by A. M. Manay
Penn’s eyes brightened, and she walked past Shiloh to get to the kitchen. Shiloh turned her attention to her birthfather, hoping to find similar improvement. In that, she was disappointed. He was awake, at least, so she managed to get some medicine down his throat.
“If I’m dying, you have to leave Freehold,” he managed to tell her in a hoarse whisper. “I do not know who would win the election to replace me.”
“You’re not dying, you big baby,” she countered, not sure if she was lying. “And I can handle myself.”
“Fenroh’s men might have done this on purpose. Letting those kids get rescued after infecting them, to spread contagion here.” Keegan clutched urgently at her sleeve.
“Pa, I know. Silas and I figured that out days ago,” she told him, removing his hand from her arm and placing it gently upon his chest. “You rest now.”
“You called me ‘Pa,’” he gloated, a touch of his old fire in his weary voice.
Shiloh snorted. “Well, do as I tell you if you ever want to hear it again.”
Gret arrived, looking nearly as tired as her sick husband. Shiloh left her in a chair at his bedside and went to check on the others, then lay down on a rug to catch a few hours of fitful sleep.
Her rest was interrupted by a scream. Shiloh shot to her feet, her hand fumbling for her wand in her pocket. She followed the keening sound to the kitchen, where Barr and Gret stood in horror at the sight of Penn weeping over Loor. A bowl lay shattered on the stone floor.
Shiloh knelt next to her friend. “Penny, let me see,” she insisted. Shiloh placed a hand on Loor’s chest and could feel no heartbeat. There was blood and vomit around the child’s mouth.
“Get Jonn. He’s probably checking on the other patients downstairs,” Shiloh commanded, and Barr turned to obey. Shiloh placed the girl gently upon the kitchen table. “What happened?” she asked Penn while she simultaneously began healing spells that she knew in her heart were going to be worthless.
Penn struggled to control herself enough to answer. “She woke up, so I gave her some soup. She swallowed a little and started vomiting, and then she seized up and stopped breathing.”
Shiloh looked to the floor at the bowl. “No one touch that. Gret, go make sure no one else is eating anything, then fetch Silas, please. Where is the rest of the soup, Penny?” Gret ran to obey.
“On the stove,” Penn sobbed.
Jonn arrived, panting and red-faced from the climb. “Oh, no,” he breathed.
“I think she was poisoned,” Shiloh informed him.
He took in the scene and bent over the princess. He opened her eyes and shook his head. “They call it the Axman’s Potion,” he said sadly. “It kills almost instantly. It’s easily identifiable because it turns the whites of the eyes to blue.”
“Do something,” Penn begged.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace. There is nothing to be done. She’s gone, poor thing.”
Penn began to rock in silent agony, and Shiloh wrapped her arms around her friend.
Silas arrived and shook his head at the sight.
“Axman’s Potion,” Jonn told him with a sigh.
“Who made the soup?” Silas asked, voice grim.
“I have no idea,” Shiloh replied. “Food has been appearing a couple of times a day.”
“Does anyone know?” Silas asked, eyes moving from face to face.
Gret shook her head, then Barr, then Jonn.
“I believe the women who are immune have been taking turns preparing it,” Gret offered uncertainly. “I’ve been so preoccupied with Keegan that I haven’t been paying much attention.”
“Have any of you seen anyone else enter these rooms today?” Silas asked.
Again, there was a flurry of denials.
“The entrance hall leads straight in here,” Shiloh said. “Anyone could have entered without being seen if we were all in the back rooms when they arrived.”
“Do you think it was meant for my father?” asked Barr.
“Perhaps. Perhaps for Shiloh. Perhaps for Loor. Perhaps some combination thereof. Those are the most likely targets in these rooms. Someone needs to run and make sure the other hospital area is safe from harm,” Silas said. “Discreetly. I’d rather not spread knowledge of this attack far and wide.”
“I already sent Hana to do just that,” Barr answered, “when I went for Master Jonn. I warned her to tell no one of what has happened.”
“Good. Gret, you must see to preparing the food for these apartments yourself from now on,” Silas continued. “It is impossible to know whom to trust now.”
Gret nodded. “They could have killed us all. Whoever it is.”
“It’s Olin. I would bet anything,” Barr snarled.
Silas placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “He would be my first suspect as well, but we must not let on. If he is spooked, he could run and escape justice entirely. And it is entirely possible that we are incorrect in our suspicions. We must tread carefully. We’ll need some trustworthy guards, in case they try a less subtle method of assassination.”
“I have some lads. We’ve been thick as thieves from the cradle,” Barr offered.
“Would you trust them with your life? And your father’s?” Silas asked.
“I would,” Barr declared.
Silas stared at him for a long moment, eyes drilling into the boy’s own, until he nodded. “Good. Please see to it. We must not leave Keegan alone for a moment. Not a moment.”
“Agreed,” Shiloh said.
“You, either,” Silas added pointedly.
“I can defend myself. He cannot, at the moment,” she argued.
“Be careful for me. Take precautions for my sake. Please,” Silas begged.
“Very well, my lord husband.”
“Our story will be that Loor died of her fever. I’ll keep a sample of the soup for evidence and destroy the rest,” Silas told them. “Keep your ears to the ground. Perhaps our culprit will reveal himself. Let’s get through the epidemic and then worry about justice.”
Shiloh leaned her cheek against the back of Penn’s head. Her friend was quiet now in her arms, staring blankly at the floor. “Penny, we should take you home,” she suggested in a gentle voice.
Penn raised her head with great effort. “No,” she declared, steel in her voice. “I want to be here in case they come back. They will find the job difficult to finish.”
Silas smiled sadly before replying.
“The answer of a queen,” he judged.
“You do realize what this means?” Silas asked the moment he got Shiloh alone.
“That there is a baby murderer on the loose? That had I eaten instead of sleeping, I’d be dead?” she answered sharply, struggling to remove her boot. For the first time in a fortnight, she was about to sleep in her own bed. None of the fever victims looked likely to die in the night, and Jonn had ordered her to go home and get a decent night’s rest. She had to admit, she was grateful for the push. “That Jasin Kepler’s curse strikes again, taking out another of Rischar’s line?”
He knelt to help her. “That you are now the only person with a claim to the throne after Esta.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”
“Shiloh. You must make peace with it. Because when death comes for Esta, and Westan’s men come for you, there will be no time for indecision,” he declared. “And I begin to fear it might happen sooner than later.”
Shiloh sighed deeply and leaned back onto the bed while Silas yanked off her stubborn boot.
“And what of our marriage, then?” she said. “What of our marriage should I press my claim in order to keep Gerne off the throne?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, voice quiet. “I don’t know.”
“You would give up our marriage for Bryn?”
“I would give up my life for Bryn,” he replied. “So if called upon to give up my happiness, well . . . I already gave up my soul.”
She sighed. “Putting me on the throne would mean
war. You already fought one war to put a rightful heir on the throne, and how did that end up for you? All those terrible things you’ve done in the name of keeping the peace, because another war was too terrible to contemplate . . .”
“There will be war regardless if Esta dies without issue. The lords will not sit by while a Gernishman steals the throne, and every man of them will think to put himself upon it instead. And most of them have sons to fight for it, save Daved Jennin. Their own ambition will divide them, will protract the war to oust Gerne, will lead to civil war in the aftermath. But united under you, at least there is a chance to make quick work of expelling Gerne and minimize the suffering of the common folk.”
Shiloh swallowed heavily, then closed her eyes.
Silas sat upon the bed and took her hand.
“You need to start thinking about it, little bird. Please.”
Keegan was finally well enough to be querulous. “Damn it, Shiloh, I’m not an invalid!”
She narrowed her eyes. “Fine. You’re so ready to leave the house, you walk across the room without help. Go on.”
Keegan made it halfway across before he collapsed against a table. “Fine, fine!” he cried, admitting defeat. “You win.”
Shiloh helped him back to his chair. “You’re improving quickly,” she assured him, “especially for a man of your advanced years.”
He shot her another glare then softened when she kissed him on the forehead.
“What’s the latest news?” he asked her.
“Every patient is out of bed,” she reported happily.
“Thanks to you,” he praised her.
“And Jonn, and Gret, and Barr, and many others,” she said.
“And just three dead?” he asked.
She nodded. “Two of the baby monks of fever, and Loor.”
Keegan’s face darkened. “How goes Hatch’s investigation?”
“He’s spoken with all of the children. Gently but thoroughly. They told him that the men who came for them brought the gray robes in a wagon and insisted the children change into them. They had Gernish accents. Some of them wore the livery of the royal guard. We think the robes carried the contagion. Barr was meant to find them and bring them here.”
“Does he think any of them could knowingly be agents of the crown or the church?” Keegan asked.
“The children? He thinks it possible but unlikely. Most of them are too young to even know how to read more than nursery rhymes. The ones who are old enough to be useful have all known each other for years at the monastery, which was in the middle of nowhere in the Teeth. How would they have been recruited or trained as covert agents of the court?”
“No, I suppose it’s probable they were unknowing carriers of pestilence. Seems like rather a desperate gambit,” Keegan said. “They would have no way of knowing who would fall ill, or how quickly, or if Barr would bring them to Freehold before the fevers began.”
“Maybe it was meant primarily as a distraction, or to provoke your rivals into acting against you. I really don’t know,” Shiloh confessed.
“Please be careful. If they were after Loor, they were probably after you, too. And if they were after me, they were probably after you,” Keegan warned. “So it all comes back to you, regardless.”
“So Silas reminds me hourly,” she replied. “I am taking precautions.”
They chatted until he grew tired, and then she watched over him as he dozed. For the first time, he looked old to her. It occurred to her that she actually cared about him, deeply, in spite of everything. Maybe because of everything.
I suppose it’s all right to love all of them, flaws and mistakes and betrayals and all. Edmun, Poll, Keegan.
Silas.
One corner of her mouth twitched into a crooked smile.
Winter Solstice
“What are they doing?” young Silas asked Edmun.
Edmun followed the boy’s gaze over toward the Feral part of the camp, where three men sat at a table. Another man stood before them, his hands tied in front of him.
“That’s Feral justice,” Edmun explained. “Must have caught him deserting, or stealing from his own. That’s the only kind of thieving they have a problem with.”
Edmun shook his head and went back into the tent, while Silas walked closer, so he could hear. Keegan caught sight of him leaning against a nearby tree and crossed to converse with the lad.
“What think you of our little trial?”
Silas cocked his head. “It’s interesting. The judges are just three ordinary people? They aren’t educated in the law?”
Keegan laughed. “Our laws are not so complex as yours. They don’t require a priest or a nobleman to make sense of them. We draw lots to see who is to pass judgment.”
“What did he do?” Silas asked.
“He’s accused of beating another of my men unconscious in a dispute over a woman,” Keegan told him.
“Is he guilty?”
“I certainly think so,” Keegan replied.
“What will happen to him?”
“It’s up to those three, not up to me,” Keegan explained. “I’m not a king or a lord, Silas. I don’t hold their lives in my hands in the same way. Sure, I could get them killed ordering them into battle, but I am not the law. Among the Free, the people enforce the law.”
“Huh,” Silas mused.
Keegan laughed again. “Don’t let ‘em see you’re interested in our ways, boy. Nobody’ll trust you anymore.”
“How is your friend, the dowager queen?” Barr asked Shiloh as they sat by the fire in Keegan’s sitting room.
He had to bend near to be heard. Several dozen of Keegan’s favorites were crammed into his residence on the cliff, which, though spacious, was not spacious enough for large-scale entertaining. Winter Solstice decorations brightened the granite walls, and all were dressed in what passed for finery in Freehold.
“She mourns,” Shiloh said. “She lost her own baby. Now Loor. There is very little to brighten her days this winter, I’m afraid.”
“She is young. She could marry again. Have children, in time. When she is ready,” Barr pointed out.
“Perhaps,” Shiloh replied. “But the last man who asked me about her was a king with a penchant for adultery and murder, so she may not want me playing matchmaker. Why so interested in Penny?”
“No reason.” Barr shrugged, not very convincingly. His eyes never left the sad young woman sitting silently amidst the revelry.
Shiloh barked a laugh. “Right,” she teased. “Sure.”
Barr ducked his head. “All right, all right. I think she is pretty. And she’s different from the girls I know.”
“Of course she is,” Shiloh replied. “She’s about as un-Feral as they come. I’m not saying she’s weak. Not at all. But she’s very . . .”
“Quiet. Gentle,” Barr finished for her. “But she keeps her back straight, even after all she’s lost. And she doesn’t take guff from anyone. I watched the boys at school trying to roll over her. They learned their lesson right quick.”
Shiloh laughed again. “I’d pay to have seen that.”
“And she doesn’t put on airs, either. I expected her to be a lazy snob. I mean, she’s a queen, never did a day’s honest work in her life, but she was out there grinding acorns with everyone else last fall, not a word of complaint,” Barr continued.
“Have you talked to her? Tried to get to know her?” Shiloh asked. Barr shook his head sheepishly. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, she won’t bite!” Shiloh pointed across the room where Penn sat next to Bluebell.
He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m going. I’m going.”
Barr rose and crossed the crowded floor. Silas took his place next to Shiloh.
“Your brother is sweet on Queen Penn,” he observed, taking a sip from his wine.
“Aye,” Shiloh agreed.
“I hope he causes her less grief than her last man,” Silas said.
“Me, too.”
“This seems qu
ite tame for a Solstice celebration,” he observed. “I expected a little more rowdiness from Feralfolk.”
“Well, Keegan is still getting over the fever, as are many others. Besides, I think this is just the prelude, when people eat and drink with their family and close friends. Barr said things don’t really get going until after midnight, when we all spill outside, already drunk enough not to mind the cold. Then there’s the bonfires, the fireworks, the dancing . . . ” Shiloh trailed off and blushed.
“The fornication?” Silas finished for her, laughing. “Well, that’s a relief. I was starting to get worried that they were going to be boring.”
“Just promise to get me home before it gets too wild,” she admonished him.
Multiple bonfires burned down in the meadow. Someone had used magic to dry out the ground from the recent rain, so the people could dance with abandon unhindered by boots stuck in mud. Ale and wine flowed freely, along with mountain moonshine. Between the fires, the dancing, and the alcohol, no one minded the cold. Every few minutes, someone set off a firecracker. Jonn ran around healing singed fingers and shaking his head.
Shiloh laughed at the exuberant display of Solstice joy. “Not much like that masked ball two years back,” she commented. “Nor last year, locked up and afraid.”
“No, not much,” Silas agreed, then took a swig of ale. “Certainly more fun.”
“I do miss my da a bit extra this time of year, though.”
“I know, little bird,” Silas said, squeezing her hand.
Shiloh yawned. “I’m getting tired.”
“Then let’s head back,” Silas suggested.
He downed the rest of his drink and offered her his arm. They made their way to the periphery of the celebrating crowd. They had taken only a few steps into the darkness beyond the bonfires and lanterns when Shiloh staggered next to him, her ward flashing bright around her. He pulled her to the ground, and another curse flashed by above their heads.
“What in the world?” she exclaimed, pulling her wand and crouching close to the ground.
