Three Dark Crowns (18 page)

“Y
ou hate her, don't you?” Joseph asks, sitting with Arsinoe at the Milones' kitchen table as Madrigal washes fresh rune-cuts on Arsinoe's hand. They are all the way up her wrist now, with bloodletting wounds on the inside of each arm.

“Mirabella, you mean?” Arsinoe asks. “Of course I hate her.”

“But why? When you don't even know her?”

For a moment in the forest, when Mirabella held out her hand, she almost made Arsinoe believe something different. And then the priestesses came, looking more like soldiers than temple servants, and whatever flicker was there vanished. Her sister is cunning and strong. She came very close. It must take all those soldiers to keep her in check. To keep her from stealing away and killing her sisters too soon.

“I don't think it is strange at all,” Arsinoe says. “Don't you
see? It has to be one of us. It has to be her. My whole life I have heard that it has to be her. That I have to die, so that she can lead. That I do not matter, because she's here.”

Across the kitchen, Grandma Cait throws a towel over her shoulder, shooing off her crow, who flies into another room and returns with a jar of salve. She lands on the table and knocks it against the wood.

“I'm not touching that,” says Madrigal. “It's oily and it smells.”

“I'll do it then,” Cait says gruffly, and uses the same towel to shoo her daughter out of her chair.

Cait's hands on Arsinoe's wounds are rough as she works the salve into the cuts. Rough because they are worried, but she says nothing. No one has said anything about Arsinoe's use of low magic. Since it brought Joseph home, even Jules has kept her mouth shut.

It is not in Cait's nature to hold her tongue. But chastising Arsinoe would do no good. She has been indulged for too long and has become used to doing as she pleases.

“You ought to let this air awhile. Before you wrap it up again.”

Cait holds Arsinoe's hand a moment and then pats it firmly and sets it on the table. Arsinoe frowns. The Milones have loved her well, but they have loved her as one loves a doomed thing. Only Jules ever thought differently. And now Madrigal.

“I don't suppose it matters that none of those things are Mirabella's fault,” Joseph says, and Cait smacks him with her towel.

“Stop defending that queen, Joseph Sandrin,” she snaps.

“But she saved my life.”

“Is that all it takes to buy your loyalty?” Cait asks, and Joseph and Arsinoe smile.

Joseph stands when Jules comes through the front door. He leans down and kisses Arsinoe on the forehead.

“You saved me too,” he says. “You found me.” He rests his hand on Arsinoe's shoulder. “But I don't want to see any more cuts on Jules, do you understand?”

“Not even if you go missing again?”

“Not even then.”

She harrumphs. “You sound like a temple acolyte.”

“Maybe so,” he says. “But there are worse things to sound like.”

Arsinoe does not see Jules again until much later, when Jules slips into their shared bedroom, with Camden behind her. Were it not for the sad dragging of the mountain cat's tail, Arsinoe might never have known that something was wrong.

“Jules? Are you just coming back?”

“Yes. Did I wake you?”

Arsinoe sits up and searches her bedside table until she finds her matches. She lights the candle to see Jules's troubled face.

“I wasn't sleeping that well, anyhow.” Arsinoe holds her hand out to Camden, but the big cat only groans. “What's the matter? Has something happened?”

“No. I don't know.” Jules climbs into her bed without
changing clothes. “I think that something might have happened with Joseph.”

“What do you mean?”

“He's different since the accident.”

Jules sits back quietly against her pillows, and Camden jumps up to lie beside her, and rests her large paws on her shoulder.

“Do you think,” Jules starts. “Do you think something could have happened with your sister?”

“My sister?” Arsinoe repeats. Jules almost never refers to the other queens that way. It sounds near accusatory, though Arsinoe cannot believe that is how she means it. “No. Never. You are imagining things.”

“He keeps finding ways to mention her,” Jules says.

“Only because she saved him.”

“They were together for two nights.”

An uncomfortable ball forms in Arsinoe's gut. She wishes that Jules would stop talking about this. She does not want to know it.

“That doesn't mean anything. She was . . . she was likely using him to find me. Perhaps she even sent the storm.”

“Maybe,” says Jules.

“Have you asked him?” Arsinoe asks, and Jules shakes her head. “Then ask. I'm sure he will tell you there was nothing. Joseph has been waiting for you for years. He would never . . .”

Arsinoe pauses, and glances down the hall toward Madrigal's room. When Joseph came home, they had worked a spell.
Soaked in her blood and then knotted together. But she had destroyed it before it could be finished. Or at least she thought she had.

“Sleep, Jules,” Arsinoe says, and puts out the light. “It will be better in the morning.”

That night, neither girl sleeps well. Jules and Camden compete for space in the bed, grunting and pushing at each other with paws and knees. Arsinoe listens to the rustle of blankets for a long time. When she finally closes her eyes, her dreams are of Joseph, drowning in a bloodred sea.

In the morning, Cait sends Jules and Arsinoe down into town, on orders to procure proper festival clothes. Gowns, she said, and grimaced when she said it. Cait, like Arsinoe, has no use for gowns. The brown and green wool dresses she wears to tend her household are all she needs. But even she will need one. This Beltane will be the elder Milones' first since Jules was born. As Arsinoe's stewards, every Milone must attend. Beltane, Cait says, is for the young and the obligated.

“Will we see Joseph first?” Arsinoe asks.

Jules wrinkles her nose.

“To make him come shopping?”

“There is no reason we ought to suffer alone. He and I can try on jackets and get kicked out of Murrow's for eating crab claws. It'll be grand.”

“All right,” Jules says. “He will not be on the boats, anyway.”

Joseph will not be on the boats for a very long while. It did not sit well with anyone to nearly lose him so soon after he was
regained. Least of all with his mother. She has grounded him and Jonah both and set them instead to working in the shipyard. Even Matthew has been restricted from going out too far on the
Whistler
, though that means sacrificing his best runs.

Arsinoe inhales warming morning air. Wolf Spring has begun its thaw. Soon enough, the trees will bud and everyone will be in much finer spirits.

“Wait, Jules! Arsinoe!”

A petite black crow soars overhead and wheels around to flap twice in Jules's face.

“Aria!” Jules sputters. Camden rears up to halfheartedly swat the bird, but the crow is too fast and makes it back to land at Madrigal's feet.

“I'm coming with you,” Madrigal says. She looks very pretty in a light blue dress and tall brown boots. Her hair is curled and bounces around her shoulders. Over her arm is a basket draped in white cloth. Arsinoe smells baked bread.

“What for?” Jules asks.

“I know more about gowns than either of you,” she says. “And it is too fine a day to spend indoors.”

Jules and Arsinoe look at each other and sigh. After the poor night of sleep, neither has the energy to argue.

They find Joseph with Matthew, talking on the deck of the
Whistler
.

“Here they come,” Matthew says with a broad smile. “Three of our favorite girls.”

“Matthew Sandrin,” Jules says, casting a glance at her mother. “You are too polite.” But she grins when Joseph jumps
onto the dock and pulls her close.

“They are very sweet,” says Madrigal.

“They are, indeed, though I could stand to see less of it,” Matthew says, and tosses a coil of rope at Joseph's head.

“We've come to take him away from you,” says Arsinoe.

“And what will you give me in return? Your pretty company while I bring in the crab pots?”

Arsinoe blushes. Matthew Sandrin is the only boy who has ever been able to make her blush. How she used to envy Aunt Caragh, even as a child.

“Perhaps this will do for a trade.” Madrigal holds out her basket. “Fresh oat bread and some cured ham. Two ripened hothouse tomatoes. The best we had. I ripened them myself.”

Matthew leans over to take the basket.

“Thank you,” he says. “This is unexpected.”

“I will come back for the basket later,” says Madrigal. “Will your run be long?”

“Not with my mother watching.”

“Come on.” Jules waves her hand. “If we get this over with soon enough, we can still make it to Luke's for tea.”

Their destination is Murrow's Outfitters, the only likely place to find festival clothes suitable for a queen.

“Maybe one of those lace ones?” Joseph suggests once they are inside, and Arsinoe grasps one by the sleeve.

“Lace,” she mutters, singsongy. “Lace, lace, I will strike you in the face.”

“Not lace, then,” he says. But there is not much to choose
from. What dresses they have are plain cotton things in blues and greens.

“Will you need something?” Arsinoe asks, and holds a jacket up to his chest. “Perhaps for the Hunt?”

“For the feast, you mean,” Madrigal says. “Naturalist boys will be shirtless for the Hunt. Bare-chested, except for the symbols we paint on them. As this is your first Beltane, Jules, you had best think of some pretty markings for Joseph.” She smiles and holds a dress up to Jules, who swats it away much like her cougar would. “Will Matthew join the Hunt this year?”

“I don't know,” says Joseph. “He may. He may not. He says it is for the young.”

“But Matthew is not old! He cannot be more than thirty!”

Joseph squeezes Jules's hand. Matthew is only twenty-seven. The same age as Luke. But Luke seems much younger. He has not known the sadness that Matthew has. The loss. All of Matthew's years must have felt long, after they took away Caragh.

“I'm going to go talk to the clerk,” Joseph announces. “Perhaps they can still have things brought in from Indrid Down, if the fear of poisoned dresses has not taken hold yet.”

“He doesn't seem different to me,” Arsinoe whispers to Jules after he has gone.

“Perhaps you were right,” Jules says.

“Why don't you take him and get out of here for a little while? We are not having any luck.”

“Are you sure?” Jules glances at her mother. “I can stay.”

“Go,” Arsinoe says, and grimaces at a dress of lace and
black ribbons. “That way you can witness my shame for the first time at the Disembarking, like everyone else.”

Jules nudges her shoulder, and Arsinoe watches as she goes to whisper into Joseph's ear, some foolish lovers' talk that she cannot ever imagine saying herself.

Of course Jules is wrong. Joseph may have done his share of looking, but he has only ever had one girl in his heart. Except as they leave the shop, Arsinoe catches Joseph's guilty reflection in the glass of the window.

“Arsinoe?” Madrigal asks. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” she says, but she grasps Madrigal by the wrist. “That first spell beneath the tree, when Joseph came home . . . That did not come to pass. That was destroyed. Wasn't it?”

“I do not know,” Madrigal answers. “I warned you not to burn it.”

She had not warned her not to burn it, Arsinoe remembers as she and Madrigal walk through the streets toward the square and Gillespie's Bookshop. She had only suggested she should not have, after the charm had already been burned.

Low magic will come back to bite. How many times has she heard that and in how many voices? From Jules and from Cait. Long ago, from Caragh.

“What if we did some kind of harm?” she asks. “Some kind of wrong, to Joseph and Jules.”

“If you did, there is nothing to be done about it now,” Madrigal says. “It will work its will, out in the world. Whatever you did has to be borne.” She shoves Arsinoe playfully. “My Jules
is in love and happy. You are worrying for nothing.”

But all through Luke's excellent tea service of poppy seed cake and diced chicken sandwiches, it is all she can think about. When Madrigal excuses herself to go to the docks to check on Matthew's afternoon catch, Arsinoe barely hears her.

“You know,” Luke says, and the way he twists Hank's tail feathers tells her he has been working up to this for the last several minutes, “all this searching through Murrow's is a waste. When I could make you something twice as good as anything from his tailors.”

Arsinoe looks at Luke and grins.