Page 10 of Hemlock & Silver

Three days passed before the king was ready to leave. I had been a bit surprised to learn that when the king said come with me, he didn’t mean within the hour, but Javier assured me that this was actually extremely fast as such things went.

Apparently a king could not go anywhere, even one of his own estates, in less than three days.

Immense numbers of people had to ride ahead to every stop, to deliver food and bedding and other necessities, presumably so that the immense number of people had something to eat when they got there.

And there were servants and guards and horses and grooms, and also a strangely large number of people who were going simply because the king was going and who seemed to fulfill no function whatsoever.

I’d had everything packed by the end of the first day and began to fret myself into near madness.

I consulted every book in my library about poisons, running over the signs and symptoms—loose teeth, blue lines on the gums, garlic-scented breath, vomiting, vomiting, vomiting.

When the human body is poisoned, vomiting is almost always the first line of defense.

(This is another reason that I usually wear brown.) I knew all these things, and I knew that I knew, but I had a horrible fear that when I finally confronted Snow, I would panic and forget everything that I had ever learned.

Eventually I decided to go for a walk. Javier fell into step behind me. They switched off on who was the going-out guard and who was the staying-at-home guard. I wondered which job they preferred.

I meandered aimlessly around the streets, trying to think of something useful to do.

There was nothing left to prepare. I had packed everything I could imagine needing, and a few things that I couldn’t.

Lacking the princess’s symptoms yet, I could not consult with another scholar in my field.

I had written a note for my father and had dinner with Isobel and made all the arrangements with the housekeeper that you make when you are going out of town for an unspecified length of time.

At last I turned a corner, and there was the Temple of Saint Adder again.

Scand used to say that prayer was what you did when you had done everything else you could possibly do.

Apparently I was at that point now. I turned my steps toward the temple, listening to the echo of Javier’s booted feet behind my own.

The great statue in the center of the sanctuary portrayed Him as a rearing chime-adder with his tail carved into dozens of bells.

The sculptor had somehow made the serpent’s eyes look both wise and kind.

It was an impressive feat. I have seen a chime-adder rear that way on occasion, and never when the snake was feeling benevolent.

I made my way along one wing of the sanctuary, running my hand along the metal bells set into the wall.

Dozens of bells ran the length of each wall, set at waist height, so that anyone walking past could send up a chorus in their wake.

Other pilgrims were doing the same, so the bells formed a liquid backdrop to the sound of prayer.

My destination was not the main sanctuary but a small shrine, set down a flight of stairs and behind an unmarked door, as if the temple were slightly embarrassed by it. Saint Adder may be the patron of poisons, but we prefer not to dwell on the matter.

I started to kneel to crawl into the tiny entryway, but Javier stepped in front of me, ducked down, and looked inside. I rolled my eyes behind his back. Did he really think that someone was going to be hiding in there, ready to collude with me? Lurking behind the candles, perhaps?

Finding no suspicious characters, he nodded and stepped back, gesturing that I could enter.

The sound of bells faded behind me as I crawled inside. I heard the scuff of boots on stone as Javier took up a place beside the entrance.

The shrine of Saint Adder the Poisoner was old, older by far than the rest of the building, but they had not removed it when they built the great sanctuary overhead.

It still had the original walls, made of dry stone laid without mortar, though surrounded on the outside by sandstone brick.

On the wall opposite the door was an ancient painting in red ochre, a headless man with the coils of an adder set above his shoulders.

The paint had worn over the centuries, and smoke had stained the ceiling, but the adder’s tail bells were still clearly visible.

I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to organize my thoughts.

I’m not actually good at praying. Not when I have time to think about it, anyway. In the moment, of course, when there’s someone in front of me who’s accidentally eaten rat poison, I pray as much as anyone. But formal prayer, something beyond oh Saints, let this work, is another matter.

The problem is ramifications. If I convinced a saint to save a life, what might happen?

I don’t mean the stupid questions, like, What if they go on to kill thousands of people?

, because in real life, that almost never happens.

The number of people who go on to start wars or spread plagues is vanishingly small.

But take my cousin Anthony, for example.

I’m sure his mother prayed for him to survive.

But if he had, I wouldn’t have become obsessed with poisons.

There were sixteen lives that I was absolutely positive I had saved.

Maybe more, but never mind—I was sure about those sixteen.

Would all those people have died if my cousin had lived?

I don’t know. Maybe they would have, or maybe the temple would have realized they needed a poison specialist and trained someone, and maybe some of them would have lived.

Maybe this hypothetical specialist would be better at their job than I am and more people would have been saved. How can you know?

And even if you could know, what gives you the right to say that Anthony’s life was worth trading away? One for sixteen sounds like a bargain, sure, but turn it the other way, and you’re saying that a child should’ve died simply because it was inspirational . I’m pretty sure that’s monstrous.

Maybe the point of gods and saints is that they can make the monstrous choices that people can’t.

Or maybe Anthony’s life was always going to end when it intersected with that little root that smelled of mouse nests, and the best the saints could do was to bend his cousin’s mind to an obsession that would someday save others, and pry some good out of tragedy.

All I know is that when I think about these things, I wind up afraid to pray for anything too specific, as if I’d be joggling the elbow of someone who is trying to run the universe.

My sister says that I think too much. Scand said that I had too much of the melancholic humor of earth and needed to eat more red meat.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to help this girl,” I told the saint finally, as I sat there with my knees aching from the rough stone floor. “Just… please send me wherever I can do the most good. That’s all.”

I leaned forward and rang the handbell that stood in front of the painting, then sat while the echoes rang around me.

When the last one had died, I felt… not better, exactly.

Emptier, the way that you feel after a good cry.

A little more peaceful. Some of the bitterness at having to leave my work in the city had faded with the echoes.

Wherever I was going, if the saints were kind, maybe I could do some good.

I backed out of the shrine. Javier didn’t say anything. I wondered if he’d heard me praying, and if so, what he thought of it, but I didn’t ask, and unlike Aaron, he really was the strong, silent type. I’d heard perhaps a dozen words out of him in the last two days.

My knees were unhappy after I stood up, and I leaned against the wall, trying not to rub them too obviously, while Javier waited. “You don’t have to check every single room I go into,” I said, still annoyed. “I swear I’m not colluding with anyone.”

He actually looked startled. “Ah… Mistress Anja… we’re here for your protection.”

“Sure you are.”

Javier cleared his throat and said, very carefully, “The king is concerned that if your mission becomes widely known, those responsible might seek to prevent you from carrying it out.”

I stared at him. “Wait… really ?”

“If someone is conspiring to poison the king’s daughter, you can only be seen as a threat.” His voice was deep and faintly hoarse, as if rusty with disuse.

“But…” My mouth felt suddenly dry. “But… it probably isn’t even poison!”

His shrug was apologetic, but still a shrug.

I felt as if I’d been struck with a board.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might be in danger from anything except the king’s displeasure.

That was so large a thought that I couldn’t quite see around it.

It squatted in the middle of my head like a piece of furniture too heavy to move.

I poked at it from different angles, but it didn’t go away.

Those responsible might seek to prevent you from carrying it out.

No. Surely I’d misunderstood. “Are you actually saying that someone might try to kill me?”

He grunted, then apparently decided that wasn’t enough, and added, “Possibly.”

It was as if the world had picked itself up, turned ninety degrees, and dropped back down over me. Everything had shifted and nothing had changed. I stared up the steps to the sanctuary as if assassins might be hiding under every step.

At the top of the steps, I froze. Were all these pilgrims who they seemed to be? Was that woman who prostrated herself in front of the altar hiding a weapon? Was that old man as frail as he looked, or was he trying to divert suspicion?