Chapter 30
30
Romulo was as good as his word. We weren’t sure how he did it, but he had that book in our hands about an hour later—for a hefty price, which Lucas paid, because neither Nix nor I had more than a few coins on us, enough for food and a trip to the bookseller but not for Romulo’s contraband.
Lucas handed over the money in exchange for the book, and we made a hasty exit from the docks. We still had to trudge back through the spooky forest, but I was relieved to get away from the place where all the outlaws congregated. As princess, I felt vulnerable and exposed, unsure whether my title endangered or protected me. I wondered if—or how many of—the men gathering near the ships were involved with the insurgents. Though we knew the mambabarang was behind the murder, that didn’t mean none of them were working with the witch or up to schemes of their own.
“I’ll pay you back,” I told Lucas.
“Me too,” Nix chimed in.
He made a face, like he was insulted. “No need. Frankly I’m offended that you’d suggest it.”
I decided to change the subject. “Where do you think he got the book?”
“Smugglers will hang on to anything that might be worth something. And if it’s associated with dark magic, that means it’s banned, and that means it’s worth quite a bit to the right person. There are enchanted safe houses, either in the Sombra Woods or the other realm, where they stash things. Treasure, weapons, whatever.”
The three of us walked until we found a quiet spot near town, where some small children in linen play dresses ran circles in the grassy meadow. We headed for a copse of trees in the near distance and sat in a circle beneath them. Lucas placed the book on the ground in front of us.
I had seen this book at the palace library, and it was then that I realized I’d also seen it elsewhere. “Whoa! I just remembered something. I saw this book at school.”
Lucas asked, “You did? Wait, how?”
“That girl. Fortunada. We ran into each other—that day in the cafeteria when Amador tried to make me eat black rice. A book exactly like this fell out of her bag.” Another thought occurred to me. Maybe it wasn’t Amador who gave me the black rice. “What do you think that means?”
“Probably means she’s involved with the smugglers somehow,” Nix said, scrunching her nose. “I told you she was weird. And not in a good way.” She took the folded paper out of her skirt pocket while Lucas flipped right to the “Forbidden” chapter.
“Here it is,” he said, turning the book to face Nix. “It’s all there.”
Nix held out the parchment and began scanning the pages. Every so often she’d hold the drawing up to one in the book, looking for a match. None of the plants were familiar to me; according to Lucas, they were all native to Biringan and could not grow anywhere else. “In fact, most of them are extinct,” he told us. “Or destroyed.”
“Didn’t know you were a botany expert,” I said. “Gotta say, I’m kind of impressed.”
“I took the Hayop at Halaman class last year,” he explained.
“Ah. Guess we haven’t gotten to that unit yet.” I shrugged.
“Wait,” Nix exclaimed. “I think this is it!” She looked from the book to the drawing and back again a few times, then laid the paper down next to it. “What do you think?”
I studied the two pictures side by side. “Definitely,” I said. “The drawing actually looks like it was copied directly from the book.”
Lucas read the description out loud: “ Acalypha bitela , a rare species of poisonous plant, distantly related to the similarly named Earth genus of flowering Acalypha ... primary source of sustenance for the coleopteran species Malificenti mortiferum , likely extinct.... Its blooms may be dried, crushed, and utilized in various potions.... Indigenous to Biringan, once found exclusively in dense, shaded forestlands near the riverbed, it has since gone extinct in the wild. Use with extreme caution. In small amounts, causes severe illness. In large doses, death.”
“This is it! This is what caused the king’s illness,” Nix said excitedly. “That’s why the drawing was in his desk. He must have suspected something.”
“Maybe he was sick for a while before he died. Like my father,” Lucas said. “But why did the witch not just use a larger dose?”
“Either to draw out the agony or better escape detection,” I suggested. “Or both.”
“That makes sense,” Nix said. She picked up the drawing. “Look!” She held it up to the light. “There’s something written on the bottom.” We all leaned forward and scanned the paper. After a few seconds, I saw it, too. Symbols, in what looked like white ink. “I can’t read it, though,” she said. “Can you?”
Lucas squinted at it. “That’s an ancient diwata language. No one speaks it anymore.”
“Can you read any of it?” I asked him.
“A little bit. I took a course, but it was rudimentary. This one is easy.” He pointed to a square with a sun, moon, flower, and leaf in it. “That means ‘the kingdom,’ as in all of Biringan, or actually, it could also mean the throne itself. Let me try the rest.” He studied the symbols for a while, holding the paper in different lights, muttering to himself. A few minutes later, he said, “Okay, I think I’ve got the gist of it anyway. It’s a recipe. An incantation. Both, actually. How to make the poison and also how to administer it, I think.” He pointed to a stick figure symbol. “That’s the poppet. And then over here, there’s the beetle symbol. The rest is harder, but in context, it’s definitely a spell.”
“ Malificenti mortiferum is the beetle!” Nix exclaimed, taking the book from Lucas.
Lucas looked over her shoulder. “Yes!” he said excitedly. “The beetles are the vector. They carry the poison inside them. And since they can both administer and clear up any evidence of the poison, by biting their victims and then extracting the poison once it’s done its work, the mambabarang enchants them and directs them to the target, represented by the doll. That way they keep their hands clean, evading detection. But basically, anywhere you see the beetles, the witch isn’t far behind.”
I remembered something from that last day I was in school. “The day I came here, that morning when I was sitting in class, I saw a beetle. Not long after that, the assassins tried to kill me.” It was all making sense now. The witch was working with the insurgents; I was sure of it. It was all connected. Lucas’s dad’s murder, my father’s, the page’s, the rise of the insurgents, and then the plot to kill me. Whoever this mambabarang was, they were after me and after the throne.
“What else is in here?” Nix began turning more pages. She stopped at the back of the book. “Look.”
Lucas and I leaned in to look. It was an elaborate family tree. In the center, Lady Elowina. Some of her ancestral branches were dead ends, but one in particular went very far back, much farther than the rest. All the way back to one foremother.
Queen Felicidad.
“So technically, you’re a distant cousin of Lady Elowina?” Nix pointed out.
There were handwritten additions, too—Elowina’s direct descendants. It didn’t take long to find a familiar name.
We all realized it at the same time. Lady Elowina was Fortunada’s grandmother.