Dust motes floated between us, suspended in the beam of sunlight from the windows. Glass alembics glinted, and the chime-adder moved restlessly in her cage, accompanied by the thin sound of bells. My heart thudded in my chest, hard and fast, as the venom did its work.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” I said, forming each word carefully. “I think I need to sit down.”
The widowed king took my arm, all courtesy, and helped me to the chair. He was shorter than I was, which didn’t seem right at all. I’m a big woman, granted, but kings are supposed to be taller than ordinary mortals, even if only by the height of a crown. That extra half inch seemed somehow anti-monarchist.
There was only one chair in the stillroom, and I knew that you weren’t supposed to sit when a king was standing, but youdefinitelyweren’t supposed to faint when a king was standing, so my options were limited. I sat.
The king hitched one hip up on the table and faced me, which was enough like sitting that it probably counted. I tried to smooth my skirt and succeeded only in dislodging more rosemary leaves. The smell rose, cleansing and pungent, and chased away any possibility of fainting. I washere. In the workroom. There were bundles of dried herbs hanging from the rafters and distilling equipment arranged along the table, and also there was a king.
My nose itched dreadfully. It always does after snorting venom. I tried to wipe it in a dainty and ladylike fashion, with minimal success.
“I am very sorry, Your Majesty,” I said finally. “That sounds dreadful.”
That startled him, I could tell. His eyes had been on the floor and rose sharply to my face. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was. Very… very dreadful. I’ve never had to… That is… killing someone in battle isn’t like that.”
I suspected that this was the first time he had spoken those words. Had no one offered him sympathy? Perhaps it had simply been the wrong sort of sympathy. I could imagine everyone telling him that he had done the right thing, the needful thing, and no one actually suggesting how terrible the right thing must have been.
I didn’t want to feel bad for him, not when I was still angry at him for coming into my workroom and being the king. But it was hard not to feel some kind of sympathy.
“Your daughter—” I began.
“She died.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear it. Cutting someone’s heart out is a very specific process, after all. You’d have to get quite far along before it was distinguishable from mere stabbing. “Shit,” I said, and then slapped my hand over my mouth in horror.
Shit, Your Majesty,my brain informed me. I clamped my fingers down to prevent the sudden hysterical laughter from rising.Ah yes, laugh at his daughter dying. That’s sure to endear you to him.
The king snorted. There wasn’t much humor in it, but there wasa little, and I liked him better for it.Not that I have any place to be liking or disliking a king.
“Don’t,” he said, gesturing to my hand. “That’s possibly the first honest thing anyone’s said to me about it.”
“I’m sorry for that, too, then.”
He nodded. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said.
This was such an absurd understatement that I choked back another hysterical laugh. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
He glanced around the workroom, as if seeing it for the first time. “Your father says you know much of poisons.”
Had I thought my mouth was dry before? Now it felt like my tongue was swaddled in wool. I could not believe that my father had been so indiscreet as to speak of such a thing to the king. Of course, he was proud of me, I knew that, but still. People had been put to death for knowing too much about poison. Granted, the Temple of Saint Adder had extended me the title ofHealerfor my work, but that was a thin protection against slander. Physicians could get away with knowing too much about poison. Middle-aged spinsters could not.
“Antidotes,” I said, a bit feebly. “My interest is in antidotes, not poisons.” Granted, one of those poisons was currently coursing through my veins, but it didn’t seem like the time to mention it.
“Of course.” The king inclined his head. “But they are two sides of the same coin, are they not?”
I picked at the rosemary on my skirt and looked around the workroom, trying to buy a little time. The room was full of herbs and glassware and a sharp clean smell, but I had not realized until that moment how worn all the furnishings were and how many cobwebs had gathered in the distant corners, as if the king’s presence threw all the stains into sharp relief.
A little resentment pushed back the bafflement then, a thin thread that said howdarea king come here, into my own space, where he did not belong, and make it seem so shabby by comparison?
The absurdity of the thought struck me before it even finishedforming. Kings went where they chose in their own kingdoms, and merchants’ daughters smiled and agreed. Even if they were agreeing to something that might get them burned or hanged or stoned to death.
“I have learned a few small things about treating poison,” I admitted. (Which was false modesty, but I was hardly about to brag to a king. There are wonder tales about what happens when you brag to royalty. Many of them involve getting your head chopped off if you fail to deliver.)
“I am hoping that you can help me,” the king said.
“Err,” I said.Err, Your Majesty.“How so?”
Thud, thud, thudwent my heart, so loudly that I was surprised the king couldn’t hear it.
