The King Slayer Part 9

Were I less angry, less worried, I might be able to appreciate the beauty of it. The carefully planted gardens, the fountains, the marble statues, the walls crawling with ivy and bejeweled with stained gla.s.s windows that sparkle in the sunlight. As it is, all I can do is look at John. He's long since shrugged off Nicholas's grasp, his face like thunder as he storms ahead of us, looking at and speaking to no one.

"The solar, I think, John, in the west wing?" Nicholas says. "We'll have privacy there."

John doesn't respond, but leads us through one of a dozen archways into an exterior hallway, to a closed but still guarded wooden door at the end. The guard sees John coming and immediately steps aside to let him in. A few turns down a corridor lands us in a cozy room overlooking the courtyard we just came in through.

Nicholas hails one of the maids bustling nearby and motions her over. He looks at John expectantly.

"What?" John throws his arms up. "For G.o.d's sake, what do you want from me?"

"Herbs," Nicholas replies, his voice soft, his eye contact direct. "For Elizabeth? For her injuries. What do you need?"

John throws me a half-appraising glance, then turns to the maid.

"Arnica for the bruising. Calendula or chamomile for swelling. Water. One bowl hot, the other cold. Clean cloths." A pause. "Bring some pa.s.sionflower, too, if you've got it. That should help calm her down."

"I don't need calming!" I shout.

The others look at me.

"Then what in G.o.d's name did you do that for? Fighting Schuyler-have you gone mad?" John swings an impatient hand. "Look at you! Your face. G.o.d's nails. How the h.e.l.l do you expect to hide that? Never mind that. He could have killed you."

"I wouldn't have killed her," Schuyler says at the same time I say, "He wouldn't have killed me."

"I had it under control," I continue. "We were just... practicing." I resist an urge to press a hand to my rapidly swelling eye.

"Why, Elizabeth?" Peter's calm voice is a stark contrast to John's rage. "You're not ready. Not for a match like that. Swordplay you could have managed, and I had Fitzroy ready to wager on your archery. Something noncombative. You didn't have to do this."

"It was Gareth." I glance at the solar door to make sure it's shut. "He was watching you fight, John. Chime was, too, and Fitzroy. They could see how good you were."

"So what?" John snaps. "So I was good. Why does that matter? It doesn't have anything to do with you."

Beside me, Fifer lets out a small squeak of protest. "It has everything to do with her."

"G.o.ddammit." John paces the room, threading his hands through his hair. His shirt is untucked and ripped down the front, his trousers are coated in sand and blood-not his own, but mine. "If you two don't shut your mouths about that stigma-"

"John." Peter's voice is firm. "That's quite enough."

"Then I don't want to hear another word about it," John retorts. "The stigma is mine. You gave it to me." He flashes me a look, not one of grat.i.tude or affection, but one of anger and ent.i.tlement. "If you want it back, it's the same as wishing I had died. Is that what you're saying?"

The way he's manipulating me in this conversation, boxing me in to get the response he wants, it feels familiar. It's the way Caleb used to speak to me.

"No," I reply, and I wish to G.o.d we were having this conversation in private. "I'm not saying that, of course I'm not-"

"Then stop trying to protect me!" he shouts. "You act as if I need you to swoop in and save me at every turn. I don't. I don't need you."

I feel as if I've been punched in the gut. My mouth goes dry and my face fills with the heat of embarra.s.sment and humiliation, of having others witness it. I try one more time, one last time.

"You don't know what having it means," I say. "I know the strength you feel, I know you feel invincible. But you're not." I pause, measuring each explosive word as if it were gunpowder. "I never regret giving you the stigma, I told you that. I also told you it has to be earned. What I didn't tell you was what earning it does to you." I'm aware of my voice echoing through the room, of everyone's eyes on me. "It takes away your compa.s.sion. Your humanity. It will take everything that makes you a healer. Everything that makes you who you are."

John shrugs. "And I told you, things are different now. As for my compa.s.sion, I have none. Not for Blackwell. Killing him has nothing to do with humanity, it has to do with revenge. I'll be d.a.m.ned if you or anyone else is going to stop me from getting it." He turns and pushes through the door into the hallway, Peter on his heels.

"He doesn't mean that." Fifer looks at me, her face waxen with horror. "He's just angry. He needs time to calm down. I'll go talk to him; maybe he'll listen to me." Even I can hear the uncertainty in her voice. She gives me a weak smile before following John and Peter out the door. Schuyler goes with her, and I'm left alone with Nicholas.

"What is happening to him?" I sink into a soft, golden chair and drop my head into my hands. "I don't understand what is happening to him."

"Blackwell's magic is taking over," Nicholas replies. "John's magic, the magic he was born with, gifted with, it cannot exist in the same plane as Blackwell's. The stigma is simply too powerful, and the balance that magic requires cannot be maintained." He eases into a chair beside me, as if that will ease the words that come next. "It is destroying John's magic."

"Then transfer the stigma back." I jerk my head up. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I'm desperate now. "Your magic did it once before; it can do it again. Give it back to me."

"I cannot do that," Nicholas says. "For one, John would not allow it. For me to force it from him would be the same as Blackwell forcing magic from all those other wizards without their consent. Even if I could," he adds above my objections, "it would not work the way we'd want it to. Blackwell's magic is too entangled with John's now. There is no way to separate the two."

"What if I kill Blackwell? If he's dead, if the source of the stigma's magic is gone, will it disappear from John?"

Nicholas shakes his head. "The stigma's magic is not attached to the source, the way my curse was attached to the Thirteenth Tablet. Were the stigma to operate the same way, it would be dependent on that source. Which is to say, if the witch or wizard who gave up their power were to die, a witch hunter would lose his or her power. You know, as I do, that Blackwell would never allow his machinations to fall upon the chance of others."

I drop my head back into my hands. The only sound in the room is the pendulum on a clock somewhere, ticking off seconds.

"I still have to kill him." I say the words not in anger or desperation, but in manufactured calm. "And I have to do it before John makes good on his threat to do it himself and gets himself killed."

"You're not ready to face him."

"The h.e.l.l I'm not!" I lose the hold on my composure, tether it down again. "I think it is he who is not ready to face us. Why the knights, why the archers, why this spy? If he needs the stigma so desperately, why isn't he coming after it himself?"

"Have you ever known Blackwell to do something when he could send others in his stead?"

"No," I admit.

"Blackwell not being here himself is not indicative of a lack of readiness," Nicholas says. "Our sources confirm that he's marshaling troops in Eastleigh and Spellthorne, Portsmouth and Somerset, and, of course, his own county of Blackwell."

"That's the whole of the southern counties," I whisper.

"Yes," Nicholas replies. "He is moving exceedingly fast, even in winter; especially in winter. He is more than ready to face us."

"Then all the more reason for me to stop him before he gets here," I say. "You have to help me do it, I don't care how. Spell me, curse me, give me an army, or just give me your blessing. But give me something. Give me"-I stop as it occurs to me; I can't believe it hasn't occurred to me-"the Azoth. I wounded Blackwell with it once; this time I can finish the job. I can sneak into Ravenscourt, I can kill him in his sleep-"

"You will not," Nicholas says, stern as the father I barely remember. "The Azoth is magic beyond you, beyond me; it is beyond even the stigma. Were you to use it, it would curse you. It would take you over, take every ounce of your power, until there was nothing left."

"I thought you said I didn't have any power," I mutter.

Nicholas throws me a sharp look. "I said this before at your trial, and I meant it: There is much for you to do to help us, but it does not entail you throwing yourself into death in order to achieve it. I understand you are accustomed to this being expected of you, but we do not expect it of you. I do not expect it of you."

"But John-"

"You cannot help him if he doesn't want to be helped," Nicholas says. Then he is gone, his red cloak billowing behind him as he sweeps from the room.

"The h.e.l.l I can't," I whisper. My eyes begin that familiar, uncomfortable burning that always seems to follow that familiar, uncomfortable feeling of pain.

The maid comes back into the solar with a silver tray full of the things John requested and sets it down beside me. Three tiny sachets of herbs; two bowls of water, one hot, one cold. I don't know what to do with any of it so I do nothing with it. I'm about to tell her to take it away when a soft, musical voice speaks.

"He left without healing you."

I look up to find Chime standing in the doorway, watching me. Up close, her yellow dress is even more beautiful, the skirt iridescent and shimmering, the bodice thickly sewn with seed pearls. But her face is shadowed by worry and beneath that, fear.

I swipe a hand across my eyes. "Yes."

"That's not something he would do."

"No."

"And you're not healing on your own."

"No," I repeat, my voice cracking on the word.

With a swish of silk and a patter of slippers on stone, Chime steps inside and shuts the door, moving to sit in the chair beside mine. With a sweep of her hand, she dismisses the servant and gestures at the tray between us.

"Start with the calendula, for swelling. That's the orange flowers. You'll need to steep them first, but not in the hot water. It'll burn the leaves. Use the cold instead."

"What do you know about healing?" I'm suspicious, remembering Fifer saying Chime's specialty was love spells.

"Not a lot," she admits. "But I've watched John work often enough that I know more or less what he would do. And anyway, I don't think I can make you any worse than you already are." It was meant as a joke, I know, but neither of us smiles.

It occurs to me, in a sickening, resigned sort of way, that Chime is the only one who cares for John the same way I do. She sees the difference in him now. She doesn't even know about the stigma but she knows enough to know he's not himself.

There's nothing Fitzroy wouldn't do for his daughter.

Chime is not my friend, nor will she ever be. But maybe she can be something more than that. Something that, in the end, will be more valuable. Maybe she can be my ally.

We sit together in the solar, empty and silent now but for the flutter of Chime's hands in water and the whisper of herbs as she steeps sachets and I dunk and wring out cloths, holding them to my eye, my cheek, my nose.

And I tell her everything.

TONIGHT, AS IT HAS DONE each night in the week since I arrived, the iron bell in the mess tent clangs three times, calling us to supper.

It's a different experience, living and training at Rochester, than it was in Greenwich Tower. There, we had our own living quarters. Warm beds, roaring fireplaces, fragrant rushes on the floor, linens smelling of lavender and changed daily. We ate formally: five-, even six-course meals on plates of silver with flatware made of pewter, wine in crystal goblets. We displayed our table manners, part of our education and a requirement foisted upon us at mealtimes, one we all abided unless we wanted the disgrace of being made to dine in the kitchen with the lesser servants.

Here at Rochester we sit at crowded tables, eat meals off trenchers of wood, often with no flatware at all. No goblets, either; we drink from shared wineskins. Dinner is not quail, or roast lamb, or even chicken: It's porridge and beans, cabbage and turnips, bread and cheese. Once a week, on Sunday, we're served meat, whatever is caught and killed from the surrounding park. It's not what I'm accustomed to, but I don't fault it. Feeding a thousand people is no small feat, even with the fleet of volunteers and servants Fitzroy has on hand. Not just that-these supplies have to last for who knows how long, and be enough for several thousand more.

I'm pushing my barley and onion stew around with a hard piece of millet bread when John appears, surrounded by a group of boys in uniform. They squeeze in around and across from me, all of them dirty and sweaty from yet another sparring match. I know them by sight but not by name: tall, well-built, attractive boys around John's age, laughing and confident. Some of the girls farther down the table watch them as they settle into place and begin reaching for their trenchers, cramming down bread and stew as if it were a delicacy.

John slides in beside me and gestures at the boys around him. "Elizabeth, this is Seb, Tobey, and Ellis." The boys look at me appraisingly. One of them winks. "And this is Bram." He points at the boy across from me. Dark hair, dark eyes, a twisted nose that looks as if it's been broken a few times. "His father's one of Fitzroy's lieutenants."

"I remember you." Bram looks at me across the table. "From Winter's Night. Remember? I congratulated you on your and John's wedding."

I don't say anything to this, but the other boys laugh and catcall John. Accuse him of being henpecked, of being smitten, wife-ridden.

"I'm not getting married," John says. "Never was. It was just a joke." The tone in his voice, the dismissal in it, makes my throat close up and my cheeks burn. I look down at my plate, whatever little appet.i.te I had now long gone.

The way John has treated me this past week, since the incident in the solar, it's wearing on me. He's always surrounded by these boys, always fighting. He doesn't seek me out anymore, not the way he used to. If anything, he's avoiding me. I saw him just last night with his new group of friends, Chime among them. He saw me, too, I know he did. But he didn't invite me over, and I didn't go. I just walked on by.

"Right," Bram says. "But joke or no, I enjoyed talking to you anyway. I remember your dress, the white one with the flowers. It was quite lovely."

I look up at him then, and the smile he gives me drops into the pit of my stomach and makes me feel even worse. He pities me, and to be pitied is the worst kind of humiliation. But I stay quiet. It's a trick I learned from training: If I make myself as invisible as possible, danger may just pa.s.s me by.

John and his friends continue eating, devouring everything in front of them. Seb, a tall boy with ginger hair and an unpleasant smirk, pulls a flask from beneath his jacket and uncorks it, the harsh scent of whiskey wafting over the table. He pa.s.ses it around and when it comes to John, he takes an enormous swallow. I open my mouth to remind him he doesn't drink, at least not while he's healing. Then I remember he's not healing at all and shut it.

"You're not eating," John says finally, nudging my shoulder with his. It's coming up on four in the afternoon, but the sun is already making its way into the horizon, spilling red across the grounds. The short and bitterly cold days of winter have taken hold, despite the warmth of a thousand fires-some real and rooted in kindling, some magical and free-floating-that heat the camp.

"I guess I'm not hungry." I wait, with useless hope, for him to tell me I should eat. That I need to in order to keep my strength up, or to prevent illness, or to stay healthy.

Instead, he says, "You don't mind if I have the rest, then?" He slides my plate in front of him before waiting for my response. "Fighting makes me so hungry. Seems like there's never enough." A pause. "Maybe you should train more. You might eat more, if you did."

With a clatter, the boys rise to their feet, pulling on cloaks, strapping on weapons, s.n.a.t.c.hing last-minute bites of bread off the table. John finishes the last of my food and turns to me.

"We're going to the tiltyards, see if we can't get in on the last matches of the day. Those pirates, they've got more money than sense. There's a fortune to be made off them, and you barely have to try." He shakes his head. "Idiots."

The other boys laugh. I wonder what Peter would say if he heard John speaking about his friends that way.

"I don't suppose you want to come, do you?"

His words, they're so similar to ones Caleb used to dismiss me, the way he'd invite me to things out of habit instead of desire. It hits me hard as a slap.

I shake my head.

"Suit yourself." John unfolds himself from the bench and that's when I see them: A brace of men making their way through the narrow aisles between the tables. Not the Watch, but members of the guard all the same. Black cloaks, silver pikes, the red-and-orange Reformist badge, stubborn on their lapels. There may not be Persecutors, not any longer; Blackwell took that away. But there are still lawbreakers to persecute.

The crowds around us, they pull back to let them through, following them with bemused looks. The men stop in front of me, but I know they're not after me.

"John Raleigh," one of them says.

"Yes?" John looks down at the guard; he towers over him by at least three inches. "What d'you want?"

"By the order of the council, we are sent to arrest you for possession of materials herewith banned within the parish of Harrow-On-The-Hill."

John opens his mouth, then snaps it shut, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

"What materials?" The boy called Tobey steps to John's side. His hand strays to his hip where his sword is hilted, an aggressive gesture.

"Leave it, son," the guard says to him. "You'll only make it worse."

Another guard pulls out a slip of parchment from his cloak, unfolds it, and begins to read. The gesture is so familiar, so like what I did for all those witches and wizards I arrested not so long ago, that I begin to tremble.

"Aconitum, a known paralyzing agent," the man starts. "Belladonna, which causes convulsions. Mandrake, which arrests breathing. Foxglove, also called deadman's bells, which causes tremors, seizures, delirium, and death."

Tobey turns to the red-haired boy, Seb. "Go fetch John's father. Peter Raleigh. He's at the tiltyards with the rest of the pirates. Now."

Seb pushes from the table and disappears into the crowd. Beside me, John pales; I can actually see the blood draining from his face. And slowly, slowly, he turns to me.

"You," he says, the disbelief evident even in his hushed voice. "You found them, didn't you? In my room. And you told them." He swipes a hand across the table then, sending trenchers and wineskins scattering. The crowd around us, they've fallen so silent I can almost hear my own heartbeat, pounding wildly in my chest.