“I am,” he says, and no more than that.
So we wait, and I try not to fidget as minutes slide into hours, moving just enough to keep my muscles from stiffening. This is part of my training—probably the aspect the Ghost thinks is most essential, after slyfooting. He has told me again and again that most of being a killer and a thief is waiting. The hardest thing, according to him, is not letting your mind drift to other things. He seems to be right. Up here, watching the ebb and flow of the servants, my thoughts turn to the coronation, to the drowned girl, to Cardan riding up on his horse as I fled Hollow Hall, to Valerian’s frozen, dying smile.
I wrench my thoughts back to the present. Beneath me, a creature with a long, hairless tail that drags in the dirt scuttles across the ground. For a moment, I think it is part of the kitchen staff. But the bag it carries is too filthy, and there is something subtly wrong with its livery. It isn’t dressed like one of Balekin’s servants, and neither is its uniform the same as the other palace staff.
I glance over at the Ghost.
“Good,” he says. “Now shoot.”
My hands feel sweaty as I draw out the miniature crossbow, seeking to steady it against my arm. I have grown up in a house of butchery. I have trained for this. My principal childhood memory is of bloodshed. I have killed already tonight. And yet, for a moment, I am not sure I can do it.
You’re no killer.
I take a breath and loose the bolt. My arm spasms from the recoil. The creature topples over, a flailing arm sending a pyramid of golden apples spilling to the dirt. I press myself down against a thick cluster of roots, camouflaging myself as I’ve been taught. Servants scream, looking around for the shooter.
Next to me, the Ghost has a smile on the corner of his mouth. “Was that your first?” he asks me. And then when I look at him blankly, he clarifies. “Have you ever killed anyone before?”
May death be your only companion.
I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak the lie out loud convincingly.
“Sometimes mortals throw up. Or cry,” he says, clearly pleased I am doing neither of those things. “It shouldn’t shame you.”
“I feel fine,” I say, taking a deep breath and fitting a new bolt into the bow.
What I feel is a kind of nervous adrenaline-soaked readiness. I seem to have passed some kind of threshold. Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.
He raises both brows. “You’re good at this. Nice marksmanship and a stomach for violence.”
I am surprised. The Ghost is not given to compliments.
I have vowed to become worse than my rivals. Two murders completed in a single night mark a descent I should be proud of. Madoc could not have been more wrong about me.
“Most of the children of the Gentry don’t have the patience,” he says. “And they’re not used to getting their hands dirty.”
I do not know what to say to that, with Valerian’s curse fresh in my mind. Maybe there’s something broken in me from watching my parents being murdered. Maybe my messed-up life turned me into someone capable of doing messed-up things. But another part of me wonders if I was raised by Madoc in the family business of bloodshed. Am I like this because of what he did to my parents or because he was my parent?
May your hands always be stained with blood.
The Ghost reaches out to grab my wrist, and before I can snatch it back, he points to the pale half moons at the base of my nails. “Speaking of hands, I can see what you’ve been doing in the discoloration of your fingers. The blue cast. I can smell it in your sweat, too. You’ve been poisoning yourself.”
I swallow, and then, because there’s no reason to deny it, I nod.
“Why?” The thing I like about the Ghost is that I can tell he’s not asking to set me up for a lecture. He just seems curious.
I am not sure how to explain it. “Being mortal means I have to try harder.”
The Ghost studies my face. “Someone’s really sold you a bill of goods. Plenty of mortals are better at plenty of stuff than the Folk. Why do you think we steal them away?”
It takes me a moment to realize he’s serious. “So I could be…?” I can’t finish the sentence.
He snorts. “Better than me? Don’t press your luck.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” I protest, but he only grins. I look down. The body is still lying there. A few knights have gathered around it. As soon as they move the body, we will move, too. “I just need to be able to vanquish my enemies. That’s all.”
He looks surprised. “Do you have a lot of enemies, then?” I am sure he imagines me among the children of the Gentry, with their soft hands and velvet skirts. He thinks of little cruelties, small slights, minor snubs.
“Not many,” I say, thinking of the lazy, hateful look Cardan gave me by torchlight in the hedge maze. “But they’re quality.”
When the knights finally bear the body away and no one is searching for us anymore, the Ghost leads me across the roots again. We slip through corridors until he can get close enough to the messenger bag to light-finger the papers inside. Up close, though, I realize something that chills my blood. The messenger was disguised. The creature is female, and while her tail is fake, her long parsnip nose is entirely real. She’s one of Madoc’s spies.
The Ghost tucks the note into his jacket and doesn’t unroll it until we’re out in the woods, with only moonlight to see by. When he looks, though, his expression turns stony. He’s gripping the paper so hard it’s crinkling in his fingers.
“What does it say?” I ask.
He turns the page toward me. There, six words are scrawled: KILL THE BEARER OF THIS MESSAGE.
“What does that mean?” I ask, feeling sick.
The Ghost shakes his head. “It means that Balekin set us up. Come on. We need to go.”
He pulls me along into the shadows, and together we slink away. I do not tell the Ghost that I thought she worked for Madoc. Instead, I try to puzzle through things myself. But I have too few pieces.
What does the murder of Liriope have to do with the coronation? What does Madoc have to do with any of this? Could his spy have been a double agent, working for Balekin as well as Madoc? If so, does that mean she was stealing information from my household?
“Someone is trying to distract us,” the Ghost says. “While they set their trap. Be alert tomorrow.”
The Ghost doesn’t give me any more specific orders, doesn’t even tell me to stop taking my tiny doses of poison. He doesn’t direct me to do anything differently; he leads me home to catch scraps of sleep just after dawn. As we’re about to part, I want to stop and throw myself on his mercy. I’ve done a terrible thing, I want to say. Help me with the body. Help me.
But we all want stupid things. That doesn’t mean we should have them.