Flamecaster (25 page)

“Blood and bones,” Ash muttered, debating. He hated to leave the queen in Merrill's incapable hands. There was no escaping the hall, anyway.

You can't save everyone, sul'Han. That was becoming his mantra.

And suddenly, somehow, Destin Karn was there, in Ash's face. “Come with me,” he said, gripping Ash's arm, “and see to the queen.” The lieutenant seemed unaccountably agitated. Maybe he was worried that if the queen died, he would get the blame for not somehow preventing it.

“Master Merrill's handling it,” Ash said. “I'd rather not butt in. He's furious with me already, and I'm still a little shaky from—”

“Listen to me, healer,” Karn said. “The queen is the kindest, most compassionate—the only truly decent person in this entire court. You are going to come with me, and you are going to heal her if you can, understand?”

“All right,” Ash said. “Let's go.”

“That's what you get for being so damned capable,” Lila called after him.

The crowd parted to let Ash and Karn through. He climbed onto the dais to find Merrill waving a pomander under the queen's nose. “Stay back and give Her Majesty some air,” he cried.

Montaigne leaned against a marble pillar, guards on every side, arms folded across his chest. His eyes were like chipped ice, fixed on Destin Karn. There would be no getting close to the king now.

“That poison was meant for me, Lieutenant. How could you let this happen, when there has already been one attempt on my life. You knew there was an assassin in the palace.” He gestured angrily, the stone on his right hand glittering. “Apparently he has the run of the place.”

“Nobody leaves this room without being searched and questioned,” Karn said. “The kitchen staff are being interrogated as we speak. We will find out who's responsible.”

Ash knelt beside the queen. She lay on her back like a princess in a story, her skin pale as porcelain, her breathing shallow and ineffective. There was a blue tinge around her lips and fingernails.

“Go tend to the taster, boy,” Merrill snarled. “I'll handle this. I've been treating the royal family for years.”

“Then they are lucky they are still alive,” Ash murmured. “I should let you treat the queen, and when she dies, you'll reap the consequences. But I've taken oaths. I can't do that. Now get out of my way.”

“Merrill!” Lieutenant Karn said, planting a hand on the master's shoulder. “Do as he says, by the king's command.”

The look Merrill gave him was pure poison itself. The healer rose, straightened his tunic with great dignity, and crossed the dais to where the taster lay, neglected.

Ash sent up a prayer for the taster, then turned back to Queen Marina. Using his thumb and forefinger, he slid back her eyelids and did not like what he saw.

He looked up at Karn. “Bring me the cup she drank from.”

Karn did as he was told.

When he handed Ash the wassail cup, Ash sniffed at it. Sniffed again. There, amid the cinnamon and clove and rum, he smelled something familiar.

Gedden. Made from a fungus that grows on yew trees, it was easy to find throughout the Seven Realms. There was no time to lose.

He rummaged in his kit, came up with a small brown bottle, thrust it into Karn's hands. “One part powder, one part water, cook over flame until it dissolves.”

Karn glanced over to where Merrill was hunched over the taster, but watching them. “Perhaps Master Merrill—”

“No,” Ash said, recalling the water hemlock incident. “Whatever you do, don't get him involved. Do it NOW!” he roared when Karn hesitated. “Are you going to wait until she is dead?”

Ash turned back to the queen. Her breathing was already slowing. Soon she would forget to breathe, her heart forget to beat. The poison was abroad in her body, hunting down the spark of life so it could be extinguished. There was no easy way to call it back. The best he could do until Karn returned was to support her breathing and keep her heart going. He leaned close, feeling the whisper of her breath against his cheek, the thread of her pulse in her wrist. When her heartbeat faltered, he pressed both hands against her chest and used flash to compress and release the heart.

It seemed to take forever, but finally Karn was back, with a bottle of warm, murky liquid. Ash sniffed at it, nodded, and said, “Good. Now sit her up as best you can.” He felt Lila's presence behind him. “Each of you, take an
arm and hold her steady.”

Tipping her chin up, Ash poured half of the preparation into her mouth. “If you can hear me, Your Majesty, please swallow.”

He wasn't sure if she heard him or not. He massaged her throat. She coughed and choked a little, but he managed to get most of it down. They waited. For an awful moment, she lay still and cold. Then she took a deep breath. Released it. Took another. The color returned to her pallid cheeks. Her breathing strengthened, and her heartbeat, too.

Karn and Lila both breathed out, as if they had been holding their breaths.

“Good work, healer,” Karn said softly, not bothering to hide the relief in his voice.

Ash held up the bottle with the remaining antidote. “Give this to the taster,” he said.

Lila cleared her throat. “He's dead,” she said. “You may as well give her the rest of it.”

Ash turned back to the queen. “Your Majesty,” he murmured, stroking the damp hair off her forehead. “Can you take a little more?”

She opened her dark eyes and smiled at him, as if she would know him anywhere, as if they were old friends under the skin. “I had the most wonderful dream,” she whispered. “I dreamed that I had died.”

It's one thing to be locked in a dungeon when you're nearly dead, and it doesn't matter much where you are. But Jenna was feeling better, and getting restless.

Though she'd worked underground for half her life, she was a person who needed to see the sky, even briefly, every day. She wanted to feel the wind in her face and breathe in all the scents it carried. Not that there weren't smells in the king of Arden's dungeon—she just didn't like any of them. She needed a bath. She didn't even want to be with herself.

Jenna was still manacled to the wall, but Karn had given her a longer chain, maybe convinced that she didn't intend to hang herself. So she used the extra bit to pace back and forth, burning off energy and trying to build her strength
back up. If she had the chance to escape, she wanted to be ready.

She'd slid her pendant out of the lining of her velvet coat and had hidden it between two loose stones in the wall. She was tempted to put it back on, but worried that it would be discovered.

She was hungry, too—starving, in fact, like her body knew that it had fasted for a week and was making up for lost time. She had no way to mark the time, but it seemed forever since anyone had brought her food.

That wasn't the only thing she was hungry for. She'd hoped the healer, Adam Freeman, would have come back to see her by now.

She was drawn to him in a way she hadn't been since Riley, back when she was just a lýtling, and easily smitten. It's not easy to muster up a romance when you're cold, and exhausted, and dirty most of the time. It didn't help the cause that she'd been walking the world as a boy ever since Riley died.

Besides, after Riley, she'd realized that love was just a setup to get your heart broken.

So now she was locked in a dungeon, dirty as a miner on a bender, and she was falling for the enemy's healer, who might be a wolf. Maybe she hadn't learned much after all.

Wolf, she repeated in her head, like a besotted farm girl. She really should stop calling him “healer” and “Wolf,”
but Adam Freeman didn't sound right, somehow, and so she had a hard time saying it. Even when
he
said it, it sounded like a lie.

She was getting tired of the tight circle she could make around the bed. She scanned the room. The torches were mounted high on the wall. If she stood on the bed, she might be able to reach them.

Then what? Play with them? They wouldn't burn hot enough to melt her shackles.

Still, for something to do, she climbed up on the bed and stretched up high, reaching, feeling the pull in the wound in her belly . . .

She heard somebody fumbling at the door and dropped like a rock, hitting the bed hard. Was it the healer? Her heart accelerated.

But, no. The door swung open to reveal Destin Karn with a goblet in one hand and her jeweled dagger in the other.

Oh.

“What was that noise?” His eyes flicked around the room.

“What noise?”

“Just now.”

Jenna gave him a look like you might give a lýtling who's making up stories. “I didn't hear it.”

Karn crossed to the bed and pulled up a stool, resting the blade across his knees. At least the blade was clean now.

He raised the goblet. “Happy Solstice, Jenna,” he said. He took a long drink.

“Is it really Solstice? I didn't know.”

Karn raised his glass again. “May the sun come again.”

“Where is my wassail?” she asked, eyeing his.

“You need to be careful, drinking wassail around here,” Karn said with a wink. His slow, deliberate speech said that he'd definitely been drinking, though he wasn't stumble drunk.

“I'll chance it.” When he didn't respond she said, “What about something to eat?”

Karn furrowed his brow. “Are you hungry?”

“Nobody's been down here all day,” Jenna said. “So, yes, I'm hungry.”

“Oh,” he said. “I'm sorry.” He seemed to think that handled it.

Jenna gritted her teeth. “Why are you here?”

“I need to ask you some questions,” he said, “now that you're feeling better.”

Jenna's empty stomach clenched. This was what she'd worried about, all along—that if she survived, she'd be put to the question. He'd brought nothing with him save a cup of wassail and the dagger, but there was a whole array of torture tools just outside her door.

“Look,” she said, “I'm not who you think I am.”

“Who do you think I think you are?” Karn said.

It took a while to hack through that word tangle. “You
think I'm one of those Patriots, but I'm not. I worked in the mines and made a little coin on the side telling fortunes. Me and my da—we just tried to keep our heads down and stay out of trouble. Yet you came into my father's tavern and you killed him.”

“It was an accident,” Karn said.

“Well, he's just as dead as if you did it on purpose, isn't he?” Jenna was having a hard time reining in her temper, partly because she was guilty and her father was innocent, yet he was the one who had died.

Karn waved this away. “Anyway, I'm not here about the Patriots.”

“You're not?”

He shook his head. “I'm here about you.”

Fear lay like a stone in her belly. “Look, if you think you can get drunk, come down here and—”

He shook his head. “No,” he said flatly. “Tell me what you know about the symbol embedded in your neck.”

And that was how the truth she'd been beating away with both hands found a place to roost. “This is really about the magemark?”

“Yes,” Karn said. “It is.”

“Then you probably know more than I do,” she said, exploring it with her fingers. “You've seen it, I haven't.”

“Were you born with it?”

“As far as I know. It's—it's like a birthmark. Or maybe a curse.”

“A curse?” Karn leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

Jenna didn't know much, so she saw no reason not to spill it. “All I know is what I've been told,” she said. “My parents adopted me from an old woman who said she was my grandmother. She said they should hide the birthmark, because people would kill me because of it.”

“What people? And why?”

“She didn't say.”

Karn scowled, like he was angry with her dead grandmother for not leaving clear directions. “Have you seen it anywhere else—the symbol, I mean? Or seen anyone else with a marking in the same place?”

“No,” Jenna said, “but I haven't really been looking.”

“What was your grandmother's name?”

“I don't know.”

“Where was she from?”

“She never said, I guess, though my da said she sounded like a foreigner.”

Karn rolled his eyes. “Your parents adopted a baby and they didn't ask a single swiving question?”

“They must've asked when my name day was, so they could celebrate when it came around,” Jenna said. When he kept shaking his head, she said, “Look, they'd waited a long time to have a baby. They were getting up in years. Maybe they figured beggars can't be choosers. Or they might learn something they didn't want to know.”

“Have you ever been to the Northern Islands? Or Carthis?”

Jenna shook her head. “I'm not even sure where that is.”

“Perhaps your family was from there? Or maybe they traveled there?”

“Why all these questions about places I've never been? Are you sure you have the right person?”

“Why is the Empress Celestine looking for you?” Karn snapped the question out, like it would catch her off guard.

Jenna felt like she was wading in deeper and deeper, with nothing to hang on to. “Who is Empress Celestine?”

“Empress Celestine is the empress in the East. She rules the Northern Islands and Carthis,” Karn said. “Or most of Carthis. So. What is her interest in you? And don't tell me you don't know, because I don't believe you.”

“I don't know what to say, then. I never heard of her, and I had no idea she was interested in me. If she's the one looking, then why don't you ask her?”

“That,” he said, wincing, “would not be a good idea.” He held up the dagger. “Where did you get this?”

“My grandmother gave it to my parents. She said it belonged to my mother.”

“What's your mother's name? Where is she now?”

“I don't know her name, and she's dead. Both my parents are dead.”

“Really,” Karn said skeptically. “Let me fill you in. This weapon of yours is from the Northern Islands. It is carried
by Empress Celestine's bloodsworn warriors.”

Jenna stared at it, then looked up at Karn. “But . . . you acted like you didn't know anything about it before, when the healer—when Freeman was trying to treat me.”

“What I've been told is that nobody survives a cut from a bloodsworn blade. Sharing that would have served no good purpose.”

Jenna swallowed hard. “Oh.” That explained why Karn was so desperate to get her to Ardenscourt—because he thought she was going to die.

“So. It seems that Freeman is very good at what he does. Now,” he said, as if he'd backed her into a blind alley, “would you like to change your story?”

“Not unless you want me to make something up.” It was like she was in class at the temple, and she hadn't done her work.

“Celestine tends to seek out the powerful. So what makes you powerful, Jenna? What does she want from you?”

Karen's rapid-fire questions about things she knew nothing about were getting on her nerves. “Think about it, Lieutenant,” she said. “If I were powerful, do you think I'd be locked up in somebody's dungeon?”

“You are resistant to magery,” he said.

“I didn't know that until you tried to spell me.”

“Do you have other gifts as well?”

“Nothing that an empress would cross the ocean for.”

“Such as . . .”

Jenna sighed. “I see things that other people can't. Like, you know, visions. Sometimes I see hints of the future. Sometimes I see a person as they really are. Or I see the truth when you tell me a lie.”

Karn shifted on his stool, as if he found that last bit unsettling. “What else?” he persisted. “Even if it seems trivial.”

“I have good hearing and a sensitive nose. I can see farther than anyone I know, even in the dark.” She hesitated. “I heal up quick, whether it's a cut or whatever. And—and I don't burn.”

“What?”

“Just what I said. My skin turns heat and flame. Even when I was little, I could snuff out a lantern with my fingers or pull a pan out of the oven bare-handed.”

Karn didn't seem impressed. “How is that helpful?”

“It's helpful to a blaster,” Jenna said, “or a baker.”

Karn gripped the chain that bound Jenna's wrists and jerked her in close, so they were eye to eye. “Do you think this is some kind of joke? I don't think you understand just how precarious your situation is,” he hissed. “The empress is hunting you, and we need to know why before she finds you.”

As it sometimes did, the truth tapped Jenna on the shoulder. “Who's ‘we'?” she said. “The king doesn't even know you're down here, does he?”

Karn stared at her for a long moment, his face gone stony as the Fellsian escarpment. He pushed to his feet, reached high, and pulled down one of the torches. “You're resistant to flame, are you?” He thrust the torch into her face and she flinched back, startled. “Prove it.”

Jenna raised her manacled hands to shield her face. “I don't know what you're trying to—”

“I said prove it!” He jabbed at her again, and this time she closed both hands around the flaming head of the torch and held on until she smothered it out. By then, the end of her sleeve had caught fire, and she had to bat it out against her side.

“Look what you did,” she said, examining the charred cuff. “I only have the one shirt, and you—”

“Blood of the martyrs,” Karn whispered. “I never meant you to—let me see your hands.” Karn gripped both her wrists and examined the palms of her hands. He sucked in a breath and looked up at her, eyes wide with relief or surprise or both. “They're not blistered—they're not even red.” He tapped her hand with his fingertip. “It feels like they're armored.”

“That comes and goes,” Jenna said, pulling free. “I don't know why you keep asking me questions when you don't believe any of my answers.”

At that moment, the door banged open and they both turned, startled. It was the healer, Adam Wolf, his arms full of packages. He froze in the doorway, staring at the
two of them, apparently clasping hands.

“What the hell is going on?” He spoke quietly, but his voice was laced with steel and there was a darkness at his center that she'd not seen before.

“Freeman,” Karn said. “This is a surprise.”

“Obviously,” Adam said. He set his packages down at the head of Jenna's bed and turned to face Karn, his body balanced and ready for action. He did resemble a wolf in a way—one who had chosen his prey and was considering the kill. “Well? What are you doing here?” He took a step toward Karn. “I told you that she needed rest. You couldn't let this wait for even a day?”

“Careful, healer,” Karn said with icy calm, though one hand found his amulet. “Don't lose your head and do something you'll regret. I needed to question Jenna today, because I'm . . . it was now or never. She may be your patient, but she is our prisoner.”

“But I'll get the blame if she has a relapse.” Adam sniffed the air, then took another good look around the room. “What's burning?”

“One of the torches went out,” Karn said, shooting Jenna a warning look as he relit the torch and set it back into place.

Ah, Jenna thought. The lieutenant doesn't want the healer—or the king—to know what he's been up to. Well, then. Her da always said that when somebody offers an unexpected gift, it was bad manners not to take it.