the Favored spied on her even in her dreams. She had torn her clothes and walked up and down the passageways singing children’s songs until at last she disappeared from the Seclusion altogether.
She was becoming obsessed with the idea of being poisoned, and not just because of the high priest’s foul elixir. Each time someone handed her a cup, any time she accepted food that was not spooned out of a communal pot, she felt as though she was about to step off a cliff. It was not merely the open and obvious malice of Paramount Wife Arimone—many of the other women had begun to look at her strangely, too, regarding her sessions with Panhyssir and the other priests of Nushash as a sign of some kind of unwarranted favor, as though that daily misery was some prize Qinnitan had secured for herself. Even Luian, who had been her staunchest ally, had grown a little distant from her. Their conversations had become awkward, like two women meeting in a marketplace who both knew that one had slandered the other recently. It was Jeddin and his ridiculous, unreasonable passion for her—it stood between them now like a closed door.
So now Qinnitan lay sleepless in her narrow bed in the deep watches of the night, thoughts scurrying like busy ants, the occasional snoring of her maids outside her door poking at her like a cruel child every time it seemed she might be drifting toward slumber. The days in the Hive seemed impossibly far away Everything that was happy and simple seemed beyond reach. And because she lay wakeful, thinking such feverish, miserable thoughts, Qinnitan heard the quiet noise of someone moving at the far side of her chamber as plainly as if they spoke to her, and knew that she was not alone.
Her heart lurched, sped. She slowly sat up, squinting into the near-darkness beside the door. All she could see by the glow of the shuttered lamp was a shape, but it was a shape that had not been there when she had crawled into her bed.
And if the gardener was on Arimone’s business, Qinnitan knew she might scream herself hoarse without bringing any help at all.
She slid out of the bed and onto the floor as quietly as she could, letting out a small whimper like a disturbed sleeper in the hope of covering the sound of her own movements and perhaps even making the assassin stop moving for fear of waking her up. Desperate, her heart still hammering painfully fast, she struggled to think of what she might use for a weapon. The scissors that the slaves used to cut and shape her hair. But they were at the bottom of the basket under her bedside table, inside the ivory sewing kit—she could never get them out in time.
As her hand passed over the small table, she touched something cold and hard and her fingers closed on it. It was a dressing pin Luian had given her, a handspan long and ornamented with a gold-and-enamel nightingale. She curled the nightingale into her fist, raised the pin like a dagger. Tanyssa would not murder her without bleeding for it, Qinnitan decided. Her mouth was dry, her throat as tight as if the strangling cord were already twisting tight.
The shape by the doorway began to move again, slowly, silently, feeling its way with outstretched hands With much of the dim light behind it now, it seemed scarcely even human, too thin of limb to be Tanyssa, let alone any of the other stranglers Arimone or the autarch might send. For a moment Qinnitan’s already racing heart threatened to stop entirely. Was it a ghost? A shadow-demon from out of Argal’s night kingdom?
The thing was almost upon her. She saw a shadowed face loom up and her superstitious terror turned her arm to stone when she should have struck with the pin, should have buried it in the dark spots of the intruder’s eyes; instead she felt the thing bump against her and recoil. The feeling of cool, human flesh was so startling that the sinews of her arm finally caught life and she slashed at it. Her attacker fell back with a strange, breathy whimper but no words, no shout of pain or surprise, and Qinnitan’s heart stuttered again with superstitious fear.
“Leave me alone!” she cried, but it came out a choked murmur. The thing scrambled away from her, still making the strange, animal noise, and cowered on the floor. Qinnitan leaped past it and ran toward the door, ready to scream for the huge Favored guards waiting only a few dozen paces away from the sleeping chambers, but then she stopped in the doorway. The thing was weeping, she realized, a bizarre, rasping sound.
She reached up and burned her fingers pulling the lamp from behind its slotted screen, but when she had the handle and lifted it up, flooding the room with yellow light, she saw that the fearsome thing crouched on her floor was only a small, dark-haired boy.
“Queen of the Hive!” Caution and fear still kept her oath of surprise quiet. She moved closer. The boy looked up at her with wide, frightened eyes. A long scratch down his chest dripped blood, showing where she had caught him with her nightingale pin. “Who are you?' she whispered.
The child stared at her, tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. He opened his mouth but what came out was only a low grunt. She flinched and he threw his arm in front of his face to protect himself.
The boy whimpered again but let her examine his wound. It was long but shallow. Still, blood was already soaking the waist of his white linen breeches. She hunted for a moment until she found one of the clean cloths waiting for her next moonblood and pressed it against the cut, then found an old scarf and tied it around his waist to hold the bandage in place.
“It is not a bad wound,” she whispered. “Can you understand me?”
He touched the cloth gingerly. He still looked as though he might bolt at any moment, but at last he nodded his head. “Good. I am sorry I hurt you. What are you doing here?”
Even in the lamplight she could see his face pale so quickly that she feared she had given him a mortal wound after all. She tried to restrain him, but he clambered grunting to his feet and reached into the blood-soaked waistband of his breeches, making soft hooting noises like a dove. He pulled out a bag that had been tucked away there between his body and the clothing. It was red with the blood of his body and wet, and for a moment she was reluctant to take it, but his expression was so anguished she realized that he was afraid something within had been ruined. She took it from him and saw that the drawstring was sealed with silver thread and wax. She held the lamp close, but did not immediately recognize the seal printed on it. Qinnitan took a breath, suddenly reluctant again, but the boy made a little whimpering sound like a dog waiting to be let out of doors and so she broke the wax away from the string and shook out into her hand a curl of parchment and a gold ring.
The signature at the bottom of the parchment said “Jeddin.” She cursed again, but silently this time.
“I have it,” she said. “It is safe—the blood has not soaked through. Was it the captain who sent this? The Leopard captain?'
The boy shook his head, puzzled. Qinnitan was puzzled, too, then she had another thought. “Luian? Favored Luian? Did she send this?'
Now he smiled, although it was a pamed and sickly one, and nodded his head.
“Very well. You have done what was asked. Now you must go out again, as silently as you came, so as not to wake the ones sleeping outside. I truly am sorry. Have someone dress that wound properly. Tell them . . tell them you fell on a stone in the garden.”
The boy looked doubtful, but he rose and patted his bandage to make sure it was still in place. He bowed to her, and the courtly display was so strange in the middle of the night, with the lamplight and the smears of blood on the floor, that she almost laughed with shock to see it. A moment later he slipped out through the curtains and was gone.
