Dark Jenny

TWENTY-FOUR

My bad hand, even without its cast, felt plenty strong. I tied Hoel’s wrists to one of the wagon wheels, his back against the spokes. When he protested that the ropes were too tight, I tightened them. Then I put a tourniquet around his injured calf. I stuck his sword, the hilt still dripping Agravaine’s blood, into the ground between his legs. He couldn’t reach it, of course, but I wanted him to try. He shouted desperate, high-pitched curses after me.

Kern had carried Jenny into the cottage bedroom. Amelia sat in the living room, a bloody rag to her nose. She looked up at me as I closed the front door to muffle Hoel’s cries. Without a word she handed me another rag to wipe the blood from my hands.

“Are you okay?” I asked, hoping I sounded reasonably normal. The rage still quivered just below my sternum.

She nodded. “It’s just a bloody nose. Had lots of ’em. The little fucker blindsided me, that’s all.”

“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.”

“What does she look like?”

“Average. You wouldn’t look at her twice if you met her. Probably wouldn’t remember her the next time you saw her.”

“And she’s in exile?”

“Oh, yes. And every knight memorizes her portrait because in Grand Bruan, she’s to be killed on sight.”

“That’s harsh for a princess, isn’t it?”

“It’s not harsh for a traitor.”

I nodded. Everything was pulling together, except for one final element: motive. “Bob says she hates Marcus because his father raped their mother. Is that true?”

“That he did it? Yes.”

“But is it why she hates Marcus?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

It was one more evasive answer than my patience could stand. I slammed my right hand on the table so hard all the glassware jumped. “I’m asking you,” I said quietly.

Kern tried to hold my gaze, but couldn’t. He picked up a pestle and began to grind the powder in the mortar. “If I tell you, you can’t-”

“No strings. This island has yanked my chain enough, and I’m about to yank back.”

He looked down and his long white hair fell to either side of his face as he spoke. “Has anyone mentioned a man named Kindermord to you?”

“The name’s come up a few times. Who is he?”

Kern’s voice was numb, flat, and matter-of-fact. What he told me was horrifying, and disgusting, and made perfect sense. It was the motive that explained everything. He concluded, “Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil.”

We stood in silence. The weight of his revelation demanded that moment of respect. At last I said, “An army was headed to Nodlon. Medraft was in Astolat ahead of it. That means I have to get Jenny to Nodlon fast.”

“Why? What can she do?”

“She’s the wild card. I don’t think the murderer even knows she exists. With her, I can show that the queen is innocent of treason.”

“Won’t Elliot prove that?”

“By strength of arms, yes. But I’ll prove it for real.”

“And prove the king a fool.”

I shook my head. “No. All I have to do is show that Spears has a wife who looks like the queen, which means Jennifer had no motive for killing Patrice, or trying to kill Gillian.”

That was all true. But an equally big motivation was so that she could see Elliot one last time before she died. It might make up a little for my failing to protect her. At least I could tell myself that I did something.

Kern looked at me steadily. “It’s unlikely she’ll make it there alive. Even if you left right now.”

“We are leaving right now, or at least as soon as possible. And she’ll make it. I just need some Cameron Kern magic.”

“Magic,” he practically spat. “You mean those deceptions of the ordinary and the obvious that morons call magic.”

“Whatever they are, I believe you can use them to help me. And her.”

A scream of bone-deep agony, even muffled by walls and distance, made us both jump. Kern said, “I can’t save her. Do you know how shatternight works? It dissolves the nerves, from the tips up. So the longer it works, the more painful it gets. It’s like boiling inside. If it reaches the big nerves, the ones in the spine…” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine enduring it.”

“What can you do?”

He opened the book, removed the feather place-marker, and turned some more pages. “I can almost kill her. I can mix something that will slow down her body’s processes, which will also slow the shatternight. She’ll appear dead to all intents and purposes, but when you give her the antidote, she’ll wake up. Unfortunately, she’ll be no better off, and her life will run out then just as it would now. But it would give you time to get to Nodlon.”

Another groan reached us. There was a knock on the shed door and a distraught Amelia said, “Cammy? She’s hurting so bad, I don’t know what to do.”

“Just hang on,” the old man said. “I’m mixing something right now.” To me he said, “I’ll also give you something to send her on her way, if you think it’s the right time.”

“That’s not my call, it’s hers.”

“She may not be able to make it.”

“I still can’t make it for her.”

“Then I hope you like watching pain.”

I clenched my fists. Then it suddenly registered that I could clench my fists. I looked down at my right hand, and while it was still black-and-blue, the swelling was totally gone. I’d even pounded the table with it and felt no pain. I held it up to the light. “The hell?” I whispered.

“You broke your cast. Need a new one?”

I was still puzzled. “No, I… guess I don’t.”

“You know, that’s one thing those moon priestesses can do that I could never figure out. They can make a bone knit in a fraction of the time it should take. They call it magic. But there’s no such thing, is there?”

The weight of this final revelation made me suddenly very tired. I leaned back against the door and closed my eyes. So there it was: I’d known no one when I came to Grand Bruan, and it appeared that was still true.