Page 3 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Three

DEEN WAS PEERING DOWN AT her, tall and narrow and tightly smiling, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers.

He wore a roughly knitted dark red sweater, from the collar of which was clasped a slim pair of spectacles; two paper clips; and a neatly folded square of paper, affixed to a third paper clip.

“Yes, of course,” said Alizeh with feeling, softening as her surprise subsided. “Do sit down.”

Seldom did Deen emerge from his workroom.

The apothecarist had been spending his days productively and companionably with the palace alchemist—a matchstick of a woman named Ayla. Tall and wiry herself, she was a dry and unyielding character whose brusque efficiency had appealed to the Ardunian apothecarist as rain might appeal to roses.

The two had formed an instant friendship.

Here in Tulan, where apothecaries and alchemists had access to greater stores of magic, Deen had contracted a giddy enthusiasm for his own profession.

Under Ayla’s guidance, he’d been learning a great deal about how to mix new potions and elixirs; which meant Alizeh rarely saw Deen for more than brief periods at a time, for he headed to the workroom every day with the manic gleam of a dotty inventor.

She’d never seen him so happy.

Alizeh studied her friend as he took the other chair nearest the fire, wondering what might’ve inspired his visit, or else whether he’d come to ask her for something.

To her surprise, he said nothing.

Instead, they sank into a congenial quiet as the logs popped and snapped between them.

Deen cleared his throat lightly, then turned his eyes up to the ceiling, tracking the rose vines that continued to invade the hall.

Absently, as if he’d grown accustomed to the issue, he brushed a stray petal from his hair, then two more from his sweater. He nodded toward a bay of windows.

“Still no solution to the spiders, then?” he said.

Alizeh shook her head with a stifled sigh.

He raised an eyebrow. “What of the locusts?”

“They came back,” she said. “They always come back.”

“But they leave, occasionally?”

She nodded, then noticed a pair of snodas hovering in her periphery. The tension within her coiled tighter.

Deen frowned as he sat back in his chair. “Peculiar,” he said, almost to himself.

“Very,” she agreed, afraid to say too much.

On the second morning of Cyrus’s absence, bright green locusts were seen surging around his abandoned wing of the castle, swelling and scattering in eerie exhalations.

As if this weren’t odd enough, masses of bumblebees swarmed the palace next, dispersing only to nestle in the king’s roses as they tired, several fuzzy bodies to a flower.

Not long thereafter clutters of spiders had taken up positions in doorways and windows, dangling like pendants from lintels, batting gently against glass panes in the breeze.

At first, all this had been dismissed as unfortunate infestations; for no matter the efforts of the household, the insects and arachnids couldn’t be banished permanently.

But then the groundskeeper had discovered a skulk of foxes dotting the grass at dusk, each with an apricot held between its teeth, which they deposited quietly onto the lawn.

Then came a scream of crows—hundreds of winged inkblots landing upon the roof at once, rattling shingles and rafters in a furor.

Then, most alarming, were the dozens of snakes found slithering up the steep faces of the castle, writhing like so many gleaming sickles.

The groundskeeper’s aging heart couldn’t take it—the poor man had fallen over in fright.

Alizeh had summoned the apothecarist at once.

It was Deen who’d brewed the draught that revived the groundskeeper that day. It was Deen who’d locked eyes with Alizeh in the melee, sending her an unspoken, searching look.

“A snow leopard appeared at the back entrance this morning, not long after dawn,” Alizeh said presently, turning her eyes to Deen. “Cook was returning from the market and found it sitting there, licking its paws. It, too, brought with it a half-bitten apricot, which it left behind the door.”

“More apricots?”

“Just one this time,” she said.

He made a thinking sound.

“The feline was apparently quite forbidding,” Alizeh added. This felt safe to share aloud, for the servants already knew this story. “Cook’s scream woke half the house.”

Deen raised his eyebrows. “That was Cook screaming this morning? I assumed it was Sarra.”

“Well,” Alizeh said absently. “It can be hard to tell who’s screaming these days.”

On the third day of the king’s absence, shrieking snodas had come upon a parliament of owls perched upon tables and chairs in his unoccupied rooms, dead mice being quietly devoured as they blinked their unsettling eyes.

More apricots had been reported then, half a dozen said to have been decaying softly on the priceless rugs.

The sage birds didn’t so much as twitch a wing as servants flung their dusters at them in a panic, and this was so strange a response that it seemed clear, suddenly, that the animals might be waiting for something.

For what, no one knew.

They were none of these beasts aggressive; all of them patient; and they could not be convinced to leave, no matter how many times a broom had cleared a full set of eight-legged ornaments from a window.

It had, of course, occurred to Alizeh to wonder whether these many creatures were searching for Cyrus—for the tissue between their arrival and his seclusion was material enough to present a connection.

Moreover, she distinctly remembered, on a single occasion, having seen a half-eaten apricot in his private room.

Spoken aloud, this did not present as strong evidence.

Many people ate apricots, did they not?

Alizeh wouldn’t know; she’d never eaten an apricot. The greater trouble was that the theory itself made no sense. What reason could a swarm of locusts have to concern itself with the whereabouts of a king?

The very question seemed absurd.

Even Sarra, the disturbed Queen Mother, couldn’t seem to decide between suspicion or celebration where her son’s confinement was concerned.

Worse, there were no experts to turn to on the matter, and no one to offer a ready explanation.

Diviners had been summoned to no avail, for the priests and priestesses had refused to explain or remove the menagerie.

The appearance of the rangy snow leopard this morning was deeply concerning, but still not so concerning to the royal household as the team of colossal dragons that every day prowled the palace grounds, their thundering footfalls sending terrible tremors through the walls.

The beasts pawed angrily at the soft grass, talons shredding the earth, and repeatedly singed the spires with their incendiary roars.

“Do you think they wish to eat him?” Huda had wondered aloud yesterday, plucking an infant snake from the stonework.

The creature had stared at her, and she’d stared back, fascinated, as its wisp of a tongue peeped in and out of its mouth.

“I can’t tell if they’re happy Cyrus appears to be dead, or angry they didn’t get the chance to kill him first.”

As if in response, one of the dragons gave a roar so violent it nearly set the palace on fire.

Huda startled, her hair blowing back from her face.

She’d dropped the small snake to the ground and turned to Alizeh, her eyes wide. “That was a coincidence, right?”

It seemed more like an omen.