CHAPTER 1
I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.
The poison was a distillate of chime-adder venom, which burned my sinuses when I took it off my wrist the way some people take snuff. The king was a tired man of medium height, with sandy hair and deep grooves worn into the sides of his face. I hadn’t recognized him at first when he stepped through the door of the stillroom. Well, why would I? The king was someone that I had seen far off, at the head of a long table or perched on a throne. Without context, he was simply a well-dressed man who had come in without even knocking.
Still, he had looked naggingly familiar, and I thought perhaps he was one of my father’s friends, so I simply said, “Wait a moment, please,” and turned back to stripping rosemary leaves off thin wooden stems. (I always process rosemary after snorting adder venom. The fragrance of the rosemary helps to clear out the awful burnt smell of the venom.)
Then the little voice in my head whispered, One moment please, Your Majesty, and recognition crashed over me like cold water.
I spun back toward the man in the doorway. He wasn’t standing in profile, so I couldn’t see if his face was the same one that was stamped on coins, but Saints help me, he was wearing a circlet, a thin little silver thing, and surely no one would wear that except royalty. Which meant he really was the king after all, except that he was standing in my workroom, where he had no business being. And I had just ordered him to wait.
I panicked and tried to curtsy, but when I clutched my skirts, I dropped the rosemary, and the leaves went spilling down over my skirt and clung to the fabric, sticky with sap.
“Your Majesty,” I croaked. My mouth was so dry that I half expected to hear my tongue rasp against the roof of my mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize … That is, I didn’t expect…” Could I ask him to turn sideways so that I could check his profile? No, probably not.
He did not look angry. He smiled faintly while I brushed futilely at my skirt. “Mistress Anja?” he asked.
I nodded. That was my name, although I won’t swear that I wouldn’t have nodded no matter what he’d said.
“You have doubtless heard that I killed my wife,” the widowed king said. “It’s true. I did.”
The words made no sense to me. They might have been a mouse’s squeak or a beetle’s click. I stared at the king with my sinuses full of venom and my mind full of nothing at all.
Why is he here? Father was part of a council of leading merchants who sometimes advised the king on economic matters, but he always went to the king, not the other way around. Am I supposed to entertain him until Father returns?
No, that was absurd, my father wasn’t due back for nearly a week. And this didn’t seem like a man who would be entertained by a treatise on the dangerous properties of powdered lead. Regardless, the housekeeper should have settled him in the best room and brought him wine and come to fetch me, not brought the king here as if I were his equal. And the staff knew that—at least theoretically, I couldn’t imagine they had any more practical experience with kings than I did—so either he had snuck in or he had demanded to see me, and neither scenario made any sense at all.
Perhaps he wants an antidote or some prevention against poison? That was the only thing that might make sense, but why would he come himself instead of sending a messenger? Kings had people to run errands for them. It was one of the few reasons I could imagine wanting to be king.
“Well?” he said.
I blinked at him. “Well what, Your Majesty?”
He made a quick, impatient gesture. “The rumors that I killed my wife. I told you, they’re true.”
It is very hard to respond to a statement like that. Even if I had been at my best, even if he hadn’t been a king, what could you say? Besides, I hadn’t heard any such thing. I knew that the queen had died a few months ago, that was all. Gossip found its way into my workroom only slightly more often than kings.
If I were the person that I should be, I would have been angry. It wasn’t right that someone could just announce that he was a murderer and expect everyone to smile and nod along, simply because he was the king. A good and decent person would have been filled with righteous outrage. But my heart was starting to race from the venom and my mind was cloudy, and it was simply all so baffling that I heard myself say, “Ah?” as if he had just said something mildly interesting at a party, and part of my brain said, That should be “Ah, Your Majesty?” and the rest ran in little gibbering circles inside my skull, wondering if I was about to be executed for sheer foolishness. I had never heard that the king was prone to executions, but until a moment ago, I had also never heard that he had killed his wife.
He didn’t look as if he was about to have me executed. He looked tired and worn, and the deep lines carved on either side of his mouth did not appear on the coins. He didn’t fidget, but he shifted his weight, anxious in the way of men who are not used to being anxious and aren’t very good at it. “I wanted to get that out of the way,” he said. “In case you could not see past it.”
He’s expecting me to see past a murder? How? And why would he care? He could have just not said anything about it, and I would have been just as confused and awkward as I am now.
“Ah,” I said again, searching his face in hopes that everything would become clear. It didn’t.
Surely a murderer would look different? Not so tired? At thirty-five, I was more than old enough to know that evil could present a fair face, but I had never heard that it got tired. Quite the opposite, really. Evil is relentlessly energetic.
For that matter, did he actually kill her? Or did she die in childbirth or of a broken heart and now he blames himself? That seemed much more plausible. Gossip was one thing, but the king murdering the queen was the sort of scandal that would have rocked the entire city.
Nevertheless, he had brought it up, and clearly that was the topic of conversation. “How did she die, Your Majesty?” I asked politely.
If the question surprised him, the king gave no sign. “I ran her through with my sword.”
Well. So much for that theory. I clenched sticky fingers in the folds of my gown, feeling the first stirrings of outrage. And he expects me to see past it? Does he think I’ll just overlook murdering his wife? Some sins are unforgivable, even for kings!
“She was cutting our daughter’s heart out,” he added.
… or not.
Dust motes floated between us, suspended in the beam of sunlight from the windows. Glass alembics glinted, and the chime-adder moved restlessly in her cage, accompanied by the thin sound of bells. My heart thudded in my chest, hard and fast, as the venom did its work.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” I said, forming each word carefully. “I think I need to sit down.”
The widowed king took my arm, all courtesy, and helped me to the chair. He was shorter than I was, which didn’t seem right at all. I’m a big woman, granted, but kings are supposed to be taller than ordinary mortals, even if only by the height of a crown. That extra half inch seemed somehow anti-monarchist.
There was only one chair in the stillroom, and I knew that you weren’t supposed to sit when a king was standing, but you definitely weren’t supposed to faint when a king was standing, so my options were limited. I sat.
The king hitched one hip up on the table and faced me, which was enough like sitting that it probably counted. I tried to smooth my skirt and succeeded only in dislodging more rosemary leaves. The smell rose, cleansing and pungent, and chased away any possibility of fainting. I was here. In the workroom. There were bundles of dried herbs hanging from the rafters and distilling equipment arranged along the table, and also there was a king.
My nose itched dreadfully. It always does after snorting venom. I tried to wipe it in a dainty and ladylike fashion, with minimal success.
“I am very sorry, Your Majesty,” I said finally. “That sounds dreadful.”
That startled him, I could tell. His eyes had been on the floor and rose sharply to my face. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was. Very … very dreadful. I’ve never had to … That is … killing someone in battle isn’t like that.”
I suspected that this was the first time he had spoken those words. Had no one offered him sympathy? Perhaps it had simply been the wrong sort of sympathy. I could imagine everyone telling him that he had done the right thing, the needful thing, and no one actually suggesting how terrible the right thing must have been.
I didn’t want to feel bad for him, not when I was still angry at him for coming into my workroom and being the king. But it was hard not to feel some kind of sympathy.
“Your daughter—” I began.
“She died.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear it. Cutting someone’s heart out is a very specific process, after all. You’d have to get quite far along before it was distinguishable from mere stabbing. “Shit,” I said, and then slapped my hand over my mouth in horror.
Shit, Your Majesty, my brain informed me. I clamped my fingers down to prevent the sudden hysterical laughter from rising. Ah yes, laugh at his daughter dying. That’s sure to endear you to him.
The king snorted. There wasn’t much humor in it, but there was a little, and I liked him better for it. Not that I have any place to be liking or disliking a king.
“Don’t,” he said, gesturing to my hand. “That’s possibly the first honest thing anyone’s said to me about it.”
“I’m sorry for that, too, then.”
He nodded. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said.
This was such an absurd understatement that I choked back another hysterical laugh. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
He glanced around the workroom, as if seeing it for the first time. “Your father says you know much of poisons.”
Had I thought my mouth was dry before? Now it felt like my tongue was swaddled in wool. I could not believe that my father had been so indiscreet as to speak of such a thing to the king. Of course, he was proud of me, I knew that, but still. People had been put to death for knowing too much about poison. Granted, the Temple of Saint Adder had extended me the title of Healer for my work, but that was a thin protection against slander. Physicians could get away with knowing too much about poison. Middle-aged spinsters could not.
“Antidotes,” I said, a bit feebly. “My interest is in antidotes, not poisons.” Granted, one of those poisons was currently coursing through my veins, but it didn’t seem like the time to mention it.
“Of course.” The king inclined his head. “But they are two sides of the same coin, are they not?”
I picked at the rosemary on my skirt and looked around the workroom, trying to buy a little time. The room was full of herbs and glassware and a sharp clean smell, but I had not realized until that moment how worn all the furnishings were and how many cobwebs had gathered in the distant corners, as if the king’s presence threw all the stains into sharp relief.
A little resentment pushed back the bafflement then, a thin thread that said how dare a king come here, into my own space, where he did not belong, and make it seem so shabby by comparison?
The absurdity of the thought struck me before it even finished forming. Kings went where they chose in their own kingdoms, and merchants’ daughters smiled and agreed. Even if they were agreeing to something that might get them burned or hanged or stoned to death.
“I have learned a few small things about treating poison,” I admitted. (Which was false modesty, but I was hardly about to brag to a king. There are wonder tales about what happens when you brag to royalty. Many of them involve getting your head chopped off if you fail to deliver.)
“I am hoping that you can help me,” the king said.
“Err,” I said. Err, Your Majesty. “How so?”
Thud, thud, thud went my heart, so loudly that I was surprised the king couldn’t hear it.
“My daughter Snow is sick.” He spread his hands. “It is slow, whatever it is, but it is killing her. None of the physicians I have consulted have the least idea what is wrong. Most of them say it is simply shock at losing her mother and her sister, but I know that it is more than that.” He put a hand over his heart. “I know. But I do not know what to do.”
Now I was on firmer ground. “Ah. What are her symptoms?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what is a symptom and what is simply being a grieving twelve-year-old girl. She eats little, she is very pale, her moods are erratic—but which of those is significant? And what am I overlooking?”
“I see.” He wasn’t wrong. Family members were forever trying to tell you what the symptoms were, in my experience, and half the time, they’d fixated on entirely the wrong thing. The other half of the time, they were convinced that they knew exactly what had poisoned the victim and were pointing fingers at each other over the sickbed.
How much worse would that be when the sickbed belongs to a king’s daughter?
“I have had what feels like every doctor in the kingdom attend my daughter,” the king said. “They have bled her and sweated her and accomplished nothing. They tell me that it is not consumption, nor ague, nor any one of a hundred ailments. But they cannot tell me what it is. And she gets no better.”
I doubt that I’d get better if I was being sweated and bled and having my feet blistered and the saints know what else, I thought, but I certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud. “So now you’re wondering if someone is poisoning her.”
It was a statement of fact, but he answered anyway. “I do. And I hoped that you would come to the palace and tell me what you find.”
I rubbed my temples. “Your Majesty,” I said wearily, knowing that I should just agree to whatever he wanted but fearing the consequences if I did. “I am at your disposal, but I must warn you that very few ailments are actually the result of poison.”
“No?” A half smile crossed his lined face. “To hear gossip tell it, no royalty has ever died of natural causes.”
I could not hide my exasperation. “Because it is a much better story to be poisoned than to have eaten a bad bit of fish, or contracted choleric fever, or drunk oneself into a stupor. People reach for poison as an excuse because they want something to blame. Most of the cases that I see have nothing to do with malice at all, and much more to do with drinking fouled water or eating the wrong thing by accident.”
My hammering heart palpitations gave the lie to what I was saying, but I reminded myself that the king couldn’t possibly know about them.
“You say most cases,” the king said. “Not all, then?”
I bit my lip. “No,” I admitted. “Not all.”
It occurred to me belatedly that I was talking to a man who had inherited his throne because of poison. The old king had been convinced that his enemies were trying to murder him. He had been quite mad but not, as it turned out, incorrect.
The king nodded slowly. “I sent Snow away from the palace early on, away from courtiers,” he said. “When we still thought it was grief. She improved for a time, but then it worsened again. My fear is that the poisoner has followed her.”
I picked at my skirt again. It was old and stained, the fabric long overdue for the rag bin, and I resented him a little more for seeing me in it. But it’s not as if I can wear a ball gown to process herbs, on the off chance a king stops by.
Probably there were noblewomen who did wear ornate gowns all the time, for just such an eventuality. But I presumed that they spent less time around open flame than I did.
“Do you have any idea who might want to poison your daughter?” I asked finally.
“That’s the maddening thing,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face. “I don’t. I have an heir already, and Snow is nowhere in the line of succession. At best, she might marry and have a child that might someday be in line for the throne, if my son Gunther’s line dies out.”
It seemed to me that this meant the most logical poisoner was the king’s heir, seeking to remove a possible future rival, but I didn’t want to say that. I’d never heard any ill of the prince, though, and in any case, he was currently several hundred miles away, courting the eligible ladies of the kingdom of Tohni.
“Will you come with me?” asked the king abruptly.
I lifted my head, startled. “Come with you?”
“To Witherleaf. To see Snow for yourself. To see what the others have missed.” Whatever my expression, he mistook it, because he gestured at the workroom, the sweep of his hand taking in the glass alembics and the jars and the chime-adder drowsing in her cage. “Bring your equipment. A workroom will be prepared for you. Anything you require. Witherleaf is only three days’ ride from here.”
Three days?
I swallowed around my first instinctive protest. One did not say no to a king, and one certainly did not shout no! in a king’s face.
“But … surely if you suspect poison, there are others better equipped…” I tried, while part of me panicked about how I would continue my work so far from the city, and the other part panicked about what would happen if I failed to cure the king’s daughter of whatever mysterious ailment had taken hold of her, and a third, largely insignificant part noted that this batch of chime-adder distillate was the strongest one I’d cooked up yet, and I should probably back the dosage down if I didn’t want to give my patients heart failure. (This is why I test each batch on myself.)
“If it is poison, who can I trust?” the king asked. “My advisors have suggested a dozen physicians, for all the good it has done. So now I must ask why they put those names forward and whom they might have served in doing so.” He shook his head. “But you … well, your father mentioned you to me a year ago, long before Snow became ill.”
“I’d saved his horse from snakebite,” I said wearily. “I think he told everyone in the city.”
“He told me, certainly.” Another faint smile from the king. “When I began to suspect poison, I remembered the story. And I have come to you alone to ask for help.”
“I did wonder where Your Majesty’s … err … entourage was.”
“Doubtless drinking the excellent wine your servants have provided and wondering what on earth I am doing. Meanwhile, you have no ties to any of my advisors, no one has put your name forward, and you stand to gain nothing if my daughter dies.”
And neither of us will mention what I stand to lose. I wound my fingers in the folds of my skirt, feeling something duller than fear sink into my bones. It was not good to brag to a king, but it was much, much worse to fail one. “I … Your Majesty, you realize … I cannot promise anything.”
He met my eyes steadily. I thought again of how tired he looked, and part of me wanted to help him and part of me wanted to hide under the bed until the world went away and left me alone. “I’m not unreasonable, even if I am a king. If you cannot cure her, at least I will be no worse off for having you try.”
Copyright © 2025 by Ursula Vernon
