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!”
“No, not a—” he said, and placed his hands on her arms to calm her, “not that. But I would like to think I am not only a painter. I would like to think that I too am her friend.”
“You may need to prove that.” Bess wiped at her eyes. “Elsabet does not have easy days ahead. She will need us. All of us.” Morning was beginning to creep over the city, and her eyes widened at the sight of his nightclothes. “I shouldn’t have come. Forgive me.” She made to reach for the door, and he stopped her and instead drew her farther inside.
“Bess, wait. Please stay a moment and sit. Tell me what you meant about the queen. Why will she suffer? What’s the matter?” Bess nodded, and let herself be led to his table and two lonely chairs. “Your hands are like ice.”
“There was a chill in the air tonight, from the water. And I haven’t slept. I hope the queen is sleeping now. . . .”
Jonathan stoked his small fire back to life and swung a pot of water over it to heat for tea. “A warm cup will put you to rights.” He searched his cupboard. “I don’t know if I have untainted sugar. I have untainted honey; will that do?”
After the tea had steeped, he got it into her hands and waited as she sipped.
“You and I and Rosamund,” she whispered. “Catherine Howe. Gilbert Lermont. We may be the only loyalists the queen has left. I don’t want to believe that, but—”