by Callie Bates
She looks at me and points wordlessly at the door.
CHAPTER TWO
A knot tightening in my stomach, I hurry back through the chilly corridors, into the vaulted halls whose ceilings are painted with images of cold-eyed Paladisan gods. My heartbeat has begun to pulse in the tips of my fingers. Where is Guerin?
Closer to the king’s grand apartments, I find the crowd that’s missing from the other rooms and corridors. Half of Laon seems to be waiting outside the gilt-paneled doors of the grand salon, shopkeepers shoulder-to-shoulder with silk-clad courtiers. Nobody takes much notice of me; I realize I’ve forgotten to change out of my plain breeches and greatcoat. I look like a boy. It’s disrespectful. I should have put on a gown.
Word has gotten out fast. But does it mean he’s deathly ill, or just that everyone wants some more entertainment the day after the celebration?
I shove my way to the doors. I step on toes and someone swears in my ear, but then I’m there, pushing past the bewigged footmen in their blue-and-gold livery. They don’t stop me; they’ve seen my face. They know who I am. I grab the cold gilt doorknob myself and then I’m inside, the door clapping shut on the noise in the hallway.
The grand salon sits almost empty, except for a knot of state ministers clustered together by the far door—the one that goes into the king’s bedroom. I don’t need to hear their whispers to guess what they’re saying. They fall silent as I approach, and then, with a sort of collective sigh, Master Madoc separates himself from the others and comes to grasp my forearm. The muscles of my arm tense, but I don’t throw him off. He’s the minister of finance, and the father of my best friend, Victoire. Sometimes I let myself imagine he’s my father, too. Right now he’s trying to look paternal, but I see the worry in the lines on either side of his mouth. They’ve been there often of late—especially since he released that report on the country’s revenue. It was intended to pacify the laborers who clamor in the city squares—to show everyone, from the merchants to the poor, that the king has taken no more from them than is necessary to run the country. Most were quelled, but I’ve still seen pamphlets in the city complaining that the king should pay taxes, too, and that the nobles grow fat off the labor of the commoners—all things that, though patently untrue, lie heavily on the court. Ordinarily Master Madoc looks impeccable, but his neckcloth is carelessly tied, and his waistcoat is coming unbuttoned.
“King Antoine won’t wake,” he says. “He went to bed with stomach cramps, and now the doctors say he hardly has a pulse. Poison, they think.”
“It’s not the drink?” I ask, because it is the logical question, the logical solution. I’m proud of how my voice doesn’t rise, despite the anger pulsing in my temples.
He shakes his head once. “We’ve already taken several possible conspirators into custody. The servants, naturally.” He pauses, watching me. “And the royal botanist, Master Jacquard. They’re saying he would know how to administer a poison, since he works with the plants.”
That damned amanita. The king’s symptoms match its effects. My jaw tightens. I can’t tell Master Madoc—not yet. It would only be further evidence against Guerin. “Guerin Jacquard did not try to poison the king.”
Master Madoc spreads his hands.
I march to the bedchamber doors and let myself through. The ministers stare but don’t stop me.
I pause inside to let my eyes adjust to the dimness. At first glance, the cavernous room seems deserted. It takes me a moment to make out the crumpled figure of the king in the vast maw of his curtained bed, and on a stool beside him, hunched over the bedside, a woman in a voluminous gown. Loyce, the princess. His daughter. The future queen of Eren.
The woman who won’t care if I die in a ditch once I turn twenty and am no longer under Antoine’s protection.
She’s risen to take a step toward me. Despite myself, I stop short, my whole body tensing.
“Get out of here.” Her voice grates. She takes another step forward, the paniers beneath the gown swaying so that her skirts ripple. It’s the court gown she was wearing last night for the celebration, strewn with pearls and sapphires and worked with gold thread. Only now the pale-blue silk is rumpled, and her hair has begun to fall out of its towering coiffure. The walnut powder bronzing her skin has smeared.
Finger by finger, I close my hands into fists and then release them. “I’ve come to see him.”
“You’ve come to gloat. You Caerisians have always wanted him dead.”
“Not me.” I barely restrain myself from saying, Then you would be queen. “I’m no more Caerisian than you are.”
Loyce’s lip curls. “You can wash your hands all you want, but the stink of the gutter remains.”
I flinch at the paraphrase of Bonneviste’s satirical quote, for its accuracy stings. Most Caerisians, after all, are poor shepherds who keep dingy, windowless huts and stink of peat fires. By all rights this should ignite Loyce’s charitable instincts, but of course she doesn’t care about the poor in Caeris any more than the poor in Eren. She has her servants throw bread at the crowds on holy days, while she sits holding a handkerchief to her nose. Victoire and I are the ones who hand out food on the temple steps. I’ve looked the poor folk in the eyes.
They terrify me, because I see myself in them. Myself, if Antoine dies.
I have to calm my mind. I have to remember why I came here—for Guerin’s sake. While Loyce and I are fencing with words, anything could be happening to him. I say, “I understand you’ve taken Guerin Jacquard into custody. He’s not a murderer. He wouldn’t conspire to kill the king. What could he possibly gain from it?”
But Loyce isn’t listening—of course. She never listens to me or to anyone. She swings back, her skirts dipping, to study Antoine’s shrunken body. I take a few steps after her until we’re both close enough to hear his breath. It shakes out of his body and stops with a gasp. In the silence, all the muscles across my shoulders tense. “Don’t die,” I whisper. If he dies now, it will be Loyce who arranges my future. Loyce who chooses the man I will marry, the place I will live. You can be sure she won’t let me go to Ida to study botany. She’ll see I end up with some horror of a husband in some dead end of the world—or worse, she won’t even arrange a marriage, just send me “into the country” and no one will ever hear from me again.
Antoine draws in a shaking breath and I release the grip I had on my coat cuffs. My fingers are slick with sweat. I can look away from his hollowed cheeks and gaunt skin, but I can’t stop hearing the rattle in his throat. This is the man who sat with me at the breakfast table, talking of everything from politics to the latest Idaean play. He took me hunting at his country estate—without Loyce—and we laughed together over how poor my aim is. He’s read my botanical notes and studied my illustrations.
Even as he wheezes, I half expect him to open his eyes and say, A king must not rest. Fetch me my coat! My tea! What’s the news?
His fingers twitch on the coverlet. But he doesn’t wake up.
“I always thought it would have been more of a kindness if he had imprisoned you straight off,” Loyce says. She doesn’t look at me; her gaze is fixed on her father. “Rather than make you think you have a life worth living.”
“I—” I clench my jaw against the other words that want to pour out. I want to scream at her, I want to grab and shake her until she looks at me, until she really sees me. Until some small compassion enters her heart.
But she’ll only call the royal guards. I will be escorted out, and forgotten.
I curtsy instead, reflexively, though it must look absurd in breeches and a coat. Ordinarily Loyce would seize on any chance to ridicule me, especially for wearing men’s clothes. She said on my twelfth birthday, in front of the entire court, that I looked like a scrawny Caerisian peasant who’s spent too much time in the sun. Even though everyone knows she envies my brown complexion, for it means I don’t have to wear walnut powder to fashionably bronze my appearance. But now she doesn’t even seem to notice what I’m wearing.
Hensey would want me to say something like I hope you remember that I came here in your hour of need. When you plan my future for me, I hope you remember that I cared about your father.
But I can’t say the words. They’re pathetic.
And my life is worth living.
—
I LET MYSELF out of the bedchamber. The ministers have left the grand salon, and for a moment I’m alone in the dusty light scattered over empty chairs and the neat lines of a pianoforte. I allow myself to close my eyes. Let two tears catch in my lashes. I have no power, no station: This court is the only home I have known for fourteen years, and yet I can’t truly call it home, because I could be thrown from it at any moment.
The squeak of hinges alerts me to an opening door. I scrub the tears off my cheeks. In walks Denis Falconier, Loyce’s favorite, in purple velvet down to his shoes. The man Loyce wanted to marry, though Antoine forced her to wed Conrad of Tinan. Denis is short and blond and genial, and everyone calls him charming. A great irony.
He breaks into a smile at the sight of me, though by all accounts he should be overwhelmed with grief and worry. “Lady Elanna! To what do we owe the…pleasure?”
I try to compose myself, but the skin between my shoulders has tightened at the sight of him. “I was paying my respects.” I wet my lips. Denis has more influence than anyone ought to. If I can convince him of Guerin’s innocence, he might persuade Loyce to free him. “Did you know they’ve accused Guerin Jacquard of conspiring to kill King Antoine? The idea is absurd. We all know he would never—”
“Do we?” Denis says dubiously.
“I’ll speak for him. I know him better than anyone else at court.”
Denis looks me up and down. “You?” The corners of his eyes crinkle as he laughs, and I am fifteen again, standing before the court in my new gown, feeling beautiful and grown up until Denis says, Look, the Caerisian has breasts. It must be a girl after all. How Loyce laughed. “Lady Elanna, it’s touching that you wish to take such good care of your friends, but I’m afraid this matter must be left up to those in charge. Those,” he adds, “who have a bit more knowledge and experience than the daughter of a backwoods traitor.”
My hands curl. Once, when I was ten, I actually threw a book at his head. He had a bruise at his temple for a week; my tutor switched my hands with a birch rod, but it was worth it. But I can’t throw something at him now. I need his help. “Guerin has no reason to conspire against the king. He has everything to thank the king for—employment, supplies, plants.”
Denis studies me. He actually seems to be thinking; quite extraordinary. “And how much,” he says softly, “do you love the king, Lady Elanna?”
Coldness tightens the back of my neck. I remember the weight of the pistol against my temple, the chill of the cobblestones against my feet. I swallow hard.
“I love the king dearly,” I say. “Like a father.”
Denis raises an eyebrow. “So that argument you had with him last week—that was a bit of paternal affection?”
My mouth goes dry. Of course Denis has twisted things. It wasn’t an argument. I had insisted that, upon turning twenty, I would go to Paladis to study botany; Antoine had argued that he had a better plan for my future, including a husband to care for me and a home to dwell in. “You can’t live in a garden,” he said. “Not even the Kepeios Basiliskos.” I said I’d sleep on the ground if it meant I was in Ida. He told me I was being a fool, and then he said, “Get out of here.” He said it kindly—but he spoke the words, and now Denis can cast whatever meaning he wants on them.
“All fathers and daughters sometimes disagree,” I say.
Denis raises an eyebrow. “And your real father? What does he think of all this?”
I go cold. “You know as well as I do that I haven’t spoken to Ruadan Valtai in fourteen years.” It’s hard to imagine that I was fathered by a traitor who schemed to put a crown on the Old Pretender’s head.
“Actually,” Denis murmurs, “I don’t know that.”
We stare at each other. He’s smiling a little. My throat is tight.
“Well, it’s true,” I say.
“Hmm.” He shrugs. “Maybe.”
My breath is coming faster; he can’t hold my barbaric father’s failed rebellion against me. He can’t claim I would kill the king who has fed, clothed, and educated me for fourteen years. He can’t.
But he’s Denis, and he has power that I don’t. He has Loyce’s ear as well as her bed. This is the man who has ruined the prospects of young ladies-in-waiting by telling Loyce they looked at her sideways. The man who claimed the Count of Aeroux wrote a seditious pamphlet against the king; the count, an innocent, was locked up and Denis got his lands and revenue. And the man who started the “game” of having me followed, of hunting for anything suspicious in my behavior, trying to undermine my position with the king—and so Loyce gives him more and more gifts, more and more attention.
“It’s too bad,” he says, “that we found a piece of white mushroom in the king’s dish last night. What’s it called? Destroying Angel?”
No. No, no, no. I can’t breathe.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammer.
“Don’t you? Some botanist you are.” He watches me, smiling. “I don’t know the Idaean word for it. Amazita? Emaranta?”
I want to stare him down, but I can’t seem to look him in the eyes. The amanita keeps reappearing in my mind, its broken stalk fleshy under my fingers. I swallow. A pale, tingling cold washes up my legs. He’s twisting things—twisting me. “What are you saying, Lord Denis? Are you accusing me of plotting against the king?”
“Not at all!” He laughs. “We all know your interest in those hideous fungi; the king fawns over your skill in drawing them often enough. How amusing to think you didn’t know some of them are deadly.”
I suck in my breath. I did show King Antoine my drawings, before many members of the court. But this is ridiculous. I didn’t murder the king.
“Arrest me,” I say. “I’ll prove my innocence in a court of law.”
I see myself standing before the judge, in the old law court near the river, presenting my case. I retired to my chambers shortly before two o’clock in the morning. I rose around half past six and went for a walk.
And woke a specter on the Hill of the Imperishable.
If they don’t arrest me for regicide, they can arrest me for practicing magic—because that Idaean man saw me. What if he tells them? A sweat breaks out over my palms, beneath my arms. I have to find the man and stop him from speaking. I have to talk to Guerin.
“It’s so much fun to watch you squirm,” Denis says with a lazy smile. He hasn’t made a move to alert the guards. Instead he moves past me, his velvet shoes clicking on the parquet, and lets himself into the king’s bedchamber.
As if he didn’t just accuse me of murder.
—
I HAVE TO free Guerin—or if I can’t, I at least have to speak to him before Denis accuses me to Loyce.
It’s easy enough to find out where the prisoners are being held, though I’m afraid my tense countenance makes me look guilty. The conspirators haven’t been transferred to the Tower yet. Instead, they’ve been locked in an old stateroom that Antoine hasn’t yet renovated. A full complement of guards stands outside the doors. My legs seem to be made of water. Denis could have sent word. They could arrest me at any moment. I lift my chin as I approach the captain.
“I must speak with one of the prisoners,” I say to him. “Guerin Jacquard.”
He looks over my shoulder, unimpressed. “No one is allowed in. Unless you’d like to name yourself a co-conspirator?”
My heart leaps in my chest, but he’s not actually accusing me. Word hasn’t arrived to place me under suspicion.
Yet.
The captain’s eyes fix on something behind me. Someone.
I turn, slowly.
A man is coming toward us down the corridor, urbane in a cream silk
coat and knee-breeches against the old, naked walls. “Lady Elanna,” he calls out, his voice hoarse from years of shouting at soldiers on battlefields. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
My hands curl into fists. Deep in my stomach, my heartbeat flutters wildly.
Maybe Denis has let out word.
“Lord Gilbert.” I’m damned if I’m going to bow to the Butcher of Novarre. “As I am sure you’re aware, Master Jacquard, the king’s botanist, has been taken into custody—”
He lifts a hand. “We will take the utmost care of Master Jacquard. I intend to listen to each deposition personally.”
I doubt the Butcher’s ideas of “utmost care” agree with mine.
“Walk with me,” he says. “I’m just on my way back to the princess—the queen, I should say.”
“She isn’t queen yet. The king’s not dead. You should pray he lives.”
He looks closely at me, breathing through his thin lips. “Indeed. You are quite right. The princess.” He holds out an arm for me to take.
I hesitate, but touching the Butcher’s arm isn’t going to get me imprisoned. I put my fingertips as lightly as possible on top of his wrist, instead of sliding my arm around his, aware I’m touching the man who burned the lands of Novarre and sowed their fields with salt during the Border Wars with Tinan that began ten years ago. When he took Tinani men and women prisoner, he had them lined up and shot instead of ransoming them. He’s killed fallen soldiers on battlefields, butchered livestock, and flogged men to death. King Antoine always says, “I ask Lord Gilbert to show no humanity, and by all the gods, he never has.”
The Butcher’s left eyebrow twitches upward, as if he’s puzzled by my reticence.
My skin crawls. Was it like this for the Fayette family, when he came to their house after they sold information to the king of Tinan? Did they know, when they fed and housed the Butcher, that in the morning their home would be ashes and so would they?
No one else gave intelligence to the Tinani after that. I was just twelve, and Antoine said to me, “War is an unpleasant business. But you mustn’t be afraid of Lord Gilbert. He’s always followed my orders. He’s a good soldier—and a great general.”