Poison Study

by Maria V. Snyder

  Of the group, Porter was the oldest. He was in charge of the Commander’s kennels. Another holdover from the King’s reign, he had been deemed too valuable to be replaced. He scowled more than he smiled, and Rand was his only friend. Rand had told me stories about Porter in an “I can’t believe anyone would believe such nonsense” tone of voice, but wild rumors that Porter had mental links with the dogs made him an outcast.

  The uncanny way the dogs responded and understood Porter seemed abnormal. Almost magical. The suspicion of magic was enough for everyone to treat Porter like he had a contagious disease. Still no one had proof, and his rapport with the animals was useful. Something the Commander prized.

  Sammy was Rand’s fetch boy. A thin child of twelve, his sole purpose was to obtain anything Rand needed. I’d seen Rand yell at Sammy then hug him in the space of a heartbeat.

  Liza was a quiet woman only a few years older than me. She was the castle’s pantler, in charge of the pantry’s inventory. Liza plucked at her uniform sleeve like she was nervous, but I guessed talking with Porter was better than being near me.

  When Rand emerged from his rooms, we left the castle. Sammy raced ahead of the group, too excited to stay with us for very long. Porter and Liza continued their discussion, while Rand and I trailed behind.

  The night air was refreshing. I could smell the clean scent of damp earth tinged with the distant aroma of wood smoke. It was my first trip outside in almost a year, and before we went past the gate in the immense, stone buttress that surrounded the castle complex, I peered back. Without a moon it was too dark to see any detail besides the few lighted windows and the towering walls. The complex appeared deserted. If Valek followed, I couldn’t spot him.

  When we cleared the gate, a breeze greeted us as the day’s hot air cooled. I walked with my arms held slightly away from my body, allowing the air to flow past me. My uniform rippled in the wind and my hair blew. I inhaled, enjoying the fresh evening scent. We walked through the grass field that surrounded the guard walls. No buildings were permitted within a quarter mile of the castle. The town, once named for Queen Jewel, was renamed Castletown after the takeover. Jewelstown had been built by the King in the valley south of the castle complex as a gift for his wife.

  The fire festival’s tents had been set up in the fields just west of Castletown.

  “Isn’t Dilana coming?” I asked Rand.

  “She’s already there. Some big emergency came up this afternoon. When the dancers opened the costume boxes they discovered that some animal had eaten holes in all of the outfits. They called Dilana to help mend them before the opening ceremony.” Rand laughed. “I bet the panic that reigned after they opened the boxes would have been fun to watch.”

  “Fun for you, but not for the poor woman in charge of costumes.”

  “True.” Now silent, he limped beside me. Because of our slower pace, we fell farther behind the others.

  “Where’s your cake?” I hoped I hadn’t ruined his good mood.

  “Sammy ran it down this morning. The baking contest is judged on the first day so they can sell the entries while they’re fresh. I want to check the results. How come you’re not entering any competitions?”

  A simple question. One of many about the festival that I had been avoiding with some success since Rand and I became friends. At first I suspected his interest to be an attempt to gain some insider information for the next round of betting. But now that the gambling was finished, I realized his interest was genuine.

  “No money for the entry fees,” I said. The truth, but not the entire story. I would need to completely trust Rand before I would tell him about my history with the fire festival.

  Rand clucked his tongue in disgust. “It doesn’t make sense not to pay the food taster. Otherwise, what better way to obtain information about the Commander than to bribe the taster?” He paused, then turned to me, his face serious. “Would you sell information for money?”

  12

  I SHIVERED AT RAND’S QUESTION. Was he asking just to ask or was he offering to pay me for information? I imagined Valek’s reaction if he discovered that I had taken a bribe. Having no money was better than facing his wrath.

  “No. I wouldn’t,” I said.

  Rand grunted. We walked in an unnatural silence for a while. I wondered if Oscove, the old food taster, had taken money for information. It would explain why Valek hadn’t liked him and why Rand suspected Valek of killing Oscove.

  “If you’d like, I’ll pay the entry fee for you. Your help has been invaluable, and I’ve certainly won enough money on your resourcefulness,” Rand said.

  “Thanks, but I’m not prepared. It’d be a waste of money.” Besides, I was determined to enjoy the festival without money just to prove to Valek that it could be done.

  Despite promising myself I wouldn’t, I glanced back over my shoulder. Nothing. I tried to convince myself that not seeing Valek was a good thing. If I could spot him, then anyone could. Still, the nagging feeling that maybe he had decided to let me take my chances wouldn’t quit. Stop it, I told myself. Don’t worry. Then again, I’d be an idiot to walk around the festival blind to danger.

  I felt as if I balanced on a high wire, trying not to fall. Could I watch for trouble and have fun at the same time? I didn’t know, but was determined to try.

  “Which competition would you have entered?” Rand asked.

  Before I could answer, he waved his hands in front of me. “No! Don’t tell me! I want to guess.”

  I smiled. “Go ahead.”

  “Let’s see. Small, thin and graceful. A dancer?”

  “Try again.”

  “Okay. You remind me of a pretty bird, willing to sit on the windowsill as long as nobody comes too close, but prepared to fly away if somebody does. A songbird. Perhaps you’re a singer?”

  “You’ve obviously never heard me sing. Are all your guesses going to come with a lengthy discussion of my personality?” I asked.

  “No. Now be quiet, I’m trying to think.”

  The glow from the festival was growing brighter. I heard the distant buzz of music, animals and people blended together.

  “Long, thin fingers. Maybe you’re a member of a spinning team?” Rand guessed.

  “What’s a spinning team?”

  “Usually there’s one shearer, one carder, one spinner and one weaver in a team. You know, sheep to shawl. The teams race to see who can shear a sheep’s wool and turn it into a garment first. It’s pretty amazing to watch.” Rand studied me for a while. I began to wonder if he had run out of guesses.

  “A jockey?”

  “Do you really think I could afford to buy a racehorse?” I asked in amazement. Only the very wealthy citizens had horses to race for sport. The military used horses for the transportation of high-ranking officers and advisers only. Everyone else walked.

  “People who own racehorses don’t ride them. They hire jockeys. And you’re the perfect size, so stop looking at me like I’m daft.”

  As we arrived at the first of the massive multicolored tents, our conversation ceased as we absorbed the frenzied activity and panoramic sights that assaulted us. When I was younger, I used to stand amid the chaos and feast on the energy of the fire festival. I had always thought the name of the festival was perfect, not because it occurred during the hot season, but because the sounds and smells pulsated like heat waves, making my blood sizzle and pop. Now, after spending close to a year in a dungeon, I felt the force slamming into me as though I were a brick wall. A wall whose mortar threatened to crumble from the overload of sensations.

  Torches blazed and bonfires burned. We walked into a slice of captured daylight. The performance and competition tents were scattered throughout the festival, with small open stands tucked in and around them like children clinging to their mothers’ skirts. From exotic gems to flyswatters, the merchants sold an array of goods. The aroma of food cooking made my stomach grumble as we passed several barbecue pits, and I regretted having skipped dinn
er in my haste to get here.

  Entertainers, contestants, spectators and laughing children ebbed and flowed around us. Sometimes the press of people hurried us along from behind and sometimes we struggled to go forward. We had lost track of the others. If he hadn’t linked his arm in mine, I probably would have been separated from Rand as well. Distractions peppered the festival. I would have followed the lively music to its source or lingered to watch a skit, but Rand was determined to see the results of the baking contest.

  As we moved, I examined faces in the crowd, searching for green-and-black uniforms even though Valek had said Brazell wouldn’t be a threat. I thought it prudent to avoid him and his guards altogether. Unsure of who I was looking for, I watched for unusual faces. It was the wrong way to detect a tail. Valek had taught me that the best agents were unremarkable in appearance and didn’t draw attention to themselves. But I figured if a skilled spy followed me, my chances of spotting him or her was small.

  We met up with Porter and Liza in a small tent filled with a sweet aroma that made my stomach ache with hunger. They were talking to a large man in a cook’s uniform, but they stopped when we entered. Surrounding Rand, they congratulated him on his first-place win. The heavy man declared that Rand had broken a festival record by winning five years in a row.

  While Rand examined the array of baked goods lining the shelves, I asked the man who had won in Military District 5. I was curious if Brazell’s cook had won with his Criollo recipe. The man’s brow creased with concentration, causing his short, curly black hair to touch his thick eyebrows.

  “Bronda won it with a heavenly lemon pie. Why?”

  “I thought General Brazell’s chef, Ving, might win. I used to work at the manor.”

  “Well, Ving won two years ago with some cream pie and now he enters the same pie each year, hoping it’ll win again.”

  I thought it odd that he hadn’t entered his Criollo, but before I could deduce a reason, Rand jubilantly swept us out of the tent. He wanted to buy everyone a glass of wine to celebrate his victory.

  We sipped our wine and wandered around the festival. Sammy materialized on occasion from the crowd to report some wonder with great delight, only to rush off again.

  Twice I spotted a woman with a serious expression. Her black hair was pulled into a tight bun. Wearing the uniform of a hawk mistress, she moved with the grace of someone used to physical exercise. The second time I saw her she was much closer, and I made eye contact. Her almond-shaped, emerald eyes narrowed, staring boldly back at me until I looked away. There was something familiar about her, and it was some time before I figured it out.

  She reminded me of the children in Brazell’s care, and was more similar to my own coloring than to the pale ivory complexion of most of the Territory’s people. Her skin was bronze. Not tanned from the sun but a natural pigmentation.

  Then our aimless group was snared in a flow of spectators heading into a big red-and-white-striped tent. It was the acrobatics tent, where trampolines, tightropes and floor mats were covered with brightly costumed men and women. They were all trying to pass the qualifying round. I watched as one man performed a beautiful series of flips on the tightrope, only to be disqualified when he fell during his solo tumbling run.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rand watching me. His expression triumphant.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re an acrobat!”

  “I was an acrobat.”

  Rand waved his hands. “Doesn’t matter. I was right!”

  It mattered to me. Reyad had tainted acrobatics. The time when I felt satisfaction and enjoyment from performing was gone, and I couldn’t imagine getting any happiness from it now.

  From the benches in the tent, our small kitchen group watched the contestants. Grunts of effort, sweat-soaked costumes and thumping feet made me long for the days when all that worried me was finding time to practice.

  Four of us in Brazell’s orphanage had taken up acrobatics. We had scavenged and begged for materials to set up a practice area behind the stables. Our mistakes sent us crashing to the grass until the stable master took pity on our bruised bodies. One day we arrived to find a thick coating of dung-scented straw carpeting our practice area.

  Brazell’s teachers had encouraged us to discover something we could excel in. While some found singing or dancing to be their calling, I had been fascinated by the acrobatic displays since my first fire festival.

  Despite hours of practice, I failed during the qualifying round at my inaugural competition. The disappointment stabbed my heart, but I healed the ache with resolve. I spent the next year covered with black-and-blue marks, nursing sprains too numerous to count. When the festival returned, I passed the qualifiers and the initial round only to fall off the tightrope in the second. Each year I worked hard and advanced steadily. I won through to the final round the year before Brazell and Reyad claimed me as their laboratory rat.

  Brazell and Reyad didn’t allow me to practice acrobatics, but that didn’t stop me from slipping away whenever Reyad was on some mission for his father. What did stop me was getting caught by Reyad a week before the festival, when he arrived home early from a trip. I was concentrating so hard that I failed to notice him astride his horse until I finished my tumbling routine. His expression, a mixture of anger and elation, caused the beads of sweat on my skin to turn into ice crystals.

  For disobeying his orders, I was forbidden to go to the festival that year. And as an added deterrent to disobedience, I was punished for the duration of the festival. Each evening for five nights, Reyad forced me to strip. With a cruel grin on his face, he stared at me as I stood shivering despite the warmth of the night. He draped heavy chains from a metal collar around my neck to metal cuffs on my wrists and ankles. I wanted to scream, to beat him with my fists, but I was too terrified to anger him further.

  Pleasure at my fear and humiliation made his face flush as he drove me with a small whip to perform acrobatics of his own devising. A lashing sting on my skin was the reprimand for moving too slow. The chains battered my body as they swung with my movements. Their weight dragged at my limbs, making each tumble an exhausting ordeal. The cuffs began to rub my wrists and ankles raw. Blood streaked down my arms and legs.

  When Brazell participated in the experiments, Reyad meticulously followed his father’s instructions, but when he was alone with me the indifferent exercises turned vicious. Sometimes he would invite his friend, Mogkan, to assist him, and they made my hell a contest to see who invented the best way to test my endurance.

  I was in constant fear that I would madden Reyad enough to force him to cross the only line he seemed to have drawn. For all the torture and pain he inflicted, he never raped me. So I somersaulted and cartwheeled with chains just to keep him from crossing that line.

  Rand’s heavy arm fell across my shoulders. I flinched back into the present.

  “Yelena! What’s wrong?” Rand’s eyes, full of concern, searched mine. “You looked like you were having a nightmare with your eyes open.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. Here…” He handed me a steaming meat pie. “Sammy brought these for us.”

  I thanked Sammy. When my attention focused on him, his eyes grew wide, and his young face whitened. He averted his gaze. Without thinking, I took a small bite and tasted for poison. Finding nothing, I ate and wondered what wild stories had been told about me to cause Sammy’s fearful reaction. Children Sammy’s age usually enjoyed scaring each other with imaginative horror tales.

  We used to frighten ourselves at the orphanage after the lanterns had been blown out and we were in bed waiting for sleep. Whispered stories about monsters raging and magician’s curses made us gasp and giggle. We told gruesome tales about the older “graduates” of the orphanage, who just seemed to disappear. No explanation was given to us of where they were working, and we never encountered any of them in town or in the manor house. So we created horrible scenarios about their fates.


  How I missed those nights with the other children when I was finally able to rest after spending a day with Reyad. He had isolated me from the others. Taken from the girls’ dorm, I had been given a small room next to Reyad’s suite. At night, with my body aching and my spirits crushed, I would lie awake and recite those tales in my mind until I fell asleep.

  “Yelena, we can go.”

  “What?” I looked at Rand.

  “If this is upsetting you. We can go. There’s a spectacular new fire dance.”

  “We can stay. I was just…reminiscing. But if you want to see the fire dance, I’ll go along.”

  “Reminiscing? You must have hated being an acrobat.”

  “Oh no, I loved everything about it. Flying through the air, the complete control over my body as I spun and twirled. The thrill of knowing I was going to land the perfect dismount before I even hit the ground.” I stopped. The confusion on Rand’s face made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. How could I explain to him that it wasn’t the acrobatics that upset me but the events that they had triggered? Reyad’s cruel punishment for practicing. Sneaking out to participate in the festival the following year, which had led to Reyad’s death.

  I shuddered. Those memories of Reyad were like a trap in the corner of my mind, and I wasn’t ready to spring it. “Someday, Rand, I’ll explain. But for now I would like to see the fire dance.”

  He hooked his arm around mine as our kitchen group left the tent and joined in the flow of people. Sammy raced ahead, shouting over his shoulder that he would save us some good seats. A drunken man bumped into me and I stumbled. He mumbled an apology and saluted me with his mug of ale. Trying to make a bow, he landed in a heap at my feet. I would have stopped to help him, but I was distracted by the appearance of blazing staffs of wood. I felt a pulsating rhythm vibrating through the soles of my feet as the fire dancers spun the flaming props around their heads and paraded into the tent. Amazed by the dancers’ intricate movements, I stepped over the drunk.