As Cousin Lucian goes over the day’s accounts—tax collections from the merchants for the Queens’ Duel were higher than expected, and there is a fear over a lack of crop production in Wolf Spring—Katharine does her best to pay attention. But day-to-day matters on the island are not what is on everyone’s mind.
“Oh, how long will you make us wait?” Renata Hargrove exclaims.
“Renata, be calm,” says Genevieve.
“I will not be calm! Natalia promised the temple three council seats. And you know whose seats those are.” She looks at Lucian Marlowe, Paola Vend, and Margaret Beaulin. They are the only other members of the council who are not Arrons. Marlowe and Vend at least are poisoners, but Margaret is war-gifted, and as for poor Renata, she is completely giftless.
“How can you know whose seats they are,” Katharine says mildly, “when I do not?” She studies Renata from her chair, and Renata shrinks back. It is a good feeling, to be able to command such a reaction. Katharine does not look like much, small as she is from so many years of poisoning. Forever scarred and forever pale. But there is more to her than that. More to her even than the boost of a thousand years of vanquished queens, and the entire island will come to know it.
“However, Renata does have a point.” Katharine turns to Luca and smiles, all teeth. “You have returned. And you must have given some thought to your choices while you were away.” She had hoped that the High Priestess would not be able to stomach staring into the eyes of the queen who had bested her beloved Mirabella. That Luca would not be able to bow to her and would never return. But she should have known better. Before Mirabella and Arsinoe sailed into the mist, Luca had agreed to preside over Mirabella’s execution, after all.
“I have,” says Luca. “And my choices are myself, the priestess Rho Murtra”—she lifts her chin—“and Bree Westwood.”
The cousins, Lucian and Allegra, make small pained noises.
Pietyr scoffs. “Never.”
Katharine frowns. The only real surprise is Bree Westwood. She had expected that Luca would choose Sara, the head of the elemental family. Not Bree, the flighty girl who played with fire. And of course, Mirabella’s best friend.
“The High Priestess cannot serve on the Black Council,” Genevieve spits.
“It is uncommon, but in the old times, it was not unheard of.”
“The temple is meant to be neutral!”
“Neutral to the queens. Not to the affairs of the island.” Luca’s gaze slides over Genevieve dismissively, and Genevieve’s lip quivers with rage.
“So,” the High Priestess goes on. “Queen Katharine. These are my choices. Who are yours, to be replaced?”
Katharine looks at the faces of her council. But they are not really her council. They are Natalia’s. A few are even Queen Camille’s. She feels the hostility coming off them, and beneath her skin, the dead queens prickle.
The Arrons expect that she will remove three of the others; the others would say that she ought to keep them, to better represent all interests. Even the giftless. Genevieve would tell her to throw the High Priestess’s selections back in her face. And no doubt they all think that she should replace Pietyr. She has seen the way they look at him, how their eyes narrow whenever he touches her.
But they can think what they like. Her Black Council will be hers alone.
“Lucian Marlowe and Margaret Beaulin, you are released. You have both been faithful servants of the crown, but Lucian, we have no shortage of poisoners here. And Margaret, I am sure you can understand my feelings about the war gift, given what happened to me at the hands of Juillenne Milone. Besides, there will be a war-gifted priestess on our council now, to look after the interests of Bastian City.”
Margaret stands and shoves her chair back from the table. She does not use her hands, but the movement is too quick for Katharine to tell whether she used her mind to push or her heel.
“A priestess has no gift,” she growls. “Rho Murtra’s voice will be for the temple and the temple alone.”
“Indeed,” says Lucian Marlowe. “Do you mean to have an entire council of only Arrons and priestesses?”
“No,” Katharine replies, her tone clipped. “Renata and Paola Vend will stay. Allegra Arron will yield the last place.”
Allegra opens her mouth. She looks at her brother, Lucian Arron, but he will not look at her, so finally she rises and bows her head, so low that Katharine can see the whole of the ice-blond bun piled high atop it. She looks so much like Natalia. And it is for that reason as much as anything else that Allegra is leaving.
“Will you stay on,” Katharine asks them, “until my new council members arrive?”
Lucian Marlowe and Allegra nod. But Margaret slams her fist against the table.
“Do you want me to shine my chair for the priestess as well? Give her a tour of the Volroy? This is not the way to rule. Allowing the temple to invade the council space. Keeping your boy by your side as though it is his advice that you’re interested in!”
Katharine reaches into her boot.
“Guards!” Genevieve calls. But Katharine leaps to her feet and throws one of her poisoned knives hard toward Margaret, so hard that it sinks into the tabletop.
“I need no guards,” she says softly, sliding another knife between her fingers.
“The first was a warning, Margaret. The next will go into your heart.”
BASTIAN CITY
Jules Milone places her hands on the stones of the city wall. Beneath her palms, the mortar is rough, warmed by the sun but cooling now in the early hours of twilight. Before her lie the sea and the beach, cast in gray by the stretching shadow. The sound of the waves and the smell of the salt air are a little like home, but nothing else is. The wind in Bastian is less wild, and the beach is not dark sand and flat black rock for the seals to lie on, but pale, fading into a beach of small red and white wave-polished stones. It is pretty. But it is not Wolf Spring.
Camden, her cougar familiar, rubs along the back of her, hard enough to press her to the wall, and Jules winds her fingers deep into the big cat’s soft, golden coat.
Their companion on this walk is Emilia Vatros, the eldest daughter of the Vatros clan, warriors who have led Bastian City for as long as anyone can remember. Emilia looks at Camden and frowns. She would have rathered the cat stay behind, in hiding. But Jules is a naturalist, gifted to make fruit ripen and fish swim into her net. And she does not like to go anywhere without her cougar.
Camden hops up and places her good front paw atop the stones, to look out at the waves like Jules is. Jules moves quickly to drag her back down, careful to avoid the cat’s bad shoulder, injured the past winter by an attacking bear.
“It is all right,” Emilia says. “No one is here, and with the sun at her back, anyone looking will mistake her for a big dog.”
Camden cocks her head as though to say, Big dog, my eye, and swats at Emilia half-heartedly when the warrior girl leaps up onto the wall’s edge. Jules gasps. The wall is high, and the ditch below full of unfriendly rocks.
“Don’t do that,” Jules says.
“Do what?”
“Just jump up there like that. You’re making me nervous.”