“Sounds like a sensible dance to decline.” Dipping the eyedropper into the distilled water, Arin prepared to add the first ingredient—water, harmless on its own but host to all the other more volatile components.
“Ah, but it’s the most exciting, beautiful dance there is! If you don’t dance it, you haven’t lived.” Positioning her arms as if she had an invisible partner, Master Garnah swirled around the room. She bypassed the other tables, the pile of supplies, and the stack of dead frogs. They’d started with rats as their subjects, but Master Garnah wanted the potions tested on non-mammals as well. “The dance with destiny! Or death. Or immortality. Whatever. Take your pick of something poetic.” Swishing past Arin, Garnah called out, “Three drops, my dear!”
Arin held the dropper over the test tube and added three drops. She then went for the next ingredient, which was known for its explosive qualities. Five drops. Almost done.
Last ingredient.
She felt the tremor through her feet, and then the table began to shake. Her hand, with the final ingredient in the dropper, shook.
Glass tubes and bottles rattled together. A bowl slid off the table, and the liquid spattered across the expensive carpet. Arin felt a yank on her arm as Master Garnah pulled her back. She turned and ran as the floor rocked and shook.
Master Garnah shoved another table over and pulled Arin with her behind it. “Down!”
Arin obeyed, crouching down as the world shook and shuddered. Cracks ran down the walls and sounded as if the whole palace were breaking apart—
Boom!
The potion exploded, and shards of glass shot into the walls. She saw them embed in the wood, above where they hid.
And as suddenly as it had begun, the earthquake ended.
Everything was still.
Arin stared at the shards of glass stuck into the wall.
Standing, Master Garnah dusted off her knees. “Invigorating,” she commented. “Come, you must learn faster. There are many more potions you need to know.”
“But the quake . . .” She had to see if Daleina was okay. Had spirits caused it? What happened? Had there been an attack? Semo again?
“Potions,” Master Garnah said, climbing over a fallen chair. Glass crunched under her shoes. “There’s no time to waste. Don’t you understand?”
“Understand what?” Climbing out from behind the table, Arin began to clean up the broken bottles. Powders had spilled on the floor—they’d be useless now. I need a broom.
“A queen is supposed to keep us safe,” Master Garnah said. “And a content, stable queen will do exactly that. But with a queen of sorrow . . . You must learn quickly, girl. Sooner rather than later, you will need to be able to keep yourself safe”—she plucked a bit of glass from the wall and shook it at Arin—“or you will find yourself in pieces.
“Now—leave the mess, and learn!”
Chapter 9
“You must be drenched in diamonds, my queen, per tradition,” the courtier said. Merecot hadn’t bothered to learn her name, but the lady wore a row of jewels in the curve of her ear and gold strands laced in her hair. “If you will permit me . . .”
Merecot waved her hand. “Drench as you please.”
Cautiously, the lady approached her, and Merecot wanted to bare her teeth and growl to see if she’d flinch. But she resisted the urge, because she wasn’t five years old. Oh, but it’s tempting! Suppressing a grin, Merecot held herself still in front of the mirror as the courtier draped necklaces around her neck, fastened bracelets all the way up her arms, and wove jewels into her black hair. As she decorated her queen, the courtier began to prattle about the jewels with increasing confidence. “The Crown was given this necklace by the town of Erodale, during the reign of Queen Eri of Semo. It was carved by the master jeweler Hoile, in his final year of life. It is said that his blindness cleared, and he regained the strength in his hands for the length of time it took him to carve the thirty-six petals into the shape of a perfect rose. When he finished, he carried his masterpiece to the queen and presented it to her. As she clasped it around her neck, his blindness returned, his hands shook again, and his heart gave out. He died at her feet.”
She had a story like that for every single bauble.
Merecot would have demanded silence, except that she had a more effective way to skip the history lesson. So instead of listening to the courtier’s prattle, she sent her mind sailing out of her chambers, out of the palace, and across the mountains, skipping from spirit to spirit like a rock across the surface of a pond.
She pushed her mind farther, beyond the border, into Aratay. Most queens wouldn’t even have had the strength to reach this distance. But then most queens are not even close to me. There was something strangely soothing about the unpleasant sensation of spreading herself so thin and wide that she could brush against the forests of Aratay.
Not that I miss the forests. She didn’t. Shadows everywhere. Always having to worry about the stupid bridges breaking. She’d climbed enough ladders and swung on enough ridiculous ropes to last her several lifetimes. Besides, she’d left behind her worst memories between those branches, and she didn’t regret that for one second. But she had spent the majority of her life above the forest floor, with leaves overhead, and sometimes it felt strange to feel her feet on the ground and see the open sky with nothing brown or green to obscure the sun. And the mountains—oh, the glorious mountains! They were why she had chosen Semo, as opposed to the flat farmlands of Chell or the icy glaciers of Elhim or the ever-present salty stickiness of Belene.
The mountains were fists punched at the sky, fabulous “you don’t own me” gestures at the world. Her favorites were in the west, with their sharp ridgelines and sheer cliffs, but she also admired the southern mountains, with their boulders that could crush a town. And she admired the people who lived in them, carving out lives on the stone faces, eking out their existence from the plants and animals that were hardy enough to live there.
I fit well here, she thought.
If only there were no spirits trying to destroy everything that’s beautiful and good.
Merecot rode with the wind above a snowcapped peak and then soared down the other side. She was only dimly aware of her body, back in her chambers, as the courtier rebraided her hair to hold even more diamonds, plumbed from the depths of the mountains.
Shivering, Merecot strained harder, sweeping her awareness over the strange other feel of the spirits of Aratay. They moved like bugs through her consciousness, making her itch, until at last she brushed against the minds of spirits that felt familiar, hidden in the shadows where the Aratayian spirits wouldn’t see them—touching them felt like breathing in fresh mountain air.
Her spirits, the ones she had sent into the forest.
The ones she’d sent with a purpose.
She touched their thoughts. Did you succeed?
Images were blurred—golden trees, blue sky . . . and then a wolf, running with the queen’s children . . . and then a wolf, running alone . . .
Did you catch them?
Did you kill him?
From across the border, it was difficult to sort through the tangle of the spirits’ memories. But then she saw an image, as crisp as if it had happened in front of her: the wolf running alone into the untamed lands.
Merecot laughed out loud. Distantly, she heard the startled courtier speak, but her mind was too far away to hear words. She felt the spirits’ confusion, then disappointment, then fear. Fear of her anger at their failure.
She consoled them. But you didn’t fail! Granted, the Protector of Queens wasn’t dead, as she’d ordered, but he might as well be. Given what he was, he couldn’t return from the untamed lands, not on his own. He’s as good as dead. But what of the children?
The spirits milled in confusion. They didn’t know . . . They . . . She suddenly realized she was touching only four minds. Where are the other two?