Erian placed the pieces of the miyan set on the board. Each piece had been carved out of a different beautiful stone: jade, quartz, and other stones she couldn’t name. One had a lightning pattern of yellow. Another had pink flecks. Mama had said it cost a fortune and it wasn’t for children to play with.
But breaking that rule was a lot better than letting Llor run free. It had taken him less than two hours after they’d discovered they had no guards to find the dumbwaiter that led to the kitchen, the back route to the armory, and an open window that led to the greenhouse. Erian was tired of chasing after him.
“If you don’t sit still,” Erian told him, “I’m going to ask Mama to tie you to a chair.”
“She won’t do it,” Llor said. “And if you make me play, I’m going to cheat.”
“If you cheat, I’ll tell the palace guards.”
“If you tell the guards, I’ll put a frog in your bed.”
“If you put a frog in my bed, I’ll scream. And then the guards will come again.”
Llor fidgeted in his seat. “But miyan is so boring.”
“Not if you don’t cheat.”
He picked up one of the pieces and made it gallop across the board and then bash another piece. “Pow, pow, pow.”
“Put that down.” She finished setting out the pieces. She thought that was how they went, arrayed in semicircles, but she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. She picked up the jade piece again and scowled at it.
“If Father was here, he’d play hide-and-seek with me.”
Erian felt her throat thicken, as if she’d swallowed something gummy. “Well, he’s not, and you’re stuck with me. Besides, Mama hates hide-and-seek. She likes to know where we are.” She blinked fast so she wouldn’t cry. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She had to be strong, for Mama.
He muttered so low that Erian wasn’t sure she heard him correctly: “You’re boring.”
He’s so . . . so . . . argh! She slammed the miyan piece onto the board, and its arm chipped off and flew across the room. Both of them watched the sliver of jade fly. It landed on the carpet by the hearth.
“Ooh,” Llor said. “I didn’t do it.”
The door to their chambers swung open. “Didn’t do what?” a woman asked.
Both Erian and Llor jumped off their chairs. “Captain Alet!” Game forgotten, they flew to the guard. Llor reached her first and hurled himself at her, hugging her neck. Erian followed behind. She wanted to hug her too but wasn’t sure whether that was okay or not. Then Captain Alet held out her free arm toward Erian, and Erian threw her arms around the guardswoman. She smelled like metal and rusty copper. Erian wrinkled her nose.
“Have you been fighting spirits?” Llor asked.
“Not today, little warrior. But I have been out in the capital, taking care of a few things for the queen. Just got back and thought I’d see if my two favorite warriors were hungry.”
Erian’s stomach growled, as if on cue. “We had breakfast, but . . .” It had been before the funeral, and Erian hadn’t felt like eating much. And then Mama had disappeared for more training, leaving them alone. Or as alone as we can be in a palace stuffed with strangers.
“Can I show you the secret passageway I found to the kitchen?” Llor asked, jumping from foot to foot.
“If it’s secret, are you sure you should be telling me?”
He stopped jumping.
Captain Alet laughed. “I’m kidding. Yes, please show me.”
“Or we could just use the stairs,” Erian suggested.
But Llor was already bolting for the door and flinging it open. “The palace is really big. No, not big. That word is too small. Why is the word ‘big’ such a small word? It should have a super enormous number of letters.”
“‘Enormous’ is a large word,” Captain Alet said, following, “especially for a little boy.”
Llor drew himself up onto his tiptoes. “I’m not little. I’m ‘compact.’ Mama said so.”
“Of course,” Captain Alet said, and then ruffled the boy’s hair. Erian suppressed a sigh—Mama had spent a solid fifteen minutes trying to comb his hair this morning. On the other hand, the funerals were over, and it wasn’t like anyone cared what either of them looked like. They were just two more kids in the palace. She wondered if anyone even noticed they were here. The palace was so big . . . enormous . . . that they could have moved in to any one of the hundreds of rooms in any of the branches and not been noticed for years. “Where is your mother?” Captain Alet asked.
“Training,” Erian said.
“She trains all the time,” Llor complained. “Ooh, there it is!” He scooted ahead and then dropped to his knees and crawled behind a tapestry. He stuck his head out from beneath it. “See, there’s a little door! It goes straight down to the kitchen.”
Bending, Captain Alet lifted up the tapestry. “You found the lift. Clever boy. The kitchen staff uses this to transport food to the upper levels. It goes straight up, all the way to the Queen’s Tower, the highest point in the palace. If you pull on the rope—see, here”—she demonstrated—“it will bring up a cupboard. There’s a crank in the kitchen, but you can do it manually from any level.”
“Or you can just climb the rope down. Come on!”
Captain Alet laughed. “I can’t fit in there.”
He began scooting down. “Race you!”
Not again! “Do I have to follow him?” Erian still had raw red patches on her palms from the last time she’d chased Llor down the rope.
Captain Alet patted her shoulder. “We’ll be civilized and walk.”
They arrived at the kitchen. Captain Alet nodded to the cooks as she strode in. Erian wished she could enter a room like that—the guardswoman seemed to immediately fill a room. She hoped she could be like Captain Alet when she grew up. Her hands went to her hair, pulling it back so it would match the captain’s. She glanced at herself in the reflection of a copper pot and then dropped her hands. I look ridiculous.
On the opposite side of the kitchen, Llor was perched on a counter. “You’re slow,” he proclaimed. Erian noticed one of the cooks had wrapped a white cloth around one of Llor’s hands—he must have gotten rope burn. Serves him right, Erian thought.
At the pantry, Captain Alet helped herself to a heaping plate of pastries. She carried it over to a little table by a window and straddled a chair. “Come on. You need to refuel after such an adventure. Is this what you’ve been doing while your mother has been training?”
“Yes,” Llor said proudly. “I’m clever.”
“If she were here, she’d never let you climb through the walls like that,” Erian said. “She should be here. Llor won’t listen to me, and he’s going to get himself hurt.”
Captain Alet served the pastries onto napkins. “You can’t blame your mother for training a lot. She only wants to keep you safe.”
“She wants to be heir,” Llor reported. “She told Champion Ven she’d do it.” Plopping into a chair, Llor stuffed a pastry into his mouth. Erian sat next to him and selected one that looked like it had been dusted with cinnamon.
Captain Alet seemed to freeze. Her face paled, and she looked at Erian, as if for confirmation. See, she’s upset too! Erian thought.
“Mama changed her mind and said yes,” Erian said.
“And now she trains all the time,” Llor said, talking through a mouthful of food.
“Chew first,” Erian told Llor. To Captain Alet, she said, “And when Mama’s with us, she’s always worried.” And I’m worried about her. “She’s been having nightmares. We hear her.”
Captain Alet wasn’t eating her pastry. She was mushing bits of the flakes between her fingers and looking out the window. She looked exactly like Father did when Mama had said they were leaving. “I didn’t think she’d change her mind. I was certain . . .”
Erian had a sudden idea. “Can you talk to her? Tell her why she shouldn’t do it?” Surely Mama would listen to the guardswoman. They were friends.
“Yeah!” Llor chimed in. “Get her to change her mind back! She’d listen to you!”
“You know that no matter what she decides and what she does, your mother loves you very much,” Captain Alet said. “You are her sun and her moon.”
“Erian’s not a moon,” Llor objected.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the sun either.”
“Am too.”
She was not going to argue homonyms with him. She turned back to Captain Alet. “How can we convince her not to be an heir? I don’t want her to die!”
“I don’t want her to either. I’ll talk to her,” Captain Alet promised. “But your mother is stubborn. She knows her own mind. If I can’t convince her . . . You shouldn’t be on your own in the palace. It’s not safe. Your mother should have found someone to watch you.”
“Mama thinks we are being watched,” Erian said. “She thinks we’ve been staying in our chambers, safe and sound. She thinks we have people watching us all the time.” She shot a look at Llor. “Told you you’re going to get us in trouble.”
“Not if she doesn’t tell,” Llor insisted. “You won’t tell, Captain Alet, will you?”
Captain Alet sighed heavily. “No. But you need someone to look after you. Maybe we can find you a governess.”
“No governess!” Llor shouted, sputtering out crumbs.
“I’m too old for a governess,” Erian said.
“A guard then? I could have one assigned specifically to you,” Captain Alet said.
They’d had guards in the beginning—Champion Ven had assigned them and Mama had approved them—but those guards hadn’t come back after the spirits attacked, and Mama had been too preoccupied to notice. Erian thought maybe they were dead. A lot of people had died. “Can you be our guard?”
Llor hopped up and down in his seat. “Yes! Please, please, please! And the wolf too! He can have my dinners. And you can have my desserts. Half my desserts.”
But Captain Alet was shaking her head. “I have responsibilities.” She seemed to sag a little, as if she was even more tired than Mama, which didn’t seem possible—Captain Alet wasn’t supposed to ever be tired. She was the strongest person that Erian had ever met. “But I will see about finding a proper—”
“No!” Llor wailed.
“We’ll be fine,” Erian said. “I know someone who will watch us, if we write and ask.”
Llor cut off his wail. “Who?”
But Erian didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to tell Mama anything about us. But will you please talk to her? Convince her not to be heir?”
Captain Alet nodded. “I’ll try.”
Erian bit into her pastry and thought about the letter she needed to write to Father.
Sword ready, Ven watched as Naelin directed a half-dozen tree spirits as if she were an orchestra conductor and they were her instruments. She’d kicked out the gardeners and taken over one of the palace flower gardens. Three spirits were weaving vines of roses up the palace wall. Another was forcing bushes to grow into shapes: dancers, bears, birds. Two more were devoted to cultivating a new herb garden, because Naelin insisted gardens should be practical as well as ornamental. She was humming to herself, though Ven didn’t think she even knew she was. She was intent on her work.
He could watch her all day.
She gestured with one arm, and a spirit swooped up to wrap a vine around a window. Roses burst into bloom, framing the window in huge red blossoms. He watched her as she laughed at a butterfly that was startled when a bud opened beneath it. Her laugh was as warm and rich as hot chocolate. He wondered if anyone had ever told her how amazing she was, and if she’d believed it when they’d said it.
Still, as captivated as he was by her, he was trained enough to notice the sound of soft footsteps behind him. The churned dirt muffled the man’s slippers, but Ven heard them, as well as the whoosh of his clothes as he moved. So yes, he knew the man was there. He just didn’t care. Naelin was much more interesting to look at.
“You’re supposed to be guarding her,” the man—Healer Hamon—said. “I could have stabbed you by now, if I wanted to. Severed your spinal column here, and here.” Ven felt Hamon’s finger brush his back mid-spine and at his neck.
Spinning fast, Ven shot his foot out and swept Hamon’s feet out from under him. He crashed down into the soft earth of a flowerbed. Before he could even draw a full breath, Ven was kneeling on his chest.
“Or you could have flattened me before I even drew a blade,” Hamon said conversationally.
Ven released him and helped him up.
“Oof. Thanks.” Hamon shook off the soil that clung to his cloak. Reaching over, Ven plucked a leaf from his shoulder. He then returned to watching Naelin. She was creating a sculpture in the center of the garden, using earth spirits to push rocks up out of the ground. It was shaped loosely like the palace tree. “She’s not worried about the kraken anymore?” Hamon asked.
“She’s been training with Daleina,” Ven said. “She’s got this.” She lacked the range to protect the entire country—only a queen had that kind of power—but she had the strength to defend the palace, maybe even the capital, if Daleina blacked out again.
Spreading her arms wide, Naelin stepped back, and water spirits burst through the center of her sculpture. Water cascaded down—she’d made a fountain. It was a very nice fountain.
“And the other champions don’t object? It’s favoritism.”
“It’s practical. They know their candidates are nowhere close to ready. Daleina’s last blackout scared them.” They’d held a meeting. Yelled a lot. Daleina had listened to it all and then nodded and said she’d heard their concerns and hoped they felt better for expressing them, though she could not feel better no matter how much discussion they had, because she was the one dying. That shut them up. He’d been proud.
“Speaking of frightening them . . . I have a favor to ask.”
Ven looked at Hamon and noticed the circles under his eyes, the sunken hollowness of his cheeks, the way his hair was uncombed and his clothes wrinkled. Hamon usually took such care with his appearance, courtesy of his former teacher’s training—appearance was important to a healer. It soothed the patients. Ven guessed the search for the cure wasn’t going well. “Of course. No luck yet in finding the poisoner?”
Hamon shook his head. “This is a separate matter.”
“There are no separate matters. This is the only thing that matters.” He made a mental note to talk to Captain Alet about her progress. With Naelin proceeding this quickly, Daleina had to be thinking harder about abdicating. He wanted to delay that moment as long as possible.
“I need you to look at a dead body. Actually, several.”
That wasn’t a request he heard every day.
“Can you call a guard to watch Naelin?”
Pivoting, he called, “Bayn? Guard Naelin.”
Uncurling his body, the wolf stretched and then ambled over to Naelin. He drank from the fountain and then lay down at Naelin’s feet. She absently scratched Bayn behind the ears before continuing to direct the spirits. Ven thought about telling her to remember to rest, but decided she wouldn’t appreciate his mothering. He followed Hamon out of the gardens.
Hamon led the way to the palace morgue. Created out of stone, the morgue was tucked behind the treasure pavilion. It had been shrouded in vines so it would blend in with the trees, but the walls themselves were the kind of rock found deep within the ground. Legend said that an ancient queen had summoned it from the bowels of the earth and it had risen, a hollow chamber with a funeral bier inside, after the death of her husband. She’d housed his body inside for forty-one days, until she could lay his killer beside him. Only then did she allow him to be buried. The chamber still stank of ancient death. Ven wasn’t fond of it.
Two guards nodded to them as they passed, but Hamon didn’t even seem to see them. His hands were shaking as he opened the door. “Brace yourself.” He handed Ven a face mask of soft cotton and strapped one on his own face.
Inside, Ven’s eyes immediately watered. The chamber reeked of incense and thick, heavy flowery smells that were trying—and failing—to cover the smell of decaying flesh and old, sour blood. This wasn’t ancient death; this was new.
On the tables were bodies. All were uncovered. All were young women—girls, in truth—in varying states of decay. Ven carefully shoved all his emotions away and ignored the part of him that wanted to march out the door and seal it behind him. “You have been digging up corpses,” he said evenly.
“It was my mother’s idea.” Hamon held up a hand to forestall any response. “I know I shouldn’t listen to her ideas, but in this case . . . She thought there was a possibility that the poisoner experimented on other victims before attempting to kill the queen. Other victims whose deaths could easily be attributed to another cause. If the poisoner killed before, there might be a clue to his or her identity . . . or a clue to the poison itself.”
“Did you find any such clues?” Ven asked.
“Unfortunately no. And in the process of looking at these recent deaths, I discovered something unsettling.”
Ven thought that everything about examining dead bodies was unsettling. There were six total. Most had been ripped open—a rib cage exposed, a leg that looked as if it had been savaged, flesh peeled back . . . “These weren’t killed by poison. They were killed by spirits.” He’d seen this kind of damage far too often to doubt it.
“Yes, I know. Except . . . not.” Hamon moved between the bodies. “This one, she died of blunt trauma to the head. And this, her throat was slit. Here, three wounds beneath her rib cage. Another, the back.” He beckoned to Ven to come closer to one, one of the freshest.
Ven glanced at her face and then wished he hadn’t—he knew this one, the redheaded girl he’d considered at the academy, the one whom Piriandra had chosen. Beilena. He swore and then looked at the other faces. He recognized another—Esiella, Havtru’s candidate.
“Are they all candidates?” Ven asked.
“Forget what you’re thinking, who they were, what could have or should have happened. Just look here, at this wound. Look at the precision of it, the cleanness of the slice . . . And if you look inside”—pulling on gloves, Hamon spread open Beilena’s wound, to show the sliced muscles and bone—“see how it’s cut, with a twist? And the depth of it? It nicked the bone. See that?”
Ven was not a doctor. He had seen—and caused—his share of violence. But Hamon casually peeling back the skin of dead girls . . . “So if I were to be sick . . . ?”
“Bucket is under the table. Don’t think of them as people. Think of them as puzzles. And tell me: ignoring the circumstances in which they were found, ignoring what you know of who they were and what they were doing, what made this cut?”
“Knife,” he said instantly.
“How are you sure?”
He pointed. “The slice on the bone.”
“Could have been a claw. Or a tooth.”
“It’s not a bite,” Ven said. “It’s only one slice.”
“Single claw? Single talon?” Hamon was watching him intently. Ven felt as if he were taking an exam. He bent over the body, trying to focus only on the wound, not on the girl’s face, not on the thought of how young she was or how scared she must have been. I know wounds like this, Ven thought. I’ve made wounds like this.
“Every spirit I have ever seen attacks to rip apart, not stab—that’s their instinct, to destroy,” Ven said. “They use claws and teeth. There should be multiple wounds, not a single slice. There’s no question this was a knife.” And the spirits don’t use knives. Ven looked up at Hamon. “You think . . .”
“This is the wound that killed her. All the other wounds, including the icicles that supposedly stabbed her throat, were inflicted after death.”
“She was stabbed and then . . .” Left for the spirits? Given to them? Mutilated to look as if it were spirits? He straightened and looked at the other bodies. “What about the others?”
“Some were clearly killed by spirits. But not all.” He led Ven around the morgue, pointing out the injuries. In the worst, the candidate had her extremities frozen—an ice spirit—but it was again a knife thrust that had killed her. It was hard to see, Hamon explained, but once he’d known what to look for . . . He showed Ven her wounds, as well as the wounds on three other girls. Finishing, they left the morgue and stripped off their face masks.
Ven sucked in the sweet outside air. He walked away from the morgue toward the treasure pavilion, not looking back.
“Am I right?” Hamon asked.
“Yes,” Ven said. “Someone is murdering candidates.” And I have left Naelin alone. He broke into a run. His feet pounded over the paths, crushing the delicate flowers that grew between them. He vaulted over one of the tree roots and scrambled up another, running along it, leaping over the decorative statues and vines.
He reached the garden—
The wolf rose and trotted over to him. He was wagging his tail. Naelin was standing on top of her new fountain, and the water spirits were swirling around her, casting rain on all the flower beds but nowhere else. Naelin’s eyes were closed, and she was smiling, just slightly, only the corners of her lips turned up.
“You guard her,” Ven told Bayn. “Every second that I’m not near her, you are.” Kneeling down, he looked the wolf directly in the eyes. “Can you understand me?”
The wolf regarded him evenly and then—clearly, deliberately—nodded.
“Thank you,” Ven said gravely. Someday he would need to ask Daleina what she knew of the wolf—where he’d come from, why he was so intelligent—but later, once she was well. For now, it was enough that Bayn would do as he asked.
Rising, Ven crossed to Naelin.
She wouldn’t be like one of those girls in the morgue. She was powerful and intelligent and fierce . . . As he reached her, she opened her eyes. Seeing him, she smiled. “Aren’t I doing well?” she asked. “And yes, I’m fishing for praise. So go ahead, tell me I’m amazing, and I’ll blush and deny it, but inwardly I’ll agree, because this . . . I never thought I could do this.”
He wanted to take her in his arms and tell her she truly was amazing.
But she wasn’t finished. “Galling to admit that Renet might have been right. I suppose this means I owe him an apology.”
“He still endangered you and your children,” Ven pointed out. Her former husband was unworthy of her. But that wasn’t the conversation he intended to have. “I need you to be careful—”
“You think I’m not careful enough?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the spirits disperse. Earth spirits dove into the soil, air spirits spiraled up toward the clouds, tree spirits skittered along the branches. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Hear me out, before you decide to be furious at me. You’re already careful with spirits. I need you to be careful of humans.” And he told her what Hamon had showed him, what he’d seen, leaving out the details. As he talked, he felt her sag.
And then she straightened and looked him in the eye. “All right then. Spirits want to kill me. People want to kill me. Anything else?”
He wanted to kiss her.
But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled out one of his knives, the short dagger he kept tucked in his boot, and said, “I’m going to teach you how to survive this.”