“What do you mean?”
She let out a shaky breath. “There’s a color, a beautiful vivid green, that has arsenic as one of its ingredients. It’s fine, you don’t eat it, but artists—when artists use it, they get lines on their fingernails. Black and white ridges, from the poison.” She scraped at her own painted thumbnail, until a bare patch peeked through. She held it out to me. White lines ran across the nail. “See? That’s just from painting with it. I don’t know what color was used in the cake, but what if it had arsenic as an ingredient, too? If nobody knew that . . . what if it was an accident? What if nobody meant it at all?”
Naomi frowned. “Why would you put poison in your paints?”
“Because artists will do anything to create the exact color they want. As long as they don’t eat the paints, it’s not going to kill them. But if someone didn’t know, if they got a new color, an exciting rare color that also contained arsenic, and they baked it into the cakes . . . the cakes would have been full of it. Every piece. Every single bite of it. It’s just dye. Just color. If you saw it, and you didn’t know . . . oh no no no.” She sank onto a kitchen stool. “What if they died for nothing? Nothing at all?”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “We don’t even know if there was poison in the dye. And if there was, someone could have used it on purpose. We don’t know. We have to find it, first.”
We searched through jars, looking for even a hint of the dye. The rich smell of spices tickled my nose, but we didn’t find anything even vaguely gold or yellow.
Four large jars like those that held spices had been left on the side of the counter. I hurried over and pulled off the lids. Nothing but darkness inside. I moved the lamp closer. The first jar was scraped clean. The second was the same. But in the third . . . in the third, a little yellow powder clung to the sides and to the base.
“Here. I found it.” It was difficult to tell in the dim light, but it looked the same as the cake. And how much yellow-gold powder could there be in a kitchen?
I used a spatula to scrap a few clumps of yellow powder out of the jar and deposit them in the zinc and niter bowl.
The dye dissolved. The zinc fizzed. Garlic smoke exploded out of the bowl.
My friends flinched back, but I stayed close, staring at the bubbling metal, the powder dissolving into nothing. Here it was. Here was the answer. I’d expected to feel more excited. More accomplished. Now I just stared at the mixture, horrifying certainty settling into my stomach. This was how the murderer had done it. This was what had killed them.
“All right,” I said. “All right. We found the source of the poison. So now we need to find the source of the dye.”
Madeleine let out a shaky breath.
“It wasn’t necessarily an accident,” I said. It couldn’t be. If it had been an accident, I had no defense against Sten. No one would believe me, not even if I had all the evidence in the world. “It’s a possibility, but—we have to keep investigating. We have to assume someone planned this.”
I picked up the jar. It was heavy and awkward to hold, but I wasn’t going to risk scraping out more powder now. I needed to take the rest back to the lab.
“Well, then. What are you lot doing down here?”
I jumped. Two men stood in the doorway, each holding a large sack. I could see gold candlesticks and decorative cups peeking through the top of each. I tightened my grip on the jar and stepped back. My hip banged against the counter. If they realized I was queen . . .
But they wouldn’t. Why would the queen be here, in the kitchens, dressed as simply as this? They’d think we were other looters, at worst.
“After the spices as well, are you?”
Madeleine stepped forward, smiling prettily, all trace of paleness and panic gone. “Oh, sirs,” she said. “Are you here to help with the cleanup? We’ve been struggling here. The queen’s council told us that more men would be following along soon enough. We’ve been trying our best, but, well, we’re not near strong enough to move everything by ourselves.” She watched them expectantly, that pleasant, hopeful smile still on her face.
The man stared at her. “That’s right,” he said. “We’re just here to help out.”
“Excellent. Oh, but you seem to have run out of sacks. I think there are some piled in that closet. Let us check for you.”
She began to walk toward the door, but the man stepped forward. “Hang on,” he said. He reached for my jar. “Let me take this. It looks cumbersome.”
“No,” I said, fighting not to stutter. “I’m all right.”
“What’s in there? Spices?”
“Rubbish,” I said. “Things I swept up.” I didn’t sound particularly convincing.
“I’ll take it. Dispose of it for you.”
Logic said I should give him the jar. If he opened it, he’d find nothing worthwhile inside and discard it. It was the safest course of action, the most sensible thing to do. I knew that. I knew it, even as I flinched away from him, my arms tightening around the jar. I knew it even as I knew my actions had been suspicious, that he’d never believe it was worthless now.
The man snatched for the jar. I dodged back, but I didn’t move quickly enough. His fingers scraped against the ridges around the rim, and his nails found purchase. He tugged as I pulled away, throwing me off balance. The heavy jar teetered, and I tried to tighten my grip, but the man snatched again, and it fell. The pottery smashed on the floor.
I dove after it. “You idiot.” I shoved the shards aside. One rough edge scraped my finger, drawing blood. There had to be some dye left, something stuck to the pot . . . but I could barely see in the darkness, and the floor was dusty, unswept since the night of the banquet. I couldn’t see anything.
“Freya!” Naomi grabbed my arm and hauled me backward. Madeleine ran for the wooden door, wrenching it open to reveal another dark corridor beyond. Naomi yanked me along, too, half dragging me across the room and into the corridor, as Fitzroy ran behind us. One of the men shouted, but Madeleine did not stop. Honey-brown hair streamed out behind her as she led us up the stairs, through doors, up and around and out into the palace gardens again.
My sides burned. I could barely breathe. But I kept running, gripping Naomi’s hand, the taste of grass choking in the back of my throat, until we were out on the city streets again.
“I don’t think they followed us,” Naomi said, when we stopped for breath. “Just didn’t want us to interfere.”
I leaned against a wall, gasping. “We lost it,” I said. “We lost the dye. We lost the proof.”
“But we still know,” Madeleine said. “We know what caused it.”
“No. You don’t understand.” Without the dye, I couldn’t prove it. Why would anyone believe me without proof? “I have to prove it wasn’t me. How can I do that now?” It’s lost in the dust.
“The dye didn’t prove that,” Naomi said softly. “It was just a start. And you still know it’s poisonous. You’ll find something else.”
I nodded, my breath rushing out through my teeth. She was right. There was no point in panicking now. We still knew the dye was responsible. We had something. “We need to go through the letters again,” I said. “If we can find where he ordered it from, or who might have suggested it to him . . . that’s what we have to do.”
The letters were less than helpful.
It was easy to tell which notes had been taken by a scribe, and which had been written by the king himself. The scribes’ handwriting was always elaborate but clear, their pens flowing across the pages. The king’s writing was nigh illegible, a mixture of jagged scratches and ostentatious loops. But as I tried to decipher the words on page after page, reading his comments on proposed laws and taxation decisions and pleas from his advisers to find a new wife who might give him legitimate heirs, I had to admit that he, too, was not exactly as I thought. Yes, his court was wasteful, dramatic to the point of ridiculousness, but he’d responded with care to every issue presented to him. And there were so many
issues—as many as I had faced and more, a deluge of needs and questions and problems to be faced.
But then I’d pull another page from the pile and see his demands for more and more—more jewels for the queen, more clothes, new paintings to fill the supposedly “empty” parts of the palace. A better cook, additional guards, more and more things, while he waved away concerns about finances with a casual flick of his pen.
Then, after what felt like a hundred useless pages: “I found something.”
Fitzroy looked up from his own pile of papers. “What was that?”
“Here.” I scanned the page again to be sure. “Listen to this. ‘We’re continuing the search for King’s Yellow, as Your Majesty requested. The people here call it orpiment, and they tell us that it can cure all manner of impossible ailments. One must suspect they are merely trying to raise the price, but we will continue to negotiate.’” I looked up. “King’s Yellow. That would fit.”
“But it sounds like he’s talking about a medicine, not a color,” Naomi said. “Who would confuse arsenic with medicine?”
“It is a medicine,” I said. I’d heard it before, the details lurking deep in my brain. “I think—I’m not sure.” I flicked through the pile of letters, as though the answer would be hiding there. “I’ve heard of it being used. In very small amounts, when someone is very sick.” To purge the sickness out of them.
“Madeleine,” Fitzroy said. “Have you ever heard of a color called King’s Yellow before?”
She shook her head. “Never. The dye didn’t look familiar to me—I’ve never seen that exact shade before.”
“But if my father discovered something new, of course he’d name it after himself.”
“There’s more,” I said, flicking back to the letter again. “‘We are told the mineral forms in the hot springs in the mountains, which explains the extreme expense, and why, as Your Majesty believed, it is only available in Rejka. We send another sample to Your Majesty with this letter. If the quality is satisfactory and the price good, we will acquire more.’ The king’s written something else at the bottom.” I peered at the scribbled handwriting. “‘Spare no expense.’” The letter was dated a few months ago. “Madeleine. You said the king was unwell, didn’t you? He had some stomach complaint. So, what if someone gave him this dye as a potential cure for his illness?”
“The golden wine,” Fitzroy said slowly. I looked at him in confusion. “My father’s wine looked gold. I noticed it a couple of months ago. I assumed it was just his goblets changing the color, but what if he dyed it instead? If he was taking King’s Yellow as a medicine, he could have mixed it with the wine. It would have suited his arrogance.”
“And then he was so impressed by the medicine that he decided to make a show of it in the banquet?”
Madeleine shook her head. “If he found a magical cure for his illness, he wouldn’t share it like that. He’d hoard it all for himself.”
“Perhaps he wanted to show it off,” I said. “If it’s a rare and expensive medicine, what better way to show how rich and powerful he is than to throw all of that away at a banquet? On his birthday? Like a—like a declaration that he’s well again, and he can do whatever he likes.”
“I don’t know, Freya,” Fitzroy said. “If it was rare enough to shout about, why didn’t he shout about it?”
True. But there had to be something in here. We had a name—King’s Yellow—and a source. We knew it was rare and expensive. But they were scientific answers, not explanations. Who had introduced the king to it in the first place, if even Madeleine had never heard of this dye? Had it been an accident, or had someone prompted him to do it? And was the poison in the dye he’d ordered, or had someone changed them along the way?
I placed the paper to one side and continued to read.
TWENTY-FIVE
I WATCHED HOLT CLOSELY AT THE COUNCIL MEETING the next morning. He looked tired, but he didn’t look guilty, and he didn’t seem to know that I’d been in the palace, too. I wanted to ask him what he’d been doing there, accuse him of some connection to the murders, but I swallowed the words, down down down, until I nearly choked on their bitterness.
I didn’t know that he was involved. Not yet. And if he was involved, and I revealed what I knew too early . . . I could lose the chance to prove it.
“We are running out of time,” Norling said. “Sten has swept east, and is marching back to the capital. The Darkwoods have joined him, as have the Solbergs, with all of their own resources at his disposal. The kingdom is against you, Your Majesty, and Sten will not hold back when he arrives.”
“How many men does he have?” I was almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Ten thousand.”
“And how many men do we have?”
“Trained guards and soldiers?” Norling said. “Perhaps thirty. I would estimate around twenty thousand people remain in the city, but most will not fight for you. You have gained some supporters, Your Majesty, but most people want to survive, and if staying quiet and allowing Sten into the walls is the best way to do that, that is what they will do. I suggest that you run now. Before it becomes impossible to leave.”
“No,” Holt said. “She cannot run. If she leaves, she will forfeit the crown.”
“At least this way, she will live.”
“She’ll live,” Holt said. “But for how long? Sten will hunt her down, and without the crown to protect her, how will she hide from him? Where could she go? She couldn’t possibly hope to evade him forever. And then what will happen to the kingdom? It will be stuck with a blasphemous usurper rather than their rightful queen. We cannot allow it. We must stay and fight.”
“Fight?” Norling laughed. “Fight how? This isn’t going to be a civil war, Rasmus. This will be a massacre.”
Her words rang in the silence. I’d known, of course, that my chances against Sten were slim. But to hear my closest adviser insisting that I was going to die . . . my first instinct was to run to the library, pull out books on military strategy, history books about battles where impossibly small forces defeated their larger enemies, but what would be the point? I couldn’t become a better strategist than Sten or my advisers in a few days. I could only win through invention. It had taken me years of study to be able to think inventively in the lab. And now I had to pretend I could learn how to think inventively in battle by the end of the week.
“Norling,” I said quietly. “You’ve always advised me to appear strong before. To return to the palace, to punish people, to fight. But now you want me to run. Isn’t that weak, too?”
“Perhaps, Your Majesty. I have always advised you because I want your reign to be strong. But now—I am concerned for your safety now, Your Majesty. I am concerned for you. Do not continue with this folly and put your life at risk.”
“The Forgotten support our queen,” Holt said in a low voice. “They will protect her. We will find a way.”
“The Forgotten are not here, Rasmus!” Norling snapped. “They have never been here. They will never be here. This is not some story of divine justice. There will be no magical intervention. This is a tragedy. We must leave.”
“I won’t leave,” I said, my voice shaking slightly. I couldn’t, not when people were relying on me, not when my father was at risk. I pressed my hands against the desk. “If I leave, I’ll just look even more guilty. I have to find a way.”
“Your Majesty—”
“No. I can’t leave.”
“A wise choice,” Holt said.
“A foolish one,” Norling said.
Holt ignored her. “We must focus on fortifying the city,” he said. “Rationing must be put in place, in case of a siege. I will send men to protect our water supply—”
He talked through the strategy, and I tried to focus, but everything he said was defensive. We would strengthen the walls, add to the guards, protect the food. As though we just needed the resolve to hold strong until Sten gave in.
So if my plan didn’t work, if I couldn�
�t convince him to stop his attack . . . what would we do then?
All I had on my side was science, and the bubbling rumors that I was chosen by the Forgotten. They didn’t exactly mesh together, and most people couldn’t really believe in my supposedly divine ascension. The Gustavites had planned an entire campaign around the idea that I was rotten, just like the court, that the Forgotten despised me. And maybe their feelings had come from an honest place, once, a desperate need for change, but they had still tried to murder me, still encouraged others to turn against me. They’d been quiet since Sten’s attack, since I’d distributed those pamphlets, but they were still an unknown quantity, potentially dangerous.
But I wasn’t who they thought I was. I cared, I did, and I wanted to make changes. I wanted to help people. Even if I wasn’t really chosen by the Forgotten, surely our aims might fit together. If Sten took the capital, it would be back to the way the court was before, undoing all of the Forgotten’s supposed interventions.
“Do you have anything to add, Your Majesty?” Holt said.
It was an insane idea. To convince the Gustavites to be on my side, to somehow twist around their entire agenda. If I could gently alter their ideology . . . but it would take subtlety, and time, and the nobles would be furious. It wasn’t exactly the perfect solution.
“I’ll go to the Minster this afternoon,” I said instead. “To pay my respects.” Make another show of my connection to the Forgotten, and let people think of it what they would. It seemed that faith would stop people from abandoning me, even if it wouldn’t do much more.
But could I really use people’s beliefs against them like that? If Holt had been involved in the murders, if he had been manipulating me all along, a puppet queen for his twisted agenda . . .
Could I manipulate them, too, to save myself?
Yes, I thought, and I hated myself slightly for the knowledge. I would manipulate them if it meant staying alive.
Norling was the first to leave after the council meeting concluded, marching off to arrange the Minster visit, while Holt reflected on his notes. I paused, too, standing behind my chair. I could ask him about his trip to the palace, or at least about things related to it, find some way to uncover the truth.
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