Three Dark Crowns (23 page)

T
he poisoners arrive in the night, their whole clan descending upon the festival grounds like ants. They set their tents by moonlight and only the smallest of lamps, working so quietly that when day breaks upon a dug-in encampment, many of the heavier-sleeping priestesses stare at it with open mouths.

Inside her tent, Katharine paces. Pietyr was to bring her breakfast, but he has been gone for too long. It is not fair that he should be free to wander the meadow while she must stay inside until the Disembarking. Perhaps if she can find Natalia, they might take a walk together.

She steps out of the tent, directly into Bertrand Roman.

“Best to stay inside, my queen,” he says, and places his huge mitts on her shoulders to move her back through the flap.

“Take your hands off her.” Pietyr steps between them and shoves Bertrand away, though the great brute is not shoved far.

“It is for her own safety.”

“I do not care. You are never to touch her that way again.”

He slips his arm about Katharine's waist and draws her inside.

“I do not like him,” he says.

“I do not like him either. I have not seen him since I was a child and he showed me how to poison with oleander milk,” Katharine says. “I did not think he needed to demonstrate on an entire batch of kittens!”

“Yet who better to lead an armored escort,” Pietyr mutters. “We must not be lax about your safety.”

But there were others who could be just as effective. Choosing brutal Bertrand Roman was Genevieve's idea. Of that, Katharine has no doubt.

Pietyr climbs onto her makeshift bed and lays out what food he has found. Most of the food is still unpacked or is being carefully hoarded for the feasts. But he has managed some bread and butter, and some hard-cooked eggs.

“Pietyr,” Katharine says. “There is a flower in your hair.”

He reaches up and plucks it from his ear. It is only a daisy, common in the field.

“Where did you get it?”

“Some priestess or another,” he says, and Katharine crosses her arms. “Kat.” He rises and wraps his arms around her. He kisses her face until she giggles. He kisses her lips and her neck until she slips her hands under his shirt.

“It is unfair of me to be jealous,” she says.

“It does not matter,” he says. “It is our lot. To drive each other mad with jealousy. You will kiss a suitor, and I will kiss a priestess, and it will make your fire for me burn even higher.”

“Do not tease,” she says, and he smiles.

Outside the tent, poisoners converse as they move and unpack chests. Preparation for the night's Hunt has begun. Every poisoner at Innisfuil will soon be stringing bows and readying crossbows, dipping their arrowheads and bolts in dilutions of poisonous winter rose.

“I wish I could take part in the Hunt,” Katharine says. She walks to the bed and kneels to smear butter across a bit of crust. “It would be nice to take a horse into the hills and flush quail and pheasant. Will you go on horseback? Or on foot?”

“I will not go at all,” he says. “I will stay with you.”

“Pietyr. You do not need to. I will only be a bore, worrying about the
Gave Noir
and the Disembarking.”

“No,” he says. “Do not worry about any of that.”

“It will be hard to think of anything else.”

“Then I will help you.”

Pietyr pulls her to his chest and kisses her again until they are both breathless.

“Do not think of it, Kat. Do not worry.” He lays her back on the bed. “Do not be afraid.”

He moves on top of her, his warm breath in her ear. Something has changed in Pietyr; his touch is desperate and slightly sad. She imagines it is because he knows they will soon be parted by one suitor or another, but she does not say a word for
fear he will stop. His kisses make her dizzy, even if she does not understand it when he traces his finger across her skin, first where her arm and shoulder meet, and then in an invisible line across her throat.

J
ules raises the mallet high above the tent stake. She means to tap. But when she swings, the impact splits the wooden stake in two. A waste of a perfectly good stake, but at least it frightens the onlookers. Since Arsinoe disappeared, Jules has had no peace. Everyone thinks she must know where Arsinoe went.

Even Billy's father. The day after the boat went missing, William Chatworth finally paid the Milones a visit, but only to pound on their door demanding answers. Demanding punishment. But there is no one to punish. The queen is gone, and Billy has gone with her.

Ellis bends down with his white spaniel, Jake.

“I didn't mean to split it,” Jules says.

“I know,” he says. “Don't worry. Jake can pull this out, and there are more on the cart.”

Jules wipes her brow as the dog sets to digging up the stake.
Their main tent lies on the grass like a dead bat's wing, and smells just as sour. It is nothing like the fine tents housing Mirabella and Katharine. Not that it matters. They do not really need to put it up. Without Arsinoe, they did not need to come to Innisfuil at all.

Jules toes the edge of the tent, and a hole in it that needs mending.

“This is shameful,” she says. “We should have taken more care. We should have treated her like a real queen.”

“We did,” Ellis says. “We treated her like a naturalist queen. Nose in the dirt. Running with us and fishing. Naturalist queens are queens of the people; it's why they make such good ones, when they are strong enough to manage it.”

“Scat!”

Jules and Ellis turn and see Cait chase Camden from her tent. Eva caws and flaps around the cougar's head.

“What's the matter?” Jules asks.

“Nothing much,” Cait says. “She is only after the bacon.” She gestures with her chin. “Here's Joseph.”

He waves a greeting, walking slightly hunched. The eyes of the island have been on him too since Billy and Arsinoe disappeared.

“Hallo, Joseph,” Ellis says. “Have you and your family settled in? Where are you camped?”

“Just over that way,” he says, and points to the east. “Though my parents decided to stay behind with Jonah, so it's just me and Matthew.”

“Have you scouted ground for the Hunt?” Cait calls.

“No. Not yet.”

“Then you'd best get after it. You and Juillenne both. If you go slowly enough, you can take this beast with you.”

At her mention, Camden looks at Jules hopefully. Her left foreleg and shoulder are healing poorly, but her eyes are bright and yellow green.
I am not useless,
they seem to say.
I am still alive and eager.

“Let's go,” Jules whispers, and the cat canters ahead on three legs.

“Do a good job of it,” Cait says. “There will be more deaths this year, just on account of so many jostling feet.” She looks out across the enormous meadow. “It won't be long before these tents start to spill over onto the beaches.”

And more will come, on top of that. Folk without any tents at all, to sleep out under the stars.

“Jules,” Joseph says when they are inside the trees.

“The undergrowth is not thick,” Jules says. That will make for easier going, but hunting in the darkness of the trees is always perilous. People trip and are trampled underfoot. They break their bones on uneven ground. Or they are caught by a careless blade or arrow.

“Jules.”

He touches her shoulder.

“How are you? I mean, after all this.”

“Shouldn't we be happy?” she asks, and shrugs him off. “Haven't we always wanted her to find a way off the island?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I didn't think it would be so suddenly. And without word. I didn't think she would go without us.”

Jules's eyes sting. “That does cut. But I don't blame her. She saw her chance.”

Camden scouts ahead and grunts at the edge of a slippery washout along the widening banks of a creek. During the Hunt, Cam will be kept in the camp with the other familiars. Though she would love to join, it is no place for the snap-able bones of dogs and birds, and any could be mistaken for prey.

“Mirabella is here,” Jules says. In the corner of her eye, Joseph tenses. “Did you see the carriages that brought her? Gilded and spotless. The horses had not a hair of white between them. If not for all the silver on their harnesses, they would have looked like shadows.”

“I didn't see them,” he says. “I haven't seen her, Jules.”

“I'm saying that it's good that Arsinoe is gone,” Jules continues. “She was never going to win. Maybe she could have, if she'd had the Westwoods or the Arrons behind her instead of us. If we had been able to give her . . . anything . . .”

“Arsinoe was happy,” Joseph says. “She was our friend, and she got away. You made her strong enough to get away.”

Camden's ears flicker backward as a branch pops beneath a foot. Other hunters scouting the woods. Joseph raises an arm in greeting. It is no one they know. They are probably naturalists but could have any gift. At Beltane, the people mix and mingle, though the tents do not reflect it. The naturalists are camped near other naturalists, and all the Indrid Down and Prynn tents
are together. Even during the Hunt, only those with the war gift will venture outside their parties, and them only because they are so few and because they know the naturalist gift will provide a better opportunity for a kill.

“It's nearing time,” Joseph says. His eyes are bright. Sad as he is for Arsinoe, he is still a young wolf, and this is his first time running with the pack.

“I don't imagine you had any hunts so grand when you were on the mainland,” says Jules.

“No. We hunted, but it was nothing like this. It was daylight so we could see, for a start.”

In the distance, toward camp, someone beats a drum. The day has turned late without them noticing. Soon, the fires will burn high and people will jump through them. Naturalists will trade their clothes for deerskin and streaks of black-and-white paint on their bodies.

By the time they return to the meadow, the sun has dipped behind the trees and turned the light to dusky yellow. And Cait was right. In their absence, Innisfuil has filled to near bursting. Tents edge together with barely a step of space between them, and the paths and fire pits are crowded with excited, smiling faces.

They reach Joseph's tent, and he skins out of his shirt.

“Are you going to keep those?” Jules asks, gesturing to his tan, mainlander trousers.

“I don't see why not,” he says. “Everyone thinks I'm from the mainland, anyway.”

He helps her out of her own shirt, down to her soft leather tunic and leggings. She is not much in the mood for hunting, but the naturalist blood in her veins will not let her stay behind. Already it tugs her toward the trees.

“Will you paint me?” Joseph asks. He holds out a jar of black.

At first, she does not know what to paint. And then she does.

She dips four fingers and drags lines down his shoulder. She dips them again and drags lines down his right cheek, before doing the same to herself.

“For Arsinoe,” she says.

“That is perfect,” he says. “But just one more.”

“One more?”

He takes her by the wrist.

“I would wear your handprint, over my heart.”

Jules's hand hovers over his chest. Then she covers her palm with paint and holds it against his heartbeat. As she does, she presses her lips to his.

She missed his touch. The heat of it, and the strength of his arms around her. Since Mirabella, sometimes it has felt like Joseph had never come back to the island at all. But he is there, even if Arsinoe is not, and even if their promises to each other about Beltane, and being together for the first time, have been spoiled.

Joseph holds on to Jules tightly. He kisses her as if he is afraid to stop.

She raises her hands to his chest and pushes him away.

“Joseph. I was wrong to do that.”

“No,” he says breathlessly. “You weren't. We can stay here all night, Jules, we don't have to hunt.”

“No.”

He touches her face, but she will not look in his eyes. What she would see there might change her mind.

“Will you never forgive me?” he asks.

“Not now,” she says. “I do not want to feel like everything between us has been ruined. I want it to be right again and to go back to the way it was.”

“What if it never does?” he asks.

“Then we will know that it was never meant to be.”