“I always knew he would be. Even poor mad Bastian knew it, I think.” Lady Sorrel shook herself. “But enough of such depressing talk. Tell me something interesting.” She perched on the edge of her chair, bird-bright.
“Well,” I began, “there’s a type of fish found near Cholla Bay called a feedshark…”
Tea with Lady Sorrel was the bright spot of the day. Watching Snow was so dull that I was hiding my copy of the latest Red Feather Saga inside my notebook so that I didn’t fall asleep. Eventually I gave up, went downstairs, and retested things. I even retested the peppermint tea, on the principle that a dried leaf is much like any other dried leaf, so maybe the smell was covering something. I gave some to the rooster. I drank multiple cups myself. If there was a hidden poison, it was extremely well hidden.
The one-eyed gray cat strolled into my workroom, looked disdainfully at the caged rooster, then leaped up onto the worktable and settled into a comfortable loaf. I rubbed the base of his ears and was rewarded with a ratcheting purr.
“You better be careful,” I warned him. “Nurse is ready to make you into a furry hand warmer for scratching Snow.”
The cat did not seem particularly concerned about this. He wouldn’t make much of a hand warmer anyway. He was going white around the muzzle, and his gray fur, though neatly groomed, was more lead than silver. Even his purr was thin, like honey being scraped over gravel.
“Right,” I said, stepping away. “Back to work. Doing… whatever the hell it is I do.” I stared glumly out the window. At the moment, what I did seemed to be not finding the cure.
“I’m pretty sure it’s not arsenic,” I told the cat. “And if it’s antimony, I have no idea how it’s getting to her. I had them change out all the mugs and plates, just in case.” Which, of course, they’d done once already.
The cat closed his good eye in a lazy blink.
“It doesn’t fit any of the plants I know, and even if she’s having an unusual response to one, how is itgettingto her in the first place? It won’t do much good to know what it is if I can’t figure out how she’s ingesting it.” I scowled at the ceiling. Granted, if I could figure out what it was, that would make it much easier to figure out the delivery method, but since I wasn’t any closer to figuring out either one, it hardly mattered.
“Hell with it,” I muttered. “I’m going to take a walk.” I picked the cat up and carried him out of the workshop, then set him down in the corridor and locked the workshop door. (I didn’t suspect any of the servants of anything, but somebody here might be a poisoner, and anyway, the chime-adder might spook someone.)
The cat stalked in front of me, looking vaguely offended, until I reached the door to the gardens. He looked at the plants baking in the noonday heat, stopped dead, and began grooming his paw in my general direction.
My favorite garden was a sunken little pocket surrounded by tall desert junipers that had been pruned into a hedge. You approached along the path overlooking it, then took a shallowflight of steps down to a miniature courtyard that held a statue of a woman with a sword and shield. There was no plaque on the statue, and I often wondered who she was.
The junipers provided shade for more delicate flowers and a low bench wrapped in a bougainvillea arbor. I sat down in the shadows. Isobel would have liked this pocket garden, even if the rest would be too spartan for her tastes. Spikes of red adorned the desert hyssop, and hummingbirds buzzed each other furiously for access to the flowers. Tiny bees armored in iridescent green carapaces climbed across white viper-master flowers. Everything was simple and everything was alive.
I must have sat there for nearly half an hour, thinking nothing, when I heard footsteps and voices.
Snow stood at the top of the pocket garden, accompanied by a maid. She gestured, and the maid nodded and trotted away. Snow watched her go for a long moment, then hurried down the steps, looking back and forth, as if she expected someone to be watching her.
Someonewaswatching her, of course, but I was wearing dust-colored robes and sitting in the dappled shadows of the arbor, and her eyes flicked over me without seeing me. I started to stir, thinking to call out, but there was something oddly furtive about her movements that stopped me.
She looked around again, then went behind the statue and leaned down. A moment later she came out again, holding something in her hand. She lifted it as if to look at it more closely, and then, before I realized what was happening, she had taken a bite.
Oh god, what is she eating?“Snow, no!” I cried, lunging to my feet. “Stop!”
The girl spun around, her pale hair flying out in a nimbus around her head. Her eyes went wide at the sight of me barreling toward her. That, perhaps, was not a surprise. What was a surprise was that she hastily took another bite.
“No!”I slid to a halt, grabbing Snow around the waist with one arm and her wrist with my other hand. “What are you eating?”
It was an apple. Snow bit desperately at it, chunks of pale apple flesh falling from the sides of her mouth. I was much stronger, but Snow had a panicky strength to her, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. I managed to pull the girl’s arm away from her face, and Snow collapsed, hanging her full weight from my arm and yelling wordlessly.
Oh, blessed Saint Adder, this is it, thismustbe it, we’ve checked everything she’s eaten at every meal, thishasto be it—
“Where did yougetthis?” I asked, even as I pried the girl’s fingers loose.
“Stop it!” wailed Snow. “It’s mine—you can’t have it—give it back!”
Slick with juice, the apple popped free of her grip. I held it up over my head, feeling absurdly as if I was engaged in a game of keep-away with a younger sibling. Snow flailed at me with small fists.
“Snow,” I said, in my most reasonable tone, “calm down.” (I know, I know, this has never in the history of the world calmed anyone down. I said it anyway. I told you I’m not good with children.)
“Give it back!” Snow yelled.
“You know that we have to test all your food for poisons so that you can get better.”
“It’s not yours! You have no right to take it!” She pummeled me furiously, and, for lack of anything better to do, I did what I had done at twelve when my sister Catherine did the same thing. I put my hand on top of Snow’s head and held her at arm’s length while she flailed. I felt like the worst sort of bully doing it. Also, I was manhandling the king’s daughter, which could have all sorts of repercussions.But what else can I do? I’m trying to save her life!
