Page 14 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Dr. Ferrara

Anya dressed carefully. If she was going to ask questions without rousing suspicion, she would need to look sweet and pretty.

She chose a soft blue mermaid-spun silk, tight at the waist and just brushing the floor.

It hid that she was wearing boots she could run in.

It is harder for people to guess you are burning with fire and rage when you are clad in sky-colored silk.

“And now,” said Gallia, “your hair.” Anya slicked it down with spit and sea-spinner mousse, and wove it into two plaits hanging down her back. It wasn’t perfect—the back was bumpy and there were stray hairs at the front—but it was passable.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked younger, and sweeter. She curtsied to her reflection.

“Good, Anya,” said Gallia.

Good: Gallia rarely praised her, and Anya’s heart burned with love for the bird.

“You look,” said Gallia, “poised to recite a nursery rhyme. Now go.”

It took courage to walk down the steps from her bedroom and into the corridors, but Anya had courage. The whole population of the castle and its surroundings—aristocrats, accountants, cooks, stewards, guards—seemed to be in the corridors, whispering, discussing the horror of the night before.

She was nearing the stairs leading up to Dr. Ferrara’s study when she heard her own name and ducked behind a carved marble statue of a unicorn. It was two elderly men, both clad in formal black mourning, both familiar to her by sight; they were on the king’s privy council.

“What will happen to Princess Anya?” asked the larger man.

“A school, I assume—maybe on Lithia.” The other man’s face was narrow, and his voice was thin to match. “Might be just as well, you know. She’s always with those fetid birds. Growing up odd, they say.”

“Prince Claude will put a stop to that now he’s regent.”

She felt Gallia quiver with indignation and ran her fingers through the dark feathers. Anya jerked her head, up and then sideways: it meant “never.”

“I never expected,” said the larger man, “to have to kneel to Claude Argen.”

“He’ll only rule as regent until the girl is eighteen. Then she’ll be queen, I suppose, if they find Argus guilty.”

Anya clutched Gallia so hard that her fingers dug into the old bird’s ribs.

“So Claude will be regent for five or six years, until the princess can be queen. That’s long enough to change the whole island forever. You’ll see. The gloves will be off. Things will be very different.”

The words produced a flicker of something in Anya’s head, but it vanished before she could seize it.

“Come on,” she said to Gallia. The conversation had filled her with even greater urgency. “We need to find Dr. Ferrara.”

—

Petra Ferrara was a tall, broad, robustly built woman with knowledgeable hands and gray-streaked hair. Anya had been treated by her when she had eaten an entire crop of wild mushrooms, years ago. She still remembered the strong comfort of the doctor’s presence—and the copious vomiting.

Dr. Ferrara was bending over a sample of the poison, studying it under a glass contraption, when Anya knocked on her door. In answer to Anya’s questioning, she shook her head.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you where the poison is from, Anya, nor what it is.”

“But you have to!” Half imperious, half pleading, Anya came closer. “Please. I have to know.”

“I don’t mean I won’t, Anya—I can’t. The poison is entirely unknown. I’ve contacted three dozen poison specialists. None of us have ever encountered anything like it. It’s not karkadann gland, not lavellan spit, not peluda venom.”

“Peluda?” croaked Gallia. “What’s that?” Anya was glad she had asked.

“You find them in the west,” said Dr. Ferrara.

Her skin, usually very dark and very clear, was dry with exhaustion.

“Largely on the nonhuman islands. Quite small, breathes fire, has dozens of tentacles. Unlikely to read you a bedtime story. But it’s not peluda.

Nor is it hydra saliva, nor manticore quill, nor any of the hundreds of plant-based poisons—deadly nightshade, manchineel… ”

“But how can you know something’s unknown?” said Anya. She looked around at the books that lined the sunlit, oak-paneled study—at the medical instruments, the vials of liquid. Surely there had to be some clue there? “Can you be certain ?”

Dr. Ferrara spread her hands, her brow furrowed.

“Toxins are my specialism. Frankly, I would have said I knew every recipe for poison in the thirty-four islands,” she said.

“I’ve studied poisons that are undetectable, poisons that take a week to work, poisons that kill at the moment they’re touched. ”

She gestured to the rows and rows of bottles that crowded her shelves.

“I’ve studied poisons that will slay a chimaera, that will slaughter a herd of longmas.

There are no poisons that will kill a dragon—they’re too tough for it—but I have seen poisons that can destroy a manticore merely by the fumes. It’s none of them.”

She looked carefully at Anya, standing in the middle of the room, her body rigid with eagerness and care and longing.

She was very pale. The old woman made a move as if to touch Anya’s face, then stopped herself.

“Let me make you a preparation, Anya; a strengthening draft.” She moved to her desk.

“It has centicore milk in it; it’s very nourishing. ”

Anya ignored that. A thought had hit her, and not a comforting one. “You said you know all the poisons from the islands,” she said. “Could the poison have come from outside the Archipelago?”

Dr. Ferrara looked round, startled. “It might,” she said slowly. “Anya! That could be an explanation.”

“But how would it get in?” objected Gallia. “Every waybetween is watched by a guardian, isn’t it? In Japan and Zimbabwe and all the others? It’s impossible to smuggle anything through.”

Dr. Ferrara nodded. “That was true. But the waybetweens have been acting differently since the Immortal’s Flight.”

“Different how?” said Anya.

“When the Immortal flew into the Somnulum, a great burst of glimourie was released into the Archipelago. The ripples caused changes. There are rumors that some of the waybetweens are open all year round—I know that to be true, at least, of the routes into Scotland and New York.”

“Where are they?”

“The New York route opens on the island of Paraspara. Very few people know exactly where. It’s guarded on the Archipelagian side by a chimaera. She does not advertise her location.”

“And the other one?”

“The Scottish route currently opens in Atidina and is guarded by a human from the Outerlands.” Dr. Ferrara smiled: a smile that had history in it. “I knew Frank Aureate, the current guardian. He came only once into Glimouria. I remember him well.”

“What was he like?”

“Sharp, and sardonic, and brave. He was one of the finest men I’d ever met…but that was a long time ago. And of course you have heard the stories of his grandson, Christopher—the mermaids sing songs of him.”

“So an Outerlands poison could have been smuggled through?” said Anya. Her heart was beating faster.

“I don’t know. The Frank Aureate I knew was a scrupulous guardian—but that was when the waybetween opened only once a year.

It may be that the work is too much, now, for a single man.

Or, equally, it is possible that something has happened to the guardians of the New York waybetween.

I should ask someone to investigate. A ratatoska, perhaps. ”

Anya left Dr. Ferrara’s study with the weight of new knowledge on her shoulders. If the poison came from the Outerlands, how could she track it down? And if she couldn’t track it down, how could she save her father?