Hamon smoothed the wrinkles on his robe and then ran his fingers through his hair. Going to see his mother made him feel as if he were eight years old, with smudges on his cheeks and dirt under his nails. She used to spot every stray mark.
Now he felt like she could spot even deeper, and that made him nervous.
Flanking the door, the guards fixed their eyes down the corridor, politely ignoring the way he was fidgeting and delaying. He appreciated that. He made a mental note to commend them to their superior.
He schooled his expression into a neutral one, reminded himself to remain calm and professional, and then nodded to the guards. One of them opened the door, and he heard light laughter from inside—the voice of a young woman.
“You allowed her a guest?” he hissed to the guards.
The guards exchanged glances. “She insisted.”
“You spoke with my mother?”
“Not her. The queen’s sister.”
Hamon barged into the room. His mother was sprawled on one of the couches, her feet bare and propped on a pillow. Daleina’s sister, Arin, was twirling around the room with scarves draped over her arms. Seeing Hamon, she dropped the scarves.
“Ah, Hamon, there you are at long last! Come. Sit. Lady Arin and I were just celebrating our success.” She lifted a glass of what looked like sparkling pear wine—if so, it was one of the most expensive drinks in the capital. On the side of the room were the remnants of a several-tier cake, as well as a cascade of grape stems and a half-eaten side of spiced meat. Ants crawled over the cake, and Hamon thought he saw a mouse scoot beneath the tablecloth. Blossoms from the royal gardens—blossoms from rare, specially cultivated flowers—were strewn around Mother’s microscopes, test tubes, and beakers, in a very expensive celebratory wreath.
Scurrying to the side bar, Arin poured a crystal goblet of pear wine and held it out to Hamon. “Celebrate with us, and drink to your glorious mother’s health!”
“No,” he said. “No to all of this. Mother, what are you doing? You know I have you here for a serious purpose.”
Mother waved the glass in the air until the wine spattered on the floor, the couch, and her arm. “And I have fulfilled it! Grandly and magnificently.”
For a moment, he couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. “A cure?”
She swigged the pear wine. “Don’t be absurd. I am flattered at your faith in my abilities. Sincerely flattered, actually. To know you think so highly of me . . .”
“Mother, if you did not find a cure . . .”
“A cause, my boy,” she said. “I found a cause.”
That was not an excuse for celebration. That was obvious. “She has the False Death. It’s genetic. The cause is in her ancestry.” Every letter he’d received back from scholars across Renthia agreed with that: she’d been born to this fate. All had expressed condolences for his sick “friend” and wished him luck with his studies.
“The cause was in her wine,” Mother said. “Or her cake. Or her bread. Or dusted on her pillow. Or poured into a wound.”
Hamon sighed. “Clearly this was a mista—”
“She was poisoned, dear Hamon. Very cleverly poisoned.”
Hamon felt his knees buckle. He thought of Queen Fara and the nightend berries. His head felt as if it were swimming. His Daleina, poisoned? “Impossible. It’s False Death.”
“Indeed it is. She has been given a poison that causes False Death. Or more accurately, causes symptoms that mimic it. You have done research into other cases, yes?”
He’d researched many cases—the scientists and healers he’d contacted had sent him reams of research. He hadn’t found any examples of cases with no symptoms other than the blackouts. In that, Daleina was unique. He simply hadn’t known what it meant. Hamon sank onto a chair. “This would explain why she had no other symptoms, if it wasn’t natural. But does such a poison exist? I’ve never heard of one.” And neither had anyone else who had responded to his inquiries. No one had mentioned this as a possibility.
“Frankly, nor have I. But I tested the blood thoroughly. The sickness was introduced from the outside. You can check my work.” She nodded to a table that ran along the back. It was filled with glass tubes and stacks of parchment.
Arin hurried over to the table and showed him a dish with a drop of blood. It was under a curved bit of glass. He slid it under the microscope and peered in.
Coming up behind him, Mother said, “I treated that sample with everberry sap. If the cells had the abnormality that causes False Death . . .”
Peering at it, he saw the cells tinged with orange dots. “They would have rejected the sap. Of course.” He made a fist, wanting to pound it on the table, but restrained himself so as not to damage any of the equipment. He should have thought to test for this. But why would he have suspected a poison when one like this had never existed? “What else?”
Setting aside her wine, she led him through the various tests and experiments she’d done. It was, he admitted, impressive—she’d done at least a week’s work in three days, rerunning all the tests he’d done, plus adding many of her own. Several were so clever that he thought he should take notes.
All of them gave the same clear result: it was the False Death, but it wasn’t natural.
“How could this happen?” he asked. New poison or not, there were systems in place to prevent any kind of poison from touching the queen. He’d been especially careful, given Queen Fara. “She has tasters, and I am her healer. Only the most trusted people are allowed in her rooms or near her throne.”
“My boy, you know there are many ways for a poison to be delivered.” She was smiling at Arin as she said it, watching the girl neaten the food display.
Hamon followed her gaze. “Mother, what did you do?”
“Do? I solved your problem.”
“I mean to her.”
Mother laughed. “You think I would poison my best assistant?”
Arin laughed too, a merry cascade. “Mistress Garnah would never harm me! She’s the kindest soul that has ever lived. And so very wise.”
Hamon shook his head. There was something not right here, but he had a more important question: “Do you know how to make the antidote?”
“Again, you flatter me. I had no idea you thought so highly of me. I admit this is quite gratifying. I am so pleased I came.” She sauntered over to the food table and plucked herself a grape. “The poison dissolved in her system already. I can’t separate it out. But . . . if you find an undiluted sample, I should be able to manufacture a cure.”
Again, he felt unable to breathe.
“Ah, that look in your eyes! If I do find a cure . . .” She let the sentence dangle and sashayed across the room.
He followed her with his eyes, watching her like a hawk watches a squirrel . . . or perhaps more like a squirrel who has seen a hawk. Mother was no one’s prey. “What do you want?”
“Respect. Yours. The country’s. I want a position in the palace. Master . . . Healer?”
“You’re no healer.”
“Master Chemist then?”
“You’re too dangerous to be allowed access to the kind of power—”
Arin scowled at him. “Mistress Garnah is not dangerous! She’s enlightened and pure! She wants only what’s best for you, her son. She loves you and has missed you. She told me. You were to be her apprentice—the one she would pass all her knowledge on to—but instead you ran!” Scooping a slice of cake onto a plate, she held it out to him. “Have a piece. You’ll feel better.”
“Fix her,” Hamon said, pointing at the queen’s sister, “and prepare to create an antidote. You will be well rewarded.” He strode out of the chamber. “I will find the poison.”
Passing the guards, he said, “Don’t eat the cake.”
Her borrowed embroidered shoes quiet on the smooth wood, Naelin followed Ven up a staircase into one of the many spires of the palace. He had barely spoken after he’d come to claim her for training. He’d introduced the guards who would be watching her children while they slept, and he waited while she’d grilled them on their qualifications and trustworthiness. But after that, silence.
It occurred to her that maybe he was afraid of what she was going to say. Or not “afraid,” perhaps. He was a champion. But . . . wary.
It was almost funny.
If she had been younger, Naelin might have yelled at him and cursed him out. She might have hated him, blaming him the way she used to blame her parents—her mother, for being reckless with her power, and her father, for not finding a way to protect them. Or the way she still blamed Renet, who had started all this.
But she wasn’t interested in lying to herself: She’d been the one to summon the kraken. It was her power, and she’d been foolish to think the queen would help her, or could help her. There was no easy fix.
“Talk to me about your training plan,” Naelin said.
He was silent for a moment. She had the sense he hadn’t been thinking about her or her training at all. At last, he said, “With Daleina, she had to learn how to use her power judiciously, favor the techniques that worked for her and abandon those that didn’t. A handful of gravel thrown in the eyes of your enemy can be as effective as a boulder dropped on his head.”
“And with me?”
“You have to learn not to drop boulders on everyone’s heads.”
She snorted. “How exactly do I learn that?”
“By dropping a few on my head. You draw them, and if you can’t handle them, I’ll stick my sword into them. Fairly straightforward. We don’t have time for nuance.” He was climbing the stairs as if he wanted to pound them flat with his feet. She was struggling to keep pace with him. The stairwell was lit with firemoss, and their glow wavered as she and Ven passed.
“What if I draw another kraken?”
“That’s why we’re climbing up instead of staying on the forest floor. Besides, even big spirits don’t like being jabbed with pointy metal sticks. You surprised me back at the academy. I won’t be surprised again.” Reaching a landing, he halted in front of an ornate door, decorated with carvings of vines. He pulled out a key. “No one lives in this tower. Not anymore. You will be able to practice here without endangering anyone.”
The door swung open, and Naelin gasped.
She thought she’d seen opulence in the throne room and the grand halls, but the rest of the palace was nothing compared to these rooms. Gold seemed to drip from every surface: the curved couch, the table with the glass surface, the mantel over the fireplace, the washbasin with the filigree pitcher. It all glittered in the light of a dozen cream-colored candles on candelabras. On a dais was a canopied bed, piled high with pillows. But it was the ceiling that stunned her the most: inlaid with tiny crystals, it sparkled like the night sky. Marveling, she walked into the center of the room. “You want me to practice here?”
He didn’t answer, and she looked over at him. His hand was on the mantel, tracing the curves of the carving. His eyes were sad.
“Ven, whose rooms were these?”
She guessed the answer as he gave it: “Queen Fara’s.” He rubbed the dust from his fingertips. “No one comes here now. We can practice here uninterrupted.”
Naelin walked through the rooms, afraid to touch anything, and out onto the balcony. Before her was the night forest. Lights dotted the branches, lining bridges that were obscured from sight. She felt the spirits out there, amid the branches. She heard Ven walk onto the balcony with her. “You knew Queen Fara well?”
“Very well.”
“What was she like?”
“Everything you’d imagine a queen should be. Fearless. Ambitious. Determined. Utterly convinced of her own infallibility. She lacked any shred of humility, but she was so powerful that it didn’t matter.” Leaning on the balcony railing, he was staring into the forest as if it held answers.
“I’m nothing like that.”
He didn’t answer.
She’d never measure up, not to his expectations and not to his memories. He’s deluding himself if he thinks I’m queen material. “What was Queen Daleina like before she became queen?”
“Determined, though in a different way. She didn’t feel as though she was owed the crown like Fara; she felt it was her duty. She’d committed herself to this path at a young age.”
“And you? Were you always destined to be a champion?”
“Yes.”
Naelin resisted rolling her eyes. This was absurd. She was consorting with born-from-the-womb heroes. She wasn’t worthy of this. “You must have made a choice at some point. Something set you on this path. Come on, confess. You weren’t born with muscles. Or did you punch your way out of your mother’s womb?”
A faint smile crossed his lips, nearly hidden within his beard. “She’d say that’s exactly how it happened. She’d like you, I think. She was a mama bear too.” He lapsed into silence again, lost in thought.
“You don’t normally train people this way, do you?”
“Usually, trainees have to learn to turn their whisper into a shout. You, on the other hand, have to turn a shout into a whisper. If I were to train you the usual way, you’d likely cause a few natural disasters before we were done.”
“You aren’t comforting.” And she didn’t like her own thoughts. Insecurity was the shortest path to failure. “Can we just start?”
He nodded abruptly as if she’d interrupted him, and then led the way back inside the room, to the fireplace. Two candelabras flanked it, but the fireplace itself was cold. All the ash had been cleared away. Logs were stacked within, as if for decoration rather than use.
“No surprises,” Naelin warned.
“No surprises,” he agreed. He drew his sword and crouched, ready. “Start with a fire spirit, call it into the hearth. Concentrate on one that’s already in the palace, feel it first, attract its attention, and direct your command at it. Just at it, as if you were whispering and didn’t want anyone to overhear.”
She widened her awareness, brushing against the tree spirits that skulked in the branches, an earth spirit that snuffled at the roots far below, an air spirit . . . there, a fire spirit, flitting around the balcony curtains, shriveling their edges with its heat. You. Only you. Come to me. She tried to whisper, a gentle command.
She felt the spirit pause, curious. Patches of bark blackened beneath its feet as it lingered on the balcony. She pushed again, harder. You, come to me.
It sped closer, a streak of light. It dived inside the room and straight into the fireplace. Flames shot up a foot, and Naelin scrambled back, but then the fire calmed, and the spirit spun inside it, dancing music-less. It was no bigger than her hand, with a body made of fire and a face of twisting flame, white at the core, a molten gold chest, orange arms, and red hands that ended in black fingers. Its eyes were ember, and its mouth held a tongue of flame that flicked in and out.
Naelin studied it. It stared back.
“Good,” Ven said.
“It was the only one nearby.”
“Still, good. See if you can command it.”
It flickered as it moved, and Naelin realized its ember eyes were trained on her, as if waiting. “To do what?” The firelight danced, and Naelin felt as if she couldn’t look away. She felt the warmth on her skin and inside her, as if the fire were inside her chest.
“Control which log burns—and which one doesn’t.”
She eyed one log, a thick chunk of oak. It was untouched by flame yet, waiting for one of them to toss it in. Burn that.
With a cackling howl, the fire spirit dove onto the log. Flames shot out of the hearth, raced across the room, and hit the bed. One of the silken pillows burst into flames. Running, Naelin grabbed a pitcher from the washbasin and hurled its contents onto the bed. Water dampened the flames, and smoke curled up to stain the canopy. Shrieking, the spirit fled, bursting out the archway to the balcony and shooting straight up to blend into the stars.
“On the plus side, you didn’t destroy the palace,” Ven said mildly.
Naelin stared up at the stars. “I may need more practice.”