Page 50 of The Ragpicker King
“Ryura hini,” Conor said softly, and Lin realized she knew the words. They were Malgasi. Mariam had murmured them to her, years ago, stroking her hair as Lin screamed through nightmares.Ryura hini. Ryura.Calm yourself. Calm.
The King’s arm lowered slowly to his side. Conor released his grip on his father and took a step back. The King was still expressionless; bright-red spots burned high on Conor’s cheekbones.
Lin thought of the broken glass on the desk. “How—”How often is he violent?she almost said, but changed her mind. “How long has he been like this?”
“Since the Shining Gallery,” said the Prince. “That night, after the bloodshed, my father walked away from the Carcel and entered this tower. He has not left it since. He has barely spoken since. He has been”—he waved a hand, his rings winking brilliantly in the candlelight—“as you see. Most of the time.”
“But he understands you, you think. You spoke to him in Malgasi.”
“Would that I understood more of it. But yes. He fostered at the Court there when he was a boy.” The Prince sounded impatient; the shadowlight threw the sharpness of his features into cold relief. The angles of his cheekbones seemed cut there by knives. “I cannot have Gasquet examine my father; Gasquet has no skill. Besides, he cannot be trusted. The world cannot know the King is ill. We have been at the verge of war with Sarthe these past months. If they knew—”
“But surely the Charter Families must have noticed he has not communicated with them, not appeared at meetings or communicated with Ambassadors?”
“I have forged all his letters,” the Prince said dispassionately. “With your grandfather’s help. Fortunately, we have not had to deal with Ambassadors coming in person. After the Shining Gallery, they have stayed away out of respect. Or fear, perhaps.” He smiled a twisted smile. “I will stand beside you if you wish to examine the patient. If he tries to raise a hand to you, I will stop it.”
“I have treated violent patients before. You need not worry.”
His gray eyes raked over her before he turned back to the King. “Father. She is going to examine you now.”
Clinging to the strap of her satchel, Lin advanced slowly toward the King. His eyes did not move to follow her progress, even when her shadow was cast across him. Conor stood close by, arms crossed, watching her as she fetched her auscultor.
Taking a deep breath, she leaned in close to the King. A faint scent rose from him, like old paper and char. Up close, she could see a little of his resemblance to Prince Conor. His eyes, too, were gray, clear as seawater, though the skin around them was seamed with fine lines.
Placing the auscultor against the King’s chest, she listened. It was unnerving to have a patient who did not even seem to know she was there, but his heartbeat was steady, his breath sounds normal. The King’s glands were not swollen, nor did his skin bruise when firmly touched. His eyes did not track the movements of her fingers, but that she had expected. He seemed far away again, and it was difficult to remember that moments ago he had lashed out at his son.
“He seems healthy enough, in body if not mind,” she said, drawing back. “I assume he eats and sleeps?”
Prince Conor nodded. “There is a small apartment through there.” He indicated a door, near invisible, set in the wall paneling. There were odd marks on the door, Lin noted. Black, like scorch marks. Perhaps the result of some old experiment. “The Queen sees to him, bringing food and water. Jolivet sometimes. I trust no one else.”
“Could it be simply the shock of the events in the Gallery, affecting his mind?” Lin asked. “I have seen it before, in sailors who have survived shipwrecks but seen their friends drown. The mind can be wounded as well as the body—”
“It is not that,” said the Prince. “You asked me before about his fostering at the Malgasi Court. My father did not return from there alone. He brought a man named Fausten with him. A strange little companion. He and my father spent hours locked in this tower, claiming to be unraveling the secrets of the stars. In his more lucid moments, my father asks for him. But Fausten is dead. My father had him executed months ago.”
Lin said nothing. There were times when she knew she needed to let her patients and their families talk; they would tell her what she needed to know, given space to do it. This seemed one of those times.
“I wondered why he seemed to want to see a man he had distrusted enough to condemn to the Trick,” Conor went on, naming the black tower where convicted prisoners of the crown were held before execution. “Then I realized it was not Fausten himself he was asking for, but rather something Fausten provided for him.”
The Prince looked once more at the unmoving shell that was his father, then crossed the room to the desk and returned with a glass flask. In it was a few inches of dark-brown liquid. He held it out to Lin. “He calls this hismedicine,” he said, his lip curled. “It seems Fausten was giving my father this brew regularly. One of the guards told me. There is no more of it, though; I have searched Fausten’s quarters, but it seems to have gone with its maker.”
“And what is it?”
“That is what I wish you to discover. You are an Ashkar physician; you have knowledge of herbs and medicines. I wish to know what this is. A medication, a poison, or—something else.”
Merren would say the difference between a remedy and a poison is only in the dosage.The thought of Merren brought the image of hislaboratory to her mind: mechanisms to distill, to separate and concentrate ingredients...
“Something else?” she echoed. His gaze caught hers; she was aware again of how much his eyes were like Kel’s, and yet how different. The same shade, but there were different patterns inside the iris. In his left eye, Conor had a small white spot, like a star, near the dark rim of his pupil. “If not a medicine or a poison, then what?”
“That can be addressed when we know what the mixture is.” He held out the flask. Lin took it, and for a moment her fingertips brushed against his. The hard jolt of it went all the way through her as if an arrow had split her rib cage.
She snatched her hand back.Stupid,she thought a moment later; stupid to let him see how much he affected her. How ridiculous he must find her, she thought, and indeed his mouth had settled back into a hard, uncompromising line.
“Get word to me as soon as you discover anything,” he said as Lin slipped the flask into her satchel. “You can send a message through any of the Castelguard you see in the streets.”
“Thank you,” Lin said tonelessly. “I would like a carriage. To take me back to the city.”
“Now?”
“That is up to you,” said Lin. “I wait on your pleasure, Monseigneur. You have made that very clear.”
