Or kill her.
But I’d prefer if she were willing. Jastra had never considered that possibility, but then the old queen had never met a queen as idealistic as Daleina.
She told herself to be patient.
I hate being patient.
Merecot smelled a lemony spice that made her nose wrinkle and looked over to see the powder had eaten through the rug and was working on dissolving the wood floor. She marched over. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve never been very good at housecleaning.” Standing, the servant dusted her knees off and smiled at Merecot. It was a predatory kind of smile that made Merecot think of the mountain cats that hunted on the slopes of Semo. Instinctively, she recoiled.
“You’re not a servant.”
“Very observant, Your Majesty. I’m here to watch you while Queen Daleina composes herself in the washroom. Whatever you two were talking about shook her up. Were you threatening to poison her again? Incidentally, I wanted to ask you, where did you obtain such a fascinating poison? I’d never seen its equal. Brilliant use of extract of wheat viper venom. And it must have been combined at extraordinary temperatures to activate the linseed.”
“Who are you?” Merecot asked.
“Master Garnah, the Queen’s Poisoner, at your service,” the woman said with a bow. “Actually, that’s a lie. I’m not in your service in the slightest. I serve Queen Daleina, at least for as long as it suits me. But I do admire your style.”
Merecot eyed the powder that had bored a shallow divot in the floor. “Thank you? Um, do you plan to do something about that before it creates a hole?”
The woman pulled a vial out of a pocket in her skirt and poured a few drops onto the powder. It sizzled and steamed, and then the powder shriveled into a ball of gray dust.
Merecot decided this “Poison-Master Garnah” was the most interesting person she’d met in a long while. “Are you the one who fashioned the antidote to the poison used on Queen Daleina?”
“I may have been involved. Who concocted it?”
“It was a gift,” Merecot said.
Garnah leaned forward eagerly. “From whom?”
Merecot debated herself for a brief moment, then decided to tell the truth. “I found it in the royal treasury, shortly after I claimed the throne. It was labeled as a coronation gift from the former queen of Belene to my predecessor, Queen Jastra, decades ago.”
“Fascinating. And how did you know it was a poison and what it did?”
“It came with a detailed letter. Apparently, the queen of Belene was looking for allies outside the islands—the coronation process in Belene is rather brutal.” Merecot hadn’t really dug much deeper than that—she wasn’t all that interested in the politics of Belene, at least not yet. One country at a time.
“Really? I live in the wrong place. They use poison?”
“So it seems. For whatever reason, Queen Whatever-Her-Name-Was thought Jastra would appreciate the gift. She didn’t have a use for it before she abdicated, but I did.”
“Intriguing,” Garnah said.
“Are you close to Queen Daleina?” Merecot asked. She wondered why Daleina would send her pet poison maker to talk. Was it to intimidate Merecot? To threaten her? What is Daleina up to now? “Can you tell me how she feels about being queen?”
“Mostly exhausted,” Garnah said. “She’s had more than her share of challenges.”
True enough. “And if I were to offer to relieve her of her challenges, how do you think she’d react?” Merecot knew how she’d react if anyone offered to “relieve” her. The offerer would find her head being tossed back and forth by the nearest spirits. Reflexively reaching out, Merecot tried to brush the minds of the nearby spirits—
And found none.
She reached out farther . . . and still found nothing. It was as if she were cut off from the thing that made her her.
She hated the feeling.
Daleina, what did you do?
Merecot spun, her skirts swirling around her, to face the door that Daleina had exited through. “So she just went to the washroom?” she snarled. More like she was setting a trap. Merecot suddenly realized she’d turned her back on a woman who had powder that could eat through the floor and the skills to undo the Belenian poison. Moving quickly, she darted behind a couch and watched Garnah.
Garnah merely smiled at her, and the woman’s amusement made Merecot even angrier . . . and a bit more frightened.
And Daleina came back through the door.
Daleina had cut off both her weapons and her escape route. Granted, Daleina didn’t have any spirits to call as weapons of her own either, but with Garnah, it was two against one . . .
It is a trap! I knew it! How could I be so foolish?
“What did you do?” Merecot barked at her.
“I bought us some privacy,” Daleina said. “Poison-Master Garnah, thank you for entertaining our guest. If you would please excuse us?”
Garnah beamed at both of them. “Delightful chatting with you. And thank you for the idea for where to retire in my dotage.” Bowing, she scooted out the door and shut it behind her. Merecot didn’t doubt that she’d remained, listening.
Scowling at her, Merecot saw Daleina’s eyes light on the divot in the floor. “What did she . . . Never mind. As you’ve clearly noticed, there are no spirits left within Mittriel, either yours or mine, to overhear us. So explain everything. How do you plan to destroy them?”
It’s . . . not a trap?
Daleina listened as Merecot talked:
“The key is that I need to be strong enough for it to work. Obviously, I started out powerful. And the more powerful you are to begin with, the more powerful you are as a queen. Hence the difference between you and me.” She paused, then added, “No offense meant.”
With a tight smile, Daleina said, “None taken.”
I know she’s more powerful than I am. That’s obvious. Daleina wasn’t offended by the truth. She was offended by the invasion and the attempted assassination, but for the sake of Aratay, she was setting aside her anger and anguish. Or trying to.
Merecot continued. “When you become queen, your power—however much it is—is amplified. The spirits share their power when they choose you. This is why a queen has the strength to keep her spirits from slaughtering her people. Mostly.”
Every child knew that. It was the reason Renthia needed queens. But Daleina was determined to be patient. She folded her hands on her lap and tried to pretend she was listening to Headmistress Hanna lecture, instead of Merecot. “Go on.”
“So here’s my revelation: even a powerful queen can be made stronger. Okay, so it’s not much of a ‘revelation,’ really. It’s logic. You must have noticed that when a spirit dies, you feel weaker. Well, the reverse is true, too: if an additional spirit chooses to share its power with you, then you become stronger. So if you—and by ‘you’ I mean me, of course—can become queen of enough spirits, then you can become strong enough to issue a command that would destroy them!”
And destroy Renthia in the process. Daleina tried not to interrupt, though she badly wanted to. She’d seen firsthand what happened when spirits died. All around Aratay was the proof: the barren lands, the destroyed homes, the ruined harvest. But Daleina kept quiet, with effort, wanting Merecot to finish first before she began berating her for abject stupidity. And for raising my hopes.