For that matter, you’re not going to be rushing anywhere right now. Waddling slowly and whimpering a lot, maybe.It was going to take a day or two before I recovered fully from the length of the ride.
I went back to bed, feeling discouraged before I’d even begun.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning, the king introduced me to Snow.
I’d been dreading this part for days. As I said before, I am not particularly good with children, and presumably children who happened to be king’s daughters would be even trickier. I had bolted a hasty breakfast brought to my room, but it wasn’t sitting very well.
Snow’s rooms looked a bit like mine, only larger and filled with people. There were two women wearing maid’s clothing and an older woman who was probably a nursemaid or governess or something of the sort. She had a separate bedroom, so everyone was piled into the sitting room. A mirror the same size as mine dominated one wall, and Snow herself was seated in front of it, looking small and pale and tired.
She jumped to her feet when we came in and rushed forward to hug the king. He returned it, ruffling her hair. I looked away, embarrassed. There was such naked affection on his face that it felt like I was intruding merely by observing.
After a moment, the king released her. “Snow, love, this is Healer Anja. She’s come to take a look at you.”
Snow turned to me. Her expression was polite, but her eyebrows were suspicious. We looked each other up and down.
I knew that she was twelve years old, and I can’t tell you if she looked older or younger than that. I am terrible at judging the ages of anyone under twenty. She had hair so pale that it was almost white, and her skin was only a shade darker, so that her eyebrows stood out like scars. Her eyes were faded blue, with circles like bruises underneath, and she was much too thin. When she held out a hand, the bones of her wrists were sharply defined.
There was no question that something was wrong with her. It was my job, I supposed, to find out what. I introduced myself, hoping that the pale green scarf actually did provide an air of authority and that I didn’t look as nervous as I felt.
“Are you going to blister my feet?” she asked.
I recoiled. “Saints, no!”
She nodded gravely. “The doctors who were here before bled me,” she said. “And purged me, and blistered my feet to draw out the sickness. I don’t mind the bleeding, but the blistering was awful.” She sounded almost proud of it, now that it was over.
“I promise, nobody will be getting blistered.”
The king stepped in at this point. “Healer Anja just needs to examine you,” he said. “She’s here to make sure that… um… you’re not eating anything that might be making you sick.”
“Poison, you mean,” said Snow.
The king choked.
Snow fixed her father with the scathing look that young girls do so well. “I’m notstupid,” she said.
“No,” said the king. “Sorry.” He coughed. “I didn’t want you to worry, love.”
Snow hitched up one shoulder in a shrug.
I was deeply relieved that we’d dispensed with euphemisms. “If you’ll just sit down,” I said, “this won’t hurt at all.”
I gave the king’s daughter a thorough exam, just as I would if she were sitting in the temple’s infirmary. I checked her gums, in case there was the blue line that would indicate lead poisoning, and her hair in case it was loose or falling out. Her breath didn’t smell suspiciously of garlic, her hands didn’t have a noticeable tremor, her balance seemed fine. Her nails weren’t overly brittle, she wasn’t sensitive to light, and the older woman assured me that her bowels were working fine. Her skin bruised easily—there were yellowing marks everywhere, the sort you’d get from casually banging into a bedpost or doorframe—but wasn’t peeling or oddly spotted. Herhair was dull and lank, but so fine that I couldn’t be certain if it was caused by illness or simply the wrong soap.
Her teeth were in bad shape. The enamel had eroded in multiple places, and one had been drilled and packed with gold leaf. That must have hurt like a bear, even with laudanum to take the edge off.
“Sometimes I throw up,” Snow said. “When I try to eat.”
I nodded gravely and wrote this down, while my heart sank lower and lower.
When I finished the exam, the king jerked his head toward the corridor, and I followed him out. I tried to give Snow a reassuring smile as I went, but Saints know if I managed that much.
“Well?” the king said, when the door was closed.
I raked a hand through my hair. “If she’s being poisoned—and she might be—I can’t tell what it is yet. Her symptoms are too general, and there aren’t any that I can point to and say, ‘Aha! Arsenic!’ Or mercury or lead or what have you. Either it hasn’t advanced to the stage where the type of poison is immediately obvious, or it’s not one of the common toxins.”
Saints curse it. I was really hoping that it would be an easy one.
