“He liked hitting women.”
“Wish I’d had the chance to hit him back. But it didn’t break my heart to watch you do it.” She paused, checked the blood on the rag, and returned it to her face. “Is the man I shot…?”
“He’s dead.”
She blinked numbly a few times. “Wow. I’ve hurt people before, but I never killed anyone.” She looked up at me. “How am I supposed to feel about it?”
“Any way you feel is the right way.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“If you have to kill a snake, kill it once and for all.”
She paused, seeming to search inside herself, and said at last, “I don’t feel… anything.”
“That’s okay, too.” I touched her cheek with the back of my good hand. She smiled and leaned into my caress.
I went into the bedroom. Jenny lay on the bed, robe open, sheets strategically covering her demure parts. Her side was bare, and the freshly stitched cut oozed blood as Kern wiped it. Thankfully he’d also put on his multicolored gown again. “That should scab up quickly,” he said. “But you’ll need to stay still until it knits good and strong.”
I smelled something sour and familiar. Jenny moaned and tossed her head, eyes closed. If she’d heard Kern, she gave no sign.
“How is she?” I asked.
“I don’t know, there’s something wrong. It’s a nasty cut, sure, but nothing more than that. It hit a rib, so it didn’t reach anything vital. A few stitches, some poultices to keep it from getting inflamed, and she should be fine. Yet look at her.”
Kern was right. She was pale, sweating, and seemed to have trouble breathing. Her eyes opened and flickered about in fear. She had trouble focusing. “What do you mean?” she gasped in a weak, trembling voice. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing, honey, we’ll figure it out.” Kern’s nose wrinkled. “Although I can’t place that smell.”
I could. I felt a mix of horror and impotent rage as I lifted one of the bloody rags used to clean the wound and sniffed. “Shatternight. He coated his knife with shatternight.”
“What’s that?” Jenny asked urgently.
Kern leaned down, sniffed the wound, then looked at me with a mix of respect and fear. “How the hell did you know that?”
“It’s what somebody used on that knight back at Nodlon.”
“I’ve been poisoned?” she asked more urgently.
“The dose couldn’t have been very strong,” Kern said to me. “Exposed to the air, it would’ve started to weaken almost immediately.”
I dropped the rag. “How strong does it need to be?”
“Stop ignoring me!” she screamed.
Kern tenderly brushed damp hair from her face and smiled his best paternal smile. “I’m sorry, you’re right. We shouldn’t talk about you like you’re not here. One of men’s worst tendencies toward women, I’m afraid. Yes, it’s a kind of poison. I’ve dealt with it before, and I know exactly what to do.”
“Will I die?” she asked in a small voice.
His smile faded, but his tone remained gentle. “We all do. Now I want you to rest, and let that cut air out. I’m going to fix up some medicine to make you feel much better. It’ll only take a jiffy, if your friend here helps.” He nodded at me.
“Of course,” I said.
“I’ll send Amelia in to keep you company. Call if you need us.” I followed Kern from the bedroom, lacking the heart to look back at Jenny. Kern was careful to close the door.
“Amelia,” he called quietly, and she jumped to her feet. Her nose had stopped bleeding but was beginning to swell. “I need you to stay with Jenny. I’ve got to mix some medicine in the shed. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Will she be okay?” Amelia asked.
Kern said nothing. Which, of course, was an answer.
We went out the back door to a little shack only a few steps away. Inside was a well-stocked apothecary, its shelves filled with bottles, jars, and boxes. A table loaded with various mixing devices occupied most of the open floor space. Kern turned a handle mounted on the wall, and a section of the roof opened to admit light. Then he closed the door behind us.
Between him and the table, I had little room to move. I stood with my back against the door and said, “There’s nothing you can do for her, is there?”
“No,” he said as he thumbed through a thick, battered book of drawings and strange scripts. “Once shatternight gets into the blood, that’s it. If she’d swallowed it, there might be something I could do, but this way… no.”
I nodded. “At least it’s not a heavy dose.”
His head snapped up and he glared at me. “A heavy dose would be quick and merciful. How long did it take your knight to die?”
“A couple of minutes.”
“This will keep her in agony for hours, maybe days. You think that’s better?”
I knew his anger wasn’t really directed at me. “She’s not in agony now.”
“No. She’s in shock, and the poison is still spreading. But the pain will start soon.” He used a feather to mark his place in the book, then looked down at a large mortar filled with brownish powder. He stroked his long beard, deep in thought.
The confines of the place did not help me stay calm. “There has to be something we can do,” I insisted.
“I can hasten her end.”
“No. She’s crucial to stopping what’s going on at Nodlon.”
He looked at me, his eyes perfectly clear for the first time. “What is going on at Nodlon?”
I hadn’t verbalized my idea yet, and I figured at this point Kern had earned my trust. So I said, “Originally a simple plan to make the queen look bad. She’s got enemies, as I’m sure you know. And because of your switch on their wedding day, a lot of people think she and Elliot Spears are cuckolding King Marcus.”
“Cuckold,” Kern said with a chuckle. “Always liked that word. Sounds like cock hold, which is what it usually is. A woman gets a hold on a man’s cock, literally and symbolically.”
“Yeah, well, the Knights of the Double Tarn think Queen Jennifer has a hold on Elliot’s spear, which makes them distrust her. Someone wants to capitalize on that, so they made it look like she tried to kill Thomas Gillian as a warning to the other knights to stop gossiping.”
Kern nodded. “All that makes sense. But you haven’t told me why.”
“I’d hoped you would figure it out for yourself, you know,” I shot back. “You’re a smart one, I can tell.”
He said nothing.
“When I met Queen Jennifer,” I continued, “she compared herself to a ring setting and said Marcus was the jewel. It’s hard to make a jewel look bad on its own, but you can put it in a bad setting and it’ll look cheap and tawdry. That’s why she was framed. But it only halfway worked because I was there. The Double Tarn knights believe the queen’s responsible, but the nobles think I did it. They’re too shrewd to go against the queen when there’s a handy scapegoat dropped right in their laps. So whoever’s behind it has to make another move.” If they haven’t already, I thought as I recalled the dust cloud.
“Whoever’s behind it,” Kern repeated. “And just who is that?”
“I’m not sure yet. One person can’t be doing all the dirty work, but Bob Kay insists it’s still the work of one hand.”
“Megan Drake, just like I told you,” Kern said. “Bob’s always had a thing for her. Not a romantic one, but he sees her behind every misfortune. He probably thinks she makes all the bad weather. And he may be right, she’s a brilliant young woman.”
“Young? I thought she was older than Marcus.”
“Everyone’s young to me. And, yes, she’s a couple of years older, so she’d be… let me think… around thirty- five by now.”
