Eirhan and Aino shared a look I didn’t care for. “Learning the names won’t be sufficient,” Eirhan said. “You have to learn the people. You must know who has brought his mistress and who requires an altar in his room. Everyone will look to forward their influence with Kylma. Be prepared to talk of treaties. Be prepared to talk of your family. Be prepared to talk of yourself. And be prepared for every delegate to use the information against you.”
“So… how do I talk to them without giving them ammunition?” This wasn’t possible. Even my father couldn’t know everyone in the world.
“We will be here for you,” Eirhan said. “All you have to do is think before you speak.”
I had no doubt that things would be much worse than that. I resisted the urge to toss the paper into the fire. “Shouldn’t I be learning about our current treaties, trade deals, that sort of thing?”
Eirhan had a peculiar expression, as though something I’d said had given him indigestion. “Your Grace would be far wiser to start with the simple things.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Just because I was never interested doesn’t mean I’m a fool.”
“Of course not, Your Grace.” Eirhan’s carefully bland expression didn’t reassure me.
The door opened. “Minister Farhod wishes an audience,” the guard said.
“It’s not a good time—” Eirhan said.
I spoke over him. “Of course.” My heart did a little flip. Had we fixed things already? Was my father going to walk in here to see me playing grand duke?
Farhod entered alone. He already had the classic look of a long day in the laboratory—sweaty, in a loosened cravat and rolled-up sleeves. “I know you’re busy, but I need to show you something.”
I set my list to the side with a groan of relief. “What is it?”
Farhod’s hand went to his wrist, before he remembered his sleeves weren’t there. “I don’t… entirely know.”
I looked at Eirhan, who frowned but said, “Go if you wish.”
Aino and I followed Farhod toward the laboratory, and Viljo fell into place behind us. “Has the doctor been working with you?” I asked Farhod.
“I’m afraid so,” Farhod grumbled. He’d butted heads with my father’s doctor, Munna, on more than one occasion. I’d never been able to stand the doctor, either, so I’d trained under Farhod and hoped that I could make up any gaps in my knowledge later.
Farhod’s laboratory was a tower room built as an annex to the palace so that if it blew up, nothing else would go down with it. I’d trod the path so many times I could take it in my sleep. For a moment, I almost tricked myself into believing we were back in the routine of the curious lady and the besieged tutor. “I was thinking,” I said, trotting a little to keep up with his long stride. “Maybe I can work with you more on this.”
“You have a lot of duties. I don’t wish to add to them,” Farhod said, fishing for his key as we approached the laboratory door.
“But if I can help you with the cure, I can include it in my university portfolio,” I said. “They’d have to accept me with an accomplishment like that.”
I waited for the smile that Farhod always gave me when I thought of something clever. Or the tilting of his head from side to side as he considered. But Farhod hesitated over his keys. A tiny crease appeared between his eyebrows. Finally, he said, “Is that really what Your Grace is taking away from all this?”
“Why not?” I asked, but he’d already pushed open the door to the laboratory. I followed him in.
The laboratory was a small, clean space with a worktable and a few stools. The walls were lined with shelves that held ingredients and experiments, neatly labeled and kept in glass jars. The worktable held vials, one for each member of my family. Farhod uncorked the one marked Lyosha and held it out to me. I sniffed at the contents. They smelled… sweet? Clean? “Sweat?”
“It came off the body like sweat, but it tastes more like water.”
I knew that a good scientist and doctor wouldn’t shy away from bodily fluids, but the thought of tasting something excreted from Lyosha made my stomach twist. “Something interfered with his systems?”
“And look at this.” Farhod went over to a shelf and pulled out a glass jar. Within it sat a white powder—pulverized winter roses. He took a long-handled wooden spoon and dipped it in. “Do you remember what winter roses do?” He dropped the spoonful of powder into the vial. The fluid began to change color. Farhod swirled it around, and the color deepened, becoming the clear blue of water beneath ice.
“They react with magic,” I said.
My family hadn’t fallen ill. They’d been cursed.
And I’d been spared.
My mind spun. Magic was a highly regulated resource, which meant no dose left the royal treasury undocumented. So if I tracked down the magic, perhaps I could find the culprit. And if I asked the wrong people, or made the investigation too public, or told someone who couldn’t keep their mouth shut…
“Okay.” I tried to push the foggy web of court politics out of my mind. “What do we know? It’s magical. Which means it’s probably deliberate. Could it still be contagious?”
Farhod shrugged. “Magic is too unstable to predict an outcome. It could be that whatever happened to your family wasn’t the original intent at all.”
“But there was some kind of tampering,” I said.
“I’m not sure how else they could have fallen ill. They must have touched or consumed it.” Maybe Lyosha had done it. Maybe he’d intended to poison everyone, but somehow things had gotten mixed up and I’d ended up without the curse.
“But we can treat this like poison, can’t we?”
Farhod shook his head. “There are still too many things we don’t understand. We don’t know it isn’t contagious. We don’t know if our patients will live long enough to facilitate thorough experimentation.”
Something icy gripped my stomach. “What do you mean?”
Farhod hesitated. “I don’t know whether the goal was to put them in their current state or something worse.” He spoke carefully, neutrally. Almost matter-of-fact.
A chill skittered over my skin that had nothing to do with the laboratory’s ice walls and low-burning fire. Farhod was only stating facts, and I knew that. All the same, it almost felt as though he didn’t care. You don’t care about them, either, whispered a nasty voice in the back of my mind. You only started caring when it interfered with your plans to leave. “And you’re sure it was no accident.”
“I don’t understand how it could be,” Farhod replied. “I’ve been working my way through panaceas, but the best way to find answers would be to find the culprit.”
Which meant politics. I wrinkled my nose.
I put on my gloves, and we got to work. Ground-up bear bladder, bezoar, mercury—nothing seemed to react. How would I find a cure for a magical ailment?
And if only the grand duke controlled magic, did that mean I had access now that I was the duke? Could I possibly use it on the illness itself?
But when I brought it up, Farhod said, “You know better than to bring unknown elements into the search for a cure.” He was busy with a little pot over a burner. A sharp, sweet smell, like apple blossoms, emanated from it.