The guilt and anger inside me twisted me tighter and tighter, until I felt like a walking trap, waiting to burst. The two people I most wanted to shake and rail at, I couldn’t. One was lost to me, probably forever, and the other … well, I was reasonably sure honor did not permit an attack, even verbal, on an unconscious, deathly ill Chancellor.
I stopped outside Tain’s room, hearing voices. Suspicion flooded me and I listened outside the doorway.
“What did you play?” Hadrea’s voice.
“Um … I dunno.” Davior’s high voice. The suspicion drained away, leaving me feeling tired and old. Hadrea could hardly have kept this from her mother, and despite the risks, I trusted them. In any case, I would need the extra set of eyes Salvea could provide. I tried to suppress the painful thoughts of the utterly trustworthy set I had just lost.
“Was it a new game, that you had not played before?”
“Mmm … No. I was catched. And some baddies. I got the prize!”
I walked in. Davi sat on his sister’s knee by Tain’s bed, his little round head leaning back against her shoulder as he looked up at her. He smiled when he saw me and I smiled back, but it felt wooden. Salvea stood on the other side of Tain’s bed, daubing his forehead with a cloth.
“My mother is good like this,” Hadrea said to me, tone hesitant.
“We’ll appreciate the help,” I told her, trying to warm my tone. Like throwing a blanket on an icy lake, but it was the best I could do in the circumstances. “Could you stay with him awhile?”
“Of course.” Salvea reached out a hand as if to touch me, then dropped it away. “He is a strong young man. The spirits will not have him yet.”
I nodded, stiff.
Without asking, Hadrea set her brother down and followed me from Tain’s room. I told her what had happened at the gate tower.
“Your sister is so brave,” Hadrea said at the end, her tone admiring. I stared, unsure I’d heard correctly.
“No, she’s not,” I said. “You don’t even know her. Kalina’s not brave. And she’s not strong. She would have been so frightened. She’s probably dead, and she would have been so frightened.” My voice caught in my throat and I turned away, blinking furiously.
She snorted, disbelieving. “How can you say she is not brave? Doing this thing … If she was not frightened, it would not have been brave to do it. You say she is not strong, but she was strong enough to risk her life for those she loved! That is courage.”
Even as some part of me recognized she was right, the other, tightly wound part, the part that wanted to lash out, won the day. “She made a stupid, impulsive decision, and I wasn’t there to stop her.” My voice climbed. “I didn’t watch out for her. And I was, we were … doing what we did this morning, while my sister was probably lying dead in the mud somewhere.”
She reeled as if I’d slapped her. “I do not regret this morning,” she told me, her voice dropping as much as mine had risen.
“Well, I do.”
Without a word, she pivoted angrily and walked off in the direction in which we’d come. I opened my mouth to call her back, to explain, but no words came out. The truth was I had meant it. If I had thought of my family instead of myself, Kalina would never have made the attempt. I hadn’t deserved the pleasure and contentment I’d found with Hadrea today, and would never be able to enjoy it again. It was for the best that she knew that.
Having wounded the one remaining person who mattered, I might as well turn my bitter attentions to someone who deserved them. Feeling hollow, I left the Manor in search of a poisoner.
* * *
I found Marco first, and had a few moments to observe him, unseen. He was in our new training hall—formerly a theater—directing an Order Guard and several others who had shown aptitude and had been designated as training supervisors. Hovering in the shadows of what had been the wings, I searched for signs of something, anything, to confirm or deny my suspicions.
He looked agitated. Although he spoke patiently and politely, his relentless pacing about on the stage reminded me of myself. Anxious to know if his poison worked?
I stepped out.
“Credo Jovan!” Unmistakable relief at the sight of me. “Bosco, Garaya, please carry on without me.” He put a hand on my shoulder and steered me back into the wings. “I’ve been worried.” I tried to relax the tension in my back and shoulders.
“Why were you worried?” I asked as we stopped in a back room of the theater. I propped myself against a set of crates, casually checking for exits. Being in a poorly lit, cramped space with him didn’t seem wise.
He gave the room no such consideration, sitting on the crate next to me with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been trying to find you and the Chancellor since yesterday, Credo,” he said. “I’ve left word with your messengers and went to the Manor a dozen times. Every time they said the Chancellor was out somewhere and they had not seen you. It was like you’d vanished after I saw you yesterday morning.”
I shifted, uncomfortable. I’d forgotten about the messengers. I’d have to find some way of dealing with them. “We haven’t vanished,” I said. “I had a headache yesterday and stayed indoors. I must have forgotten to pass that on to a messenger.”
He nodded, but his brow furrowed. “And the Chancellor? I met with him yesterday and we talked about how we might try again to destroy Trickster’s Bridge. He was going to meet me by the lake at dusk, but he never came.”
“I saw Tain this morning. He wasn’t in high spirits.” That’s true enough. “He needed a break from the Council and meetings and everyone pulling him in every direction.”
A pause. Marco leaned forward, staring at me. Then he shook his head. “I am sorry, Credo Jovan. But I do not believe that.”
“What do you mean?” I readied my legs. I was closer to the door than him, but would need the element of surprise to outrun my much more athletic opponent. “You don’t believe what?”
He sighed. “Chancellor Tain would not avoid his advisers and friends because he needed a break, Credo Jovan. He is honorable and bound by duty. He would not decide to avoid people on a whim. And a headache? You look more like a person to whom something terrible and grievous has happened. Please, tell me what is the matter with you both.”
I rubbed my hands together, stalling. Innocent or guilty, he already knew something was going on. So I gambled. “I don’t know how to tell you this. The Chancellor, he…” I buried my head in my hands.
“Credo? What is it?” It sounded like genuine alarm.
I took a shaky breath and looked him in the eye. “You must promise not to say anything. The city’s a tinderbox. If they find out…”
“Find out what? Of course I promise. Please, Credo, you’re frightening me. What’s happened?”
“Tain’s dead,” I whispered.
Marco sucked in his breath. “What? Wh—what?”
“He fell suddenly ill yesterday, Marco. He died last night. I didn’t know what to do. We thought it was some foreign disease that killed Chancellor Caslav and my Tashi, but now Tain, too? It must have been poison.”
Marco stared at me, then at the floor. His big shoulders shook. A small noise escaped him, as though he had tried to say something and failed.