Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,53

poison was it?’ I asked.

‘There’s a pinkish flower which grows along the border of the little garden with the fish pond.’

‘The autumn saffrons?’ I’d always thought them purely decorative, planted to give colour to the garden when the spring and summer flowers wilted and dropped. I shook my head in an attempt to dispel a growing ache.

She shrugged, then gave me an angry frown. ‘Why did you eat off his plate? I’ve never seen you touch one of his dishes before.’

‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘I regret it more than you do.’

‘Yes,’ she said, dropping her gaze. ‘The crocus is thorough.’

I froze. Not the saffron, the crocus. And she’d said it was thorough.

‘You poisoned the food?’

‘Of course,’ said Roshi, her guileless eyes reminding me of how she had stepped forward, colliding with the thrall, disrupting the meal before I could take another bite.

‘I also went to a lot of trouble to get you in the kitchen and working on the meals,’ she went on, ‘then you went and ate his meal! Now no one assumes you were behind it. All my effort to keep your honour intact,’ she said with an angry shake of her head that set her braids and feathers to swinging, ‘and you undercut it.’

I gripped the bedcovers to steady my hands at this new revelation, a sharp pain in my fingertips reminding me of the damage the crocus had inflicted.

‘You meant for me to be blamed?’ I cried. ‘Why?’

‘If you want your throne back, you can’t afford people to think you will shy away from doing what’s necessary,’ she said.

‘I asked you to get me out of the palace, not kill him!’ I snapped, appalled.

‘What did you want but your freedom, and eventually your throne? Running won’t achieve either.’

The truth of her words brought on a fit of trembling. I should want Dieter dead, I needed him dead to end this – so why did I shy so fiercely from it?

‘You need to rest,’ said Roshi.

I fought the suggestion, trying to sit up. The smell of the sheets and my unwashed body were nauseating; I wanted to tear off my rank garments and bathe. ‘I don’t have time to rest,’ I snapped.

Dieter was no fool; after Roshi’s behaviour at the meal, he would surely suspect she was behind the poisoned food – and he would infer her orders came from me. He still had the vial of my blood. One wrong move against me, and I’ll finish what I started at Aestival.

‘You’re not strong enough,’ Roshi protested as I shoved at the bedding in a vain attempt to rise.

I wanted to rail at her and order her out of the room, she with her loyalty more dangerous than any betrayal could be. With difficulty, I fought the urge down. I needed information, and I didn’t have time to spare.

‘Has Dieter questioned you?’ I demanded, finally succeeding in untangling my legs before having to pause to rest. ‘What have you told him?’

Roshi grinned, sharp and conspiratorial. ‘That I was so distraught at the sight of my kin in chains, I didn’t notice one of the hounds at my feet, and when the thrall collided with me, I tripped. I do not think he believes me,’ she concluded happily. ‘He’s charming, isn’t he? I can see why you don’t like him.’

Skythes, I decided, were mad. Perhaps the voices in my head weren’t the artefacts of arcana after all, but insanity from my mother’s bloodline.

My racing pulse, and Roshi’s inane cheer in the face of disaster, made my head ache. ‘How long have I been sick?’

‘A little more than a week. You need to be abed longer still,’ she added sharply as I tested my weight on my feet. ‘Don’t think waking up is all the recovering you have left.’

‘The gadderen,’ I said, forestalling her further. ‘Which drightens are here?’

‘All except the Vestenn lord,’ she said, surprising me with her prompt answer. She had obviously been paying attention. ‘There’s been no word of him. Maja of the Saschan arrived yesterday morning.’

I knew what she had left unsaid. House Saschan ruled the Cuathn tribe, and ruled their holdings from Eysgard in the far west. If Maja had arrived, Harald of Vestenn should have, too. The Eberholm, his stronghold, stood south and west of here – in the throat of the fertile valley which served as a pass through the Sentinels. The Ilthean empire lay south of the valley; Nureya, and Helena’s Ilthean army, lay east. The Vestenn’s absence spoke of trouble,