But she couldn’t win either. She was stalling them, keeping them within Naelin’s range, keeping them from killing more of her people, but she wasn’t winning. Merecot was fueling her spirits with her strength—and she was very, very strong.
Reaching out, Daleina directed several spirits to the academy. They peeled the enemy spirits away from the walls, plucked them out of the practice ring, buried them in the earth, flooded them. She had her spirits sweep through the streets—her people were hiding, and her spirits kept them safe, harrying away any spirits that attempted to pry off doors and break through windows. She sent others to the palace, defending the refugees.
She tried to pull the spirits out the second she felt the blackness rising. She tried to send them out of the city, away from her people, toward the grove. She pushed them as far as she could and hoped she’d given Naelin enough time.
“Now, Bayn,” she told the wolf. “Find him.”
She heard him run from the tower as she collapsed.
Arin bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She could do this. All she had to do was focus and keep her hand steady. So far, they’d tried twelve possible antidotes, and all had failed when they encountered a drop of the poison dissolved in a drop of Arin’s blood. She was on their thirteenth try.
Behind her, Hamon and his mother were arguing. Again.
The poison was a chameleon, changing whenever it was close to human blood, cleaving to the cells. It hides in the blood, Garnah had said. Disguises itself. She admired the poison, Arin could tell. “Such a clever beauty,” Garnah would murmur, which would lead to Hamon yelling. Luckily, Arin didn’t need either of them to do this part.
Squatting so that she was even with the jar, Arin squeezed one drop of distilled water. It plopped into the drops of her blood—they’d started with samples of Daleina’s blood but had switched to Arin’s when it ran out. There wasn’t time to go bleed her sister, and anyway, she was busy, Hamon had said.
“What could be more important than discovery?” Garnah asked.
Arin felt the same way. Daleina should be here. This was her life they were trying to save. She’s probably off somewhere being noble. Of course, she was certain that Master Garnah was interested in results for entirely different reasons—she loved the poisons themselves, not the people.
Adjusting the microscope, Arin positioned a slide under it and peered in. She watched the cells constrict and then expand as they were invaded by the poison.
Behind her, Hamon was saying, “Yes, I do. I love her! Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you going to murder her now, to see how I react? Or to make me need you? Because it won’t work. You’ll only drive me further away.”
“My boy, I’m trying to save her!” Garnah captured the tone of wounded innocence perfectly. Arin assumed that Hamon could see right through it. He had much more experience with his mother than she did.
“Master Garnah,” Arin interrupted, “what would happen if we added feather-moss extract?” She knew why you never baked with feather-moss extract—if it hit sugar, it reacted badly.
“Ooh, interesting, but no. Not unless you want to make your queen vomit for a week.”
“So long as she lives,” Hamon said.
“Sadly, that would not be a side effect,” Garnah said. “But what if you add red lichen—” Coming to Arin’s side, Garnah picked up one of her vials and twirled it. “Perhaps we’re coming at this wrong. Perhaps instead of attacking the poison, we could redirect it. Give it a new target.”
The palace shuddered, and the workbench rocked to the side. Arin hugged the microscope so it wouldn’t fall as the tubes and jars rattled together. Outside, she heard screaming. Hamon rushed to the window.
“That is not good,” he said grimly.
“That is not our problem,” Garnah said. “You really must learn to focus. That was always what prevented you from excelling. Instead of focusing on the problem at hand, you get distracted by irrelevancies.”
“Other people’s lives are not irrelevancies.”
Arin wanted to tell him to stop trying to change her. In a way, Garnah was right: he was focusing on the wrong problem—his mother—instead of the right one: the poison. Yes, people outside were screaming, probably dying. Like Josei had died. But that only made their task more important, not less. For those who hadn’t yet lost the loves of their lives. “Tell me what to do,” Arin said to Garnah.
“Bleed more,” Garnah said. Before Arin could react, she pressed a blade to Arin’s arm and then caught the drops of blood on a slide. “All right, begin a new batch. Start with the red lichen. . . .”
Muttering to himself, Hamon applied a bandage to Arin’s cut while she mixed the ingredients and ignored the sting of her arm. He kept glancing at the window.
“Hamon, if you’re not going to focus, you might as well go to her,” Garnah said.
“I’ll go when I have the antidote to give her,” Hamon said.
The palace shook again, but this time Arin was braced for it. The chandelier swung side to side, and a fiery log rolled out of the fireplace. Flames leapt onto the carpet. Hamon stomped the flames out and shoved the log into the fire. He tossed a bucket of sand over the fire. It died. Quickly, he sealed the fireplace. He then checked the locks on the windows and pulled the curtains.
From the corridor outside the room, Arin heard screaming.
That was close. Much too close.
The enemy spirits couldn’t have reached the palace tree already. She’d been told they were held at the city border. They shouldn’t have reached the palace at all. She worried about Daleina. “Hamon . . .” Arin began.
“Something’s wrong,” Hamon said. “I’m going to her.”
He crossed to the door and pulled it open.
A spirit flew at him, claws out, teeth aimed at his neck. Arin screamed. Garnah lunged forward, grabbing one of the vials. Arin caught her arm. “No, you’ll hurt Hamon!”
Hamon kicked at the spirit, but it bore down on him. And then a massive gray shape launched itself through the door and slammed into the spirit. It knocked the spirit against the wall, and Arin saw it was a wolf—Bayn!
The spirit fled.
Baring his bloody teeth, the wolf turned to look at Hamon and then he grabbed the healer’s robe in his teeth and tugged. “Daleina?” Hamon said.
“Go,” Arin told him.
“Go to her,” Garnah said, a sigh in her voice.
He ran out of the room with the wolf at his side.
Garnah barred the door behind him. “Perhaps we can get some work done now.” She crossed toward Arin, and the window shattered open. An air spirit howled as it flew inside, and before Arin could even scream, Garnah threw the vial she was holding into its face.
It screamed and clawed at its face, then it fled.
“And now we can get some work done.”
“What was that?” She’d never seen a spirit flee like that—a charm could repel them, but the spirit had acted like—
Garnah rapped on the table. “Focus, my apprentice. We have a task to do.”
Side by side, they bent over the workbench. Arin measured and mixed. Garnah peered through the microscope. They tested. They failed.