with her, so that we could get past Kaven’s barrier and onto Zudoh. The sea had felt vast, but it certainly hadn’t felt empty. Its depths held too many unknowns, things I couldn’t see but knew were watching.
Fortunately for Vataea, there’s not much longer to travel. The merchant raps her knuckles on the bark of another tree, and this time the three of us still when hollowness echoes back. The merchant digs her fingers into the gray bark and peels it back as if to open the tree.
“Stairs?” Vataea squints her eyes, keeping her blade drawn at her side as she approaches the merchant. Rukan held tightly in my own hand once more, I follow and peek down into the base of the tree. Sure enough, there are stairs built from the trunk, lowering into the roots of the tree and descending into the darkness of what appears to be a hollowed-out room.
It’s ingenious. A person could search forever and never find this place.
“I’ll go first,” I offer. “If she’s a mind speaker, there’s a chance we’ll have company down there.” Though I make a move to climb down the stairs, Vataea presses a hand to my chest to hold me back.
“You’re the queen,” she says simply, flat and factual. “You need to survive.”
Not about to take no for an answer, she steps before me and descends the stairs. I’m quick to follow her, with Shanty and the merchant tailing us.
“Try anything funny,” Shanty warns the woman in a deceptively pleasant voice, a thin knife pressed against her back as they walk, “and you’ll be dead before your next breath.”
The stairs are creaky makeshift boards of rotting wood atop earth, hardly stable. We take them slowly, weapons held at the ready despite the silence that waits for us.
The tunnel is a stifling blackness, so stagnant my lungs tighten and so dark that I test each of my footsteps before making them. Only when the stairs end and the floor levels out do my eyes adjust enough to make out the shape of a small wooden table and the oil lamp beside it. With practiced ease, the merchant lights the lamp, bathing the tight quarters in a dim amber glow.
No faces wait to attack us. No weapons are drawn, aside from our own, and no fights are imminent.
“They’re over there.” The merchant nods to a small room carved out in the corner, and I exchange a look with Vataea. Her knowing stare confirms my own suspicions—something here isn’t right. This is too easy.
“Don’t linger,” I tell her. “We need to hurry and get out.”
Vials of liquid poisons and cotton pouches stuffed with powders fill the walls, each of them labeled not with what’s in them, but what they do. My skin crawls as I realize there’s a tiny skull symbol on the label of more than half of them, and already I’m coming up with a hundred different ways in which I’d like to burn this place to the ground. To think that such a place could exist right under my nose.
Had Father known about any of this? After everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. Just how long has the Montara family allowed this kingdom to destroy itself? With each passing day, it feels like my duty to repair it is getting that much harder.
“Someone tried to kill our queen.” Shanty skims the shelves, not bothering to be sly when she slips three different vials and two pouches of powders into her pockets, much to the merchant’s protest. I bite the inside of my cheek, hating that I wonder what she intends to use them for. Shanty’s proven nothing but helpful so far, and I pay her too well for her to be a threat to me.
Unless someone were to offer her more …
I hate that I think it, and yet Vataea watches the face-shifter as intently as I do. Her eyes are pinched, trying to decipher what, exactly, Shanty’s taking. The air around Shanty grows fuzzy as she paces, and I ignore the dull throbbing of my temples as the poison from last night acts up.
“We think someone snuck something into her food,” Shanty says. “It would need to have been something easily masked.”
The merchant snorts. “You think someone would be able to do that at a party? To sneak something into her food, specifically? There’d be too many people. Too many risks. More people would be sick.”
Rukan’s weight is suddenly heavy in my hands. “If not in