Moth and Spark

by Anne Leonard

  The palace was actually a collection of buildings spread out over acres of land, and she had not explored it yet at all, though she had pored over a plan of the grounds. Many areas she had no need to go to: the archives and the bureaucrats’ offices, the storehouses and barracks and guest residences. There were stables, a coach-house, a smithy, outdoor cook pits, a laundry, boiler-houses, and a large plaza for swordfighting or wrestling or ball. Between the buildings were green well-kept lawns or neat and colorful flower beds, vines covering arched entrances or hanging down from roofs, and slender elegant trees. Some buildings were joined to each other with enclosed pathways or graceful footbridges. Many lawns had a fountain in them. On the main building, there were balconies from which plants hung or water poured, caught in basins to be pumped up again, over and over. Trees in large tubs shaded terraces at many levels.

  Much of the first two floors of the palace was open to palace guests. Silver moved and shimmered everywhere: water falling smoothly down a wall of reflective marble, ribbons of metal turning noiselessly in columns from floor to ceiling lining a corridor, light swirling on a ceiling with no apparent source or pattern. Tam could not tell what animated the movements. In the corners of a wide arched chamber, metal birds sang sweetly and clearly from glass trees that changed colors with the notes. It was artistry of a skill she had never seen before.

  She passed rooms for small gatherings or large parties, for dining or for making music, for playing games or looking at art. In one room was a table with an inlaid chessboard of silver and reddish-gold, with intricate and polished pieces. Someone had moved a soldier forward two squares. Impulsively, Tam countered by bringing out a knight. She was a good player, but such an anonymous move was all she could expect to do here. Women played cards. The adjacent room was entirely empty except for the large pendulum swinging slowly over the mosaic circle in the floor with the degrees marked in gold. The center of the circle was a dragon, wings lifted, tail curved. The flames curling from its mouth had been worked in gems.

  Next she came to a writing room, with several small tables, ink, pens, and paper. She lingered for a moment, thinking she ought to write her parents. Then she went on. She stepped into the formal Great Hall, all pale marble and gold, huge, empty. A large balcony overhung the room at the end opposite the pair of immense and gilded doors that was the ceremonial entrance to the palace. She supposed the balcony was for speeches or pronouncements before a crowd. There was a lonesome feeling to the place. Stern-faced portraits of past kings and queens lined the walls. Near the front was one of the king that must have been painted for his coronation. He looked quite young and serious. She wondered how much it resembled him now.

  She decided to leave the remaining official rooms and go back to the more ordinary spaces. The halls instilled quietness in her, solemnity even. Not so with other people, who appeared to care not a whit who else heard their conversations. She was not ignored, but looking at her did not stop people from talking. Everything was suddenly quite crowded. She took turns this way and that until she found herself alone except for guards in a narrow corridor. Feeling as though she could breathe again, she walked more slowly.

  She had not walked very far when a guard called out. Startled, she turned. He was not paying any attention to her; his exclamation had been addressed to a man coming in from another door with a drawn knife. Tam froze. Her body went alert with fear. The guard was hurrying toward the man.

  Then she saw that the courtier—he was dressed too finely to be a servant—was staggering. His face was so white she wondered how he could be standing. There was a glassiness in his eyes, and his pupils were dilated. He dropped the knife. The guard bent down to pick it up as the man stumbled toward Tam. She realized he was not just sick, he was dying.

  “What did you do with it? You gave it to him. He hates you. You were supposed to give it to me. Where is it?” He was pleading. Their eyes met.

  He stared imploringly at her as though she was the only thing he could see in the world. There was a roar like the ocean around her. He opened his mouth. A black moth came out, and another, and another. They gathered around her, dark, soft, fluttering, hundreds of them. Their wings stirred air against her skin. They clustered thickly on the wall and the ceiling and her dress. I am not seeing this, she thought. She batted furiously at them.

  They dissipated like smoke. His face twisted with pain. It was so terrible that she reached for his hand. Hot, dry skin. She smelled stone and ice. A bruise on his arm was spreading like ink. He was shaking.

  “Water,” he said, and then there was blood. Bright red blood pouring out of his mouth over his chest, onto the floor, splashing her dress. His hand went limp. She jerked hers away and jumped back. His eyes rolled up. This was real. He fell forward, face landing in the blood.

  Her throat closed with franticness. She could not breathe. Fear, black and relentless, filled her entirely as she clutched her neck. If she could have screamed she would have. Her chest was tight and painful. Sweat chilled her body. Her vision was a narrowing tunnel, and she was dizzy.

  Someone pulled her away. Hands brought her down onto a bench. She leaned forward, head down. Her skin tingled. There was a damp cloth on her face and a cup of water in her hand. Beautiful clear glass, beautiful clear water. She drank deeply. When she looked up she saw a group of guards standing around the body. The blood glistened and seemed to move like sunlight on a rippling lake.

  There was blood on her skirt. Blood from a man who had died delirious and hemorrhaging.

  “Cut it off, cut it off!” she cried out, tearing futilely at the hem.

  A guard—where had they all come from?—slashed at the cloth with a knife. “Don’t touch the blood!” she said urgently. It seethed and shifted. “Burn it!”

  He tossed away the cloth and said reassuringly, “It’s all right, miss.”

  “It’s not,” she said, forcing herself to speak like an adult and not an eight-year-old. “It could carry poison or contagion. If you’ve touched it wash your hands now. Now. Send for the doctor.”

  The guards all stared at her. “Please,” she said. “My father is a doctor. Blood infection is a horrible way to die.” It certainly was not what he had died of, but they wouldn’t know. She never should have said poison. It had slipped out before she had a chance to think.

  There was another instance of silence that seemed to extend forever. Then the one closest to her said, “You wait here,” and began to give orders to the others.

  Exhausted, Tam closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. If she was right about what it was she dared not tell them—they would panic. The royal doctor would know, he had to know. It was an instrument of war. She heard water splashing.

  Blood. His skin had been so hot. Last night there had been rain, cool sweet-smelling rain, folding softly around everything. That was what to think about. Rain that made boots track mud on the palace floors, rain that drove the cats to prowl inside, rain that made the fires safe and pleasant. Not dark moths and blood.

  The guard brought her a basin of fresh hot water and she plunged her hands in and held them as long as she could stand it. Her shoes were clean, and her stockings. She had been lucky. The poison could be taken in through the skin. She would burn the dress anyway.

  Waiting, she watched the guards. With a great deal of efficiency they were keeping people out of the corridor. There might not be much to guard against, but they were well trained.

  The doctor came fairly quickly. He had a kind face, with green eyes. He was younger than she expected, only forty or so. After a glance at the body he came to her side. She stood up. Her head had cleared entirely.

  “The guards say you know what he died of,” he said, obviously doubtful.

  “Possibly,” she said, mindful of listening ears. She looked down at her rent skirt. “Can we go somewhere else, please? I’d rather be away from him.” Calm, giving no hint of the
terror that had roiled her. She knew how to do this. It was not the first death she had seen, the first death she had described.

  “Of course,” said the doctor. He took her arm and led her into an adjacent room with a window looking out on the garden. It was papered in faint pink and gold and full of chairs and spindly-legged tables. It had a handsome tall clock and a still-life of peaches and pomegranates. The red seeds shone luminously on the canvas. No one would ever dare to die in this room; it was too decorous. He shut the door and looked hard at her.

  “It might have been sickness,” she said. She was unsure of whether she should tell him exactly what she feared. But it seemed too important to lie, or trust that he would find it out himself. “But I think it was blood-dust.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “How would you know a thing like that?”

  She hesitated. “My father studied it.”

  “And who is your father to know himself?”

  “A doctor. Hyrne Warin.”

  He looked at her with more interest. “What brings you here?”

  “Summer court. Lady Cina invited me. She’s married to my brother.”

  He gave a little grunt of acknowledgment, perhaps remembering the marriage, and went on. “What makes you think it was blood-dust?”

  “The blood,” she said. “He was entirely white, but he had started hemorrhaging beneath the skin. I expect you’ll find the bruises. And he was delirious. He thought I was someone else. I think he was going into shock. Blood-dust is the only thing I know of that makes all those at once. Except for the red plague.” Crisp, collected. She was not going to tell anyone how the man had looked at her, the raw need on his face. That she was going to remember the rest of her life.

  He did not try to convince her she had not seen it. “I’ll have to look under a glass,” he said, “but I’ll assume you’re right for the moment. If it were red plague someone else would be dead already. Did any of the blood get on you?”

  She gestured to the cut skirt. “Not on my skin.”

  “Did you wash?”

  “Yes. And I told the guards not to touch it.”

  “Did you say what it was?”

  “Of course not,” she replied, somewhat indignantly. “I said it was sepsis or contagion. There had to be a reason for them to stay away that they would believe.”

  “You don’t say a word to anyone, hear me?”

  “I’m not a fool.”

  “I expect you’re not. But I have to warn you anyway.” He put one hand on the back of an elegant chair with an elaborately embroidered cushion. “There’s no one else who will need to ask you, no one else you need to tell. I’ll take care of that. Your work is to forget about it all.”

  “What if I’m wrong?”

  “If you’re wrong I’ll let you know, but you still can’t let loose you even suspected it. There aren’t many people who know about blood-dust, and you keep it that way. You’re lucky you have the right background; anyone else who knew what you know would be under arrest by now.”

  Tam had known it would not be prudent to speak her guess, but he was coming down on her as though it were a state secret. Perhaps it was. She let herself imagine what would happen if it were generally known that the Sarians had such a poison. “I understand,” she said. She was still so very calm. “Who was he?”

  “Cade. The likely heir to a very minor barony.” He lifted his hand. “I must see to him. The guards will want to ask you some questions. Don’t tell them anything about the blood-dust either. Not even if they ask directly. Wait here.”

  She nodded. There were no other options. Blood, moths, pain. It would have been better to go with Cina.

  If he had been poisoned, had he been one of the men in the courtyard last night? Or had they been the poisoners? Why her, what made him die in her presence? It was nothing, all a tissue of spider-threads that reason would rip apart in seconds. Cade was dead and the mechanics of death would run their course. A funeral in a few days and then memory of him would fade away from all but the few who had actually loved him.

  She waited. There was nothing in the room to occupy herself with. A few common sparrows picked at the ground in the garden, but nothing else moved. It began to rain again. She wanted to change her clothes. She would not think about the moths or the moving blood.

  She was beginning to think they had forgotten about her and was working up the courage to go interrupt when a soldier came in. He was not a guard; he had to have some officer’s rank, although he was too young for it to be very high. The glance he gave was followed by a stare, broken before it became rude.

  He asked her a few ordinary questions, which she answered honestly. She expected him to go on and repeat the questions the doctor had asked her.

  He did not. He said, “Did you know Lord Cade?”

  “No.”

  “Had you ever seen him before?”

  She thought about it. “If I have I don’t remember. There are so many people here.”

  “Do you have any idea why he would be murdered?”

  “How could I have an idea of that if I had no idea who he was?” she replied, perhaps too sarcastically. He stared at her in an unfriendly way, then continued.

  “Do any of your friends know him?”

  “I don’t know.” This was beginning to feel like an interrogation. “If there is any connection between me and Lord Cade other than the chance that I saw him die, I don’t know it.”

  “You said he died of poison.”

  She folded her arms. “Blood poison. Sepsis. Or contagion. I explained this. I am a doctor’s daughter. I have seen people die before. Sometimes the infection or disease is carried in the blood. It could be anything. Red plague, jungle fever. Do I need to find myself an advocate?”

  The words red plague caught his attention. His eyes widened. “Red plague?”

  “Probably not. But your doctor can decide that.” She would scare him into leaving her alone.

  He looked at her with rather more respect and said, “If it was murder and there is a trial you will have to testify. Don’t leave without telling us. You can go on, then.”

  Not the polite dismissal it should have been, but she did not care. In her room she undressed and left the ruined clothing on the floor. She hurried into the bathroom, where she ran blessedly hot water and scrubbed her entire body. She washed her hands four times before they felt clean again.

  She put on a clean dress and bundled up the other into a neat ball, washed her hands once more, then rang for a servant. A chambermaid or two was always about. She gave directions to burn the clothing, repeated it firmly to the astonished girl, then sat on the windowseat and thought. She left the window open even though it was chilly.

  If the courtiers ever found out that she saw Cade die, no matter the cause, she would be surrounded by the horrified curious. She was certain the doctor would not talk. The guards might, but most of them did not even know her name. Probably it would all fade away, especially if Cade really was as unimportant as the doctor had made him seem. But it might be just as well to vanish somewhere for the rest of the morning.

  Tam made her way to the library, chose a book, and settled herself in a comfortable chair in the corner by the tall windows. Rain left soft grey trickles on the glass and dimmed the garden beyond. The lit glowlamps—so many of them!—were set to a lower brightness, making the room feel cozy and warm. Anyone else who knew what you know would be under arrest by now. Her eyes traveled down the page but she read nothing. The book was a popular novel, replete with betrayal, ghosts, and a crumbling tower overlooking a black and rocky sea. She forced herself through two chapters, then gave up. If she was thinking so much about the Sarians, she might as well read about them.

  She went back to the bookshelves. The library was well organized, but it took a while to find anything about Sarium. Even then, there were only a few
books. One was titled Beyond the Black Peaks, which sounded promising. As she started to carefully remove it from the shelf, she was distracted by the one next to it. Magicks and Alchymies of the Distant Easte. There was a subtitle: Being a Collection of the Barbarous Spells and Curses Practiced by the Eastern Peoples, With Special Attention to Charms and Potions of Love and of Hatred. If anything merited the word tome, this did. It looked more likely to have something about blood-dust in it than the other book.

  You fool, she thought as she carried the book to a table. If she was found reading it now, it would not look good. Better than before the murder, she told herself.

  The table of contents was frustratingly detailed and disorganized. Of the uses of henbane. A cure for warts. To renew a lost love. Phases of the moon and their influence on healing spells. Apparently the Sarians were as full of supernatural nonsense as the Caithenian peasants. She began turning pages. The type was small and cramped, and the pages were old and crumbling a bit. No one had read it for years and years. Even if there was a formula for blood-dust in it, it would be impossible to find without removing the book and reading for hours, which certainly had not happened recently. She sneezed.

  That sufficiently tried her patience for her to return it to the shelf. Little flakes of paper clung to her dress. If she kept reading she was going to have to change her clothes again. Books were not the answer today. She would come back tomorrow if the rain kept up.

  There was a large mosaic map of the Narrow Sea and the countries surrounding it on one wall. Tam stood in front of it and looked at the blue sea south of Caithen. Her father knew about the blood-dust because he had been in Sarium, and the doctor knew because the king’s spies and scouts knew. But how had it come to Caithenor, to be slipped into the food or drink of an ordinary courtier? The reason he was killed did not puzzle her unduly; people had their secrets. He had crossed someone in love or money. A Sarian poison was a different mystery.