INCIDENT: Suspected poisoning of Credola Valleya Reed
POISON: Lockwort
INCIDENT NOTES: Gradual temperament change and weight loss noted by colleagues as symptoms of old age. Retirement and replacement by great-nephew suggested in Council, proofer sought excuse to examine torso and confirmed distinctive broken capillaries and encouraged C. Valleya to seek medical attention. Suspect regular dose of lockwort (powdered in beverage?) by nephew. Internal Reed matter, no further action.
(from proofing notes of Credola Jaya Oromani)
1
Jovan
You never get used to poisoning a child.
Dija Oromani arrived in Silasta four months after the siege ended, in that strange period teetering between chaos and routine, when my sister’s health had recovered enough for her to return home but not to work, and the last of the billeted citizens had returned to the lower city. At eleven years old, the youngest daughter of my second cousin, Dija radiated quiet earnestness, with thick glasses over bright clever eyes that reminded me of my uncle, and a cloud of hair like Kalina’s. How easily she had slipped into our household. The Oromani family needed an heir to eventually inherit my Council seat, one young enough to learn the machinations of government and strong enough to withstand the other requirements of my position.
Six months after she arrived, I poisoned her for the first time.
I knew it was too early in her training. In better conditions we would have studied for several years, building a base of knowledge before taking that critical step. But at eleven, almost twelve, she had been five years behind the ideal starting age for proofing. We couldn’t afford to wait years. It was with an anxious heart and shaking hands that I added bloodroot to the ground oku meat in our evening meal, and a long night of doubts and guilt as I sat beside her bed, holding her vomit pail and cooling her sweaty forehead with a wet cloth, murmuring weak comforts. She had recovered, and apologized—apologized!—for failing to detect it. Almost two years had passed since that first night, but I remembered the twisting discomfort in my own stomach. Harming a child was wrong; it was against every deep biological instinct. And yet.
And yet I had poisoned her then, and again, and again. In minuscule quantities, over the two years she had been my apprentice, to build her immunity to some of the most common, but non-lethal, poisons she was likely to encounter. In larger doses, to demonstrate the cues, only learned through experience, that could one day save her life and her charge’s. Occasionally, to surprise or test her. The last I hated the most, but it formed the most critical part of our training.
I had failed Tain once. In his thin face and dulled complexion, his drastically reduced appetite, his swiftness to tire, the reminders of that failure faced me every day. I was determined never to so fail again. But one day, through poison or some other means, I would be gone, and Dija would be the last quiet shield between the Chancellor and those who meant him harm. It was my responsibility to ensure her readiness. Perhaps one day there would be no need to fear a silent attack on Sjona’s ruling family from within or without. Until then, though it tugged at my heart and slow-soured my relationship with Hadrea, I would lace Dija’s morning tea and prepare small, dangerous tablets, and nurse her back to health, and remember that our country, for all its flaws, was worth this. Worth my life. Worth hers.
It had to be.
* * *
The darkened theater was too hot, and the glare from the single focused lamp on the stage left bright smears behind my eyelids when I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Eyes open or you’ll miss it.” A whisper in my left ear.
I kept them closed. “I have a headache.”
Can a grin be audible? I could have sworn I heard one. “Another one? You should see a physic about that, Jov. You might be allergic to something.”
I opened my eyes a crack to scowl at my friend. Even in the darkness of the audience seating the brightness of his teeth revealed the width of his smile. “I am allergic to something,” I muttered. “I’m allergic to this sh—”
“Shh!” I shifted my glare to my other side. Kalina was two seats down, and though it was too dim to read her expression, her tone was severe. “They’ve worked hard and you’re being very rude.”
“It’s all right for you,” I grumbled back. Down on the stage, the lights had expanded to reveal the actor playing my sister, crying far more attractively than any human had a right to at a simulation of Chancellor Caslav’s funeral. Stagehands cunningly hidden from view fanned the actor so her dress caught dramatically in the “breeze,” and the roguish young man cast as Tain—all right, I could admit he was a reasonable likeness—laid a comforting arm around her shoulders. A heavy chord sounded from the small orchestra and the light narrowed in on an ascetic figure who had been lurking behind the glamorous pair. I tried not to bristle. The Jovan character, while ostensibly one of the protagonists of the play, skulked and glared, creeping around the stage, tailing after the luminous pair of Kalina and Tain like some kind of tame but badly socialized animal.
“He’s quite handsome, Uncle,” Dija whispered from beside me. Her gaze looked innocent behind her thick glasses. I couldn’t tell if she was teasing me, or offering serious consolation. Someone on my other side suppressed a small snort or chuckle.
“Maybe you should try wearing those pants, Jov,” Tain suggested. “They’re all the rage now, and they’d really show off your thighs.”
“Shh,” I hissed back. “They’ve worked very hard and you’re being rude, Chancellor.”
He buried a laugh with a hasty cough.
I’d read the script in advance, but the text had not quite conveyed the tone of the play, and I understood now why the Theater-Guilder had been so insistent I see the early showing, before the rest of the city was talking about it. It was going to draw attention to me again, and from the looks of it, reignite speculation about my relationship with Tain. The stage Jovan seemed more poisoner than proofer, whispering worries about traitors and urging Tain to take action against them, and presented more as spy and adviser than friend. After all, my part in the public story could be distilled merely to the most dramatic and violent events. Tain had discovered and owned up to the city’s dark past and secured peace between the rebels and the city citizens; Kalina had uncovered the plot by the Warrior-Guilder, Aven, almost dying to warn us all of her treachery, and Hadrea of course had taken on the powerful water spirit, Os-Woorin, and saved the city from destruction. But me? I had covered up Tain’s poisoning, killed the traitor Marco, and blown off the Council chamber roof to free the trapped Council from the fire. My part was not so easily smoothed into celebrated heroism.
Just when my brief fame—or notoriety—after the siege was starting to fade away, too. I tried not to sigh. This was far from the first production of the siege of Silasta; apparently the residents of this city didn’t mind reliving their own trauma in dramatized form, as there’d been a string of the bloody things. But this one had three times the budget of its most recent competitor, and as the highlight show of the karodee, guaranteed high audience numbers. The international guests currently swelling our population seemed fascinated by our brief civil war and the apparent reemergence of an ancient magic. I hadn’t even been a character in several of the earlier productions but now I could look forward to being the source of scrutiny and fascination once more.