I shrugged. Then it occurred to me that one did not simply shrug off inquiries from the ruler of the country, so I cleared mythroat. “Not regularly, no. The temple only sends for me when they suspect a poisoning. Sometimes I’ll go months without seeing any at all.”
“How many patients have you seen, then?” the king asked.
“Eighty or ninety,” I said. “Perhaps as many as a hundred. I would have to consult my notes.”
“And how many of those have you saved?”
(The last thing Isobel had said to me before I left was “Try to be tactful.”
“I alwaystry,” I protested.
She gave me a Look. “Try harder.”)
Tact. Yes.Don’t you think you should have asked me this before you hired me, Your Majesty?I thought, but did not say. I studied my hands on the reins instead, admiring how calm they looked, how they failed to clutch nervously at the leather. “Sixteen.”
“Sixteen?”The king’s voice did not quite go shrill at the end, but it came close. His mare sidled a little in surprise. “Out of ahundred?”
Tempting as it might be to teach the king a lesson about checking one’s credentials in advance, I had no desire to be known as the woman who had killed eighty-odd patients. “You misunderstand me, Your Majesty. The vast majority lived—but they would have done so anyway. At best I helped speed their recovery a little, but I can hardly be said to have saved lives that were never in danger.”
“Oh.”The king relaxed. So did Aaron. I wondered at myself, daring to alarm a king. Perhaps it was revenge, however petty, for how he had alarmed me in my workroom.
“Your modesty is becoming,” the king said. “Most physicians would simply claim credit for all of them.”
I shrugged. “I’m not really a physician. I’m a scholar who has studied antidotes at great length. As I told you the other day, most of what people think is poison really isn’t. If I took credit for every bellyache that got better, I’d be no better than a charlatan.”
Aaron cleared his throat, glanced at the king for permission, and said, “You said the vast majority got better. I assume some didn’t?”
Clever Aaron.Of course, he’d seen one of them. “Nineteen,” I said. Now my fingers did tighten on the reins, the knuckles going white. I watched them from a little distance, then loosened each one individually until they lay easy again.
The king had learned something, it seemed. When I looked up, I saw his gaze intent on me. “And how many of thosecouldhave been saved?”
I sighed. “With what knowledge we have? Perhaps none of them. There are still too many poisons that have no cure.” I could feel my shoulders hunching, and I lowered them as consciously as I had relaxed my hands. “Mushrooms… prussic acid… poison hemlock. There’s little enough that can be done for any of them, except to ease the victim’s passing.”
“But you have been able to save a few,” the king said.
I nodded, feeling curiously reluctant to admit even that much, as if saving lives was a moral failing instead of a victory.
We rode for a little way. Despite the awkwardness, I was very pleased not to be breathing dust.
“What poison do you see most often?” the king asked after a time.
I had to think about that. “In children, probably arsenic. Toddlers getting into flypaper or rat poison. Adults vary more. Mushrooms are rare but tend to get whole families at a time. They don’t grow around here, they come in dried, so it’s impossible to tell what they are. Someone buys a package that includes a dried Saint’s Tear and makes soup, and forty-eight hours later, you can practically pour the liver out of the bodies.”
The king swallowed.
It occurred to me that was possibly a little more graphic than he’d been expecting. “Err… sorry, Your Majesty.”Really, I don’t know why that would bother him. He’s killed people in battle, hasn’the? Probably stabbed a fair number of people through the liver. Possibly including his wife.
“Does that happen often?” he asked. “The mushrooms.”
“I’ve seen it twice. Nine people total.” I spread my hands. “When you think about how much dried mushroom is shipped into the city, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.”
“Ah. Not something that requires royal action, do you think?”
I blinked. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that I might, with a word, influence policy throughout the kingdom. “Um. No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure what could be done anyway.” Whatdidrequire royal action? “If Your Majesty really wanted to cut down on poisonings, banning using honey or sugar water to coat flypaper would do a lot more good. Then toddlers wouldn’t lick it so much.”
He gave me a terrifyingly thoughtful look. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
We stopped that night at a shrine to Saint Toad. It wasn’t a large shrine, but it boasted a spring that would let us water the horses, which was important. Saint Toad has dominion over the melancholic humor and the bowels, and laxative bottles often have toads stamped on the labels. People make pilgrimages to the big Toad shrine to the west of Four Saints mostly to ask for wealth, which is also His domain, but more than a few go to ask for regularity. (I am not here to judge. In the course of testing things on myself, I’ve had more than one occasion to beg for Saint Toad’s intervention.)
