They sit, and the servants reveal the dishes: a pretty, pale soup of autumn squash, golden roasted hens bundled full of aromatic herbs and a dessert of custard swirled through with a fruit preserve. The servants fill their cups with wine and water and slice the bread. Then they go and close the door tightly behind them.
“I would have asked my companion, Pietyr Renard, to join us or Genevieve Arron. They have ever been fascinated by the sight gift. But they have also grown up as poisoners, and their faces turn so sour in the presence of untainted food.” Katharine gestures to the plates. “I find it terribly rude. But I cannot seem to break them of it.”
“The poisoner gift has grown strong. Even the babies are born with immunities now. To come into your gift and be impervious to the deadliest toxins . . . They have every right to be proud. It is a sacred thing.”
“Like all gifts are sacred,” Katharine says quickly. “I would instill in them a healthier respect of those other gifts.”
“Shall I throw the bones for you?” Theodora asks.
“After supper, perhaps. We do not want the food to get cold.” Katharine motions for her guest to begin, feeling the weight of the poison tucked into her sleeve.
Theodora stares at her. She is no fool. She knows what is coming. After a long moment, she takes up a piece of bread and dips it into the soup.
“I am sorry I was not of more use.” She turns to the hen and picks meat from the breast with her fingers.
“That is all right. You will be.”
The woman eats as slowly as she can, afraid of every bite. But she swallows and swallows again. Such brave consumption. It is a wonder to watch, even if the meal is not poisoned yet.
“You know I never wanted a troubled reign.” Katharine takes up her silver and begins to eat her own portion. “I am not the monster that you have heard about. Not undead, like they say. It was my sisters who were the traitors. Pretenders in black dresses—or trousers, as the case may be.
“But the island never gave me a chance. They rose up as soon as I had my crown. The mist coming for me like the Goddess herself.” Katharine skewers a bite of hen. “Well, let her take the naturalist’s side. It was not by the Goddess’s will that I was crowned anyway.”
“If not hers,” Theodora asks, “then whose?”
In her lap, Katharine positions the bottle of poison. Then she reaches for her wine.
“Have the oracles truly allied themselves with the rebellion?”
“I know of no such allegiance,” Theodora says, and purses her lips.
“Then why did you refuse to come? Why was I forced to drag you here?”
“Perhaps because everyone on the island is afraid of you.” She takes another bite of soup and bread.
Katharine shifts the poison at the edge of her sleeve. Agreeable delirium, in a purple bottle. Agreeable delirium, and death.
“You have such kind eyes, Mistress Lermont. I wish you were telling me the truth.” She takes a drink and sets her wine back on the table, passing her hand over the tops of Theodora’s cups. She has gotten better at it, and the poison slides down unseen to mingle with the water and wine. It is so easy that Katharine slips poison into every dish, tainting the bowl of squash soup and adding several shimmering drops to the custard. So much poison in the meal that the delirium begins to strike before the dessert is even touched, and Theodora starts to laugh.
“Is something funny?”
“No.” She dabs at her forehead with her sleeve and calms to take a swallow of water. “It’s only so strange that we are afraid of you. The stories that they tell—the Undead Queen—but you are such a small thing. And young. Nearly a child.”
“All queens are young in the crown at some point. You would think Jules Milone and her cronies would know that. But perhaps it is not even the true Jules Milone. Perhaps the real Jules Milone drowned in the Goddess’s storm with my sisters.”
“No, it is her. I have seen her myself in the visions. One green eye and one blue, with a mountain cat in her shadow. Some have said that, when she ascends the throne, her blue eye will darken to black, but that is just nonsense.”
“It is nonsense that she may be queen at all when she is not a queen. When she will bear no triplets.” Katharine drains her wine and pours more. She herself may bear no triplets, and the thought makes the hen in her mouth taste like wood.
Theodora shrugs. “The prophecy says, ‘once a queen and may be a queen again.’ It’s never easy to interpret. But the people believe. She is a naturalist and she is war gifted. And both of her gifts are as strong as a queen’s.”
“How?” Katharine asks. “How is she as strong as a queen when she is legion cursed? Why is she not mad?”
The oracle looks at her seriously. Then she erupts into peals of laughter. It is uneven, this poison. And Katharine has no idea how long it will last.
“But you are a pretty girl,” Theodora says, and cackles. “And you are sweet and kind and have given me a comfortable room. You speak of the gifts with equal reverence.” Her left eye narrows. “Did you really buy the High Priestess with a council seat?”
Katharine pushes the custard bowl forward. “Take some dessert to ease the wine in your stomach. I think you have had too much.”
“Yes, yes.” Theodora swallows a large spoonful. “Forgive me.”
“Why do the people seek to overthrow me?”
“They fear that you are wrong. That you were never meant to rule.”
“But Juillenne Milone was?”
“Perhaps anyone is better than a poisoner.”
“And if she goes mad? Can you foresee that, whether she will lose her mind?”
Theodora puts her elbow on the table. She is beginning to look tired. Her head hangs. It seems harder for her to swallow even the custard.
“I can’t see that. But the low magic will hold. Her mother bound it, you see. In blood. So the curse is held in check and both gifts are allowed to flourish.”
Katharine leans back. She has seen this mother before. In Wolf Spring during the Midsummer Festival. She stood by the water as they released the garlands into the harbor, before Katharine issued the challenge of the Queens’ Hunt. Madrigal Milone, her name was. Very young to be mother to a daughter of sixteen years. Very pretty to be a mother to a girl as plain as Jules.
“If the mother dies, will the curse come to fullness?”
The oracle opens her eyes wide.
“None can say. No one with the legion curse has ever lived so long unharmed by it. Some wish for the binding to be cut. Some say it will make her even stronger.”
“Where is Jules Milone now?” Katharine asks, but Theodora shakes her head. Perhaps she truly does not know. Or perhaps even Natalia’s poisons have limits. “Where is her mother?”
Theodora’s eyes lose focus, and her face goes slack, a glimpse of the true sight gift at work. “If you go now, you will catch her in the mountains, riding south toward Wolf Spring.” The vision ends, and Theodora blinks as though confused.
Katharine calls out over her shoulder, and a servant opens the door. “Go to the Black Council. Tell them to send our fastest messengers and best hunters toward the mountains with a bounty on Madrigal Milone’s head. A nice, fat bounty if she is brought to me alive.”
When the servant is gone, Katharine faces Theodora, whose eyes swim circles. The poison has begun its final, grotesque turn, inducing highs and lows, grins and terror. “Is there anything else you can tell me? About the mist? Why does it rise? Why has it turned on its own island?”
The oracle looks down and listens. She presses her hands to her temples and leaves behind smears of custard. “The Blue Queen has come. The Blue Queen! Queen Illiann!”
“Why?” Katharine asks. “What does she want?” But the oracle can say no more. She only weeps and shrieks. The poison has become a spectacle, and Katharine pours them both more wine. “Take a sip,” she says gently.
“I do not think I can.”
“You can.” Katharine takes up the cup. She moves to sit beside Theodora and helps her to hold it, pressing her hands over the woman’s cold fingers. “It will make it easier.”
“You did this,” Theodora says. Then she gasps, twisting with laughter that is like the bray of a mule.
Katharine holds her shoulders tightly. “I did this. So I will stay and talk with you until it is finished.”
THE REBELLION
THE MAINLAND