The king slayer, p.5
The King Slayer, page 5
The trellis.
In less than a minute I’m out the window and over the edge, down the wall and on the ground. A quick glance through the blue-paned window of the front house shows Peter at his desk, busy with his letters. I duck beneath it and pass to the other side, my bare feet crunching in the narrow gravel pathways until I’m standing in the garden beneath John’s window. There’s a trellis here, too, full of the same winter honeysuckle.
I start to climb.
Within seconds I’m at the top, peering into his window. John is sitting at his desk, propped up on one elbow, his head resting in his hand, reading. He’s tired, I can tell; his eyes are at half-mast and even as I watch him, they slide shut and his head bobs forward.
I tap on the window.
His head snaps up, eyes wide. He glances toward the door.
I tap again.
John whips his head around, catches sight of me outside his window. I smile at the way his jaw drops open, shocked. He’s on his feet in an instant, crossing to the window, pulling it open, and tugging me inside. I clamber over the sill, clutching my nightgown around my legs so it won’t tangle.
His eyes travel from my hair, loose and hanging around my shoulders, down to my bare, mud-stained feet then back to my face, but not before lingering slightly on the low, square neckline of my nightgown that shows more than it should.
I really should have changed.
“Elizabeth,” he starts.
“Before you say anything, I need to talk to you.” I step away from him, out of reach of his arms, of the way his shirt is unbuttoned too low, his hair that looks like it’s had my hands in it. The way he looks at me, a half smile bordering on a smirk, and the way he smells, lavender and spice and something unmistakably him. My insides do a long, slow twist.
He takes a step closer.
I hold my hand up. “You stay right there. I can’t have you distracting me.”
John sighs, running a hand through his already-disheveled curls. Then he points at the chair at his desk, the one he was sitting and almost sleeping in moments ago.
“Please, sit.”
I do.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For how I acted today. Earlier. Downstairs. You know.” I shake my head at the ineptness of my apology.
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. “I was terrible. You didn’t do anything. And I never even thanked you for what you did do. Standing up for me at the trial. Agreeing to fight with me. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
“You’re wrong.” John sits on the edge of his mattress facing me, resting his bare feet along the dark wooden bed frame. “It was very easy.”
“I know that’s what you think now,” I say. “But nothing about this is going to be easy.”
“I only meant that the decision was.”
“You say that only because you have the stigma,” I say.
“It has nothing to do with that.” John considers. “No, you’re right. It has everything to do with it.”
“I don’t regret giving it to you,” I say quickly, before the seed of the idea can take root. “I never regret that.”
“But you do regret not having it,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. And there it falls: the truth. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t. It would make what I have to do… doable. Because right now it isn’t. Right now it seems impossible.”
John falls silent, in the way that tells me he’s thinking something he doesn’t want to say. So I wait for it. For him to tell me I can’t kill Blackwell. To tell me, as he’s done so many times before, that it’s too dangerous, that I’m not strong enough.
“I know you think I’m going to try to stop you from doing what you want with this,” he says finally. “But I’m not.”
“You’re not?” I enjoy a second of relief before it falls into distress. “Oh. Is that because… you don’t want, you know, you, and me, and…”
“No!” He gets to his feet, takes my hand, and pulls me off my chair and onto the bed to sit beside him. “Of course not. That isn’t it at all. Do I wish I could lock you away until this is all over? Yes. But you would hate me for it, and anyway, that’s not who you are. And I never want you to be anything different.”
I blink. “No?”
“No.”
“And… that’s it?” I say. “No arguments, no fighting?”
John huffs a quiet laugh. “Would you prefer I pull a sword on you? Duel it to the death?” I smile, and he goes on. “I’ve got your stigma, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to protect you with it. As much as I can, however I can. I won’t stop you. But I don’t want you to try to stop me, either.”
I hesitate, but only for a moment. The conditions of the truce he’s offering aren’t ideal, but they’re unlikely to get any better.
“I guess we’re in this together, then.”
He grins. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
I laugh at that. I can’t help it.
John shifts a little, moving closer to me. The light in the room is dim, the tired candle on his desk having already extinguished itself. The last one sits on the table beside the bed, the flame bobbing softly in the night breeze. He slides his hand into my hair, cupping my neck, his thumb skimming across my cheek. I lean into him and I don’t know who kisses who first but it hardly matters.
We half push, half pull each other down onto the bed. We’re tangled together on the sheets, kissing and fumbling and tugging at each other’s clothes. I don’t remember deciding to take off his shirt but there it is, off. His hand moves to my bare leg, sliding up to my hip and taking my nightgown with it. I let out a little gasp; he kisses me harder.
The feel of his hands on my skin, of mine on his. His lips on my neck, his hair tangled between my fingers, his breath in my ear. I can’t think. Maybe it’s the control we spent staying apart while living so close in this house, maybe it’s the control spent keeping ourselves together today, but it’s falling apart now. My heart is racing, my breath is coming fast, we’re doing what we’ve done before but it’s never felt like this: all urgency and carelessness and need, and I want it all to carry me as far as it will take me.
A flurry of wind blows through the window then; the candle on the bedside goes out with a hiss. The room plunges into darkness. The sharp, opaque scent of sulfur from the extinguished flame; the mattress creaking under our weight; the feel of his bare skin pressed against my own. At once, I’m not in John’s room, kissing him, feeling his body on top of mine. Instead, I’m in Ravenscourt Palace, in Malcolm’s room. I’m coerced, I’m unwilling, and I’m frightened.
The heat I felt just moments before gives way to a sudden snap of cold. I push him off and away from me. Scurry to the head of the bed, pulling my nightgown down to cover my bare legs. My breath is still coming fast.
I can’t see through the darkness in the room, not really, but I can make out John’s silhouette as he sits up. His breath is still coming fast, too.
“Hold on a minute.” John gets up, fumbles around for his shirt, pulls it on. Makes his way to the table. I hear the scratch of a match, watch as he relights the candle in front of him. He glances at me, then crosses the room and lights three more, set into brackets at intervals along the wall. Light floods the room.
“I’m sorry,” I say, before he can say anything. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I did that.”
“You don’t have to know,” he replies. “And you don’t have to apologize.”
“I guess it was the dark,” I continue. “It reminded me of being somewhere else, with someone else—”
“Elizabeth.” John moves to the bed again and sits at the very end of the mattress, as far away from me as he’s able. “You don’t have to explain it to me.”
He slides his hand forward across the mattress until his fingertips touch mine, tentative.
I’m reminded of the way he did that on the morning after we first went to Veda’s, after I reacted the way I did in the tunnel beneath her cottage, remembering my final test, filled with so much fear I couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything but curl into a ball. Reminded of how he carried me in his arms back to Nicholas’s, stayed with me all night. How, even then, he cared for me in a way no one else had before.
I’m also reminded of how none of this is easy for him. Nothing about me, or him and me, is simple. I know it would be easier if I had never come into his life at all. If he had stayed with Chime, if he’d preferred her over me. The guilt eats at me, but I can’t tell him this. Because if I do, it will be just one more burden he will take on for me, when he’s already taken on so many.
“I should go.” I swing my legs over the edge of the mattress.
“Wait.” He catches my arm. “Please, stay. I’ll sleep on the floor,” he adds quickly. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But I don’t want you to go.”
I start to say no, that it’s best for me to leave. But just like every other day, when I stay when I know I should go, I don’t.
“All right,” I say. “But you’re not sleeping on the floor.” I turn back to the bed, sliding under the clean, lavender-scented linen sheets.
John pauses, then slides in beside me, pulling the bedcovers over both of us. He’s careful not to touch me, too careful. But after a moment I roll over to face him, wrap an arm around his waist. He pulls me closer, my head resting on his chest, his face buried in my hair.
And we sleep.
COUGH.
The sound cuts through my slumber, pulling me awake. I open one eye, then the other, taking in the dark paneled walls, the deep blue bedcovers, John’s arm slung around my waist. We’re still in the same position we fell asleep in, curled up in each other.
Cough.
Peter.
“God’s nails,” John murmurs into my hair.
“How long do you think he’s been out there?” I whisper.
Cough. A pause, then a horrible choking sound of Peter clearing his throat. Cough.
“Judging by that noise he’s making, I’d say awhile.”
I press a hand to my mouth to smother a laugh.
“Shh, you’ll make it worse,” John says, only he’s laughing, too. “I guess I’d better talk to him.” He pulls away from me and climbs out of bed. His warmth goes with him, leaving me cold.
“Wait.” I sit up. “You can’t go out there looking like that.”
“Why?” John looks down at himself. At his wrinkled trousers, his rumpled shirt that looks exactly what it is: slept in. What he can’t see is his tousled hair, or the smirk on his face that makes him look as if he’s been up to no good—or quite a bit of good, depending on the one looking.
“Because you look as if you’ve been doing exactly what your father thinks we’ve been doing.”
“Ah.” John grins. “Here’s the thing: If I go out there with neat hair and proper clothes, he’ll think I’ve got something to hide. Because if I were really guilty of something, there’s no chance I’d go out there looking like this.”
“Oh.” I think about this a moment, then scowl. “Done this before with other girls, have we?”
“I’ve never done this with other girls. Only you.” He dips his head, brushes his lips against mine. “You’ll always be the only girl.”
My lips curve into a smile as I kiss him back.
Cough.
“Into the breach.” John crosses to the door, flinging it open with a flourish. “Sounds like you’ve got the croup,” he announces, stepping into the hall. “That’s quite a feat, you know. Croup is almost exclusively a child’s illness, and exceedingly rare in old men.”
John closes the door then, but I hear Peter’s response anyway.
“I’ll give you the croup, young man.”
I press my hand against my mouth again to stifle my giggles.
John and Peter continue talking, their voices muffled through the wood so I can’t hear what they’re saying. I can’t exactly leave and go back to my room, not with them standing in the hallway. I could climb back out the window, but there’s no point in that now. May as well wait until John returns, to hear our punishment.
I climb out of bed, examine the tangled sheets and coverlet before pulling them over the mattress, smoothing them tight. Then I remember what John said about looking guilty and pull them back down again.
The window is still slightly open, the cold morning breeze slipping inside. I pace the room, and in the light of day I can see just how transparent this linen nightgown is, how you can see nearly everything underneath. So I sit down at John’s worktable and tuck myself in as far as the chair will allow.
It’s a mess. Books, parchment, ink, and quills scatter the surface. Scales, mortars and pestles, strainers and stirring sticks made from wood and glass and metal. Half the drawers in the table are open, spilling forth with herbs and powders, roots and leaves. I’m overcome with an urge to clean it all up, but I leave it all be. I’ve seen enough of the way John works to know there’s some sort of method in his madness.
A familiar scent hits me then, drifting in with the breeze. It’s deceptively soft and sweet, like scented talcum, but with a bite that lingers in your nose afterward—a warning. I peer into drawer and there it is: Aconitum. Also called wolfsbane, or devil’s bane, it’s extremely poisonous. It can cause paralysis; it can stop someone’s breathing; it can stop a person’s heart.
While devil’s bane is recognizable by scent in its raw form, it can be mixed with other herbs to become neutralized, making it odorless, tasteless, untraceable: the perfect poison. There’s no use for it except to kill.
I look through a few more drawers. Dig through more sachets, more jars, more bottles. Find more poisons. Belladonna. Mandrake. Foxglove. Why does John have them? More than that, how did he get them? Even in Harrow, where magic is allowed, these herbs are banned. Fifer said that Harrow’s prison, Hexham, was once filled with wizards who tried to settle one grudge or another using poison: a salting of devil’s bane in someone’s soup or a dusting of deadmen’s bells on a letter.
I set the poisons on the table, thinking to ask John about them. Then I reconsider. If he hasn’t told me about them, there’s a reason for it. So with the skill born of years spent ransacking wizards’ homes—finding things they didn’t want me to, rearranging them back the way I found them before leaving and filing a formal report with the office of the Inquisitor, and eventually, inevitably, returning to arrest them—I tuck them back into the drawers.
When John returns moments later, I’m sitting in his bed on top of the blue coverlet, smoothed tight over the mattress again. I’ve plaited my hair down my back, securing it with a piece of twine I found on his table. My hands are folded in my lap. John stops on the threshold, takes one look at me, and starts to laugh.
“I’ve never seen anyone look guiltier than the way you look right now.”
I don’t reply, not right away.
“What did your father say?” I finally manage.
John shuts the door and leans against it. He’s grinning. “He says I’m to remember my manners, and your modesty. I’m also to consider my future instead of my present, weigh my intentions against my impulses, eschew vagary and vulgarity, caution against capriciousness, reject foibles, and embrace virtuosity.”
“Those are a lot of words.”
“There were a lot more besides that.”
“He talks a lot, doesn’t he?”
“You have no idea.” He tilts his head, his grin fading into a look of sympathy. “You look so glum. Don’t be. If this were at all a problem, I would tell you. It’s not. It’s just his way of showing he cares. It’s odd, I know. But believe me, if he didn’t act this way there would be a problem.”
“If it’s not a problem, then why are you still standing there instead of over here?”
John’s grin is back. “Because he’s on the other side of the door, waiting for me to escort you back to your room.”
“Oh.”
I get up, cross to the door. Stop in front of him. He looks down at me, his eyes full of warmth and amusement and something else, too: love. When he leans down to kiss me, I push down my guilt, as far as it will go. Wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back.
“Vagary,” he whispers.
“Vulgarity,” I whisper back.
The following day, Harrow is hit with another attack. Five more archers, just like last time. Only this time they get farther, all the way to Gallion’s Reach, the very center of Harrow. Where the high street is, where the shops and taverns are, where a hundred or so people were when they came roaring through in a swirl of inky-black cloaks and arrows and violence. They fired at random, killing two unarmed men, a horse when they missed, one of Peter’s pirate brethren when they didn’t.
The archers escaped as quickly as they invaded, before what little guard we have could rally a chase. Our men spent the morning picking through the surrounding villages but came up empty, the attackers no doubt returning to Upminster to fill Blackwell’s ears with yet more information on Harrow: the layout, the security and lack thereof, where people congregate, where people do not.
Nicholas and the other council members spend the week increasing and adding to the spells around Harrow. Before, only those without sovereignty were disallowed. Now there are three veils of magic: sovereignty, sanction, and intent. Three chances to pass, three chances to fail.
But as Blackwell’s men are armed with magic, magic is not enough. So within that same week, the Watch was formed—a group of two hundred armed men patrolling the thirty-odd miles of Harrow’s borders, day and night, determined to prevent another breach. Peter and John were among the first to volunteer. Not wanting to disrupt the fragile peace that’s settled between us, I encouraged it. And when they packed their bags and stowed their swords and left Mill Cottage, I hid my reservations beneath a smile and a bid of good luck for Peter, a kiss and a whisper of care for John.
