by E. J. Beaton
Sarelin’s fingers closed around her wrist. “No use,” she managed. Another shudder ran through her.
The skin against her hand was already turning cold. Lysande felt tears welling up behind her eyes and fought the urge to curse, to hurl her anger at the sky.
“No use . . . don’t leave . . . Lys . . . don’t forget . . . to open . . .”
One of Sarelin’s fingers twitched in the direction of Lysande’s pocket. Lysande glanced down and saw the corner of the envelope poking out.
Sarelin strained for air, and Lysande leaned closer, crouching until their noses were almost touching. She could feel Sarelin’s nails biting into her skin.
“Find the Shadows. Tell them.” Sarelin’s voice had turned into a croak. “Tell them they were right—”
But the rest of the words never came out. Another breath strained, barely making it from her lips. The queen gave a shudder, hacked out one last cough, and lay still.
The silver cape had spread out around her and the crown winked, its diamonds sharp and bright against the grass. Points of light danced in her hair. Lysande took in her stillness and felt a stone settle inside her.
She stood up. She heard the door of the royal suite banging, and Raden came running through the bedchamber and out into the garden. Too late, she wanted to shout. The words stuck in her throat.
The captain’s boots trampled a rose bush as he hurried to her side. Lysande heard his cry, sob-raw. “She was nearly recovered!”
“Poison.” Lysande’s lips seemed to be moving of their own accord, as if her mind had severed its connection with her flesh. She picked up the little monkey’s body and held it before Raden. “The animal tasted it first. But the queen’s tasters . . .”
“Alive. As far as I know.”
Something tinkling into a goblet. Sarelin pouring rose-pink liquid. The tasters would have tested everything from the kitchen, but they would not have wasted vivantica, surely, with so few viva-flowers to replace it. If someone else had known of the scarcity of the only life-restoring medicine, then the route for a poisoning would have been obvious.
She had to keep thinking, keep analyzing, keep deducing. She could not allow herself to look into those black eyes.
“I’ve sent the guards to search the palace,” Raden said.
He knelt and inspected Sarelin’s mouth and ears, his hands skimming over her body. Lysande knew he would find nothing. Ignoring the memories of mocking remarks thrown at her across the staff table as she read, she returned to the medical manuals she had pored over, flipping through them in her mind. All the scientific books she had absorbed in twenty-two years told her that if it was an ordinary poison, there would have been stiffening of the muscles and coughing up of blood. Poor Trichard had not detected anything.
Her mind was racing. The weight of what had happened—the huge, heavy reality of Sarelin’s still body—had to be held back, until she knew how this had come to pass. Sarelin deserved that. She moved closer to the queen, the flow of thoughts coming so fast that it was hard to fish the details from the stream.
She turned Sarelin gently onto her front and pushed her dark hair to one side. Below the hairline and just above the cloth, there was a small purplish mark, about the size of a fingernail, a little darker than an ordinary bruise. Lysande rubbed the spot, tracing its edge. “Chimera blood only leaves one mark, on the nape of the neck.”
Raden’s gaze locked on hers for a long moment. He did not speak.
“It takes several minutes, then kills in a quick stroke. I watched her die, Raden. Right here. And the medical texts say the body goes cold at once—feel her skin!”
For the first time in her life, she would have been happy to know less about anatomy.
Raden placed his hand on Sarelin’s neck. He held it there for a few seconds. Slowly, he removed his hand and rolled Sarelin onto her back, before rising to his feet.
“It’s impossible,” he said. “It hasn’t been used for a hundred years. You know all the gold in Lyria couldn’t buy a vial.”
Rare. Like a panther with yellow eyes. A panther that couldn’t have been born in Elira. Lysande’s throat tightened.
“It must have been in the medicine,” she said. The words came out half-choked.
“I’ll round up the physicians. There’s a cell under the palace where they can rot,” Raden said. “My women and men are trained to be persuasive.”
“There was a man. This morning. Coming out of her chamber. Very fit; black hair.”
“Lord Brackton. Her latest. I’ll get him, too.”
“And the Rhimese envoy.” Nectar roses, bristling with thorns, were hard to forget.
“I’ll prepare a chamber. The best we can do is hold her in the staff tower, unless we want a spat with Rhime. Or another poisoning.”
Lysande gazed ahead. Panther. Poison. It was all part of the same picture. She kept her gaze trained on Raden’s face. It was easier to look at him than to gaze down at Sarelin, her face dappled with light from her crown, all the color drained from her cheeks. She had the odd feeling that she had stepped into another world. Just moments ago, they had been walking arm in arm. There could be no reality where Sarelin’s arm did not link with hers again, no realm where Sarelin did not clap her on the shoulder, surely.
“I’ll have to get the damned steward to call the court at once. But without a Councillor . . . if only she had named somebody,” Raden said.
Lysande pulled the envelope from her pocket and felt the emerald wax of the seal, a thick daub. Her head felt heavy as she looked at it. It was strange: she had glanced at that envelope many times, turned it over in her fingers, and positioned it in her eyeline while she worked on her treatise. In all those moments, she had resented that green seal. She had never asked for the responsibility of keeping it. Now that she had to let it go, however, she found that her fingers did not want to part with it.
“She gave me this.” Somehow, she forced the words out. “It was to be opened after her death. She insisted I take it, after the hunt returned, when she was bleeding onto her bed. There was so much blood, and she kept ranting about the future of the realm . . .”
Raden’s hand reached for the envelope. He jerked it back just as quickly. For a moment, he hesitated. “No, she gave it to you. And if you’re charged with it, you have to open it.” He gave a short laugh. “Whichever silverblood’s got the job, they won’t like getting their news from the palace scholar. Maybe that was her last joke.”
Lysande only nodded. It felt like a deception, seeing Sarelin lying there on the ground, still and cold; she did not want to think about the realm, or anything other than Sarelin. Her mind was too numb to feel pain. Yet Raden’s stare reminded her that she did not have the luxury of waiting, and she forced herself to move, pushing her body into motion. Had not Sarelin said—on that endless first night—that Lysande would need to open it immediately?
Her fingers fumbled as she tore the envelope. The slip of paper inside had been folded many times, but it bore Sarelin’s scrawl, recognizable anywhere. Her stomach gave a lurch.
“In the event of my death, I appoint a Councillor to choose between the city-rulers of Valderos, Lyria, Pyrrha and Rhime. I invest in the Councillor the power to judge these rulers fairly, and to bestow on one of them the honor of ruling Elira. I ask the Councillor to make their choice in the best interests of the realm.”
“Go on,” Raden said.
“I hereby name as Councillor . . .”
But she could not finish. She stared at the paper, unable to digest the words.
“Who? Not that leech, Pelory, is it?”
Her hands were trembling. There was no way to make sense of it. It was like some horrible illusion, only the words did not shimmer and melt away. And yet she had known—had she not guessed, somewhere shadowed inside her, once Sarelin handed her the envelope?
Raden snatched the page from her and held it up.
“I hereby name as Councillor: Lysande Prior, the scholar of Axium Palace,” he read.
There was no sound but the wind whipping through the garden and shaking the heads of flowers. A gust caught the rose bush beside them, and red petals rained down on the soil.
In her mind, Lysande saw her dream: her own hand reaching for Sarelin’s, straining to pull, and Sarelin slipping from her grasp, flailing, tumbling deeper into the quiet earth.
Two
She was rushing through bracken. Her soles leaped. The melody billowed around her: the fluting of the swallows in the tops of blackfoot trees, the chirrups of finches among clumps of paradisiac and northern heather, the cicada-song floating up from a carpet of jadeheart moss, and the calls of harpmouths dripping from hidden boughs. Deer flitted in and out of shadows. Over the birdsong she heard the whipping of her own steel, a rhythm punctuating the tune.
This was far from the Axium pavell, where nobles kept their distance from each other through the dancing, stepping around each other’s boots. This was a dance with blades, with bodies lunging. She kept her eyes on the glint of armor as she hastened to reach Sarelin again. A gap would open, and if she charged, she could try a thrust, or even a full swing of her sword.
An arm blocked her path. Sarelin’s great boom of a laugh rang out.
“You don’t need to worry,” Sarelin shouted. “What you need is to be the sword. If you’re steel, can you be worried?”
“I’m not a blade. I’m a woman. I have a brain, and it worries.” Lysande lifted her sword.
“Then you must forget how to be a woman. Listen to me, Lys. When you run, are you worried about your legs?”
“I suppose not.”
“Because you trust your feet not to trip.”
“They’re part of my body. Of course I trust them.”
“So are your hands. And they grip the sword.” Sarelin took advantage of her limp posture, charging in and grinning. “Try.”
And she had tried: entered the flow, for a moment. The moment became a little longer each time, until she could beat the queen back enough to defend her dignity.
“Councillor?” Lysande heard someone say.
She could still hear the trill of a harpmouth and see the raindrops gleaming on Sarelin’s shoulder.
“Councillor, the ceremony is complete.” The birdsong faded. Lysande opened her eyes. The chafing of the sword-hilt against her palm receded and the forest melted into a hall ringed with flickering torches. It took several seconds for her to recognize the heavy, orbed staff made of silver, while her memory retreated, but she realized at last where she was, and why she was standing on the stage. The stones inside her chest multiplied.
At the row of priests bordering the stage, she knelt, taking the tokens one by one from the attendant. She deposited the elder-oak branch at the feet of the woman dressed as Cognita, though it seemed a dry offering for the goddess of wisdom. The second priest, clasping the longsword of the goddess of justice, accepted Lysande’s rose thorns. As the third priest pushed back the hood of her mantle, she wore a carefully blank expression; once Lysande drew close, a sneer spread over the woman’s face.
You listened to my instructions for the blessing of the jubilee parade, Your Beatitude, Lysande thought. Two years ago, in the city prayer-house. You did not speak, but your eyes said plenty when they wandered over my sleeves, finding the ink spots there: the marks of my employment. Do you remember that I conveyed Sarelin’s thanks to you, Your Beatitude? Because I remember how your face scrunched when you had to acknowledge me, as if someone had pricked you.
Everything in its place. She almost heard the Axium motto, spoken in the other woman’s gaze.
A surge of rebellious vigor moved through her. It took all of her effort to push it down, with the help of the chant that she usually reserved for the force of her addiction: restrain, constrain, subdue. She had become so good at following the rules of self-discipline in the orphanage that she had never stopped to consider whether they offered the right lessons for a low-born woman.
She placed the winterberries for Crudelis, goddess of love, at the third woman’s boots, ignoring the renewed sneer.
Two sprigs of holly separated easily, for the last priest. She hardly needed a kiss on the brow from Fortituda, in return, but she would have taken a blow, for Sarelin’s sake.
Whispers carved through the audience, and as she took the staff from the steward, she could see ruffled sleeves and breeches of starched cloth, doublets trimmed with silver thread, and stoles of deep emerald draped over their wearers. Descending to the courtroom floor, she was pulling a great weight, each step the hauling of a boulder. Black faces, white faces, brown faces, and other shades still: with all of them pressing around her, she returned to the same observation she had made several times in this room: that Elira’s trade history seemed painted in the skin of its oldest families. Whatever the origins of each courtier, they moved with the same high assurance, not only a confidence to do but a confidence to be, each footstep and each sweep of an arm guided by birthright. Nobles’ eyes raked her as they made their pleasantries.
At the end, beyond the last bench, Raden waited. Lysande came to his side. The sight of the dark oak benches and the portraits of queens and kings around the walls could do nothing to allay the pain inside her, yet she could not weep, either. As she looked around, Sarelin’s voice echoed in her head, telling her to keep her back straight, like Queen Brettelin riding over the battlefield toward the elemental rebels. Never quaver, never yield.
“Tell me you have some news, please.” She spoke softly.
“After all the tricks my guards’ve tried, I hoped . . . but Brackton says nothing. And the physicians won’t break.” Raden shook his head. “Even Surrick claims she’s innocent, and we can’t keep holding her. She’s no use if her hands are mangled.”
Lysande stared past his shoulder, and he followed her direction, turning to face the map of the Three Lands and the Periclean States, a vast network of black lines that the royal cartographer had painted on the wall for Sarelin’s twenty-year jubilee. Lysande’s eyes followed the outline of a long territory pressed between two much wider neighbors, bordered by a round sea to the north and an expanse of ocean to the south.
She darted a glance at the thick wall snaking along Elira’s western border, then her gaze flicked to the encampments that dotted the eastern periphery. Lines were not only made in ink, of course.
Royam. Bastillón. The kind of friends you keep your sword unsheathed around, Sarelin had remarked to Lysande, when they were sitting in the garden beside the palace orchard, talking about a skirmish on the eastern border, while a man in a half-open doublet plucked gently at a lute and batted his long lashes at Sarelin.
Lysande had thought in broad brushstrokes, back then: rulers, treaties, and wars had formed her preoccupations. Since that day, she had added finer strokes to her understanding of the Three Lands, from import taxes to prisoner exchanges, feuds over shipments of grain, and the abrogation of hunting laws, and her estimation of Elira’s popularity made her frown deeply now.
“I cornered the envoys this morning,” Raden said. “Nothing from the Royamese, of course. Condolences from Queen Persephora in Bastillón, but no apology for peppering an Eliran trader with arrows last week and making off with the woman’s load.”
“Sarelin didn’t trust the Bastillonians, either.”
“I don’t trust a pack of curs, whether they come snarling from the east or the west. But I wouldn’t launch a war on them over one scrap.” Raden sighed. “We’re still the jewel of trade, in their eyes. They want our wine more than they want our crown.”
“Good thing we have four royal hunting-dogs of our own to snap at it.”
“Oh, I see.” Raden shot her a close look. “You did take a look at those nicely wrapped bribes.”
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The display-table in the foyer had just managed to fit all the tributes from the city-rulers: spiced perfume from Lyria, a ceremonial sword from Pyrrha, a wolf pelt from Valderos, and a second round of nectar roses (sporting more thorns than blooms) from Rhime. Lysande had tried not to stare too obviously at the long, thin bundle beside the roses, but looking at Raden’s faintly amused countenance now, she suspected that she might not have succeeded.
Cutting across the foyer, she had reached for the bundle. She had felt the cloth and held it up before her face, examining what could only be Lyrian summersilk, its delicacy evident at once compared to the thicker fabrics of the capital. Without knowing why, she felt drawn to this gift; its lustrous wrapping seemed to stir a desire inside her, a sharp and shifting thing that she could not name.
Curiosity wrestled with a reluctance to unwrap something this finely decorated, but curiosity won quickly, and she untied the bundle. Black petals greeted her, swirling in layers around a central point which eluded the eye. The stem of the flower bristled with thorns, like the nectar roses on the table, yet this flower was black where it should have been red or green: stem and thorns and petals, all black.
A piece of paper fell from the summersilk. Lysande unfolded it. The message took up only a little of the page:
For the palace scholar.
L.F.
A colorless flower and a note without so much as a name attached. Fortunately, Lysande recalled the full name of the prince of Rhime, shouted once by Sarelin in her presence. Prince Luca Fontaine was certainly bursting with charm, to send such a present.
Summersilk . . . she had turned the idea over for days, blotting out the thought of Sarelin’s body with that one, thin word. If Prince Fontaine was sending a rose from Rhime, with all the royal fabrics of his city at his disposal, why not use his own cloth to wrap it? The irregularity niggled at Lysande; yet she should really be wondering why a prince she had never met was including anything for her at all.