Hamon stood as straight and stiff as the guards. He was sweating beneath his healer’s robes, the summer’s humidity so thick in the air that it curled on his tongue, but he didn’t move from the spot where he’d planted himself as he watched his mother unload herself from a basket. When the basket conveyor held out his hand for payment, his mother waved her hand, holding a kerchief, toward the palace, and launched into what looked like a monologue-style explanation. Hamon made eye contact with one of the palace caretakers and nodded, and the caretaker scurried down to the bridge to pay for his mother.
Seeing him, she beamed and waved enthusiastically.
“I regret this already,” Hamon murmured.
“At least that saves time later,” a cheerful voice said behind him—Daleina’s sister, Arin. “With low expectations, you can’t be disappointed.”
“You should be with the queen.”
“She sent me away. Again. She can’t seem to decide whether she wants me glued to her side or shipped to the other end of Renthia, neatly stored away in a box inside a mountain on the other side of a desert.”
“She loves you. She both wants you near and safe.”
“Got that. In theory, it’s sweet. In practice, annoying.” Side by side, they watched his mother unload her trunks, bags, and boxes that held her precious microscope and special glassware. She appeared to have brought her entire laboratory with her. He’d have to be clear that she wasn’t staying one second longer than she was needed. “I take it you don’t feel the same way about your mother?”
“We’ve had a . . . strained relationship.”
His mother enlisted the caretaker and three guards to help her carry her luggage across the bridge toward him. She herself carried only a hat box, which—if she remained consistent with past behavior—held her most rare herbs, powders, and potions.
And poisons.
“You’d better leave,” Hamon told Arin. “The fewer people she meets, the fewer she can hurt.” He’d already requested guards on his mother’s rooms—for her safety, he’d tell her.
“You could give her a second chance,” Arin said. “People change.”
“Not all people.” He strode forward and took a box from one of the guards, forestalling his mother from flying at him, arms open, for an embrace. “Greetings, Mother. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Oh my darling boy, of course I came! I have been so worried about you!”
“Let’s not begin with lies.”
“Whyever not? Lies are the foundation of civilized society.” She clapped her hands together in apparent delight as she turned on Arin, who hadn’t left. “Oh, and is this your girlfriend? She’s very young, isn’t she, Hamon? But I suppose you have your pick as a royal healer, and young means more childbearing years. My dear, am I embarrassing you?”
“Only yourself, Mother,” Hamon said.
“Well then, I’ll have to try harder.”
He studied her. She matched the woman in his memory. She was still beautiful, with a smile built to charm and eyes that sparkled and a face that could turn heads. But she was also smaller, frailer, and grayer. Her skin was wrinkled around her eyes. Her hands looked shriveled and ash-gray in spots—clearly she hadn’t stopped messing with dangerous materials.
“Yes, I’m older. Frail, weak, and ugly. I can see you thinking it.”
“You know you’re still beautiful, Mother.”
“Aw, how sweet.” She puckered her lips. “Come, give your darling mummy a kiss.” Her lips were apple red.
Hamon did not move. “Did you paint your lips with one of your own concoctions?”
Grinning, she smacked her lips. “Secret ingredients.”
“Then no.” To Arin, he said, “She used to paint her lips with a sleeping powder and then kiss men. Stole from them while they dozed.”
“Ah, but they had delightful dreams.” She hooked her arm through Hamon’s. “How about you lead me to my hopefully palatial quarters, request a feast to dine on, and then explain how you are going to compensate me for the years of pain of knowing my only child had willingly abandoned me? While you’re at it, you can also explain your hubris in believing that I would now aid you, after you so cruelly rejected all of my pleas for help and love.”
He led the way into the palace. “You came.”
“I wanted to see my only son. Also, the palace.” She waved at the shimmering walls and then toward Arin. “You’ll see about that feast, won’t you? That’s a good girl. I’ve been eating travel food for days, and I am certain it’s rotted out my insides. I want cake. Frosted cake, with fruit and three different sauces.”
“I’ll make it myself,” Arin offered, and then—thankfully—veered off down another corridor. Hamon made a mental note to tell Daleina to caution Arin to stay away. She was too young and impressionable to handle a woman like Mother. In fact, he couldn’t think of anyone in Renthia who wasn’t too innocent for Mother.
“Good girl. I like her. You should marry her. Give me grandchildren. I’m supposed to want grandchildren, aren’t I? I’d be a doting grandmother, always giving them treats and surprises.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s barely more than a child herself.” And I would never, ever let you near any grandchildren. He felt a throbbing in his temples. Behind him, he heard one of the guards stifle a laugh and knew others would see only the flighty, funny act and not the crafty, morally void woman behind it. “You have been invited here for serious reasons, and I expect you to act accordingly.”
“So exceedingly pompous, Hamon. I never taught you that.”
“There’s a lot you never taught me.” Such as empathy and compassion and kindness. He’d worked hard to become the opposite of everything she was. Halfway up the main tower, he stopped outside a thick green door with iron hinges curled to look like vines and leaves. Swinging it open, he half bowed to welcome his mother to her quarters. She swept past him inside, and the guards followed with her belongings. They stacked them to the side as she examined the four-poster canopy bed, the marble washbasin, the alabaster fireplace, the lounge chairs that had been grown from the tree itself and matched its polished white look. Curtains hung over the wall as if over a window, but when his mother swept the curtains aside, she faced only a mural of red, gold, and black stones inlaid in the wood.
“A lovely prison.”
“A temporary home,” Hamon corrected. “I will return with samples for you to study. Please, make yourself comfortable, and”—he forced himself to say the words—“thank you for coming, Mother.”
The last part seemed to genuinely startle her. She was silent as Hamon and the guards backed out of her room and shut the door. “Two guards at all times,” Hamon said quietly, so his words wouldn’t travel through the wood. “You don’t talk to her. You don’t take anything from her. You don’t touch her, or let her touch you. Understood?”
The guards saluted, and Hamon left to find his queen and bleed her.
Queen Daleina watched the spirit pick its way around her chambers, flitting to the top of her mirror and then scrambling over the beams to the wardrobe. It nibbled on a curtain, chewing the fringe, before it settled on a chair. “You aren’t dead yet,” it announced.
“I’m not.”