Page 8 of Hemlock & Silver
I considered that for a few minutes. Colchicum is our autumn crocus, which is beautiful and grows in many gardens. Every now and again, someone takes it in their head to eat some. It can take up to a week to die, and it’s not nearly as painless as poison hemlock. “Thatwouldbe pretty useful,” I admitted grudgingly. “But I’d rather find an antidote for both. Andanyway”—I thumped the book again—“if Harkelion was wrong, then I don’t know how to go about finding either one.” According to the herbwife, I would probably need to poison either dogs or prisoners, and I had moral objections on both counts. (Also, I was twelve and unlikely to be given access to the palace prisons for scientific purposes.)
Scand reached out and tugged the offending book toward his side of the desk. “Even if hewasright, this is a translation. Translation isn’t always precise. It may be that someone used the wrong word and set us off on the wrong track.”
I scowled. “So what do we do aboutthat?”
“Well,” said Scand, “youcouldlearn a dead language…”
I let out a wail of despair.
“… or I could translate it for you, if we can find something closer to the original.”
I stared at the book. Then I stared at the ceiling. A little voice whispered to me that I could just give up now. I’d taken this as far as I could go, and Ihadlearned a lot. As Scand said, I got to keep that. I could admit defeat and put the books away.
Surely if there was an answer, someone would have found it by now. Harkelion had lived a thousand years ago. You could still see the ruins of the city he’d lived in, all weathered stone and tumbledown walls. If he’d just been translated wrong, someone would have figured that out in the centuries it had taken for those walls to come down.
It was ridiculous to think that a twelve-year-old girl might find an answer that a thousand years of physicians had overlooked.
There was a hot, headachy feeling behind my eyes, like suppressed tears.
“I’ll never find it, will I?” I said out loud. “This is pointless.”
“No,” said Scand, and I stopped looking at the ceiling and looked at him instead, because he didn’t sound the way he normally did, all calm and measured. He sounded raw and angry, the way that I felt. “Anja, you may or may not find the cure for poison hemlock, but I promise you, if you keep studying, you will findsomething. Something that will make all the work you’ve done worthwhile.”
“I’m twelve,” I said, in a very small voice.
“Then you’ve gotten started early.” He reached out and squeezed my hand, which came as a surprise. Scand never touched anyone, so far as I could tell. His fingers were dry and warm, and his grip was tight, as if I’d slid over the edge of a cliff and he needed tohaul me back up. “If you keep asking questions, youwillfind answers. I promise you.”
It took me more than twenty years, but in the end, I proved him right.
CHAPTER 3
“Of courseyou’ve heard the rumors about his wife’s death,” my sister Isobel said, clearly exasperated. “Itoldyou about them.”
“What? No.” I was packing straw around my distilling equipment, but paused and straightened up. My lower back did not appreciate the angle I’d been leaning at, and made its displeasure known. I rubbed it, which didn’t really help. “You did?”
“Yes,” Isobel said. “I did. I was standing here and you were standing over there”—she gestured in the general direction of the worktable—“and you said, ‘Oh, hmm, interesting.’ And I asked if you thought it was true, and you said that you hadn’t any idea, and then something caught fire.”
“Oh,thatday,” I said, relieved. “Yes, I remember that. And it was only a small fire.”
“But you forgot about the king’s wife.”
“… It wasn’tthatsmall a fire.”
Isobel rolled her eyes. Both of us take after our father, dark-haired and dark-eyed, but Isobel was scaled down in every dimension, neither absurdly tall nor excessively wide. I, on the other hand, am a female copy of him: broad shoulders, barrel curve of a stomach, thighs like pillars, heavy muscle generously smoothed with fat. Being tall has its advantages, especially in reaching high shelves, but I still often felt like a water ox next to my sister.
“Still, the king! Think of it!” She spread her arms wide. “Perhaps if you cure his daughter, he will fall madly in love with you and marry you and make you the queen!”
“Given the fate of the last two queens, I’m not certain I’d want that.”
“Oh, poo. You can’t count Queen Maevis—she died of purpureal fever.”
“I’d rather not die ofthateither, thank you very much.” I shut the lid on the trunk and tightened the straps to hold it closed. I had very little hope of my distilling equipment arriving in the same number of pieces that it left, but I was going to do my damnedest anyway. Perhaps the king had access to wagons that didn’t rattle like the bones of the dead.
Isobel sat up straighter, clearly struck by a sudden thought. “Wait, what are you going to wear?”
“Ihadplanned on wearing clothes, but I am open to suggestions.”
My sister groaned. “No, no. You don’thaveany clothes. Not any that you can wear in public.”
