Chapter 17 #2
I can’t screw off the top, although I try.
I can’t seem to do anything else with it, either.
I am about to give up and toss it onto my dressing table when I glimpse a tiny hole, so small as to be nearly invisible, right at the bottom.
Hopping off my bed, I rattle through my desk, looking for a pin.
The one I find has a pearl on one end. I try to fit the point into the acorn.
It takes a moment, but I manage, pushing past resistance until I feel a click and it opens.
Mechanized steps swing out from a shining center, where a tiny golden bird rests.
Its beak moves, and it speaks in a creaky little voice.
“My dearest friend, these are the last words of Liriope. I have three golden birds to scatter. Three attempts to get one into your hand. I am too far gone for any antidote, and so if you hear this, I leave you with the burden of my secrets and the last wish of my heart. Protect him. Take him far from the dangers of this Court. Keep him safe, and never, ever tell him the truth of what happened to me.”
Tatterfell comes into the room, bringing with her a tray with tea things. She tries to peek at what I am doing, but I cup my hand over the acorn.
When she goes out, I set down the bauble and pour myself a cup of tea, holding it to warm my hands.
Liriope is Locke’s mother. This seems like a message asking someone—her dearest friend—to spirit him—Locke—away.
She calls the message her “last words,” so she must have known she was about to die.
Perhaps the acorns were to be sent to Locke’s father, in the hopes Locke might spend the rest of his life exploring wild places with him rather than be caught up in intrigues.
But since Locke is still here, it seems as if none of the three acorns were found. Maybe none of them even left her bower.
I should give it to him, let him decide for himself what to do with it. But all I keep thinking about is the note on Balekin’s desk, the note that seemed to implicate Balekin in Liriope’s murder. Should I tell Locke everything?
I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after, but what you do with it must not be tied to me.
I turn the words over in my mind the way I turned the acorn in my hand, and I feel the same seams.
There’s something odd about that sentence.
I copy it out again on a piece of paper to be sure I remember it correctly.
When I first read it, the note seemed to imply that Queen Orlagh had located a deadly poison for Balekin.
But blusher mushrooms—while rare—grow wild, even on this island.
I picked blusher mushrooms in the Milkwood, beside the black-thorned bees, who build their hives high in the trees (an antidote can be made with their honey, I learned recently from all my reading).
Blusher mushrooms aren’t dangerous if you don’t drink the red liquid.
What if Queen Orlagh’s note didn’t mean that she’d found blusher mushrooms and she was going to give them to Balekin?
What if by “know the provenance,” Orlagh literally just meant that she knew where particular blusher mushrooms had come from?
After all, she says “what you do with it” and not “what you do with them.” She’s cautioning him about what he’s going to do with the knowledge, not the actual mushrooms.
Which means he’s not going to poison Dain.
It also means that Balekin may have uncovered who’d caused Locke’s mother’s death, if he found out who had the blusher mushrooms that killed her. The answer could have been there, among the other papers that I, in my eagerness, had overlooked.
I have to go back. I have to get back into the tower. Today, before the coronation is any closer. Because maybe Balekin isn’t going to try to kill Dain at all and the Court of Shadows has the wrong idea. Or, if they have the right idea, he isn’t going to do it with blusher mushrooms.
Gulping down my tea, I find the servant garb in the back of my closet.
I take down my hair and arrange it in an approximation of the rough braid that the girls in Balekin’s house wore.
I tuck my knife high on my thigh and shake out some of my silver box of salt into my pocket.
Then I grab for my cloak, toe on my leather shoes, and am out the door, palms starting to sweat.
I have learned a lot more since my first foray into Hollow Hall, enough to make me understand better the risks I was taking. That does nothing for my nerves. Given what I saw of him with Cardan, I am not at all confident I could endure what Balekin would do to me if he caught me.
Taking a deep breath, I remind myself not to get caught.
That’s what the Roach says a spy’s real job is. The information is secondary. The job is not to get caught.
In the hall, I pass Oriana. She looks me up and down.
I have to resist the urge to pull the cloak more tightly around myself.
She is wearing a gown the color of unripe mulberries, and her hair is pulled slightly back.
The very tips of her pointed ears are covered in shimmering crystal cuffs.
I am a little envious of them. If I wore them, they’d disguise the human roundness of my own ears.
“You came home very late last night,” she says, annoyance pulling at her mouth. “You missed dinner, and your father was expecting you to spar with him.”
“I’ll do better,” I say, then instantly regret the declaration because I am probably not going to be back for dinner tonight, either. “Tomorrow. I’ll start doing better tomorrow.”
“Faithless creature,” Oriana says, looking at me as though through the sheer intensity of her gaze she might ferret out my secrets. “You’re scheming.”
I am so tired of her suspicion, so very tired.
“You always think that,” I say. “It’s just that for once you’re right.” Leaving her to worry what that might mean, I go down the stairs and out onto the grass. This time, there’s no one in my way, no one to make me reconsider what I am about to do.
I don’t bring the toad this time; I am more careful. As I walk through the woods, I see an owl circling overhead. I pull the hood of my cape to cover my face.
At Hollow Hall, I stow my cloak outside between the logs of a woodpile and enter through the kitchens, where supper is being prepared. Squabs are lacquered with rose jelly, the smell of their crackling skin enough to make my mouth water and my stomach clench.
I open a cabinet and am greeted by a dozen candles, all of them the color of buffed leather and accented with a gold stamp of Balekin’s personal crest—three laughing black birds.
I take out nine candles and, trying to move as mechanically as possible, carry them past the guards.
One guard gives me an odd look. I am sure there is something off about me, but he’s seen my face before, and I am more sure-footed than last time.
At least until I see Balekin coming down the stairs.
He glances in my direction, and it is all I can do to keep my head down, my step even. I carry the candles into the room in front of me, which turns out to be the library.
To my immense relief, he doesn’t seem to truly see me. My heart is speeding, though, my breaths coming too fast.
The servant girl who was cleaning the grate in Cardan’s room is blurrily putting books back onto the shelves.
She is as I remember her—cracked lips, thin, and bruise-eyed.
Her movements are slow, as if the air were as thick as water.
In her drugged dream, I am no more interesting than the furniture and of less consequence.
I scan the shelves impatiently, but I can see nothing useful. I need to get up to the tower, to go through all of Prince Balekin’s correspondence and hope I find something to do with Locke’s mother or Dain or the coronation, something I overlooked.
But I can’t do anything with Balekin between me and the stairs.
I look at the girl again. I wonder what her life is like here, what she dreams of. If she ever, for a moment, had a chance to get away. At least, thanks to the geas, if Balekin did catch me, this could not be my fate.
I wait, counting to a thousand, while piling my candles on a chair. Then I look out. Thankfully, Balekin is gone. Quickly, I head up the stairs toward the tower. I hold my breath as I pass Cardan’s door, but luck is with me. It is shut tight.
Then I am up the stairs and into Balekin’s study.
I note the herbs in the jars around the room, herbs I see with new eyes.
A few are poisonous, but most are just narcotic.
Nowhere do I see blusher mushrooms. I go to his desk and wipe my hands against the rough cloth of my dress, trying to leave no trace of sweat, trying to memorize the pattern of papers.
There are two letters from Madoc, but they just seem to be about which knights will be at the coronation and in what pattern around the central dais.
There are others that seem to be about assignations, about revels and parties and debauches.
Nothing about blusher mushrooms, nothing about poisons at all.
Nothing about Liriope or murder. The only thing that seems even a little surprising is a bit of doggerel, a love poem in Prince Dain’s hand, about a woman who remains unidentified, except by her “sunrise hair” and “starlit eyes.”
Worse, nothing I can find tells me anything about a plan to move against Prince Dain. If Balekin is going to murder his brother, he’s smart enough not to leave evidence lying around. Even the letter about the blusher mushroom is gone.
I have risked coming to Hollow Hall for nothing.
For a moment, I just stand there, trying to corral my thoughts. I need to leave without drawing attention to myself.