But as she saw the blood that stained Lady Basset’s handkerchief, she couldn’t help but feel a bit … sorry, for them. She hoped she wouldn’t live long enough to grow frail.
“Go put your feet up,” Olivia muttered as she opened the chamber door. “I’ll send one of the girls to help you out of your dress. Then I’ll bring you some tea —”
“No need. I’ve got it all right here,” Lord Basset called from behind her. He climbed the last few steps, hefting a tray loaded with a steaming pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate absolutely packed with biscuits.
Of course, Olivia thought. That was the problem with Lord Basset: he was always meddling in things, always in his own way. Ever since his wife had fallen ill, he’d insisted on being the one to care for her — and more often than not, he arranged her nightly tea himself. But he did more harm than good.
Had he allowed Olivia to get the tea, she could’ve slipped some tonic into the brew that would’ve made Lady Basset’s night a bit more comfortable. But now because of her husband’s insistence on doing something that was completely beneath his station, she would spend the night in needless misery.
Olivia tried not to snarl. “You shouldn’t have, my lord. I would’ve been happy to fetch a pot myself.”
“Nonsense!” Lord Basset scoffed, eyes sparkling merrily above his beard. “I’m perfectly capable of tending to my own wife.”
“Thank you, dear,” Lady Basset said with a smile. Then she turned to Olivia. “And you ought to be getting back to the ball.”
“As you wish, my lady. Oh,” Olivia raised her chin to meet Lord Basset’s gaze, “Chancellor Tristan is sending me on an errand to the Grandforest. I’ll be leaving in a couple of days, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone.”
The merry glint left his eyes immediately; his brows cast a shadow as they snapped down low. “Another errand? You’ve only just returned from the last! I must say, Olivia — I don’t like the idea of my ward sailing all across the realm, haggling with merchants over bits of copper. It isn’t becoming of a young lady.”
“Nevertheless, it must be done. Chancellor Tristan says I’ve got a talent for negotiation, and I can hardly refuse him … not when he’s always been so gracious in his dealings with Greenblood,” Olivia added with a shrug.
Red tinged the flesh at the edges of Lord Basset’s beard. He hated her going off on her own. Each time she told him she was leaving, he would storm and stomp for days — and normally she would’ve spared him until the last possible moment. But after how he’d meddled that evening, she felt he deserved it.
“We can’t refuse the chancellor, my love. So you might as well make your peace with it,” Lady Basset called as she shuffled through the door.
Lord Basset glared for another moment before he finally relented. “Just travel safely, will you? I couldn’t stand it if you were hurt.”
Olivia waited until he’d disappeared inside Lady Basset’s chambers before she made her way to her own. She had no intention of going back to the ball — the revelers could entertain themselves. Now that everybody was, at long last, occupied with something else, she could finally have a few hours to herself.
She could lay still and enjoy The Poison’s lingering ache …
And perhaps begin to plan out how she would deal with this Garron the Shrewd.
Chapter IV
Simply Another Victim
OLIVIA KEPT HER FISTS CLENCHED as the carriage bounced across the road.
Sailing was a much more civilized way to travel, and she’d rather enjoyed the first half of her journey: waking to a boundless, pale blue sky above and lapping waves below, falling asleep to the gentle rocking of the swells. Once, they’d passed a squall — and the helmsman had brought them as close to the crashing waters as he dared.
He knew how well Olivia enjoyed watching the storms. He even let her climb to the crow’s nest so she could see the whole fearsome, blue-black monster roiling above the waves. She could feel the power in its howling breath, hear the lung-trembling bellow of its roar. And for a moment, she’d been free.
But her fortunes had changed as swiftly as the clouds above the seas. Now Olivia clattered across a hard-packed road in what she was certain was the Kingdom’s most uncomfortable carriage, trapped beneath the great leafy canopy of the Grandforest.
Monstrous trees dragged by her window. Their great limbs strangled the sun and covered the land below in shadow. Though she missed the openness of the seas, Olivia couldn’t help but be entranced by the deadly silence of the woods.
It was an old thing, a patient thing. The forest held so many secrets that she doubted she could’ve counted them all. As the days passed and the carriage rolled on, she began to remember it: the muffled air felt natural, voices drifted down from the canopy’s top. The trees no longer glared at her like faceless giants, but their knots and bark began to twist into the smiles of old friends.
She’d told herself it wouldn’t matter — that though the Grandforest was a part of her past, the seas were her future.
But for some reason, her heart didn’t quite believe it.
On one particularly dreary afternoon, the carriage finally rolled into the village of Pinewatch. It was Garron the Shrewd’s domain: a neat cluster of tiny houses situated beneath the wide reach of gangly trees. Though Pinewatch looked about the same as every other little village they’d passed, the people here all seemed to be in a hurry.
Not a one of them sat idly or loped to do his chores. Instead, the villagers moved quickly from shop to shop, hefting their work between their arms — grinning widely through the sweat that stained their dark faces. Olivia was certain she’d never seen a blacksmith thrash so vigorously at his forge, or a tavern porch being swept so clean.
Though she supposed it wasn’t all that surprising: Garron had obviously gotten news of her visit, and now he was trying to make this crude little village look as tidy as possible. It was probably the highest honor Pinewatch had ever received, having a chancellor’s envoy come for a visit.
At last, the carriage bumped to a halt. “Here we are, m’lady.”
The driver opened the door and sprang quickly aside. Olivia gathered her skirts and eased out of the carriage, careful not to scuff her slippers. She looked up to thank the welcome party …
Odd. There wasn’t one.
The carriage was halted in front of a large, two-story house. It was a great deal plainer than Olivia had been expecting. In fact, she didn’t think the walls could’ve been more perfectly square, or the windows more identically cut — or the whole thing a more boring shade of brown. Except for its size, she might’ve easily mistaken it for a peasant’s hovel.
“Are you certain you’ve brought me to the right village?” Olivia said, glaring at the house’s remarkably plain front door.
“Oh yes, m’lady. This is Garron’s place, no mistaking it.”
“Then why hasn’t he come out to greet me?”
“Well,” the driver grunted as he hauled her traveling chest onto his shoulders, “he’s a … a strange one, if you don’t mind me saying. Ole Garron don’t care too much for manners. You’ll see.” He shuffled towards the front door, grunting under the weight of the chest. “I’ll just take this in for you, m’lady.”
No sooner had he limped away than the thundering of hooves reached Olivia’s ears. She stepped around the carriage and saw three horsemen galloping up the road — heading directly towards her.
Two of them were forest men: she recognized the deep brown of their skin, their dark eyes and dark crops of hair immediately. But the man at their lead was decidedly paler — a seas man near the middle of his twenties, with sharp blue eyes and hair cut so closely to his scalp that she had to wonder why he hadn’t simply taken a razor to it and been done.
Olivia had expected the men to dismount at the sight of her or at the very least, slow down. Instead, she had to throw an arm over her face to keep from being lashed by the dirt flying up from the horses’ hooves as th
ey tore past on either side.
“Head back to town and let the blacksmith know what we’ll need to get the mill running again. This would’ve been a blasted lot easier if he’d simply come to me first — and make sure he knows that, will you?” the seas man barked as one of the horsemen turned. “Tell him I’d much rather cut a problem off at its head than allow it the opportunity to grow back.”
“Yes, sir!” the horseman cried. And he took off at such a speed that Olivia had to duck behind the carriage in order to avoid another stinging wave of dirt.
The seas man gave a second order — and Olivia leaned out just in time to catch a mouthful of the chalky cloud that whooshed out from behind the last horseman’s gallop.
When the dust finally settled, Olivia’s dress was ruined. Waves of dirt coated it from the hems and upwards; grit clung to the delicate knot of her hair and caked against the thin layer of sweat that’d formed across her brow.
Never, in all her life, had she been so pointedly ignored. Thus far she’d been treated like a commoner — no, worse than that. Any decent man would’ve slowed his charge rather than tear by a woman in such a manner. She’d been treated as if she was something to be trampled, no better than the dirt beneath her heels.
And she wasn’t going to stand for it any longer.
She stepped out from behind the carriage and stomped purposefully towards the seas man — her chin raised and her tongue coated with venom. “Are you Garron the Shrewd?”
“I am,” he grunted without turning. He worked on loosening something tied to the back of his horse, flicking the knots out of the ropes with deft tilts of his hands.
Olivia fixed her glare directly on the too-cut back of his head. “Well, it might interest you to know that Chancellor Tristan’s envoy has arrived.”
“Why would that interest me? I knew you were coming. And interest, madam, is something that can only be attained by introducing a certain amount of surprise to a declaration. Otherwise I’m afraid it’s merely information.”
Madam? Olivia’s nails dug so deeply into her palms that she could feel the blood raging just beneath the surface. “I’m not some common wench, merchant. I’m a lady. So when you speak to me, you will address me by my title. Is that clear?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he tugged the last knot free and the large, bristled carcass of a boar tumbled out into his arms. He hoisted the great beast across his shoulders and turned slowly, fixing her with a glare.
There was no pattern or bursts in the color of his eyes. Rather, they were a single shade of the purest blue. His gaze cut from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. By the time his eyes came to rest on hers, she felt as if she’d been summed up — as if he’d taken every line of her body and measured it against the contours of her soul …
And she’d come up short.
“No, I’m afraid you aren’t a lady,” he said, his voice cutting every bit as sharply as his gaze. “You’re the ward of a lord and lady — a commoner who has been taken in and offered a life full of privilege you have neither inherited nor earned. Had the Bassets been any less generous with their time, you could’ve easily been a tavern girl or maid. I haven’t addressed you beneath your station, but exactly as you deserve, madam.”
Olivia’s eyes left Garron and lighted upon the lifeless gaze of the boar. A single drop of bright red blood pooled at the end of its snout before it dripped stickily onto the bleached top of Garron’s sleeve. She liked that: she liked the contrast of the gore set against the clean. She liked the fact that Garron’s face seemed almost frozen in its severity while just at his ear, the boar’s was twisted in the humiliation of death — its nose drooping between its tusks and its tongue lolling out.
She liked the thought that, in just a few short hours, Garron’s face would be as limp and lifeless as the boar’s. The vision calmed her. And so she unclenched her fists and slid her mask carefully into place.
“Very well. I suppose that’s fair.”
“It’s exactly fair. Now if you’ll go upstairs, I think you’ll find your room has been arranged and your bath drawn warmly. You will bathe, madam,” he added, frowning at the lines of grit upon her throat. Then his eyes flicked down to her hems. “And you’ll don a fresh change of clothes. I expect that garment will have to be hung and beaten out before it can be worn again.”
He must’ve been joking. He had to be joking. “Hung and … beaten? It isn’t a rug, sir — it’s a dress!”
Garron cleared his throat roughly and shifted his weight to the side. “Yes, well, with all the filth coating it, one can hardly tell the difference.”
He spun and strode through the door, and Olivia followed closely. She watched as the boar’s head flopped against Garron’s shoulder, coating his sleeve with a fresh spatter of red. “What are you planning to do with that beast?”
“I’m going to turn him over to my cook, madam. What on earth did you think I planned to do with him?”
Olivia slowed, appalled. “You’re going to eat it?”
“Well, I can’t very well keep him for a pet, can I? Of course we’re going to eat him.”
We’re …? Olivia ground to a stop. “You’re going to serve the chancellor’s envoy some bristly pig you shot in a field?”
“It’s called a boar, mad —”
“I know what it’s called! I’m not a fool — and I know when a man is dressing his table cheaply.”
Garron stopped — so abruptly that Olivia had to come up on her toes to keep from brushing his bloodstained sleeve. His chin jutted towards her, but his eyes roved to the ceiling. “Cheaply? You believe that because I didn’t spend coin on this meal, it cost me nothing?”
“That’s the very definition of something costing nothing,” Olivia said through her teeth. She’d begun to think that perhaps Tristan had been wrong about Garron: she couldn’t see how such a fool of a merchant could’ve ever come by the name Shrewd.
Garron’s eyes moved further along the ceiling. “I see. And did it ever occur to you, madam, that coin is the least of our currencies? I’ve always found it curious that men should put such value in something that can be easily replenished — that they should choose to spend their time amassing these various metals when everything worth a copper simply can’t be bought. I assure you the hour I spent tracking this beast was worth far more to me than any amount of gold.
“And beyond that, he’s a lean fellow,” Garron said, nodding to the boar. “Pigs have far too much fat in them. I think you’ll find game meats to be rather more forgiving when they inevitably settle upon your figure.”
He strode away, then — and it was only the knowing that she had a far greater pain in store for him that kept Olivia from reaching for her dagger.
Garron had done nothing but scoff at her since the moment she arrived. Her dress was filthy, she’d been pointedly ignored, had her figure insulted, and now faced the prospect of having to suffer through an atrocious dinner.
Had she not been certain he would suffer far more by her poisons than her blade, Olivia would’ve killed him then.
The narrow stairway to her chambers was tidy enough, but rather coarse. Her room was dismally bare. There were very few ornaments on the walls, and what little there was to look at seemed to be purely practical in nature: there was a basin for washing, a bath for scrubbing, a hearth for warmth — but absolutely no mirror to speak of. How could she possibly be expected to look presentable if she couldn’t see how she looked?
When she saw there was nothing more than a lump of soap to wash with, Olivia could no longer hold her fury in. She tore open her trunk and cast her garments aside until she came across her little box of poisons.
There were whole dried plants, powders stuffed into vials — bottles with liquids of various sickly hues. She ran her fingers across the rough of the dried things, the smooth of the bottles and slowly, The Poison crept into her veins. It drove her anger back and made her blood hum with excitement.
She wanted to mix so
mething special for Garron, and her hands trailed immediately to where she kept her gnarl roots …
Strange. She held up the little glass bottle and frowned at the paltry inch of tiny, curled roots that remained. She was certain she’d refilled her stock before she left Greenblood … but perhaps she’d been mistaken.
It was of little matter — there were plenty of other choices.
She was helpless against the smile that bent her lips as she reached for her ingredients, knew it would be pointless to try to reason with her limbs. For once The Poison gripped her, she could only watch while her hands moved to sate its roar.
Olivia was simply another victim.
Chapter V
A Bandit’s Venom
A FEW HOURS LATER, A sharp knock on the door summoned her to dinner. After the less-than-civil welcome she’d received, Olivia wasn’t at all surprised to find that her summoner was a rather plain-looking maid. She’d obviously been sent in the middle of her duties: her dress was rumpled, and there was a mop and a bucket of filthy water clutched in her hands.
“Right this way, Miss Olivia,” she called as she skipped down the stairs. She halted at the landing and pointed towards the front door. “You’ll find Mr. Garron in the last room on your left. If you wind up out of doors, you’ve gone too far.”
Olivia didn’t return her smile. She wasn’t surprised that Garron hadn’t taught his servants not to speak to his guests. But just because Pinewatch seemed to be about as civilized as a pack of barbarians didn’t mean she had to drop down on all fours and join them.
So she swept past the maid and went straight down the hall.
When she first stepped in, she thought perhaps the maid had been mistaken. This cramped little room with its single window, a desk against one wall and a hearth against the other couldn’t possibly be where Garron intended them to have their dinner. Then she saw the small table that’d been settled atop a clean but slightly worn rug, and realized this was precisely where he meant for them to eat.
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