Serafan ladies passing us. “Now. We can go back to the compound quietly, unobtrusively.”
“I can’t—” I swallowed. “I shouldn’t trust you.”
“Very good. You shouldn’t trust anyone you don’t know well. But we’re in a terrible bind, and we haven’t time to rectify our lack of friendship at the moment. You’re not in danger from me, or even, really, the Serafans, though they’ll gladly help. It’s your own people you should fear.”
“That’s what you’d say if you were trying to kill me,” I replied, trying to sound clever and failing as a tremor passed through my voice.
“Fine. He said you’d be suspicious.” Alba pressed a piece of fabric into my hand.
Not plain fabric—a cap. Red wool. Hands shaking, I turned the edge up and traced the initials stitched into it—and saw the faint glow of a charm in the seams.
“How did you get this?”
“You know what I’ll say. That he’s here, that he gave me this as a way to make you believe me. You’ll doubt that reason, too. Make your decision.”
I had no reason to trust Alba, and she could have come by Kristos’s cap in myriad unsavory and ugly ways. My fingers worried the wool, finding the charmed seams and wishing I had some other gift—the fantastical divination of storybooks or even the commonplace ability to discern when someone was lying. I had neither.
At the moment, however, Alba seemed like my best option. From my limited understanding of the international tangle of trade and policy I was now bound up in, a Kvys stood the most to gain by protecting me. And there was the cap, a flimsy and unsubstantiated tie to my brother, but a tie nonetheless. He had betrayed me once, but I still trusted him more than I trusted the strangers I was surrounded by.
I stood, arranging my skirts as though nothing was wrong. “Very well,” I said with a forced smile.
37
NO ONE SEEMED TO NOTICE WHEN WE SLIPPED AWAY FROM THE tour; I doubted they would have cared anyway. The Galatine commoner and the Kvys nun were no one’s favorite delegation members. We strolled toward an empty section of the water gardens, where rows of southern cypress flanked a long, narrow reflecting pool.
My breath hitched in my throat, but I evened my pace to match Alba’s unhurried gait. She glanced at the reflecting pools and white-petaled lily ponds, strolling as though enjoying the scent of the cypress and the tranquil water whose quiet now felt like a threat.
One of the gates leading out of the idyllic gardens and back into the hot, dusty streets of Isildi was just ahead; Alba nodded almost imperceptibly to indicate we would be leaving. We passed between carved sandstone columns and Isildi spread out below us, the sea to our right, the verdant green forests outside the city to our left, and the sunbaked roads and buildings straight ahead.
I let Alba lead as we descended into the city proper. When we turned corners or passed taller walls, I wondered if I caught a glance of a shadow behind me, if there were threats stalking us. We entered an open square, one of Isildi’s many small specialty marketplaces. This accosted us with scents of bright pepper, heady rosemary, and thickly sweet cinnamon—a spice market.
“We’re not near the compound,” I protested as Alba slowed to inhale a jar of ruddy ground peppers.
“No? Oh, I hadn’t realized,” she said with dry sarcasm, capping the jar. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t followed.”
Stray pepper dust accosted my nose and I coughed. “Followed?”
“One never can know for sure”—she shrugged—“but I think we’re safe enough.”
“Safe enough?” I choked on the words, embarrassed by the panic in my voice even as Alba remained calm. “You think?”
“I recognize that this is unfamiliar for you—”
“It’s familiar for you?” I whispered.
She ignored the question. “—but it’s at this point important to return quickly to the compound. I know you can do little to stop Merhaven’s leaving, but your prince may.”
“Why didn’t you go to him?”
“Because I told your brother I would protect you. Now. Step lively, there we are.” She led us at a quick clip past storefronts and countinghouses and onto the broad avenue leading toward the compound. “Merhaven intends to dash away back to Galitha and leave you and Prince Theodor behind. He’s put a price on your head—”
“What?”
“Don’t fret, we’ll watch out for you. But he’s made a payment to one of those underbelly demons in Isildi’s assassin market—didn’t mention those on our tours, did they? Quite the local specialty. He’s bought himself insurance that you won’t sail out of the main ports because, well, you’d have a terrible accident if you tried.”
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