Page 44 of The Half King
Daerick shuddered. “Say no more. Let’s start with what we know about undoing curses: the soothsayer told us that blood spilled requires blood given.”
“All right, so who stabbed the goddess?” Kian asked, looking to Cerise as if she would know the answer. “Which dynasty spilled her blood?”
Cerise tipped up her palms. It was common knowledge that the Petros dynasty had forged the weapon used in the attack. The weapon was known as the Petros Blade, but none of the scrolls mentioned who had actually wielded it or what had happened to the blade following the Great Betrayal.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she said. “All four houses are equally guilty of trying to kill Shiera. If a firstborn from each noble dynasty makes a blood offering to the goddess, maybe that will repay the debt.”
“But how much blood is enough?” Kian asked. “A thimbleful? A whole body full? And in what manner should it be spilled in order to appease your goddess?”
“She’s your goddess, too,” Cerise reminded him. Other than that, she didn’t know the answers to his questions.
Kian groaned and rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Perhaps you can pray to the goddess you adore so much and ask her for a hint—just a shade of transparency to clarify the water she deliberately muddied for us.”
A shade of transparency. The words stood out in Cerise’s mind. She recalled what her father had told her about the dangers of court politics:Nothing at court is as it seems. Behind every honest word, you should expect a hidden meaning. No one will be transparent with you. They’ve learned it’s not safe to be.
All of a sudden, she thought of Mother Strout’s journal and how little information it contained. There was nothing of use on its pages, only scribbles and secretarial details, so why had the old emissary bothered to keep a journal at all? Unless there was more to it…a hidden meaning behind the words, like Father had said.
Cerise slipped to her desk and opened the middle drawer to retrieve the journal. She lifted the black-and-white book and flipped through its pages, studying them with fresh eyes. Now that she paid special attention, she could see how the outer edge of each nonsensical drawing along the margin aligned with the inner edge of the drawing on the next page. Mother Strout hadn’t scribbled in her journal out of boredom. She had left a message for her replacement, and Cerise had nearly missed it.
“Help me with this,” she said, then told Kian and Daerick what she had learned.
Together, they worked for the next hour to carefully cut each drawing from its margin and lay it atop Cerise’s mahogany desk. There were hundreds of pieces in all—a handmade puzzle to solve without a single guiding clue. Next came the task of arranging the pieces into something recognizable. The process was laboriously slow, but eventually the matches began to reveal a rough sketch of a lady’s gown. After that, the puzzle came together more easily. Daerick found the final match, and then they stood back to study the picture.
The sketch showed a group of people, five of them in all, gathered at the base of a mountain. One of the figures appeared to be a priest or at least a man dressed in robes. Two figures were depicted as women, and another two were depicted as men. The priest stood at the center of the group, holding a sword in his outstretched hands while the four other figures touched the blade with their index fingers. The image was titledContritionin tiny block letters and dated a hundred years in the past, as if Mother Strout had discovered the artwork and sketched from memory.
“Is this…” Cerise began, nearly afraid to hope. “Could this be…”
“A visual set of instructions for breaking the curse?” Daerick offered. “It certainly looks that way.”
Cerise had never seen anything like it. “I wonder where the original is.”
Kian exhaled bitterly. “If Strout hadn’t poisoned herself, we could ask her.”
Buthadshe poisoned herself? Especially after making such an important discovery?
“I can’t believe she kept it a secret,” Cerise said. The world of men had been looking for a way to break the noble curses for a thousand years. Uncovering this knowledge would have made Mother Strout a hero to every noble family in the world.
“I know; it doesn’t make sense,” Daerick agreed. “If I found a way to end generations of torment, I would tell anyone with ears.”
So would Cerise. But then she remembered her father’s warning about transparency being a danger at court. Maybe Mother Strout had hidden her discovery because she’d felt unsafe. And considering her recent death, her fears had probably been justified.
Kian pointed at the sword. “Well, this answers my question. A drop or two of blood from all four dynasties, given to—”
“The Petros Blade,” Cerise breathed, touching the sword in the drawing. Her heart was beating too fast, and there was a strange buzzing in her ears. The revelation was real. Herpurposewas real. She might actually have a chance of doing this. “But where do we get it?”
“I heard it’s frozen in the northern ice caps,” Kian said.
“No,” Daerick told him. “You’re thinking of the Chalice of Champions, and that’s not a real thing.”
“Of course it’s not real. I wasn’t thinking of the Chalice. Everyone knows it’s made up.”
“Not everyone.”
“Everyone with a brain.”
“Well, I’m just saying…”
While the two of them bickered, Cerise squinted at a miniature detail she’d just noticed in the background. There was more to the picture. A series of numbers had been cleverly drawn into the curves of the mountainside. “What’s this?”
