Chapter Ten #2
“Eventually. But those techniques are advanced, and while quite flashy, they’re also inefficient.
Consuming the vitae it takes to summon strong vines can be lethal without the proper training—you’re as likely to perish as your opponent.
But there are other ways to defend yourself, with even the smallest amounts of vitae. ”
Elswyth considered and then took her seat again. “I see. What, then?”
Kehinde raised a finger. His fingertip turned green, then black, and a thorn sprouted there, curling into a claw. A single bead of clear liquid glistened at the tip.
“The vitae it took to summon this droplet is less than the smallest flower. And yet within it is enough poison to kill a man ten times over.” He flicked his finger and the thorn shot past Elswyth’s head, embedding in the pillar behind her. She flinched as she heard it whisper past her ear.
“A poisoner,” she said, regaining her composure. “I see. I suppose I am not strong enough to fight any other way. What is it they say? A poisoner is either a weakling, a woman, or a coward. I suppose I shall be all three.”
“Is the viper a coward? The bee, the ivy? Poison exists everywhere in nature because it is useful. And a viper can kill a lion, no matter how small it seems.”
“I told you I am not a killer, Kehinde. Not anymore.”
Kehinde’s eyes traced her scar. “And I will not force you to be. I only hope that should the need arise, you will defend yourself by any means necessary. I do not know if the Reaper deserves to die. But I believe that you deserve to live.”
“Thank you, Kehinde. For understanding.”
He nodded solemnly. “Regardless, poisons are not limited to the lethal variety. There are plants that can make a man confused, or angry, or invoke unbearable pain. There are those that can render him unconscious or make him more alert. There are even combinations of herbs that can make a man lustful or give him strange visions… There are poisons that force a man to tell the truth or to obey your commands. With a touch of the hand, with a kiss on the cheek, you can bring any man, no matter how deadly, to his knees.”
“That seems as cruel as thorns and vines. Bewitchment through botany.”
Kehinde shrugged. “Cruel, but not uncommon. Think of all those debutantes and their ambitious mothers—how many playful touches, how many dances and drinks are laced with an aphrodisiac, a hypnotic, a stimulant… In nature, a creature uses everything at its disposal to survive. And even in those lofty ballrooms, people are not free of their nature. London and a jungle have more in common than you’d think. ”
Elswyth arched an eyebrow. “You mean to suggest that women in society are using floromancy to manipulate one another?”
“Of course. Where do you think I learned the subtle art of psychotoxins, if not by observing the ladies of court?”
“I suppose you learned these techniques from the same order that taught you the Ebony. Or from some far-flung place in your travels,” Elswyth said.
Kehinde smiled, brown eyes shining in the moonlight.
“London is as far-flung to me as any place. Yet this is a truth you find everywhere. In every forest on Earth there exists a web of poisons and antidotes. A plant is eaten by an insect until that plant develops a toxin to defend itself; the insect evolves an antidote, and the cycle repeats—poison, antidote, new poison, new antidote. Floromancers are no different. A tangled web of poisons and cures has woven itself over the centuries, and you must learn to navigate it quickly, lest you be consumed by it.”
Elswyth stared at the glistening droplet of poison, still dangling from Kehinde’s finger. Then she finished her tea and set her cup down on the table. “All right. I am ready to begin.”
Kehinde cocked his head. “We already have.”
“What do you mean?”
He nodded at her teacup. “You’ve been drinking poison for ten minutes.”
Elswyth dropped the teacup. It bounced off the tabletop and then shattered on the ground. When she stared at her now-empty hand, it shook violently. Her skin shone unusually pale in the moonlight, and blue veins swam darkly beneath the surface.
“What?” she said, her voice wavering.
“Poison,” Kehinde said. “I poisoned you.”
“When? Why?”
“Right when you sat down. I secreted poison through my hand as I made your tea. It takes a while for this particular toxin to take effect, especially when absorbed through the stomach. But it’s highly concentrated. I don’t doubt that the dose is enough to kill you.”
Elswyth put her hand to her stomach, which had begun to roil. She looked at where the tea lay in a puddle around the broken cup. A small film of iridescent oil shimmered on the surface like a rainbow in the moonlight. “Yes, but why?”
He shrugged. “I intend to teach you to become an adequate master of poisons. The first step in training is to expose oneself to as many poisons as possible, to identify their essences, and, eventually, to build a tolerance. The practice is called mithridatism.”
Kehinde bent down and dipped his finger into the spilled tea. He tasted it, considering. “Hm. Not bad. I learned the technique while living among a group of vishakanya in India. ‘Poison Maidens,’ they’re called. Orphan girls raised to be immune to poison. They become quite effective assassins.”
Elswyth couldn’t focus on his words. The world seemed to blur.
“I think you might have forgotten the fact that poisons kill people. I cannot learn anything if I am dead!”
Kehinde tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Oh—yes. I must have let that slip my mind. It’s no matter. All you need to do is identify the poison I gave you via the essences in your bloodstream, and then concentrate an effective antidote.”
“But I have no idea how to create an antidote!” Elswyth said.
Kehinde shrugged. “I suggest you find out how…” he said. He took out his pocket watch and tapped the glass. “In the next five minutes. Once the bleeding starts, you won’t have more than a few minutes of consciousness—”
Elswyth coughed. Blood erupted from her mouth, splattering across the stone floor. She stared at it, an ink blot that seemed to spread and shift in the shadows.
“—before death,” Kehinde continued.
Elswyth felt as though someone were pressing a long needle into her brain. Kehinde wandered in her vision, breaking into reflections of himself. Her heart pounded strangely in her chest, missing a beat and then fluttering out three more, a drummer that had lost the tune.
“You’re…” Elswyth stammered. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Did you think that learning to be a poisoner would be safe?” Kehinde said. “You will only die if you allow yourself to. The Reaper will not wait until you are ready to defend yourself, and neither will I.”
His words seemed faraway. She stood and then promptly collapsed to the ground, landing painfully on the stone.
Her wrists screamed. She tried to push herself up, but her arms trembled and gave out, sending her back to the ground.
She rolled onto her back, her breath ragged, a film of sweat forming on her brow even in the icy air.
Above her, Kehinde came into focus. He swayed like an old tree, the moon shining behind his head like a crown. He said something, but it was lost to her, as though she were hearing him from far away, underwater. Then, as though pulled down by a current, the world slipped away.
The last thing she thought of, before the poison and the darkness took her, was, of course, Persephone.
When Elswyth woke, she lay in her bed. The first threads of dawn shone through the glass in the balcony doors, spreading across her bedroom floor in patterns of light.
Her head throbbed, and it took a moment to remember the night before: the moonlit garden, the poisoned tea, and Kehinde standing over her.
She pushed herself up from bed, but her head swam and she collapsed again.
Then, from the dark corner of the room, a shape moved.
Kehinde sat in a chair by the window, obscured in shadow. “You’re awake,” he said. “I’ll admit, I would have given it a few more hours.”
“What did you do to me?”
“As I said I would. I taught you.”
“You poisoned me,” she said.
“And you lived. Now you have learned that you can survive a poisoning. That seems a valuable thing to know.”
Elswyth’s mouth was painfully dry. “Why aren’t I dead?”
“For one thing, all floromancers have a certain natural immunity to plant toxins. That kept you from dying much sooner. That, and I gave you an antidote as soon as you were unconscious.”
“A natural immunity,” Elswyth said.
“Not enough to save you, if the dose is substantial. But enough that you will be able to learn poisons by consuming them, without succumbing to them too easily.”
Elswyth looked at her hand. It no longer trembled, although she felt weak, and her skin was still eerily pale. “What antidote?”
“The essence of a hybridized plant, one specifically created to counteract both the poison and the symptoms of the poison. Antinerium oleandris.”
“Antinerium. Then the poison you administered…”
“Yes. Nerium oleander. A common varietal of the oleander flower that can be found in any garden in England, and a favorite poison at court. Now you know it. Can you feel it inside you? In your blood?”
Elswyth reached into herself with her floromantic sense, searching for remnants of the poison.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the constellations of vitae that had caused her illness, as well as the essences that made up the antidote.
It all seemed so clear to her now, like her body remembered the plant only because it had nearly killed her.
“Yes. That’s remarkable. Its shape is so clear…” Elswyth lifted her hand to the air. From the veins at her wrist, she produced a stalk of green. It grew into her hand and then ended with a five-petaled white flower. She smelled it, trying to link the scent to the feeling of poison in her veins.
“And the symptoms of Nerium oleander poisoning?”
Elswyth thought for a moment, fighting through the haze of her mind. “Internal bleeding. Irregular heartbeat. Vomiting. Coma… and death, I imagine, if untreated.”
“And are you likely to forget any of those symptoms soon?”
“No, but I am not daft, Kehinde. I would remember them even if I had learned them from a book.”
“Anyone can know things,” Kehinde said, waving his hand, “but so few understand. Now, if you choose to poison someone with oleander, then you will actually understand, in practice, the pain you intend to cause.”
Elswyth looked at the flower sprouting from her fingertip. She pruned it, drawing vitae back into herself and watching it wilt and then fall to the bed, crumbling into ash.
“I suppose this is as ethical as one can make the instruction of poisoning,” Elswyth said.
“This is the way I was taught the poisoner’s art by the vishakanya, Elswyth,” Kehinde said, “and if you continue learning from me, this is the way I will teach you combat as well. Any pain you learn to inflict, you must first endure. Do you understand?”
Elswyth nodded. A thought occurred to her.
The Reaper—whether he was the one who took Persephone or not—was a floromancer, if the warping on his victims was any indication.
And Inspector Reed had said that a single red grape was found in the stomach of each of the victims. Was that how the Reaper subdued the women he killed? By lacing their food with poison?
“We do not have much time. But now that you understand the process, we can begin moving through the poisons of the world. I must warn you, Elswyth: It will not be easy. Yet it may give you a chance to defend yourself, if the need arises. But you must decide quickly.”
Kehinde extended a hand. From his palm a single flower bloomed: bone white, with curling red filaments that dripped with bloody sap. It smelled both sweet and foul in the morning air. He offered it to her and then nodded.
Elswyth reached out, hesitantly at first, and plucked the flower from his palm.
Then she opened her mouth, placed the poison on her tongue, and began.