Greavesdrake Manor rests at the western end of the capital city of Indrid Down and spills across woodland and meadow. The great house stands on a low central hill and has grown larger as the years passed, expanding steadily, as if the house has somehow learned to feed. One more poisoner queen, and Greavesdrake will spill over into the streets.
Its pitched roofs have been washed black, to show the Arrons’ devotion to the crown. That is what Natalia told little Katharine that first day, more than three years ago, when the carriage drove up to it. But Katharine has come to believe that the roof is black for another reason: it screams down to the capital, and all across the island, This is where your queens are raised.
Katharine sits at her vanity table and lets her maid brush out her long black hair. Her eyes are hollow and haunted, and she is painfully thin. She has simply lost the taste for eating. It is not easy to pretend to relish the poisoned food they serve. Nor to keep from crying when they put her to the scorpion’s sting or lash the nettles across her back. But she tries. It is all part of being a poisoner queen. Natalia says it is her duty to become strong, her obligation—to the Arrons who house and clothe her and to the island that worships her like the Goddess. Take the pain into yourself, Natalia tells her, and you will grow strong.
But sometimes it feels like her gift will never be strong. Like it will never come, and she will never revel in the poisons like the Arrons do. It feels like she has been poisoned forever. She cannot even remember anything that came before.
“Shall we braid you, miss?” her maid asks, and Katharine does not reply. The maid will do it anyway.
A short while later, Katharine walks alone to the dining room for breakfast with Natalia. Her hair is done, and she has been fitted into a soft, fine dress of black muslin. When Natalia sees her, she smiles. Even drawn and miserable, Katharine is still very pretty, and all Natalia sees is a perfect poisoner queen.
“Good morning, Queen Katharine.”
“Good morning.” Someone pulls a chair out for her, and she sits in front of a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of cut strawberries.
“How are your studies?” Natalia looks severe as she always does, but not unkind. A red-and-black-striped coral snake is twisted around her wrist like a bracelet.
“Does it have a name?” Katharine asks.
“No.” Natalia kisses it on the head. “But it is very beautiful. Now. How are your studies? Is your new tutor more to your liking?”
“We are reading from Toxicology: The Use of Poisons in Modern Medicine.”
“Very good.” Natalia lifts the silver off her own dish. She eats a soup for breakfast, a bitter broth steeped with poison mushrooms. For lunch she might enjoy blowfish or a salad of bloodroot. Dinner is meat tenderized and tainted with scorpion venom. Poison for every meal. Such is her strength.
Natalia promises that one day, Katharine will eat the same. But Katharine cannot imagine it.
“I have to go into the capital today, Queen Katharine. But I shall be back before supper.”
Katharine puts down her spoon. “I would like to go with you,” she says softly. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I ought to go with you, if I am to rule there one day.”
During the short carriage ride to Indrid Down, Natalia studies Katharine as she looks out the window, nosed pressed to the glass like an excited puppy. At nine years old, she has little of the lanky, lithe quality that Queen Camille had. But then, queens do not pass down physical traits or talents. Nothing but the bloodline.
“Natalia,” Katharine asks, “what are we going to do in the capital today?”
“We are going to the Volroy. Where I must meet with the Black Council. You will not meet with them until after you are crowned.”
“Then what am I to do while I wait?” The little queen turns and blinks at her. There is no guile in her questions, no petulance. Only a genuine curiosity that awaits instruction. Katharine pulls a little bit at her sleeve, tugging the muslin down to cover the fading welt of a spider bite.
Natalia sighs. “Perhaps I can put off the council. I will show you the poison room. An entire room with a full inventory of poisons, both domestic and foreign. Common and rare. Curated by many Arrons before me, on expeditions to the mainland.”
“An entire poison room? Is it larger than the one at Greavesdrake?”
“Not larger.” The poison chamber at Greavesdrake is the size of a small ballroom. “But better stocked. I have added to its shelves myself, as did my brother Christophe, when he traveled through the mists to the exotic, tropical climes of the southern seas.”
Queen Katharine leans forward, daydreaming of poison as she gazes through the window glass.
“A whole room of poisons, right in the Volroy castle. Is that because the queen is always a poisoner?”
“She is not always, and you know that.” Natalia reaches out and taps her beneath her chin. “But our queens have kept this island safe for three generations, without war or intrusion. Our family has kept it safe. And if the Westwoods think they can do the same, with their breezes and rain clouds . . . Fennbirn needs a poisoner. It needs a queen to fear. Death and strength are the only true currencies on the mainland anymore.”
The carriage halts at the gates and moves on when Natalia nods to the guards. Inside the vast, chilled halls of the Volroy, eyes widen at the sight of the young queen, so rarely seen there.
“I should like to hang more tapestries when I am queen,” Katharine remarks, quietly so her voice will not echo.
“And why is that?”
“So it will not feel so cold. Cold and distant and brittle. The Volroy was not made to be loved.”
“Indeed it was not,” Natalia replies. “It was made to endure.” She leads the queen up the stairs of the East Tower, up and up and through the antechamber that leads to the room of poisons.
She steps in, and Katharine walks eagerly to the center of the stone floor. She marvels at the cabinets full of poisons, dried and liquefied and preserved, glittering malevolently in their vials. She reaches out to touch the long table of sealed wood, topped with glass, and Natalia grasps her by the wrist.
“Take care. Your gift has not come. You must wear gloves before you touch anything in this room. No matter how meticulously it is maintained, I will not take any chances with your tolerance.”
She goes to a closet and selects a pair of small, lined gloves for Katharine to wear.
“Now,” she says, and smiles, “shall we make something pretty? Something pretty, and something deadly.”
The poison that they craft is called Winter’s Blush, since it kills by constricting the blood vessels and making the body go cold all over. Sometimes the constriction causes the capillaries to burst as well, making the name even more fitting. It is a popular poison lesson for beginners, because it has only four ingredients and because of the pretty lilac color that it turns, and the way that it fizzes.
Katharine holds the stoppered vial gleefully between gloved fingers, admiring the purple hue. “It is like Miss Genevieve’s eyes,” she says.
Natalia chuckles. “She would love that you said that. But though it is beautiful, you must treat it with respect. As you must treat all poisons. A poison is not a plaything. It is sacred and serious business. As the head of the Black Council, I must concoct poisons to administer as punishment to those on the island who would do harm. Who commit crimes. Sometimes I must punish them to death. And as queen, you must do so as well.”
The young queen slides the poison into the cuff of her sleeve, practicing her sleight of hand. She is still not very good at it. But she is no stranger to death and has heard such words before. Each time she turns a little less green.