Page 64 of Hemlock & Silver
Grayling finished licking the saucer for any stray memories of fish, then checked his whiskers over for the same thing.
“Grayling?”
“Mmm?”
“If Snow is going to murder someone, you have to tell me.”
He gave me a look somewhere between pity and contempt. “In fact, I do not. I never have to speak to you again if I don’t wish to.”
It was hard to imagine that this was the same animal who had snuggled up under my arm and purred. “But we’re talking about people’slives! Saints, what if she killed theking?”
“A man who has never, to my knowledge, fed me.” He hopped down from the table, then paused and gave me a wry look. “Don’t fluster yourself so. Your human princess is not going to go stabbing people anytime soon. Unlike her mother.”
He sauntered out. I stared down at my basin of glassware, my mind awhirl.WasSnow being set up as an unlikely assassin? Did the cat actually know something, or was he just enjoying toying with me in between free meals?
For that matter, was Grayling actually a cat? He acted like one, but cats don’t talk and they certainly don’t talk in your head. I had mostly managed to shove that to one side, figuring that as I came to understand the mirror-world, I’d understand the mirror-cat as well, but that hadn’t happened yet.
“Saints,” I muttered. “Maybe it reallyismagic.”
Even saying that made me feel dirty. I picked up the sponge and jabbed it into a tube again, watching the built-up grime scrape away from the sides. When it was finally clean and I held it up to the light, I discovered that a gray cat hair had somehow gotten wedged inside.
Javier found me in the workroom, milking the chime-adder’s venom.
“Please don’t get too close,” I said calmly. At home, I locked the door to my workroom when I did this, but there was no lock on the inside of the door here.
Javier froze. I couldn’t take my eyes off the snake long enoughto see his expression, but if it was anything like other people I knew, it registered horror, then confusion, then reluctant fascination, usually in that order.
The chime-adder, who had her fangs embedded in a piece of cloth, was mostly registering annoyance, judging by the angry carillon of bells. I held a polished wood stick against the roof of her mouth, pushing gently against the fangs while venom ran down and dripped into the funnel I’d positioned below. (Well, most of it got into the funnel, anyway. There’s always a little that ends up on your hands or the cloth or the tabletop, because liquids are like that.)
“Is that…? Are you…?” Javier stopped and tried again. “Is thatpoison?”
“Yep.” (Like I said, there is really no point in being pedantic about venom versus poison in practice.) “I do this once a month or so.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh no, it doesn’t hurt her at all. She just doesn’t like having her head held. I mean, who would, really?”
“I meant foryou,” said Javier. I didn’t have to see his expression—I could hear it in his voice.
“Oh. Yes, but I’m good at it.”
“I see.”
I finished with the snake, unhooked her from the cloth, and put her back in her cage, dropping the lid on quickly. “There you go, sweetheart. There’ll be a nice mouse for you in a day or two.”
Javier’s face was a study in baffled stoicism. He shook his head slowly while I sealed up the tube of venom, which was already starting to crystallize in the air. “How deadly is that there?”
“This?” I held up the tube. “You could drink it and be perfectly safe, so long as you don’t have an ulcer. A needle dipped into it and inserted into your flesh would give you some nasty swelling around the site—and it would hurt like the devil—but it certainly won’t kill a healthy individual. As much venom as is inthis tube…” I held it up and did some quick calculations in my head. “If you could inject it the way that the chime-adders do, it’d kill two, maybe three people. By pouring it into a fresh wound, I expect you could kill one person, or at least give them the worst day of their lives.”
His eyebrows were going up.
“Don’t worry,” I said hastily, putting the tube away, “the adult snakes rarely pour all their venom into a bite. It’s not worth it when it takes so long to produce.”
“Good to know,” he said faintly, as I washed my hands.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. He was standing upright and not retching or moaning the way that I had after eating the mirror-apple, but since guards are presumably trained to stand upright without retching, I couldn’t be sure.
“A little queasy,” he admitted. “I skipped dinner. And breakfast. I’m running on tea at the moment.”
