“Mistress Arron,” he said with surprising vigor, “I am glad to know you’re not among them. No doubt you are happy that Elsabet is keeping company with another of the poisoner gift.” He drew himself up and straightened his shoulders. Francesca stifled a laugh.
“Who are you?” she asked. “A Denton? What great thing has the Denton house ever done for the island? For the poisoners? If you hope to make a place for that name within the capital, your hopes will be dashed.” She stepped close and dragged her fingernail gently along his temple and the side of his jaw. “Arrons sit upon the Black Council. Arrons hold the political favor of the queen. And do not forget it.”
Then she turned, unaffected by the shade of red he turned. Or the way his eyes bulged in impotent fury.
“You speak of it as though it is a permanent appointment,” he said. “But members of the Black Council can be replaced. Perhaps the queen will be moved to have more poisoners in her circle now that she fears the tonic she takes for her health may have been unduly tainted.”
She froze but as always was unshakable. Instead, she stared at the boy, stared and stared until he lost his nerve and turned away, cursing, and she watched him go, ascertaining just what to do with Jonathan Denton. Whether he could be bought. Whether he could be threatened.
INDRID DOWN
By the time Sonia Beaulin received her summons and met Francesca at the inn, it was the middle of the night. Which suited Francesca just fine. It meant that the inn was empty, except for the woman who ran it, and she was bought and paid for by Arron bribes. And it meant that Sonia was not likely to be seen walking through the central square, where it was always difficult not to be noticed. Warriors were like that. Brutal. Imposing. They liked to be noticed. A strange sort of people all around, in Francesca’s opinion, moving things with their minds and always intent on blood. And unlike poisoners, who all appeared to be cut of the same cloth—thin, willowy people with a stern countenance and fair hair—warriors varied in shape and feature. Some were behemoths like the Commander of the Queensguard, Rosamund Antere. Others were so small and quick they could pass for very deadly children. Sonia fell somewhere in between, a slim-hipped, even-featured young woman with large observant eyes and hair nearly as dark as a queen’s. Francesca preferred Sonia’s more average size, as it made it easier to blend in, and she valued the possibility of underestimation. But Sonia envied Rosamund her height. It was yet another source of animosity between them.
Sonia slid into the secluded table where Francesca sat near the back of the inn and signaled to the innkeeper. “Whiskey,” she ordered.
Francesca shook her head. “Ale. Keep your wits about you.”
Sonia changed her request and sighed. “What’s happened?”
“Less important than what has happened is what we must do.” Francesca was drinking tea and dropped a sugar cube tainted with arsenic into her cup. The cube had been dyed bright green, to keep any non-poisoner customers from falling over dead. The presence of poisoner fare on the menu—even before the bribes started—was the reason she had chosen to patronize the inn on Highborne Street in the first place. It was one of the few establishments in the capital to consistently offer poisoned food.
“Queen Elsabet may soon come to suspect us.”
“How? Have her visions returned? Is she not taking the tonic?”
“She may no longer trust the tonic.”
“Then you must administer it some other way. Sneak it into her food. Aren’t you poisoners good at that?”
“Terribly good. But the dosage is important. Too little and it will have no effect at all. Too much and it will kill her.”
The innkeeper arrived with Sonia’s ale and also a loaf of bread and some cheese. Sonia thanked her sullenly. “Well,” she said, “she’ll find no evidence. Her suspicion will cost us, though, of that you can be sure. This queen is vindictive. One or both of us are sure to lose our council seats.”
Francesca’s jaw tightened as she watched Sonia pout and eat, stuffing bread and cheese into her cheeks like a squirrel. It made her want to douse her in poisoned tea, force arsenic sugar down her throat. And she would have, if she did not have need of Sonia’s might.
“Is that the way a warrior speaks? So easily of defeat?”
Sonia stopped chewing and spat bread onto the floor. “What, then, would you have me say? What would you have me do?”
“Nothing that you lack the nerve for.”
Sonia sat for a moment. Then she laughed. “Stop goading me. There’s no need. The Beaulins tied their fortune to the Arron carriage long before you and I. Say what it is that you have the nerve to do.”
“I have grown up around enough snakes to know,” Francesca said, “that the one who survives is the one who strikes first. So we will strike first. And perhaps we can put an end to this before word of our involvement ever reaches the queen.”
That night, just before sunrise, Jonathan was wakened by a rap at his door. Groggy, he got out of bed and wrapped himself in a robe. He tried to light a candle, but his drowsy fingers made a mess of the match, and after the insistent knock sounded again, he gave up and went to answer in the dark.
He had no idea who it could be. He had few acquaintances in town who knew the location of his small apartment, and none who would call at such an hour. And the knock came not from the main door that led downstairs to the bakery owned by his landlord but from the side entrance in the alley.
Had he been more fully awake he might have used more caution when opening the door. He might have first asked who it was. But he was not, and so he turned the lock and threw up the latch. The word “who” had barely passed his lips before the hooded figure shoved past him into his drafty hall.
“Who are you? What is this?” he demanded, and his hand searched the table near the entry for something, anything to use as a weapon.
“Quiet, Jonathan. I come on behalf of the queen! I am her maid Bess.”
In the dim light, he could not make out her face, but he detected the movement of her cloak hood lowering.
“Bess?” he asked. They had not spoken often, but he had seen her at the Volroy, a near-constant presence at Queen Elsabet’s side.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here?” He stepped carefully past her and went back to retrieve the candle, which he lit easily enough now that he had been startled alert. He turned with it and saw Bess, dressed in a long, brown traveling cloak that was just a bit too large for her. She seemed agitated, out of breath and pacing. “Do you . . . bear a message?” He held out his hand.
“If I did, it would not be written,” she said, and slapped it gently away.
“Of course.” He wiped his face roughly with both hands, trying to quicken his wits. “Is the queen all right?”
“Do you have reason to think she would not be?”
“No. Only you here, pacing back and forth and looking like a wolf is on your trail.”
Bess stopped pacing. She took a deep breath. Then she smiled at him, such a warm and fetching smile that he could not help but return it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have frightened you like this. I shouldn’t have even come here. But—”
“But what?”
“The night you spent in the queen’s chamber.” Bess spoke in a rush. Color rose into her cheeks before she could get all her words out. “Did you . . . have you . . . are you as they say? Are you the queen’s lover?”
“No—no! I swear it!”
“I am her closest friend and confidante. You must tell me the truth.”
“It is the truth, Bess. That night we talked. And she . . . I have come to care for her. As more than just my queen. But we didn’t—she wouldn’t—”
Somehow, his declaration seemed to make things worse. Bess’s hands flew to her face, and she began to moan. “I wish that she had! My poor queen! And you are only her painter! Not a lover at all!”