‘And that drink you gave me – delicious! What was it again? Zinroot?’
‘Yes.’ Laetha looked over to at her husband, unsure of what to do.
‘It was the glass,’ Radger said casually. In his hand he held a thick iron rod, a bit under two feet in length. Each end was wrapped in tanned leather. This was a weapon for disabling a man, perhaps crippling him, but not killing him. ‘In case you’ve been wondering, the poison was in the glass already, not in the drink.’
‘Ah. The glass,’ I said as the paralytic began to assert itself on my limbs and organs. ‘I should’ve realised.’
‘Few would,’ Radger said. ‘It’s how we sometimes get children to take their medicine when they’re being obstinate: put it on the rim of the glass and fill it with plain water, then drink some yourself from a clean glass to make them feel safe.’
‘Radger! What are you doing?’ Aline asked.
‘Shush, girl. You come with me now,’ Laetha said, rising from the table.
Aline jumped from her seat and came behind me. She took the bracer of knives from the inside of my coat and pulled one free, holding it out in front of her.
‘Don’t be foolish, child,’ Laetha shouted.
Radger took a step forward and Aline threw the knife at him. She missed him by a city block, but the knife did give a satisfying thunk as it stuck into the wall. She quickly pulled another one out before Laetha could grab her arm and swung it in an arc in front of us.
‘Where is Mattea?’ Aline demanded.
‘Let’s all settle down now, my sweetheart,’ Radger said.
‘Where is she? You can’t tell me she would do this to me – you can’t!’ With her left hand she started shaking my shoulders, trying to get me to move, but I held, stiff as stone.
‘Aline,’ Radger said, taking another step towards us, ‘it’s time for you to be grown-up now. There’s enough limerot in that man’s blood to stop a pack of dogs in their tracks. So just you go with Laetha and leave me to do what I’ve got to do. I’ve got no call to hurt you, but I will if you don’t stop misbehaving now.’
‘Damn you!’ Aline screamed, waving the knife as Radger took another half-step towards us and Laetha started reaching out, looking for an opportunity to catch Aline’s wrist. ‘Damn you all! You were supposed to be my friends!’ She started reaching back inside my pocket for something and it took me a second to realise she was reaching for the soft candy again.
‘No,’ I said to her, ‘that won’t be necessary. Leave be and step back a few paces, Aline.’
The girl paused a moment and then complied, but she kept the knife in hand.
Radger and Laetha looked relieved. ‘See now, you listen to your man there,’ Radger said. ‘He knows when it’s done. No need to make a fuss.’
‘In case you’re wondering later on,’ I said, ‘it was the candy.’
‘The what?’
‘The candy. You’re an apothecary,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard stories of the King’s Hard Candy?’
‘That’s – that’s a myth,’ Radger said. ‘No one’s ever been able to make that recipe.’
‘Fool,’ I said. ‘You stupid. Fucking. Fool. Did you think you were the first person to ever come up with the idea of poisoning a Greatcoat? Did you really think that the King, with all his money and all his apothecaries, the finest in the country, and all his books from the most ancient libraries in the country – did you really think he never thought we’d have to deal with a fucking poisoner? Did you really think we wouldn’t have a way to deal with that?’
‘You’re bluffing,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to bide your time, hoping your stupid little candy will work, but it takes longer than this, doesn’t it?’
‘Take a step forward,’ I said. ‘Just one more step, and find out.’
Radger hesitated.
‘Come on! I’m right here – I’m sitting down! My sword’s in its sheath. On the best day of my life do you think I could get up, draw my blade and stab you before you can take one step and thrash me across the head with that iron bar? So what are you waiting for?’
He looked at Laetha for a moment, then back at me, and with a roar he stepped forward and swung the iron bar.
In my own defence, I did actually manage to push the chair back, get up and draw my sword faster than I would’ve thought possible, but the hard candy moves through the body from the inside out. The first thing to work, thankfully, are the internal organs, then the chest, shoulders and thighs. The hands and fingers are the last to come out of the paralysis, which in this case meant my aim was off and the blade went to the side, and the result was that instead of smashing my brains in, Radger hit the side of my ribs with less impact.
He pushed me hard, and I fell back onto my chair, the rapier dropping from my hand, and he pulled back for a final swing, only then noticing the small knife buried into his side.
‘Aline?’ he said, disbelievingly.
She had snuck in under his blow when I’d stood up and jammed the blade into his side. A big man like that, he could’ve shrugged it off for long enough to finish the job on me. But if you’ve never been stabbed before, it’s bloody painful, and shock takes you quickly.
Radger stumbled back a few feet. Laetha raced to his side. I leaned over and picked up my sword before pulling myself to my feet.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘why don’t you give me the amulet?’
‘What?’ Aline said.
I held my sword point very close to Radger’s bleeding wound. Laetha reached into a pocket in her skirts and pulled it out. She tossed it on the table and Aline ran over and picked it up.
‘It’s exactly like the other one,’ she said. Then she reached over and felt in the left pocket of my coat.
‘It’s not there,’ I said. ‘It must’ve fallen out in the fight with Lorenzo. That’s why we “suddenly” appeared for you, wasn’t it, Radger?’
He nodded grimly, biting back pain. ‘They gave us all these copper things,’ he said, ‘but nothing was happening and we just wandered around, looking through the district. But then all of a sudden there it was, a light on the surface and the lines of the streets.’
‘They must not work if we’ve got one on our person or too close to us,’ I explained to Aline. ‘If we hadn’t lost it, they never would have—’
Shit. If I hadn’t been such a damned fool and picked a fight that could have waited, then I wouldn’t have lost the damned thing.
‘They just gave you one?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘They gave each of us one.’
‘Each of you …’ Aline whispered.
‘You don’t understand, you stupid girl,’ Laetha screamed. ‘They came to all of us! Everyone who ever knew you or your damned family: “find them and be rich, fail and be dead.” That’s the choice we were given.’
She looked pleadingly at the girl, and then at me. ‘What else could we have done?’
‘But Mattea – she wouldn’t …’ she whispered. ‘I know she wouldn’t. Where is she? Tell me where she is!’
Laetha looked furious, but her glance flickered for a moment.
Aline ran to the cellar door. ‘You … What did you do to her? Mattea! Mattea!’ Aline screamed as she ran to the door and pried it open. I heard her thumping down the stairs into the darkness.
Radger slumped to the ground and Laetha knelt beside him, crying and staunching his wound with the edge of her long skirt.
I wanted to sit back down myself, but it was best to stay on my feet, stay moving. The combination of the paralytic they’d slipped me along with the hard candy was a dangerous mixture for the heart, and the more I moved about, the quicker both would get out of my system.
Radger looked up at me and I could see the guilt breaking through. He wanted someone to tell him it was all right, that anyone would have done the same – or at least to scream at him, to beat him to within an inch of his life.
I chose to do neither. For once in my life I didn’t feel vengeful. I just felt tired. Damn this loathsome city.
A moment later I heard Aline’s footsteps, and another’s, climbing the stairs from the cellar. She emerged with an old woman. Grey, tightly curled hair framed a face that might’ve been a map of the world, if the world had been made up only of mountains and valleys. Her hands were still bound and her mouth gagged. Aline ran and pulled the knife out of the wall where she’d thrown it earlier and made quick work of both ropes and gag.
The old woman coughed and cleared her throat, and straightened as much as she could. She was still bent over and wizened, but I could see strength in those old bones, and there was iron in her eyes. She opened her mouth and gave a sneer that promised foul language and a brutal temperament – and that’s when I finally recognised her.