Page 128 of The Ragpicker King
The fire in the brazier has burned low. Elsabet sits in the darkness of the temple, her hand at her throat.
She can feel the Source-Stone pulsing under her skin, the way it always does. A palace doctor had put the first stone there when she was thirteen and she had nearly fainted from the agony, but now she is used to it. As each stone faded in power, it had been removed, and a new one put in. She’s had the operation three times now, and has come to enjoy the pain, even revel in it. For the stones are the source of her power—a power no one else in Dannemore outside her family could hope to touch—and the pain and the power go hand in hand.
The power in this one is slowly dying, she knows, for all that she has tried to conserve it. The night before, she had woken to find it flickering, as if it were warning her of something, but she had felt nothing out in the city save the dull hum of slight magic that always came from the Sault. She will need to reach out soon for a replacement stone; one that malfunctions is worse than no stone at all.
“My lady.” Bagomer slides into the room like one of the shadows he likes to hide in. “All is in place.”
She flicks her gaze up to him. “The bodies have been found?”
“Yes. We left them in the canal outside the Caravel, as instructed. One of the whores found them.” Bagomer grins. “And more good news. I was just with the privateer, Laurent Aden. I have told him which guard he must speak to in order to be let into Marivent. He will retrieve the Kutani Princess and bring her to his ship. She will no longer be in the way.”
“I thought she was being recalcitrant?” says Elsabet. “That she no longer wishes to leave her betrothed?”
“Aden said he believes he can convince her. And if he cannot...”
“Then we will kill her at Marivent instead of in the sea caves. It will be messy rather than clean, but she must die either way. As must Laurent Aden. Ridiculous of him to involve himself with royalty in the first place. Men in love are so terribly foolish.” She shakes her head. “And Seven?”
“The meeting is planned for tonight. He will take full advantage, he assures me.”
The stone at Elsabet’s throat pulses as if it, too, is pleased. “Everything is in Seven’s hands now,” she says. “If he pulls it all off, I might just let him live.”
She sits back in her chair, feeling—for the first time in some days—pleased with herself. Her mother, she thinks, would be proud. She is pleased enough to be distracted, and distracted enough not to notice the faint sound of footsteps as a cloaked Laurent Aden slips from his hiding place and makes his way out of the temple.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Golden afternoon light spilled into the North Tower through dozens of slatted, narrow windows. A Castelguard was waiting on the landing outside the King’s room and ignored Lin—as if he’d been instructed to do so—as she went through the door.
Once inside, Lin felt her heart sinking. She was not sure what she expected might have happened since she’d given Conor the reformulated medication yesterday, but nothing seemed to have changed.
The room still felt close, oppressive and dusty. The papers scattered on the desk had a yellowed look, as if they were becoming antiques. The King was a shadowy, motionless silhouette in his chair.
As she moved across the room toward him, her skirts rustling as if they, too, were old paper, Lin noticed again that the noon light that lay across the floor looked fragmented somehow, like light seen through stained glass.
She remembered, then. The scratches on the windowpane. She sped up her pace, passing in front of the King—who did not seem to see her or react to her presence—and reached the window, a single heavy square surrounded by leaded glass. She dropped hersatchel and ran her fingers across the cold surface of the pane, the ridged scratches scraping against her fingertips.
They were on the inside of the window, not the outside.
Without dropping her hand, Lin turned to look at the King. His eyes were fixed on her. There was no expression in them, and none on his face, but he was lookingather. Of that, she was sure.
“You did this,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
He moved slowly, infinitesimally, turning his body toward her. He was draped all in dark cloth, as he always was, and Lin was struck by the awkwardness with which he moved. As if his own skin were a suit of ill-fitting clothes.
He spoke then, but not out loud. His voice echoed inside her mind, just as it had in her dream. She did not even feel surprised by it.
Take my gloves.
Lin blinked.
Remove them, healer. See my hands.
As if she were still in her dream, Lin went toward King Markus and knelt before his chair. His hands lay unmoving in his lap. She lifted one, carefully; it was deadweight. She wondered vaguely if she would be able to manage this without her physician’s training; the sense of something eerie, something awful, pressed at her like a weight. If she had not seen horrors before—snapped bones, crushing wounds—would she have run screaming?
She took hold of the gloves. They felt strangely warm, as if the leather were the temperature of skin.
She drew one off quickly, and then the other, dropping them where she knelt.
The King held out his bare hands, and Lin stared. Her breath felt tight in her chest. She had seen burn wounds before, skin turned to gashes and runnels by blistering fire. Limbs that seemed melted.
