A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire, Book Two)

by Jessica Cluess

  With a cry, I flung a stream of fire at Gwendolyn. Spitting, she launched herself backward, snatching up her dagger. I grabbed Rook’s arm when he started to pursue her.

  “Don’t! It’s a trap,” I said, meeting Gwendolyn’s oncoming attack with another burst of fire.

  Flinging a hand over her eyes to shield herself, Gwendolyn fled into the darkness. With another burst of fire, I looked about the garden for her, but she was gone. Swallowed up by the night.

  Rook shifted, unsteady on his feet. Growling, he turned and slammed his fist against the garden wall.

  “I didn’t want you to see me weaken,” he said. “I never want that.”

  Right then I was on the verge of telling him what he was becoming. Only Fenswick’s warning kept me silent.

  “I want you to see how I’m mastering these powers.” Rook looked into my eyes. “How I’m strong enough to care for both of us.” He pulled me closer. “Because I want to marry you, Henrietta.” He kissed me again, cupping my cheek in his hand.

  “I love you,” he whispered when we pulled apart. I closed my eyes, misery welling up inside me.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  I did love him. And I did fear for him. Very much.

  The next morning, Rook and I sat on a bench in Fenswick’s apothecary. Maria, her sleeves rolled and wisps of hair sticking to her face, poured some boiling liquid into a wooden cup. Steam rose up in a hissing cloud, smelling of lemons. Maria laid a sprig of something green in the cup, then pushed it over to Rook.

  “Drink,” she said.

  “What is it?” he asked, poking at the leaf with an uneasy expression.

  “Mint. Sweetens the taste.” She chewed a sprig and caught my eye. After I’d told her what had happened the night before, she’d agreed we needed to try something new. Quickly.

  Rook gulped the concoction in one go, then slammed the cup on the table. “What’s in it?” He coughed, shoving the cup away as though it had hurt him.

  “Dandelion root, honeyed belladonna, certain types of mushroom.” Maria deliberately left out the spider eggs she’d mentioned to me, which I thought was wise. The belladonna also worried me. It was poison—treated so that it wouldn’t kill him, of course, but poison nonetheless. It was supposed to attack the shadowy parasite that was growing inside Rook. If this worked, we’d kill the thing. No, no ifs—it would work.

  It had to.

  Rook put a hand on his stomach and groaned, climbing to his feet and nearly collapsing.

  I rose as he took a knee and pressed his head against the table, digging his fingernails into the wood. The room darkened. In an instant, I had my fire in my hand. The darkness warped while Maria took up her ax. Please, God. Not like this, not now.

  And then the light flared brighter, and the shadows dispersed.

  Rook brought his head up, massaging his forehead with the heel of his hand as if he were recovering from a night of drinking. He blinked at me. His left eye had returned to a pure sky blue.

  “Has something good happened?” he asked as he stood, swaying only a little.

  Maria beamed and went back to the fire to stir a pot hanging over it. “Very good,” she replied as I slid my arms around Rook, laying my head on his chest. He chuckled, the sound resonating against my cheek.

  “If it makes you happy, I know it’s good,” he whispered into my hair. He made a startled but delighted noise when I kissed him. His lips tasted sweet from the honey. Last night hadn’t been a dream.

  “Didn’t know I’d made a love potion as well,” Maria drawled.

  Flushed with embarrassment, Rook and I stepped apart.

  “What’s this?” Fenswick waddled into the room, and I lifted him onto the table at once so he could see. He fiddled with a button on his coat, marveling at Rook’s improvement. “I’ll be sold into the Hollow and made to dance,” he said in astonishment. I’d no idea what that meant, but I assumed he was pleased. He examined the dregs in Rook’s cup, pouring them into a glass bowl and adding some viscous pink syrup.

  “Have you a moment?” Maria whispered to me as Fenswick examined Rook’s eyes. We ducked into the hallway.

  “You’re a genius,” I said.

  “Aye, that was a given.” Her pleased expression faded. “But there can be complications.” She curled a ringlet of hair around her finger. “The important thing now is that he remain calm. If his heart beats too fast,” she said, hammering her fist upon her chest, “the drug can weaken him. If he’s weak, the thing inside him’ll fight like the devil to take control.”

  Sneaking around in the night would be absolutely out, to say nothing of fighting. Maria continued, “You’ll have to keep him from all excitement. I count the good kind as well as the bad.” Her pointed look made me pale. Rook and I had finally declared ourselves, and now we couldn’t act upon it? I had to keep from arguing.

  “Can you give him something to make him tired?” I asked. At least that would calm him. What I was asking was little better than drugging him, but Maria nodded in agreement.

  “I’ll slip something in with the doses. Hopefully, he won’t realize.”

  “Thank you for all of this.” I’d pulled on my cloak and was fastening it. Already, the clocks were chiming the hour, and I was late.

  Maria smiled. “Are you off to train, then?”

  “Would you like to come and watch?” I brightened at the thought, wishing I could invite her to fight as well, but such a thing was impossible. The boys could handle only so many renegades in one week.

  “I’d love it. I want to watch your magician in action. He’s funny,” she said. “I imagine we could take some sandwiches as well.”

  —

  MARIA GAPED AT AGRIPPA’S HOUSE AS we alighted from the carriage, nearly dropping the basket hooked over her arm. Her reaction was understandable. When I’d arrived months before, this place, with its white Grecian columns and its curling black iron gates, had been like something out of a fairy tale. Now it felt haunted, a memorial to happier times. The great windows on the uppermost floors resembled vacant eyes, gazing down at me in judgment.

  “So this is where your great Master lived?” Maria’s voice shocked me from my remembrance. “Seems a fair place.”

  Being here, I thought of Gwendolyn crawling toward us in her pitiful, shadowy rags. Maria noticed my shudder.

  “Master Agrippa had a daughter,” I said by way of explanation. “They thought she was the prophesied one, you see, before she…well, before she went away. I can’t help but think of her.”

  An even more unpleasant thought surfaced. Suppose Gwendolyn had been the prophesied girl. Perhaps she had been the one great hope for England…and had chosen the side of darkness. I’d worried that falsely accepting the title of England’s chosen one meant we were giving up on finding the right person, but what if the truth was even blacker? What if we’d already lost her?

  “No sense dwelling on what’s past.” Maria nudged me from my thoughts. We walked down the path to the front door, where the iron hobgoblin knocker still grimaced. Magnus opened it for us, his coat already off.

  “There you are.” His smile widened when he saw Maria. “Templeton! My dear, are those sandwiches?” He started poking around the basket at once.

  “Count on you to remember what’s important.” She let him snag one, chopped egg and watercress. Taking a bite, Magnus led us down the hall.

  I let them go ahead, chatting together, and gazed about the house. I stopped in the middle of the foyer, dropping the glove I’d just taken off. It felt like a dam bursting.

  Memories shouted at me from every corner. This was the foyer where I’d first arrived, turning about in wonder. To my right, the staircase Agrippa had led me up in order to meet the boys on the second floor. To my left, the games room where Wolff had taught me to play billiards. I slowly followed Maria and Magnus, stopping to touch the banister or a framed painting on the wall, anything to rekindle another bittersweet memory.

  Entering the l
ibrary was like coming into the presence of a ghost. Agrippa had sat before the fire with me on several evenings, running over the day’s lessons or playing a game of chess with a cup of cocoa. He’d called that his last vice, grinning as he snatched one of my knights in a daring move.

  “Are you crying?” Maria whispered, noticing me.

  “I’m fine,” I croaked, but had to look away. The heart of this room was gone now, and its absence was brutal.

  Enough of this. Everyone else had already arrived. They’d moved furniture to clear space for practice. The green armchairs waited by the wall, silent and orderly as a row of soldiers. Mickelmas was coaching Dee, Strangewayes’s journal open upon a wooden desk for reference. Blackwood and Magnus watched while Magnus finished his sandwich.

  Blackwood frowned at Maria and glowered at me. He said nothing about her presence, though, and proceeded to ignore me even harder than before. He’d not got over the other night. I had a feeling it would be a while before he was ready to speak to me again.

  Mickelmas brought a flute’s mouthpiece to his lips. Wincing, I waited for that earsplitting scream. He blew into it and began playing the thing expertly, his fingers moving up and down the holes with grace. He looked as though he should be first chair in a concert hall, and in his capable hands the instrument was…well, silent.

  “Is it broken?” Dee asked as he snatched the flute back.

  “No, it’s merely being played properly. Handled correctly, it should emit vibrations that harm only those creatures. The trick is to melt the monsters’ brains and leave yours intact.” Mickelmas gestured to me. “Henrietta. You see these markings you noticed earlier in Strangewayes’s book?” He pointed to a crumbling page. Indeed, there were small black circles on the margins that seemed to have been drawn randomly.

  “Yes, the dots,” I said.

  “Wrong, as usual.” He looked pleased with himself. “Musical notes.”

  No. But looking at it that way, the randomness of the marks suddenly became flourishes of music. How the hell had I not seen this before? Dee adjusted the book this way and that to read all the notes that had been jotted down.

  “If you play an up-tempo version of ‘Greensleeves,’ that should be especially repellent to Molochoron. I hope you’re musical,” Mickelmas said, handing off the flute.

  Dee read the passage over a few times, his fingers flying up and down the length of the flute in practice. Taking a deep breath, he put his mouth to the instrument and began to play. At first there was a slight squealing, enough to make everyone wince, but after a few more attempts, Dee made the instrument silent. He bobbed as he played, practically kicking up his heels. Finished, his face was a splotchy pink from exertion.

  “How do you know about all this?” Blackwood asked as Magnus went for his own turn. “How can we be certain this is working?”

  “Indeed, Your Lordship. A boy of seventeen’s knowledge is quite comparable to my own,” Mickelmas said, selecting a sandwich. “However, please trust that I can interpret Strangewayes’s shorthand at least as well as you. For example, those curlicue swords of yours are worked best when twirled abantis—counterclockwise.”

  I’d wondered what on earth that term had been.

  “Strangewayes created something like a new language among his followers, as a way to preserve magician secrets. There used to be whole histories of this sort of thing, you know. When I was a boy, they printed biographies of Strangewayes. Revered magicians even had their portraits replicated on pewter souvenir mugs.” He sighed. “I miss those days. Magician theory used to be a popular topic of discussion in London salons, passed around with the wine and finger foods.” Mickelmas seated himself in a chair, propping his feet on a gold-tasseled stool. “Enough chatter. Knee, let Haggis have a turn.”

  While Dee and Magnus corrected him on their names, and Blackwood pretended he was anywhere but here, I followed Maria over to the fireplace. She studied Agrippa’s portrait with a look of intense concentration.

  “That was my Master,” I told her. Agrippa’s face was younger in this painting, but his smile and his bright brown eyes were the same as ever they’d been.

  Forgive me. His last words whispered in my mind.

  “Thought he was the man who betrayed you,” Maria said.

  “He saved my life before he tried to destroy it.” To my surprise, Maria scoffed.

  “Strange you would remember him so fondly.”

  Though I’d told her about Agrippa’s betrayal, I felt stung.

  “He did what he thought was right.” What would Agrippa say if he knew we were here with Mickelmas right now, training with magician weapons? He’d probably demand we get these monstrosities out of his house, to begin with. Would he have understood, though? Or was that too much to hope?

  “People do what they think is right, but that does not make it good.” Maria’s voice dropped lower, to that womanly, more musical tone. She rubbed her eyes, as if waking from a dream, then retreated to the window, curling up there to stare out at the garden.

  I noticed that Agrippa’s prophecy tapestry still hung upon the wall. It had been months since I’d seen that blasted thing with its image of a white hand rising out of a dark wood, fingers tipped with flame. Agrippa’s seal, two lions flanking a shield, had been etched into the palm of the hand. I scanned over the “prophetic” lines woven by the Speakers in their priory:

  A girl-child of sorcerer stock rises from the ashes of a life.

  You shall glimpse her when Shadow burns in the Fog above a bright city.

  You shall know her when Poison drowns beneath the dark Waters of the cliffs.

  You shall obey her when Sorrow falls unto the fierce army of the Blooded Man.

  She will burn in the heart of a black forest; her fire will light the path.

  She is two, the girl and the woman, and one must destroy the other.

  For only then may three become one, and triumph reign in England.

  What a joke it all had been.

  “Howel. Demonstrate this, will you?” Mickelmas said, jolting me from my reverie.

  He tossed me one of the daggers, then fetched a strawberry and popped it into his mouth. I swiped the dagger through the air, and both times that high keening sound made me wince. Mickelmas sprang to his feet and took the dagger back. “Always have someone incompetent demonstrate first,” he told the boys. “It flatters you even more.” I restrained myself from kicking at his ankles.

  “The trick is to swipe upward.” He demonstrated the correct way, with a short, sharp jab. “Ralph Strangewayes claimed he mined these metals from the Ancients’ home world. Listen.” He flipped open the book, slowly read a few lines to himself, and then spoke: “Naught but the very melted and molten soil of their ground affects their skins or humors. I fashioned my dirks and cutlasses from their clay and steel, sometimes their very bones.” The whistle. Had I been putting something from an Ancient’s body into my mouth? I felt ill. “If once you cut them, cut them once again. That is the key.” He looked back up at us and slapped the page. “Several of these beasties have unusually tough hides. You’ll need a great deal of force behind the blade. You especially, my girl, may not have enough physical strength for some blows.”

  I wanted to make a snide comment, but after an instant of practicing, I knew he was right. Jabbing up from underneath worked better for me, and the blade did not whine.

  “Good. Now that you can use the knife, twist it when you make impact. This little serrated bit on the tip wants to dig into the skin,” he said, pointing at it.

  “You might have shared all this information with the Order before,” Blackwood muttered. “Considering you brought these demons upon us.”

  Was he really going to be like this the entire session? He remained in the corner, regarding us as though we’d all disappointed him dreadfully. Truly, Lord Blackwood acting a proper ass in Master Agrippa’s library was like going back in bloody time.

  “In my experience, one tries to avoid those who wo
uld like to put one to death,” Mickelmas said pleasantly. He ambled over to Magnus, who was jabbing at one of Agrippa’s bookshelves with the scythe. Magnus still had one arm wrapped in bandages, and he was making a clumsy job of it. “What, are you trying to pick at it?” Mickelmas adjusted him. “Wide, arcing sweeps, my boy, though perhaps you’d best really go for it when you’re out of doors.”

  Blackwood had not done with his conversation, though. “Why didn’t you try this years ago yourself, then?” he snapped.

  I’d had quite enough.

  “The magicians were scattered and afraid, Blackwood. Can you imagine what that felt like?” I practiced a few more swipes of the dagger.

  Blackwood didn’t reply.

  “How did you and Mary Willoughby open that portal in the first place?” Dee asked Mickelmas, finally taking a break from playing.

  Blackwood stiffened, but thankfully Mickelmas didn’t appear eager to divulge his father’s secrets.

  “Runes,” the magician said, carefully. “But I wouldn’t do it again.”

  “Why?” Dee asked. “Maybe we could send the beasts away?”

  “Experience taught me never to play around with such things. All right?” Mickelmas snapped.

  Dee blushed to the roots of his hair and played some more.

  Mickelmas had us line up and drill with each of the weapons. I could feel the difference when the swords and daggers were handled properly. While I hated to admit it, I wasn’t physically strong enough to handle the swords or scythe properly. I was, however, very good with the daggers. Mickelmas applauded whenever I struck a clean, upward blow.

  “Excellent. And that tiny little one,” he said, plucking the microdagger from my hand. “Well, it’s very…small.” He frowned and flicked his wrist, sending the blade soaring to stick in the front of Agrippa’s desk, its handle trembling.

  “How will we know if our training works?” Magnus asked, cracking the whip. He did it as Mickelmas had suggested, swirling it once overhead and delivering it in a straight, sharp downward movement. The violet flash of light did not happen this time, and the sound was akin to a clap of thunder. A bit noisy, yes, but it felt right.