“That poison was meant for me, Lieutenant. How could you let this happen, when there has already been one attempt on my life. You knew there was an assassin in the palace.” He gestured angrily, the stone on his right hand glittering. “Apparently he has the run of the place.”
“Nobody leaves this room without being searched and questioned,” Karn said. “The kitchen staff are being interrogated as we speak. We will find out who’s responsible.”
Ash knelt beside the queen. She lay on her back like a princess in a story, her skin pale as porcelain, her breathing shallow and ineffective. There was a blue tinge around her lips and fingernails.
“Go tend to the taster, boy,” Merrill snarled. “I’ll handle this. I’ve been treating the royal family for years.”
“Then they are lucky they are still alive,” Ash murmured. “I should let you treat the queen, and when she dies, you’ll reap the consequences. But I’ve taken oaths. I can’t do that. Now get out of my way.”
“Merrill!” Lieutenant Karn said, planting a hand on the master’s shoulder. “Do as he says, by the king’s command.”
The look Merrill gave him was pure poison itself. The healer rose, straightened his tunic with great dignity, and crossed the dais to where the taster lay, neglected.
Ash sent up a prayer for the taster, then turned back to Queen Marina. Using his thumb and forefinger, he slid back her eyelids and did not like what he saw.
He looked up at Karn. “Bring me the cup she drank from.”
Karn did as he was told.
When he handed Ash the wassail cup, Ash sniffed at it. Sniffed again. There, amid the cinnamon and clove and rum, he smelled something familiar.
Gedden. Made from a fungus that grows on yew trees, it was easy to find throughout the Seven Realms. There was no time to lose.
He rummaged in his kit, came up with a small brown bottle, thrust it into Karn’s hands. “One part powder, one part water, cook over flame until it dissolves.”
Karn glanced over to where Merrill was hunched over the taster, but watching them. “Perhaps Master Merrill—”
“No,” Ash said, recalling the water hemlock incident. “Whatever you do, don’t get him involved. Do it NOW!” he roared when Karn hesitated. “Are you going to wait until she is dead?”
Ash turned back to the queen. Her breathing was already slowing. Soon she would forget to breathe, her heart forget to beat. The poison was abroad in her body, hunting down the spark of life so it could be extinguished. There was no easy way to call it back. The best he could do until Karn returned was to support her breathing and keep her heart going. He leaned close, feeling the whisper of her breath against his cheek, the thread of her pulse in her wrist. When her heartbeat faltered, he pressed both hands against her chest and used flash to compress and release the heart.
It seemed to take forever, but finally Karn was back, with a bottle of warm, murky liquid. Ash sniffed at it, nodded, and said, “Good. Now sit her up as best you can.” He felt Lila’s presence behind him. “Each of you, take an arm and hold her steady.”
Tipping her chin up, Ash poured half of the preparation into her mouth. “If you can hear me, Your Majesty, please swallow.”
He wasn’t sure if she heard him or not. He massaged her throat. She coughed and choked a little, but he managed to get most of it down. They waited. For an awful moment, she lay still and cold. Then she took a deep breath. Released it. Took another. The color returned to her pallid cheeks. Her breathing strengthened, and her heartbeat, too.
Karn and Lila both breathed out, as if they had been holding their breaths.
“Good work, healer,” Karn said softly, not bothering to hide the relief in his voice.
Ash held up the bottle with the remaining antidote. “Give this to the taster,” he said.
Lila cleared her throat. “He’s dead,” she said. “You may as well give her the rest of it.”
Ash turned back to the queen. “Your Majesty,” he murmured, stroking the damp hair off her forehead. “Can you take a little more?”
She opened her dark eyes and smiled at him, as if she would know him anywhere, as if they were old friends under the skin. “I had the most wonderful dream,” she whispered. “I dreamed that I had died.”
29
VISITING HOURS
It’s one thing to be locked in a dungeon when you’re nearly dead, and it doesn’t matter much where you are. But Jenna was feeling better, and getting restless.
Though she’d worked underground for half her life, she was a person who needed to see the sky, even briefly, every day. She wanted to feel the wind in her face and breathe in all the scents it carried. Not that there weren’t smells in the king of Arden’s dungeon—she just didn’t like any of them. She needed a bath. She didn’t even want to be with herself.