“The taster?” He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. “You gave it to a taster? After I told you it was poisoned?”
“We needed to know, Freya. And that was the only way.”
My hands clenched, and my heart pounded, faster than when I had discovered the poison. They had forced a woman to eat cyanide, for my benefit, to protect me. “The only way was to make someone eat it, and watch to see if she died?”
“She is not dead, Freya. She may well recover.”
“But she might have died.” She might still die. Cyanide usually acted in seconds, but surely if a dose wasn’t immediately fatal, it could still kill more gradually, breaking down the body piece by piece.
Even if the taster didn’t die, she was suffering. Suffering for me. I raked my hands through my hair, ripping it loose from the pins. Was this what it meant to be queen? To have my life in danger, and throw others in the way instead? Surely a queen was meant to protect her subjects, not hide away and let them die for her sake. I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath. “What about Madeleine? Is she all right?”
“She is unsettled. But she seems well enough.” My father sighed. “You were smart there. I am proud of you. If you hadn’t noticed that smell . . . any food should have gone through the tasters, but it seems that servant did not bring them from the kitchens. And our guards, it seems, are a disgrace. You saved lives today, Freya. You saved your own life.”
But I might have killed a taster instead.
“Was the server—was she from outside the castle?”
“We don’t know yet. But we will find out. It would be best if you remain here for the rest of the night. We must check the castle for any more threats.”
“What will happen to the server? The one who brought the tarts. She might not have known what they were.” She deserved a chance.
“That is unlikely, Freya. But we will investigate all possibilities. In the meantime, don’t eat anything anyone brings you unless I’m here to tell you it is safe. Perhaps we can find a taster to try every dish immediately before you eat it. I am not sure.”
“I don’t want that.” To have someone stand beside me, to watch them to see if they died in my place? I couldn’t do that.
“Either way,” my father said. “We must do something.”
He left the room, and I began to pace again, while Naomi stood at the far side of the room, watching me.
“No one died,” she said softly. “Even the taster is still alive. That’s—that’s really lucky. It’s good.”
It was. I knew it was. But the thought wasn’t comforting. Someone had tried to kill me. I had been seconds away. If I’d been hungrier, if I’d been distracted . . . I probably wouldn’t have survived. Madeleine wouldn’t have survived.
The fact was too terrifying to consider. I scrambled for something else, a problem I could fight. “Why would anyone be a taster?” I said. “After what happened at the banquet? Why would you eat things to see if they’re poisoned?”
“People need money,” Naomi said. “It must pay a lot, to risk your life for the court.”
“We should have another way to test the food. Using people—it’s ridiculous, Naomi.” I’d always known that the king had tasters, always, but I’d never given it more than a second of thought. No one was actually going to try and poison the king. But now—now people were risking their lives to protect me, and my skin crawled at the thought of it.
“I don’t think there’s another way,” Naomi said. “They’d use it if there was.”
It had to be possible. Anything was possible, if you thought about it in the right way. Had people tried before, or had no one been concerned enough to research it?
I continued to pace. At least it gave me something to do.
“I don’t want other people to get poisoned for me. It doesn’t even work. It didn’t stop whoever killed the king at the ball. And it won’t stop anyone now. What if they use a slow poison? We won’t find out until that night, or the next day. If we use a taster then, that’s just one extra person who dies.”
And I would die, too. I shoved the thought away. I had to be practical. Focus on solutions.
“There has to be another way. There has to be. Poison is a foreign element introduced into food, isn’t it? So there must be some way it can be detected, a more reliable way than using a person, something that would reveal it straight away. Some powder it would react with, something . . .” I turned. “It has to be possible. No one’s done it before, but perhaps they didn’t care to. Why would they? Only royalty have testers, and they don’t care about anyone.”
“That’s not true,” Naomi said. “You’re royalty, and you care.”
“There must be a way. There has to be. People just haven’t found it yet.”
“And you think you can find it?”
“Why not? Someone has to. And I have the motivation.” I had to get started. Right now. I looked around for my bookshelf, but of course it wasn’t here. It was at home, with my lab, with everything of use.
“Freya,” Naomi said softly. “Are you all right?”
I paused. “No,” I said softly. “I’m not all right. But I’d rather not think about that.”
Naomi nodded and sank onto the arm of a chair. “Do you think these were the same people who attacked the banquet?”
“I don’t know. My advisers said the attackers used arsenic then. But this was cyanide. And if the attackers wanted to kill everybody, cyanide would be a stupid way to do it. It acts too quickly. A bite, a breath, and you’re dead.” I started pacing again. “Cyanide is an idiot’s poison, really, if you think about it. Everyone knows it’s deadly, and it smells of almonds. Not everyone can smell it, but some people can. And if people had access to all that arsenic, and could put it in a cake at the banquet without anyone knowing, why would they be so unsubtle now?”
“You think someone else is attacking you?”
“I don’t know.” How many people could want me dead? How many reasons could there be? “It makes sense.”
“But why?” Naomi said. “Why would they want to kill you? Because they want the crown for themselves?”
“Perhaps.” But then I shook my head. “That servant—if she was involved, why would she sacrifice herself like that to put some other noble on the throne? Unless she’s innocent, she had to have known she’d get caught. She had to have known. Why would any servant do that to have one person on the throne instead of another?”
“Blackmail, maybe,” Naomi said. “Money. You know how court works.”
But the pieces didn’t fit. It had to be something more, something that carried more weight than gold and threats. The servant had to believe I needed to die, believe so deeply that she was willing to die herself to ensure that it happened. Which suggested the Gustavites, as Thorn had said.