Page 84 of Hemlock & Silver
Nothing.
“Whois making you do this?” I asked. “Is it Lady Sorrel?”
Snow looked up at that, genuinely startled. “Sorrel?” she said, sounding twelve again, talking to an adult who had just said something unbelievable. “How would that even work?” Her shoulders shook, though whether from a laugh or an oncoming spasm, I couldn’t tell.
“Who is it, then?” I asked hopelessly. My only theory, destroyed.
Snow slumped against me. I looked down, startled, realizing that her face was now only inches from my ear.
“The queen,” she breathed.
Oh Saints. Maybe there isn’t anyone else. Maybe she really has just gone delusional with grief.I took a deep breath. “Snow, the queen is dead.”
“The queen is dead,” she echoed. That sly, unhappy smile crept across her face again. She knew things I didn’t, even if they brought her no joy. “Long live the Queen,” she added, and bent forward over the basin.
CHAPTER 22
I left Nurse giving Snow sips of carefully guarded water and retreated to my room, feeling as if I’d been beaten with hammers.
Two apples! Saints.
At least I knew now that it wasn’t Lady Sorrel. That was a good thing. Except that now, apparently my suspect was a woman who’d been dead for months. Could she have given Snow orders before she died? Was Snow still obeying them, even now?
Could the queen have known about the mirrors?
She came from Silversand, and she brought the mirrors with her. Their primary industry is mirrormaking. If anyone was going to find out…
Did that mean the rulers of Silversand knew? They weren’t our enemies, but Javier was right to be afraid of that knowledge in the hands of… well, ofanyone,really.
I gave up, summoned Eloise, and sent her to find Javier. She gave me a look that I didn’t want to analyze too closely. “Miss… you know that men need a bit to recover after…”
I put my head in my hands. “Just… please tell him I need to speak to him.”
When he arrived half an hour later, he didn’t look terribly pleased. I suspected that word of our supposed affair had spread. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Something else has gone wrong now, hasn’t it?” He pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. “I should just staple myself to your back. Every time I leave you alone, something else happens.”
I told him about Snow. At the end of it, he still didn’t look pleased, but he’d sunk into a chair and was staring at the ceiling while he did it.
“Now what do we do?” I asked him hopelessly.
He shook his head. “What would you do if you could?”
“If I could? Lock Snow in a room with no mirrors, one door, and the two of us as door guards.” I smiled mirthlessly. “Though the king was specifically opposed to that.”
“If she gets much sicker, they’ll let you do just about anything,” he said grimly.
“If she gets much sicker, nothing I do will matter. Convulsions. Shit. It’s the beginning of the end. If she keeps going…” I rested my forehead on my fist against the bedpost. “The king would let us lock her up if we told him about the mirrors. But then he’d know about the mirrors. But if wedon’tdo it, Snow will die unless we can figure this out, preferably yesterday.”
Javier grunted. It was the grunt that meant agreement, or at least acknowledgment, so I kept going. “This is like one of those horrible philosophy questions. Do you sacrifice one person to potentially save thousands?” I huffed a laugh. “I always thought that was such an easy question, too.Obviouslyyou sacrificed the one person. It turns out it’s a lot harder when you’re going to watch the person die.”
“And now?”
I stared at the ceiling. We couldn’t tell the king. We’d have to find another way. I wasn’t willing to give Snow up for lost. If need be, I’d kidnap her and take her out in the desert myself, away from any sort of mirror.
I relayed this plan to Javier, who pinched the bridge of his nose. “I want to tell you that’s a terrible idea.”
“No, it’s fine, itisa terrible idea.”
An hour later, sadly, we had no better ideas. The sun had set, and Javier finally got to his feet and gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Is it safe for me to go back to the barracks, or is something else going to happen as soon as I leave?”
