Page 13 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Hunt for Poison

Anya woke up the next morning to the fresh reality of death.

Her throat was agony: it burned with thirst. She’d never known physical pain exactly like it.

Anya looked out at the world—out from the window, down to where soldiers clustered in the grounds—and felt despair take hold of her. She whispered, “Father.”

She went back to bed, lay down, and pulled the covers over her head.

The gaganas had other plans. A gagana will not allow misery, because gaganas live long. They have seen too many beginnings to believe in anything so final as an ending.

The gaganas were not polite or gentle. They settled on her bed, two dozen of them, golden beaks gleaming. They pulled back the covers with their silver claws.

“Get up,” said Gallia. “Anya, get up.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

“I’m too tired.” Her whole body ached like she’d been beaten.

“You are not tired. You are panicked, and angry, and afraid, and lost. You will continue to be all those things until you get up and do something. Then you will just be angry and afraid.”

And so Anya rose. In her bathroom she drank straight from the tap. It didn’t help the burning in her throat. It was not a thirst that could be quenched by water. Tears tried to rise up, but she beat them back.

“Not now,” she muttered. “No time.”

She crossed to the hearth, where the chick Koo was awake, his eyes still sealed shut. She fed him a morsel of anchovy.

She could not believe he had hatched just the day before. Anya picked him up and felt his soft feathers, and his tiny heart beating against her fingertips, and it gave her something like courage. She sat next to the fire, cupped him to her chest, her jaw clenched, and tried to think.

“Gallia?”

“Child?” The bird’s croaking voice was more gentle than usual.

“My father didn’t kill anyone. It’s not possible.”

“Not possible?” said Coren. “Are you sure?”

“Shut up. You’re not allowed to even ask that!”

“Anya—”

“You’re not even allowed to think it, do you understand? If you’re going to, you can go back to the forest.” It was the only thing that powered her. She needed to keep hold of her white-hot burning certainty.

“If you’re sure, then we will be sure with you,” said Coren.

“I’m more sure than I’ve ever been of anything in my life.” She knew it with the same certainty with which she knew a flame will scald and ice will chill. “He was set up. He was trapped by someone.”

“By who? We’ll find them and declare war!” Coren was still young enough that his feathers fluffed around his neck and the back of his head when he was excited.

“But I don’t know who did it!” That was the terrible thing. She twisted the chain of her silver necklace, so tight it threatened to snap. “The castle was more full of strangers last night than it’s ever been. It could have been a hundred different people.”

She had seen enough, in her enforced year of castle living, to understand that her grandfather was not popular.

He was a harsh man. Harsh but fair, he would have said; just harsh, others might have.

But there had been more money since her uncle, with his meticulous dress and his sharp eyes, had taken charge of the treasury.

That had created ripples of grudging respect running through the castle corridors.

“Gallia?” Anya put Koo on her shoulder, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. “What’s everyone saying? Have you been out?”

“Kava has been around the castle, listening,” said Gallia. Gallia herself had refused to leave Anya’s side while she slept, but she did not say that.

The young female, Kava, bobbed her black head. “I heard Dr. Ferrara talking. They would have thought it was just a heart attack—it looks like one. But the poison was in his drink, and around his mouth, and on his collar. It had, Dr. Ferrara said, a bitter, metallic smell to it.”

“The poison, then,” said Anya. She bit down on her own knee, through her nightdress.

The pain helped. It clarified her mind. “We need to see Dr. Ferrara. We need to ask her where the poison came from. If we can find that out, we can work out who would have had access to it, right?” And she nodded, gagana-style, two lifts upward: “yes,” and “go,” and “now.”

The gaganas around gave a caw of agreement and drew closer to her, the small, shivering girl, her beating heart, and her rage: the furious child they were pledged to protect.