Chapter 19 Stilder Berries
Stilder Berries
Niel didn’t feel any better after leaving the room. And after washing, he felt almost worse. The guilt followed him, as did the image of her being dragged back around the corner, her face terrified. If someone had shown Niel a fresh-dug grave, he might have crawled straight in out of shame.
The castle felt too close around him. Feeling suddenly trapped by the protective walls, Niel stormed out to the castle walk, ignoring the soldiers he passed on the way.
The sharp wind stung his face, rifling through his freshly-washed hair and sending prickles of ice across his scalp.
He took a steadying breath and strode to the edge of the curtain wall.
It was snowing lightly again, probably heavier in the mountains.
There was no sign in the army encampment that things had gone wrong.
But by now, Corin must have been aware that the attempt had failed.
Niel wished he could have seen the look on his older brother's face.
The tunnel was sealed off. The men inside would have retreated. The thought of them panicking, stuck in a tunnel too narrow for them to easily turn around, but only to crawl backwards up into the cold, filled him with brutal satisfaction.
Satisfaction that just as quickly soured as he remembered the terrified look on the lady’s face when he’d yelled. Something was deeply wrong with him. Perhaps he’d feel better once the men were done searching the castle.
What if some of the enemy had snuck in earlier? What if there were enemies already hidden in the castle, or in passages in the walls…
He turned and took two long steps back towards the castle, bile in his throat at the thought of her in danger, before he clamped down on his sensibility and forced himself back to the wall again.
The sound of labored breathing came from below him, on the stair from the courtyard to the castle walk.
He glanced down. It was one of the soldiers who’d been responsible for searching the cellar when they first took the castle.
Now, in punishment for failing to spot the tunnel, the man hauled one of the dead bodies up the stairs to throw it over the wall and onto the frozen moat below.
Frozen ground made for hard digging. Corin could deal with the corpses.
He turned away and walked to another point of the wall, in no mood to watch the clean-up.
One of the castle servants, a woman he thought was named Megh, stood at the wall staring longingly out at the town.
He stepped around her and made his way to the far end, where the walk overlooked the mountainous terrain instead of the castle’s village.
Testily he stared out at the Kettalist mountains, so tall they cupped the sky, their tops blurring to nothingness in the gray storm.
“My lord,” Kerr called behind him.
Niel groaned and bowed his head. He sighed, then straightened and turned.
“What?”
The captain was walking towards him along the wall. Kerr paused with a frown.
“Are you alright?”
“What do you want?”
Kerr raised an eyebrow, then reached into his pocket. He drew something out in his closed, leather-gloved fist and offered it to Niel.
Reluctantly, Niel held out his open palm. Kerr deposited a single white berry into Niel’s hand.
“Stilder berry,” Niel said grimly.
“Aye.”
“Where?” He rolled it between his fingers, his jaw tight. Please, he thought, say anywhere but…
“In the lady’s room, beneath her wardrobe. There were a few dried needles on the ground, too. Maybe from a garland.”
…anywhere but there.
“But no garland.” Niel said grimly.
It still could have been a servant. Just because it was in her bed chamber didn’t mean anything. Servants went in and out of the lady’s room.
“No. Not in her room. But we found one shoved into the music room on the floor above.”
“Was there anything else in her room?”
“Nothing troubling.” The way Kerr said it made Niel look instantly at him, the berry caught between his pointer finger and thumb. “She had two books under her mattress. I can’t see why. It was only poetry and a very dull account from a voyaging trader, nothing scandalous.”
Niel raised an eyebrow. I do not know my letters, she’d told him, a vacant look on her face. He’d seen her staring at the page then, when he wrote, but he’d taken her at her word like a fool.
Did he even know anything about her? What was an act? What was the real Lady Blackfell?
He wanted to believe a servant had poisoned him; one of the cooks, perhaps, like he’d assumed at first. But it was Ayla’s castle he’d taken over, and for all her timid softness the lady had proven capable and complex.
She’d lied about being a fool, and about being able to read.
He didn’t think she’d lied about the tunnel anymore. But the poisoning…?
The moment he let himself truly consider if she was capable of poisoning him was the moment he was certain of it. Ayla was just as likely a suspect as the cooks. He’d been a fool to discount her in the beginning. A fool blinded by her soft spoken nature and her breathtaking beauty.
“I, er, read a few pages,” Kerr admitted, misunderstanding the look on Niel’s face. “Terribly dry.”
“I see,” Niel muttered, even though he was barely listening. He closed his fist tight around the berry, then turned and launched it as hard as he could over the wall, outside the castle grounds.
“So?” Kerr asked. “What are you going to do about her?”
The snow was falling more heavily. A thin layer dusted the parapet. Niel dragged a finger slowly down the wall, his mouth downturned.
“Whatever I do, I'm not going to yell at her,” Niel muttered bitterly, as Kerr tilted his head in confusion. “You’re dismissed, Kerr. Go.”
Could she really have tried to kill him? Did she really want him dead?
Of course she did. She’d probably try to poison him again the first chance she got. He’d broken into her home and taken her hostage. What sane woman wouldn’t try to kill a man who did that? He felt dizzy. And sick. And weak-legged. Like he’d been feeling for days. Almost like he was ill. Or…
He put the pieces together faster than an arrow leaving a bow, turned abruptly, and strode as quickly to the infirmary as he could. He needed to talk to Larkin, the healer among his troops, immediately.
The lanky, brown-skinned man perched on a stool in the infirmary, grinding seeds in a mortar. Larkin’s eyes found Niel instantly as the knight slammed the door open. The healer’s normally sharp eyes looked a little glassy, as if he’d been working too hard.
“He’s not awake yet,” Larkin informed him.
Niel spared a quick glance at the unconscious Enarian knight, now one-legged, bound thoroughly to one of the infirmary beds.
They still didn't have the dungeon key. The man’s pale skin was tinged gray-blue from blood loss, but Larkin had cleaned and bandaged him.
Niel almost wished the healer had just let the wound fester.
But there were more urgent matters just now than punishing a man he hated.
Even if Bradhan of Ashbrin was Hannes' nephew, and heir to the house of Ashbrin, the noble family Niel had sworn to exterminate.
“I’ve been poisoned,” Niel said.
“Again?” Larkin was on his legs before the word was out of his mouth.
“I can breathe. It’s not like last time.”
“Sit. Now.”
Niel perched on the edge of one of the tables and stared grimly straight ahead as Larkin peered into his eyes, hand pressed to Niel’s wrist for his pulse.
“Symptoms?” the healer snapped.
“My heart won’t stop racing. I feel flush, dizzy. Stomach’s unsettled, legs are weak. And my mood’s a pendulum. I feel like I'm going mad.”
Larkin frowned and slowly let go of Niel’s wrist. The healer pressed a cold hand to Niel’s forehead.
“Well?” the knight asked.
“Did this start with the fight?”
“No. Earlier. Maybe yesterday or the day before. But it’s getting worse.”
Of course she wouldn’t stop with the stilder berries. It made so much sense of all the odd ways he’d been feeling.
Larkin pulled his hand away and took a step back. Sinking against the empty bed, directly across from where Niel sat, the healer frowned and drew a deep breath.
“Have you vomited?”
“No.”
“Eating alright?”
“Yes.”
“And this is constant?”
“It comes and goes.”
“When has it been at its worst?”
Niel squinted at the stone wall.
“Last night, at supper. My thoughts were racing; I felt feverish, like I'd chugged dragonroot tonic. At the morning meal today I felt a, a tightness in my chest—”
“Tightness? Any pain?” Larkin said, squinting at Niel.
“No, not pain, just this ache,” Niel told him.
He gritted his teeth a moment, not wanting to admit he’d yelled at the lady, and forced himself to continue.
“And then this afternoon, I had—words, with Lady Blackfell, and I thought I was going to be sick or that my heart would burst. That’s not normal. ”
Larkin stared at him a long moment, the healer’s lips pressed tight.
“You had dinner last night with her,” he finally observed. “And you broke fast together?” Niel nodded.
Was she slipping it in his food, and taking an antidote later, out of his sight? Why hadn't he considered antidotes? He should have kept her tied to him day and night, not just demanded her presence at meals.
But Larkin’s lips quivered. “And these feelings—they’ve been worse around her? A racing heart, a stomach that feels full of moths…”
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” Niel said, straightening. “Moths. What's the antidote? What did she slip me?”
Larkin snorted, then laughed so hard he nearly fell off the bed.
“Larkin,” Niel snapped.
“I am sorry, my lord,” the healer’s laugh turned into a cough.
He coughed again, hard, and cleared his throat, eyes watering.
He held up a hand to Niel, rose to take a sip from a mug on his work table, and patted a hand to his chest. For a moment it was silent and still in the room. Then Larkin burst out laughing again.
“For Mercy’s sake,” Niel snapped. “What’s so funny?”
“Have you ever been besotted?” Larkin cackled. Niel’s face reddened.
“Besotted,” he repeated scornfully. “I do not get besotted.”
“Tell that to your racing heart and the moths in your gut.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? She’s a true beauty.”
“So what?” Niel muttered. “She must have done something to cause this. Beauty is not enough for love.”
“No,” Larkin agreed, sobering. “But it can often be the start of it.”
Admittedly, she had come closer to successfully killing him than anyone else who’d tried, which was a little impressive, but—no.
“I need an antidote,” Niel ground out. “I will not go on like this.”
“Ah, my lord,” Larkin said, with a smile and a sigh. “If I could trick the workings of the heart, I’d be a rich man, not a soldier-healer. What you’re feeling is perfectly natural.”
“And you’re sure that’s all…” Niel flushed.
“I do not think anything is wrong with you.”
“Fine,” Niel said. He stood, arms crossed over his chest. “If you tell anyone about this…”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Larkin reassured him. “But it's going to be a long, cold winter. Would it be so bad to invite her to your bed?”
Niel reached forward to grab the healer by the collar, one-handed, as Larkin wheeled back, eyes wide. For a second Niel stared, his vision red with fury for reasons he could not understand, before he let go abruptly, muttered an apology, and went to sharpen his sword.