Page 56 of Circle of Shadows
More air.
Nothing.
More, more, more...
Sora was light-headed. She paused so the room would stop spinning.
Daemon hurried in. He was a little paler than usual, and his hair was mussed up. But there was also an electric sort of energy in the way he bounced around the hold, unable tostand still, kinetic and fully charged.
He stopped moving for half a moment to say, “I did it. I broke into Prince Gin’s quarters.” Daemon promptly resumed pacing again and told her what he’d discovered in the maps and notes upstairs.
When he was done, Sora sank down to the floor. “Prince Gin is building an unstoppable army. War is coming.”
“No,” Daemon said. “War’s already here. It’s just that the rest of Kichona doesn’t realize it yet.”
The nauseating image of the tenderfoot nursery on fire flashed through Sora’s memory. She could still smell the smoke and see the charred remains in her head. And then afterward, once the embers had died, she’d wrenched herself away from the arms of the teachers who tried to comfort her, to restrain her, and bolted into the middle of all the ash. It had flown up around like a snow flurry from the hells.
Beneath it, there had been bones. Tiny, blackened bones, the skeletons inseparable from one to the next. The tenderfoots had died huddled together.
Sora bent over, dry heaving.
Daemon rushed to her side.
She shoved the fiery memories aside and tried to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
Breathe.
“We can’t let this ship make it to Tiger’s Belly,” Sora said. “We can’t let him choose more Hearts or take more taigas. We have to poison everyone here, and soon.”
“We really have to kill everyone?” Daemon asked.
Sora felt his unease keenly, not only because it coursed through their gemina bond like milk gone sour, but also because she wasn’t convinced that killing everyone wasnecessary either. Or at least she didn’t want to do it.
She kept focusing on her breaths as she rethought her plan. She opened Fairy’s pouch and looked through the vials. Then she saw a tiny transparent packet fastened to the inside of the leather flap. Sora gasped. It was kagi powder.
“What if we use this?” she asked, showing the fine white powder to Daemon. “It’s ground kagi leaves, which cause the equivalent of very vicious food poisoning. They’ll retch to the point of passing out.”
Daemon nodded as he processed what she was suggesting. “It’ll debilitate the ryuu long enough for us to isolate and kill Prince Gin. Maybe, without a leader, the rest of the ryuu will stop their advance through Kichona.”
“Exactly.”
However, poisoning the meal wouldn’t be easy. There were people in the galley, cooking. Sora and Daemon would have to distract them, or hope that there was a moment before dinnertime when the food was left unguarded.
They climbed up a level to where the galley was located and slinked in between crates of vegetables and drums of oranges until they were close to the kitchen. From what she could see through the galley door, there were three ryuu recruits in there, likely relegated to dinner duty because they were the lowest rungs of the ladder.
“Keep watch,” Sora said to Daemon. “Remember, if one of us is captured, save yourself.”
He hesitated.
“It’s the only way,” she said.
He shook his head. “No. We won’t get caught.”
Sora sighed. “And you sayI’mthe stubborn one.”
He shrugged and positioned himself at the ladder in case any other ryuu decided to make an appearance.
