“Do you think they’re joining him?” I asked.
“It’s unclear. They could just be trying to avoid the entire situation. I suppose we cannot blame them. And people are angry, Freya, with your actions.”
“With what, exactly?”
“Gustav’s Treatise, Your Majesty. It hardly paints the nobility in a good light. To see you distributing it . . .” She shook her head. “They think you don’t respect them, and the old ways. But I do have one piece of good news. I have information on Sofia Thorn. She is not helping Sten, it seems, or providing him information. She has returned to her own lands in the west with her husband.”
“Then why did she leave, if she’s not against me?”
“Her husband truly is sick,” Norling said. “I assume she wanted to retreat from the capital before anything else occurred, like so many of our potential allies. No one wishes to be caught in the middle of this. They will all return, I am certain, once things are settled. The cowards probably expect a pardon.”
“And my father? What have they done with him?”
“He is at Newsam Manor, too,” Holt said. “Unharmed, we believe.”
“Has Sten made any threats against him?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Norling said. “He claims he is keeping your father for trial, after you have been captured. To see if he was involved in the murders, too.”
“But he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t.”
Except—I couldn’t know that. Not for certain. All I knew was that I hadn’t been involved. Would my father have been that desperate to increase our influence? I didn’t think so, but it was possible. Anything was possible.
“Do you have any more evidence about who was involved in the murders?”
“Not yet, Your Majesty,” Norling said. “We lost a powerful resource in Thorn, and I admit, we have been distracted with more immediate matters of security.”
“But, Your Majesty, it grieves me to inform you that there have been more rumors about you,” Holt said. “Notably, about you and William Fitzroy.”
“Me and Fitzroy?”
“Nobles had of course noticed that you have grown closer, since the murders. Many are speculating that you intend to marry him, perhaps that the two of you schemed together to put yourselves on the throne. Nonsense, of course, but it is sordid enough for people to enjoy spreading it.”
“If they’ve noticed we weren’t friends before, how could we have plotted together?”
“They say you were concealing your relationship, to protect yourselves. Absolute nonsense. But still, I must warn you again—be wary of Fitzroy. Both because any contact with him threatens your position, and because we do not know that he was not involved.”
“We’ve also lost a lot more of our guards,” Norling said, into the quiet that followed Holt’s statement. “They seem to think they’ll die if they remain. I recommend making it clear that leaving is not an option.”
“No,” I said softly. “No, I can’t threaten them into staying, if they think they’re going to die.”
“Then we must increase our remaining guards’ patrols immediately,” Holt said. “Increase the work hours of those who remain. And we will have to recruit more people from the city.”
“Untrained! Untested!” Norling said. “Who knows if we can trust them? What sort of men will want to become guards at such a time, with Torsten Wolff bearing down on us?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Holt snapped. “We must get it done.” He sighed, pressing his hands on the table. “It will be all right. We are seeing more true believers by the day. People want to support their queen.”
“True believers?” I sat straighter, apprehension prickling through me.
“Your campaign is working. People are talking about your goodness, your new scientific discovery. Some are calling it a sign that the Forgotten want to keep you safe.”
“It’s science,” I said. “Not divine intervention.”
“But if people use it to support you . . . do not mistake me, Your Majesty. You still face a lot of opposition in the city, and a lot of mistrust. We are trying to stop people from speaking against you and your court, although it is difficult to do so when we have so few men at our disposal. But you have supporters, too. We can use this to our advantage.”
But what advantage, I wondered, as I walked down to my lab after the meeting. What was Holt’s goal? I couldn’t forget his words about clearing out the weeds. If the murderer was on my side, as Sten suspected, if he had killed them for me . . .
I had to find more evidence.
I tested every part of the cake I could separate, but the results weren’t particularly revealing. The arsenic was in the sponge. It was in the icing. The flakes of actual gold were safe to eat, but the rest of the cake was deadly.
“It could just be in the sponge,” Naomi said, peering over my shoulder at my notes. “It might have left traces on the icing, after so long.”
“Possibly.” Then I shook my head. “Then there’d be traces of it on the gold flakes, too. Unless the gold is interfering with the results? But why would it? It’s unreactive.” I tapped my pen on the table. Think. “We need the recipe. It’d be pointless slipping the poison into both the cake and the icing, too much risk. So it must have been hidden in one of the ingredients. What ingredients are in both cake and icing?”
“Sugar,” Madeleine said. “Sugar and water.”
“It could have been hidden in the sugar, maybe,” I said. The arsenic powder would probably mix well with sugar granules, if no one looked too closely. But then the recipe would have gone wrong. It wouldn’t have been sweet enough, unless the cook knew to compensate.
But if someone had diluted the arsenic in water, what could we possibly do next? The killer couldn’t have added it to the palace water system—everyone would have died, far sooner, and not only at the banquet. So someone with access to the kitchens must have added it that night. Which once again narrowed the list of suspects down to pretty much anybody.
“If it was in the water . . .” Madeleine closed her eyes. “What if it was an accident? The king was unwell. So what if someone was poisoning him gradually? Not enough for anyone to notice, but slowly. Over time, it might look normal to anyone in the kitchens. Someone doing their job, putting something in the king’s water. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had his own special supply.”
“If he did,” Fitzroy said, “I never heard of it.”
“But you think someone could have been poisoning him?” I said. “A different someone from the attacker at the banquet?”
“Or the same attacker. Accidentally. Maybe someone put the poison in the wrong place, or they used too much, or something else went wrong. And a single target became the entire court.”
“Maybe,” I said. Then: “No. That doesn’t make sense. You couldn’t kill an entire court with a dose meant for one person.” I ran my fingers through my hair, thinking. “But the water supply—that might be helpful. Could he have asked for special water for the banquet?”
“Special water?” Madeleine repeated. “As in, water imported from some fabulous mountain spring, rumored to grant its visitors eternal life? That sort of water?”
“Yes. Something like that. If that was the case, the water could have been poisoned long before it entered the castle, and kept locked away until the cake was made.”
Naomi turned to Fitzroy. “Did you hear your father mention anything like that?”
He shook his head. “If he planned that, he didn’t mention it to me. It might be in his letters, but—my father liked to brag. If it was special, he would have told somebody. And he would have used it in other dishes, wouldn’t he?”
But all this speculation was pointless, when we could simply perform a test. “We have to get to the palace kitchens. It’s the only way we can know. We’ll test the ingredients there.”
Fitzroy nodded. “I’ll go tonight.”
“We’ll go tonight,” I said. “You can’t carry everything
back here, and you might miss something important.”
“Is that safe?” Naomi asked.
“It’ll have to be.”
The first challenge was getting out of the Fort. My guard was somewhat depleted now, but it wasn’t gone, and people continued to watch both the front gate and the bridge. As queen, I could probably have ordered my way through, but I couldn’t let my guards tail me through the streets. I couldn’t draw attention to the investigation.
In the end, dropping my guards was fairly straightforward, if unpleasant. We all retired for the night, and then left the rooms through the hidden passage we’d found before. Fitzroy distracted the guard placed on the other end, and we emerged slightly damp, but otherwise unscathed.
Leaving the Fort itself was harder, but Fitzroy’s solution was sheer brazenness. With no makeup, wearing plain dresses and coats, our hair in simple braids, Madeleine, Naomi, and I blended into the background. No one would expect the queen to sneak out of her own castle, and so nobody looked too closely when I did. Fitzroy was more noticeable, so he didn’t even try to hide his identity. He strode confidently to the front gate and asked the guard to open it for him and his friends.
“Getting out of harm’s way, are you, Fitzroy?” the guard said. “Can’t say I blame you.”
“Not tonight, Mills. Just wanting to get out of these dreary walls for a while.”
“Can’t blame you for that either,” the guard said. “Wish I could join you. Hang on, then.” And, as simple as that, the front gate opened, the drawbridge lowered, and we escaped into the city.
For the first time I’d ever seen, the palace windows were dark, the sweeping lawns untended and slightly unruly. It looked almost peaceful through the wrought iron fence, undisturbed, the river reflecting the stars.
The gates had been left unguarded, fastened with a heavy padlock. Fitzroy pulled a key out of his pocket and opened it. I didn’t ask where he’d gotten it. “I think we’ll be lucky,” he said. “All the death should have kept away the looters.”
“The looters?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “The castle is practically lined with gold,” he said. “Of course people are going to take what they can. But the murders probably put them off the idea for a while.”
It wasn’t very reassuring. Surely gold was gold, no matter what superstitions people wove around it. A little unpleasantness wouldn’t stop any otherwise willing thieves.
But as we followed the narrow path down the lawn, we saw no one. The scraps of floating lanterns lay in the grass, and banners flapped sadly between the trees, half ruined by the wind and rain.
“No one’s been here,” I said. “No one’s cleaned up at all.” My voice sounded too loud, shattering the silence.
“Your advisers wanted it left untouched.”
“For the investigation?”
Fitzroy nodded.
We approached the rear of the palace and the double doors that led into the ballroom. Even now, weeks after the event, one of the doors stood slightly open, inviting us in. It was as though the entire palace had been frozen in time, stuck in the moment its court fell.
The door creaked as we pushed it open and stepped inside.
The feasting tables were still in place, but many of the chairs had been knocked backward, the golden plates abandoned on the floor. Doves still cooed in the rafters. Instruments lay abandoned in the corner. And there, there at that table, that was where I had sat, where I would have died if I hadn’t walked away.
Madeleine’s eyes glistened with tears. “So this is it. This is where they all died.”
“This is it,” Fitzroy said. He walked the length of the hall, past the scattered chairs and jewels spilled across the floor.
I turned on the spot, still staring. It was unsettling, to see the hall so empty, so quiet. Disturbed in the middle of a feast and left to gather dust. Someone had clearly made a quick attempt to clean up—removed the bodies, removed the mess—but otherwise, the feast might have simply paused. As though everyone had wandered away and forgotten to return.
“We need to head to the kitchens,” I said. “Do you know the way?”
Madeleine nodded. She led us out through another door, into a corridor lit solely by moonlight. The gilt walls glimmered.
Footsteps echoed from farther down the corridor. I clutched Fitzroy’s sleeve and jerked my head in the direction of the sound. Looters. What would they do if they saw us? Would they recognize me as queen? Or would they see us as rival treasure hunters, standing in their way?
The passage was cluttered with statues and human-size vases. I ducked behind one of the vases and Fitzroy pressed behind me, pushing me even closer against its cold surface, his heart thudding against my back.
Madeleine and Naomi darted behind a statue of two lovers entwined.
The footsteps moved closer. Fitzroy’s breath brushed my ear.
The person came around the corner.
It was Holt.
I gasped, and Fitzroy pressed a hand over my mouth to stop the sound. Holt was striding down the corridor, looking for all the world like he belonged. His cloak flapped behind him.
What was he doing?
I waited until he turned the corner again, and then I slipped out from behind the vase and crept after him. Fitzroy snatched for my hand, but I pulled away. I had to see what Holt was up to. What was he doing here?
Around another corner, and another. Fitzroy grabbed my arm, pulling me to his side. “Stop,” he hissed in my ear. “I know where he’s going.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. Where?
“The shrine to the Forgotten is this way. It’s the only thing down here.”
“There’s a shrine in the palace?”
“Of course. Even if my father didn’t care in the slightest about the Forgotten, he wouldn’t miss a chance to show off his gold.”
I nodded and stepped forward again, but he pulled me back. “Wait. We can look once he’s gone.”
“What good will that be?”
“We can see what he’s done, without him seeing us.”
I wanted to argue further, but he did have a point. If Holt saw us, we’d have no chance of uncovering whatever secrets he was hiding. And he’d know we’d been here, investigating. I couldn’t let him know that, not until we could rule him out as a suspect.
So I waited. Tucked in an alcove by a statue, twisting the ends of my hair around my fingers, my friends beside me. None of us spoke.
Why was Holt here? Surely, if he had an innocent reason, he wouldn’t have come in the dark, alone. But what could he possibly be doing?
The minutes crawled by. Then more footsteps, and Holt hurried past again.
I peered around the statue. Holt was carrying a sack in his arms, like its contents were precious beyond words.
Once he was out of sight, I stepped into the corridor and paused for Fitzroy to lead the way. But when we got there, the shrine was empty. A little moonlight fell through the narrow windows, but no gold glinted, no statues loomed, no relics decorated the walls. There were a few wooden pews, and a wooden altar at the front, but otherwise, nothing.
Or not quite nothing. Flowers had been left on the altar. I stepped closer. They were fresh, the petals still bright and blooming.
“Well, the looters have been here,” Fitzroy said.
“There was more?”
“Much more. There was gold plate, and tapestries . . . jewels embedded in the walls. It’s all gone.”
“Holt,” I said. “Do you think he stole them?” He’d been carrying something precious. But he wouldn’t steal from the Forgotten.
“Maybe,” Madeleine said. “If he convinced himself it wasn’t stealing. He thinks the old court was too extravagant, doesn’t he? Maybe he considered the gold an affront to the Forgotten.”
“How convenient,” Fitzroy said.
I picked one of the flowers off the altar. The petals were smooth under my fingertips. This was what Holt considered a suitable offering
. Fresh, delicate, pure. I was tempted to put the flower in my bag, as evidence, but I paused. It was a genuine offering, and although I didn’t believe in the Forgotten myself, I didn’t want to disrupt that. I laid it carefully on top and turned back to the others.
“Let’s go down to the kitchens,” I said. “Before somebody else comes along.”
TWENTY-FOUR
THE KITCHENS WERE NEAR THE BANQUET HALL, DOWN a twisting staircase that, although unadorned, matched the opulence of the rest of the palace. It was certainly nicer than any part of the Fort, lined with neat white stone and sweeping metal banisters.
The kitchen itself was two huge redbrick rooms. Ovens covered one wall, and there was a large table in the middle of the room, still covered with chopping boards and knives and abandoned pans. More pans hung from hooks on the walls, and hundreds of empty plates were piled up on the side.
Where we looked depended on when the cake had been made. There were no traces of the cake or its ingredients on the center table, so I strode into the second room and started searching through the cupboards instead.
“Empty sugar sacks over here,” Fitzroy said.
“Put them on the center table. Madeleine, Naomi, look for anything that might have contained water.”
“Especially if it has any fancy labeling on it,” Naomi said.
“Yes.” And I would look around for other clues—the cake recipe, perhaps, or remnants of the gold decorations.
I found nothing. The sugar tested negative for arsenic, and we couldn’t find any signs that water had been imported for the cake. I scraped my hands through my hair. There had to be something.
“What else goes into cake and icing?” I said. “What have we missed?”
“What about coloring?” Naomi said slowly. “The cake was golden yellow, right? What if the poison was hidden in there?”
Madeleine gripped the table. All the color rushed from her face. “No,” she said, in a strangled squeak. “Oh no.”
“Madeleine?” I ran over and grabbed her shoulder. She looked like she was about to be sick. “What’s wrong?”
“The color,” she said. “What if it was in the color?”
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