“Lady Mari.”
Her smile grew. “Did your queen like the dress I made for her? We chose the silk together. What I would have given to have seen her face.” Her smile vanished. “Do it now.”
She had not spoken to Cas. He started to turn, sensing someone behind him, but before he could, pain exploded between his eyes and he felt himself falling, falling, as the fire went out.
When Cas came to, he found himself flat on his back by the fire. Ventillas and Lena looked down at him with dual expressions of panic. Ventillas was yelling, something about sugar cane.
Cas tried to sit up, which made his brother’s face split from one into two. “Stop. Shouting.”
“Here, let me help you.” Lena’s arms came around his shoulders. She hauled him upright and did not let him go.
“The sugar cane, Cassia.” Ventillas crouched before him, his tone urgent. “Did you eat any of it?”
“No.”
Relief flooded his brother’s face. Before Cas could ask him what had happened, Ventillas jumped up, swung onto a horse, and was gone.
Mere feet away, the doctor knelt on the ground beside the boy, Luis, who vomited in the dirt. The sounds Luis made turned Cas’ stomach. His sugar canes were on the ground. One uneaten, the other half-chewed. A man and woman hovered, the woman crying, “Luis, Luis, oh, my baby.” The man looked the way Cas felt, as though he had just been hit on the back of the head.
The doctor stuck his finger down the boy’s throat. Luis vomited some more. The sight of it cut through the haze in Cas’ mind. He turned to Lena.
“Poison?”
“We think so, yes,” Lena said, pale but for two angry streaks along her cheekbones. “The doctor thought the sugar cane smelled strange, and poor Luis was turning purple.” Lena glanced at the discarded canes. “He was playing with the other children. The nursemaid said she turned her back for a moment and he was gone.”
Cas remembered the sugar cane he had refused. Had that been poisoned too? Lena helped him to his feet. He staggered over to the doctor and said, “He’s had more than that.” Cas gestured at the half-eaten sugar cane. “At least one. He threw it in the fire.”
The doctor nodded grimly. The woman wailed even louder. “Will he die, Doctor?”
“I don’t know anything just yet, Lady. I don’t know what’s been put on the sugar cane. There’s nothing left in his stomach now. Let’s hope it is enough.”
A hand on Cas’ arm. Queen Jehan stood there, white-faced, holding a sleeping prince against her shoulder. “I heard some of what happened.” She inspected the back of Cas’ head, hissed in sympathy. She eyed Luis with trepidation. “Poison, they said? And by a woman? What woman?”
Three guards fanned out behind her. Close enough to hear everything. Now was not the time to mention Lady Mari. “She said her name was Lady Noa.”
A glance exchanged between Lena and the queen, who said, “That is Lady Noa.” The wailing woman had gathered Luis into her arms.
“I must go to her,” Queen Jehan said. “Lena, take Ventillas . . .” She trailed off, eyes riveted on the discarded sugar canes in the dirt. “What are those?”
“Sugar cane.” Cas winced at the pounding between his eyes. “The doctor thinks they were poisoned.”
The queen looked horrified. She thrust the prince at Lena. “Take him!” Lena barely had time to juggle the baby in her arms before the queen whirled around, picked up her skirts, and ran. After a shocked moment, one guard followed. Two stayed behind, for the prince.
Cas said to a wide-eyed Lena, “Stay here!”
Cas went after the guard who ran after the queen. He stumbled more than he ran. What had frightened her? She headed for the royal tent at the very center of the camp. He saw her fling aside the opening and disappear within, the guard following. A cry rang out. In the seconds before he saw her again, his imagination ran rampant. She had been stabbed, bludgeoned, set afire. Lady Mari had lain in wait and killed her friend.
Cas charged into the tent. The sudden stop made his head swim. The guard grabbed his arm—Cas would have fallen otherwise—and they stared in horror at the scene before them.
Queen Jehan knelt on the rugs with Faustina in her arms. The nurse shivered uncontrollably, her face drenched with sweat and her queen’s tears. Her white wimple lay on its side nearby.
Cas kept his voice quiet. “Get the doctor.” The guard bolted.
“It’s just the two of us now, Faustina. Please, please do not leave me here.” Queen Jehan kissed the nurse’s hair.
Faustina’s words were faint. “Jehan. Forgive her.”
“I won’t. Not ever.”
“Jehan.” The nurse’s eyes closed and the only sound left was that of the queen weeping.
Clutching his head, Cas crossed the tent and knelt by the queen. A stick of sugar cane lay beside the wimple. No sharp-eyed physician had found Faustina in time to force the poison from her body. She was gone. Beside her was a small mountain of coins, as though someone had upended the entire contents of her purse. Cas picked one up. It bore the royal emblem, the bull and the flower. The opposite side showed a god with two faces, one looking forward to the future, the other looking back to the past.
Zacarias, god of beginnings and endings, in all their forms.
24
For Cas, it was the longest night in recent memory. Lena burst into the tent, holding the prince. Cas watched each horror register in her eyes—the nurse, the sugar cane, the gold coins—before she took over.
He found himself pushed into a chair directly outside the tent. Lena placed the sleeping prince in his arms. She spoke urgently. “Cas, I can’t have the baby in there. I’m not sure it’s safe for him.”
His head throbbed. “Why not?”
“There’s a strange smell . . . that sugar cane . . .” Distress cracked her voice. “Will you stay here with him? I need to help Jehan.”
“Yes.”
Lena kissed the baby’s cheek and tugged the blanket up around his ears. “The doctor will come look you over soon. Your poor head! The guards will stay here.” She looked behind her, received grim affirmation from Captain Lorenz, Bittor, and a dozen others before turning back to Cas. “Don’t let anyone take Ventillas, do you understand? He’s safe only with you.”
“I understand, Lena. Go.”
She placed a hand against his cheek, and then she went. Beyond the guards, a crowd watched and whispered in the light of a blood-red moon. Horses thundered past, soldiers called out to one another, as the hunt for Lady Mari raged on.
The doctor hurried over with his physician’s box. He entered the tent first, and then, when it became clear his services were not needed, he returned to tend to Cas. He poured something bitter-smelling onto a cloth and pressed it against Cas’ wound. The sting of it had him growling, but quietly, because he didn’t want to wake the prince.
The doctor, too, minded his volume. “This will need sutures.”
Cas had suspected. He nodded.
“Best to hand the prince off. You don’t want to drop him.”