Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Poison, I realize. Not the cup I just drank from.
(At least, I hope not.) But what’s happening to Ronan.
It could be poison, couldn’t it? The thing that’s making him lose his magic.
It’s not a constant decline. Maybe whatever they’re poisoning him with doesn’t last long.
Maybe it’s difficult to get access to him, so they can’t always keep his powers suppressed.
But as long as he’s weak at the right moments, moments like the other night in the arena, that should be enough eventually.
But what about the taster? He has a taster eat and drink everything he touches, including this very wine.
They would know if the taster was being poisoned, unless…
unless the poison didn’t make them ill in any way.
Would the taster even notice their powers were diminished?
Or could an alchemist, an alchemist like Hermes, make a poison that would only affect the drinker’s magic?
Or even one that could only affect the light-born, so that the taster remained unaffected?
Could it be in the very cup I just drank from, the cup Zara is drinking from now?
I try to ignore the nausea that begins suddenly after I have the thought. It’s not poison, I tell myself; it’s just anxiety.
Unfortunately, telling yourself not to be anxious doesn’t tend to do much for anxiety except amplify it.
After the rites have concluded, Cyrus stands at the altar to announce the hunt to the court.
As always, he sounds vaguely annoyed to be delivering the message.
“In consultation with the priests, we have selected a most excellent quarry for today’s hunt.
The griffin of the Red Cliffs, a creature revered by Sai for its brutality and power.
By taking it down, we honor Sai and the champions he has chosen.
Hunting group assignments are available on the board in the back.
Chariots are waiting outside to take each group to the hunting grounds.
May Sai bless this hunt and the hunters. ”
We’re hunting a griffin? I thought we’d be after an alligator or a heron or something. I’ve never even seen a griffin outside of the pages of a book. I’m trying to remember which two animals it is—eagle and horse? Eagle and goat?—when Ronan approaches.
“I took some liberties with the hunting groups,” he says, his hand grazing the small of my back in a way that makes me shiver. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“You’ve assigned me to Lord Cyrus’s group then?”
He smirks. “Cyrus isn’t that bad. He thinks I’m a complete imbecile compared to my father, but he does what I tell him.”
Does he, though? Or could he be the poisoner?
I’m really understanding now what Ronan was saying about being unable to trust anyone. There are so many people here at court who have reason to act against him.
“You’ll have to tell me what that feeling meant when we’re alone later,” he mutters before greeting Queen Claudia, who wants to wish him luck.
I wait for him by our assigned chariot with Taran, who has conveniently been placed in our group as well.
There are three others in the party, who are in their own chariot just behind ours: Nona of House Alta, Ronan’s aunt and current heir to the throne, Lucas, the second son of House Modesto, and a member of Ronan’s Royal Guard named Rhodes that I haven’t met yet.
“Keep an eye on him,” says Ronan as he joins us at last. He glances at Lucas. “He was caught near my chambers this morning without cause.”
“So you thought you’d bring him with us when we’re all bearing deadly weapons?” I ask.
“Just another day in Selara,” he replies with a shrug.
I get to see some of Selara today as the chariot passes through Faros, leaving the city walls and heading to the cliffs to the north where the griffin dwells.
Beyond the reaches of Faros, there are only a few scattered structures amid the sprawling farmlands, where the little grain that Selara still grows is nearly ready to harvest. Herds of lazy cattle, goats, and sheep lounge in grassy fields under expansive blue skies.
I envy them their naps—it seems a much more pleasant way to spend a late-summer day than hiding behind rocks, trying to kill something.
Civilization ends abruptly as we venture away from the life-giving River Mara.
The fields give way to low, scrubby bushes and then empty patches of dusty land in shades of brown and grey.
Then the chariot climbs hills that are low and gradual at first, like the barren desert we crossed when we arrived, but that become increasingly steep and jagged the further north we go.
Before long, I hear the ocean again, crashing into the base of the Red Cliffs, which are appropriately named, somewhere to the east beyond sight.
We approach a small circle of tents on the hilltop. “The scouting party,” explains Ronan as we exit the chariot. “They’ve been tracking the griffin.”
“That seems like cheating.” I’ve never been on a hunt like this before.
My father took Adria and Seth before the war, but I was too young to join them.
The only times I’ve been hunting were with Larus, who was teaching me to use my bow to bring down deer and small game.
We were rarely successful, largely because I couldn’t bring myself to hurt the animals.
At the time, I thought I had Larus convinced that it was just because I had poor aim.
But looking back, I’m certain he knew the truth.
“We’d be out here all month like them if they didn’t do it,” says Lady Nona.
She’s a tough-looking woman: leathery tan skin, greying brown hair, and the kind of lean build that says she’s no stranger to these circumstances.
She’s a war survivor, one of the few from her generation.
“I, for one, would rather sleep in a bed than a bunk.”
The scouting party equips us with bows and arrows. When they hand me mine, they smile. “You’re the one to beat, they say,” one of them, a young servant girl, whispers to me.
I’m touched that she looks up to me, but unfortunately, she’s wrong. I’m about as likely to kill the griffin as I am to kill anyone, which is to say not likely at all.
Not unless it tries to kill Ronan. Then I might be motivated.
Ronan, for his part, looks about as uncomfortable as I am. I wonder if this brings up memories of his father. He said they once hunted together on our lands.
We hear from the scouts that the griffin was last spotted half a mile or so northwest, but that since it can fly, it ranges quite a bit during the day. It tends to dive to the shore for fish in the afternoons, and since it’s no longer mating season, it doesn’t roost anywhere in particular.
There are twelve hunting parties, most of them around the same size as ours, made up of everyone in the court who wanted to attend, along with their guards and servants.
“Twelve parties and one griffin?” I ask. “Is that typical?”
“Griffins are solitary creatures at this time of year, but it will likely take more than one party to bring it down, unless someone makes a very good shot. They have a thick hide, and they’re ferocious predators on their own. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up empty-handed,” explains Ronan.
“What happens then?”
“We declare that Sai has protected the beast, which means it will live out its life and never be hunted again. And then we feast on pheasant or something and pretend it never happened.”
Ronan takes the entire endeavor with about as much irreverence as I had expected from him, at least when he’s speaking with me.
He’s much more effusive to the rest of the court, giving a stirring speech about Sai’s champions and their noble cause in slaying the foul beast. From that, I glean that the creature is part eagle, part lion.
I see now what he means about turning up empty handed.
King of the beasts and king of the birds in one.
Ronan is pulled away to talk to some courtier or another, with his guards trailing behind, and he calls over his aunt to join him, leaving me alone with Lucas.
Lucas is around my age, maybe a few years older, with narrow blue eyes that are a bit too close together. He’s lean and of average height, although he holds himself up higher, his jaw jutting upwards as he speaks. “You have them all fooled,” he says.
I startle when I realize he’s speaking to me. “Come again?”
“The king. His aunt. All of them. But I was there that night in the arena. You missed.”
He says it with a high degree of confidence. I know I should walk away from him and tell Ronan what he said immediately, but I would like to know why he was hanging around Ronan’s chambers, so I keep talking.
“If you believe that’s the case, why tell me?”
“So that you know that I’m watching you. So that you know that if you try again, I’ll be there.”
Well, I guess that’s good news for Ronan. It seems unlikely that Lucas is trying to act against him, unless he’s telling me this now to throw me off his trail.
Which isn’t a bad strategy, come to think of it.
This is exhausting. When I was thinking last night of how I wanted a life with Ronan, I wasn’t thinking about this.
Never knowing who your friends are. Having enemies lurking around every corner.
Treating every interaction with suspicion, always looking for some secondary meaning in the things people say.
It's terrible.
I decide to leave it to Taran to keep an eye on Lucas. I can’t deal with him today.
Most of the hunting parties head off in the northwest direction the scouts indicated, but Ronan doesn’t want to go that way. I wonder if he picked up on a feeling from one of the scouts, or if he has another reason for avoiding the rest of the court.
We head over a ridge to the north and down a rocky path into a canyon.
A narrow blue stream runs along the smooth stones at its bottom, meandering around bends out to meet the ocean.
There are signs of griffin activity here: discarded fish bones, desiccated piles of droppings. Abandoned nests as big as our chariot.
Ronan examines these, trying to see if any are fresh. We march up and down the stream for nearly an hour with no sign of anything.
“We should head back to the hills,” says Lucas, shifting the quiver on his back. “There’s nothing out here.”
“You can go,” says Ronan. “Rhodes, go with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m with him,” says Nona. “I think we all ought to go.”
Ronan shakes his head at his aunt. “Not yet. But we’ll meet you soon. Go ahead.”
“Suit yourselves,” she says with a curtsy and a meaningful glance at me.
Taran backs away a little as the others leave to give us some space.
“I thought they’d never leave,” Ronan says once they’re well out of earshot on the path out of the canyon.
“Did you bring us here on purpose so that they’d get bored and leave us alone?”
He winks.
I glance back at Taran. He’s looking at a pebble near his foot as if it’s very interesting, only glancing up on occasion to make sure Ronan is still safe.
Poor man. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable, but I’m not certain I can keep my hands off Ronan for long now that we’re almost alone together.
I’m getting ready to reach for him when I hear the clatter of a small rock falling into the canyon.
“What was that?”
Ronan holds a finger to his lips. Taran, closer to the noise than we are, turns and draws his sword.
We creep along the canyon floor, the crunching sounds of our boots on stone suddenly amplified by our heightened awareness. When we get to Taran, Ronan places a hand on his shoulder, and we all three crouch down behind a large boulder.
There’s a long silence, so long that Ronan laughs and begins to rise.
And then there’s the unmistakable flap of great wings from fifty feet above us. I lean back in time to catch its enormous silhouette cross the sky.
Oh, gods. We’re fucked.