made him think of being a child, lying in his bunk while his mother worked at her desk. The herb-and-resin smell of Arkady’s lab wasn’t entirely removed from the fragrant wood-and-incense smell of Caterina’s wagon. He could remember quite clearly what it had been like to be that little boy, lying under a quilt, knowing only the dusty ease of playing outdoors, the familiar excitement of setting up stage and footlights in a new town, the smoky campfire warmth of being loved by everyone around him. He’d had no notion, then, that he would ever cross the Barriers to the blue and gray spires of this strange, sad city, or that he would grow into a man who sat alone in a gloomy lab after midnight, figuring out how much poison per smallweight of tea. Not to kill; not right away; but to bring on a slow decline, a suffering shamble toward death. No long life lived on sun-starved bones. No convulsions. No spewing blood.
Well, maybe at the end there would be.
When he finished, he crept back to his pallet. He hoped he’d fall asleep immediately—he was exhausted—but instead he lay awake until morning, staring up at the ceiling he couldn’t see. Slowly, the light grew hazy around him. Then the sun rose, and he rose, too, and another day began.
Chapter Four
Judah found Gavin in the solarium. In a month’s time, the entire House would attend his betrothal ball there. Now, the room under the vaulted glass ceiling was like the Promenade brought indoors. Careful arrangements of sofas, ferns and potted trees carved temporary rooms out of the marble-tiled space, and every one of them was full. Any courtier who could afford to keep rooms inside hadn’t bothered going home for the few weeks until the ball. Even if Judah hadn’t spotted Gavin by the fountain, she would have known where he was by the way the courtiers subtly gravitated toward him, like flowers following the sun.
But they wanted nothing at all do with Judah, and scattered before her like pigeons. Gavin stood with a tiny woman wearing a shade of fuchsia that barely escaped vulgar. She was young and her makeup was too heavy, but her hairstyle was relatively restrained and not too crowded with decorations. The lady courtiers were all draping themselves in stuffed birds and enameled insects this season, but this one wore only a single iridescent beetle over her right ear, where its blue-green shell brought out the strawberry in her hair. Her dress was trimmed in white fur and she’d brushed opal powder on her cheeks to make them sparkle. She reminded Judah of an iced cake, the kind that looked better than it tasted. Her blue eyes were round as sugar rosettes and about as lively. Or maybe Judah just disliked her on sight because she was a courtier, and seeing her laughing so easily with Gavin brought back all of the things she could do and Judah could not.
Gavin felt Judah’s presence, looked up and grinned; with a few words to the courtier and a slight incline of his head—her opal-frosted cheeks pinked at the honor—he came to Judah, and took her arm in his. Which would also have been an honor, had she been anyone else. Judah knew that was why he’d done it. She also knew that nobody else noticed how careful he’d been not to let his bare skin touch hers. The spun-sugar courtier’s blue rosette eyes watched, her mouth curled; one delicate hand touched the beetle in her hair and Judah remembered Firo’s words, and the Seneschal’s. I’m here, among the spiders, keeping track of the webs. They will eat you alive.
“You,” Gavin said, as they walked toward the door, “smell ever so faintly of cavalry.”
She’d spent the morning in the pasture with Darid, hunting milkscorn and low ivy, both of which gave horses colic. “And you absolutely reek of courtier. Was that Lady Amie?”
They entered the hall outside the solarium just in time to see a courtier in green silk grab his page by the ear and deliver two swift kicks to the boy’s leg. The page, his arms full of paper-wrapped bundles (clothes from the laundry, probably), didn’t even try to dodge the sharp toes of the courtier’s shoes. “On your way, lord courtier,” Gavin said, and the courtier—eyes widening with shock and consternation—mumbled something servile and dragged the page into the nearest hallway. Where, Judah didn’t doubt, he’d resume kicking the boy as soon as he