the food or wine, then what?”
“What were your symptoms?” The merchant examines the shelves, squinting at their labels in the dim light. Vataea keeps close to her, inspecting the vials with sour lips.
“I was throwing up blood, and everything felt like it was spinning. I woke up feeling like I hadn’t drunk water in a year, and last night, no matter what I ate, it wasn’t enough. By the end of the night, I couldn’t keep sense of what was happening. I passed out.”
“That rules out a bloodstream poison. The timing is too long for that, and you’re back on your feet too quickly.” She heads to a different shelf instead, still squinting. “It could have been an ingested poison, but … no. Too risky. It would’ve had to enter the body in another way. Perhaps—”
“Through the skin.” As soon as the words leave Shanty’s lips, my stomach drops with understanding.
My bath. Something was in the oils and the tonics I put in the water. The ones I breathed in through the bath’s steam, and soaked my body in.
The one Lady Ilia had prepared for me when I arrived on Curmana.
I hadn’t thought anything of it when I showed up to my room with the bath already drawn for me. I’m the queen, after all. That’s normal enough.
But it hadn’t been someone trying to make a strong first impression; someone was trying to kill me.
I grab hold of a shelf to steady myself, knocking into it so fiercely that one of the vials rolls off and topples onto the floor, shattering shards of glass dripping with fluorescent-yellow liquid.
The merchant shuffles through several more shelves until she makes a clucking noise with her tongue and draws a vial, having found what she was looking for.
“Did it smell like this?” She offers me the bag, but Shanty takes it first and draws a deep breath before passing it to me.
It smells like lemongrass and sage.
Bile rises to my throat. “Who was the last person you sold that to?”
The merchant’s face remains impassive. “It must have been a while ago. I can’t remember—”
I slam a fist against the shelf, letting more vials shatter to the floor.
“I’m not playing games.” I grab the merchant by the hand and yank her forward, ignoring her sharp breath and plea of protest as I draw Rukan along the back of her index finger, pressing the hooked blade deep enough for her blood to bubble up. Lines of blue crisscross immediately over her skin as the poison enters her bloodstream. She screams, and I stuff my hand into her mouth to smother the sound. When she bites down, I press Rukan deeper into her finger, until her biting breaks into sobs as the blade nearly cuts clean through.
“You have one minute to give me a name.” I wrench my hand from her mouth, and the moment she starts to scream, my knee finds her stomach and knocks the wind from her lungs.
One life is not more important than the kingdom. If I die, so does the people’s chance at freedom. Unlike the fight on Kerost, here I can and will attack freely after what she’s done, out of sight from any wandering eyes.
Slowly, ensuring the merchant feels every inch of this blade, I drag it across a second finger.
“The more poison that’s in your blood, the quicker it works. You try that again, and you won’t get another chance to speak. I’ll cut your throat.”
She tries to glare at me through watering eyes, but the fear is too potent as I steady Rukan against her neck. She trembles, her resolve splintering.
“Someone ordered them a few days ago, that’s all I know! They never came to the shop, but they knew who I was. We used mind speak to communicate, and they hid their face with a cape. We exchanged goods, that’s it.”
I don’t remove my weapon, but instead press it deeper against her skin. “For your sake, I hope you think of something else to give us.”
“Amora—” Vataea starts, but I don’t turn back.
Panic quickens the merchant’s breath and makes her skin clammy against my hands. “B-blond! I saw blond hair, and they were tall. And … gods, I don’t know anything else! I think their voice had been enchanted somehow; it was different every time I spoke to them. But I never saw a face, I swear.”
I draw back to look at the other two. “It would have been someone who knew we were coming. They’d have