The persistent hum of the threat—a mosquito's trill in her ear, a prickle of chill in her spine—followed her return to the high city. Despite their twisted route through the lime-washed facades, Yalira could not escape its intrusive pulse. Intertwined with each of her own heartbeats, the truth screamed and echoed in her ears.
Loyal Shadow, fortunately for Yalira, took no heed of his troubled rider. He followed the promise of warm stables without care for the unforgiving grip of her bone-white knuckles. Such thoughtlessness was an unkindness, but the ninth queen could not loose the new knots that had twisted and formed within her.
Where Shadow tolerated, Gallus watched. Her mind was too noisy to weave a reassuring answer to his pinched brow, the stalwart concern that gleamed in his dark eyes. Flitting from branch to branch, her errant, crooked-winged thoughts flinched from the circling predator. For certain that was what lurked beyond sight: only a beast could find such a brutal price acceptable.
But who?
For no matter where her reasoning flew, it returned to that question in predictable migration. Surely that figure, the hooded woman in the slums, could not have resisted in gloating over playing such a wicked role in Andar's humiliation; but if not that thread of treason, then who? Did Rodan wager his claim to throne on the skeletons of infants? Did Lyroc poison the queens in an effort to foster a leashed bride at Andar's side? The queens, each of the beautiful eight, had motive to see their competition fall.
No. Yalira refused to consider that treachery in sisterhood, for surely they could not sink to such dark means. Her stomach twisted in response to the pale flutter of her heart, the memory of ether and oleander in the void of the mountainside. Sisters are not immune to betrayal.
The thought shadowed her arrival to the palace, to a waiting Andar to whom Gallus undoubtedly sent word. A fit, she imagined him conveying. Strange unresponsiveness. Perhaps touched by the day. How else could he describe her harrowing discovery if not as symptoms of something readily understood?
Andar's golden eyes searched each inch of her as if expected a new wound, a fresh burn, but he did not run to her, did not ask after her wellbeing. For all the intensity in his molten gaze, he waited in unflinching patience, uninterested pause. Even in the gentle stillness of night, there was no rain-soaked sky to shield them.
A flock of servants and their silent hands came to aid her dismount, to lead Shadow towards the dusk-bathed stables. Alone, or at least as alone as they could be with a trailing Gallus, he offered his arm. His skin seared against her frozen fingers. Half caught in shadow as he led her into the palace, Andar voiced his shielded anxiety in a hissing breath.
"Are you well?"
"No," she answered, matching his volume.
The tendons beneath her arm tightened. A mirrored match to the tautness in his jaw. A flash of candlelight sent a ripple of burning bronze through his hair. A statue, unyielding. "I will not allow you to return to the slums, I—"
She had spent too long fighting this mystery on her own. Too long playing a game without seeing the pieces. The great thread of her patience had finally worn thin against the discordant echo, but who? Subterfuge lived in each of the palace shadows. Deception lived in its columns and halls. Gallus, in gentle advice, had asked that she not wage forth alone. So be it. "Send for Oristos and Rishi. We must talk."
Andar's brow bent and broke into confusion. Whether the surprise of the interruption or the promise that breathed through each word, the message was received with unfamiliar acquiescence. He yielded.
His efficiency in sending servants to the queen, to his advisor, did not settle the prickling current in her skin. Yalira grasped for the logic to calm her nerve. Oristos was loyal to Andar before all others: he would thread the worn sinews of his heart through a needle if it meant proving that love. And Rishi helped before. The memory of the Lytvian queen spiriting away the dying infant was not as comforting as Yalira had hoped. Oristos, and Rishi were the closest she had to allies. And Andar was something for which she had no word to name.
All four of them—five, with the mute Gallus—together made for a strange party.
"When I invited you for drinks," Rishi drawled, settling herself at the lounge. She was wrapped in evening silks that whispered with each of her gestures. "This is not what I had in mind." She winked at the standing Andar. Without encouragement, the queen bent forward to pour glasses. "But I wonder if this is something more than simple revelry."
Across from her, Yalira's lips curved in absent humor. Despite her playful air, Rishi near always held a thread of the intrigue. Oristos lowered himself next to Yalira. If judging by the clenched jaw, the worried lines in his brow, and the stiffness of his posture, he did too.
Only Andar, a motionless statue before the open archway of his rooms, appeared uninterested.
"Do you plan on explaining your afternoon?" Andar asked, his voice smooth. Any concern that had broken through his stoicism in the garden, in their brief walk through the palace, had been replaced. That spark of humor in Antalis, the playful patience that sometimes slipped through in her presence. Both were gone.
He's worried.
Yalira steadied herself for the onslaught that would come. She reminded herself that this game had become too much to play on her own. Her voice did not waver.
"Someone is poisoning the queens."
Oristos let loose a strangled breath beside her, but Andar dominated her attention. In an instant, he understood. He stiffened and his golden eyes met hers in haunted disbelief, shamed relief. The slant of his mouth tightened, flinched as if he meant to speak. Instead, he ran a hand through his hair and lowered himself to the lounge with Rishi.
"Explain," he commanded in a forced breath.
"The tonic the queens drink." Yalira began simply, slowly. "A vial was broken today in the slums and I recognized the scent of the herbs within it."
She did not mention the pull of a goddess, the otherworldly confirmation that returned in furious vengeance. In her shock, Yalira had not considered what divine influence might mean in a world where she doubted divine influence. Now, surrounded by clever eyes that demanded answers firmer than the goddesses I do not believe in have made it known.
"Intentional, or no," Yalira said. "The queens have been taking an herb that I suspect and fear harms their unborn children."
Oristos opened and closed his mouth as if forming the right words to say. Rishi only leaned forward with interest. Yalira took one of the glasses for the diversion it afforded her nervous hands. She kept her eyes fast to golden king across from her.
"It is the common link. When I came to Semyra, I assumed it was you who were responsible. That you were the tie between the malformed children." Andar's eyes darkened in silent fury, but Yalira continued. "I was wrong."
She could not force her tongue to apology, to confess fully, but confession it was. In comfortable naivety, she had clung to the familiar and easy, she had avoided the sharp nature of truth. In the silence that followed, Yalira drowned her buzzing thoughts with a swallow of wine.
"I'd hate to make an accusation without evidence," Rishi said. It broke the pause. Though she smiled, no joy met her green and gold eyes. "But we know a poisoner in Semyra."
Andar flinched and shot to his feet.
Yalira waited. She did not want to believe that the queens, even the jealous Valen, could be capable of such darkness. With certainty, she knew Xaisha and Sasha had physical proof of their innocence; Avalyn implied through her loss of stillborns past. And Dezma would not knowingly harm Sasha, the woman of whom she was so fond. Or, at least, Yalira had seen no shadow of malediction hidden in her grief-stricken face as she dosed her friend with another swallow of the poison.
Edyt, Alleta, and Valen had no children born of Andar. Could their hands be stained in pomegranate and despair? Yalira shook off the memory of Edyt's arms forcing her head beneath the water's surface, the ghost of sharp pain in her chest as air escaped and the world turned dark.
It was not Edyt, she reminded herself firmly. Who meant to intimidate you. But for all of Valen's threats, her vicious tact, could the Prynian Queen maim and kill the innocent in a game of jealousy? The queen had bragged of her power, had shown sharp curiosity in Sasha's labor and its tragic aftermath. And how often had Rishi insinuated Valen's role in poisoning Andar's father? How could it be true? She had assumed that the Lytvian queen had only used those ugly rumors in petty warfare between the wives. How could Andar have willingly married the woman who murdered his father?
He paced, target of all their eyes, fire and vengeance in his.
"She wouldn't dare," he growled. A circling falcon, a stalking wolf, the savagery that lived beneath his marble surface rippled forth.
Oristos frowned and spoke as if reluctant to do so. His discomfort flashed in each note of his voice. "The medicine was brought after Andar married Valen. With her cache of physicians from Yenith."
Andar became still and, somehow still, he flickered like fire, and in it, the breath of the hearth seemed to grow cool next to his bright fury. His response, however, was steady. Hard as stone, cold as iron. "I'll kill her for this."
Though Yalira had no love for the woman, the threat scratched against her bones. Its heavy promise, bitter and burning, churned with the regret of including Andar in this new discovery.
Yalira attempted to temper him. "We do not know that it's her."
Oristos rubbed his face. His voice came hollow. A twisted whisper. "Who else would it be? Who else has the motive, the means?"
She had thought her words, that anchoring logic, might have softened Andar, but Oristos's questions prodded the king back to his pacing. The same questions spurred Yalira's thoughts into hissing insistence. Who else had the motive? The means?
There is another queen without children.
Across from her, free-hand playing at the heavy stones of her necklace, Rishi smiled grimly as she sipped at her wine. Tracing his path, her bright eyes followed Andar.
"You cannot kill a queen," she said. Ever in the game of wryness and control, her voice was touched with her usual bite. "It sets a bad precedent."
"What, then? Exile?" Andar laughed bitterly. His hands closed and unclosed in the motion of fists, but he joined Rishi on the lounge and glowered from his sprawl across its cushions. "Send my enemies another ally to use against me?"
He met her eyes with a patience, an expectance, that sent sour notes into Yalira's mouth. Where Andar had given her power, he now focused on Rishi with unbroken attention. Uncomfortable threads twisted together. Rishi who watched the hands who pulled at the strings of the world. Rishi who used careful rumor to let others implicate her enemies. Rishi who knew enough herbalism for debauchery and game. Rishi who always knew more than she let on.
"She'll stand trial," Yalira said. Her mouth had gone dry, but she was determined to regain the balance she'd not realized was at stake. "Let the forum decide her fate."
Andar scoffed. "I do not need the forum to decide for me."
His arrogance, that tightening in his jaw, set his golden eyes with fierce resolve.
Yalira ignored the spark of dark humor in Rishi's smile and made her voice firm. "You do. They wait for any cause to support your brother. Give them this small fraction of control to occupy them."
Rishi shook her head, smiled over her wine. Yalira felt her power slipping between her fingers. Threads turning into ashes. Her influence, her priestesses. She risked everything. "Occupy them with this," she said. "For I fear there are far larger conspiracies still hidden."
Andar stilled at the words. How many times had he insinuated the same? He might not know of the hooded stranger who used orphans for her purposes in the slums—and Yalira might not know the extent of her reach—but there was deeper plotting that threatened his empire. An empire with a foundation of blood and violence, with discordant aspirations of freedom and unity. An ever-shifting duality kin to the man and monster who held it in his grasp.
"And if they find her innocent?" Andar asked in forced gentleness. That powerful control, his greatest weapon, returned him to careful stoicism.
At this, Rishi smiled and tossed her head. The gold woven into her braids chimed in harmony. The song of it was battle drums, swords pounding against shields. "Do you think the queens would let her live? After what she's done to them?" Her laughter was bright. "No, Valen should hope for a fate as blessed as exile."