Page 15 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The Regent

Anya needed to see her father. Her throat burned with terrible pain, and she longed for his warm, steady hand to take hers. She needed to tell him what she knew. He would know what to do.

But they wouldn’t let her. She ran to the South Wing, where the old cells were set deep into the walls, and was turned away by a shocked guard. “You shouldn’t be here, Princess!”

“But I need to see him!”

“He’s a criminal, Your Highness. He’s not allowed visitors.”

“He’s my father ! And he’s innocent!” She fumbled in her pocket for gold coins. “Look, I’ll give you these, or anything you want. I’ve got more in my room. Please! I just need to see his face.”

The soldier’s expression had flickered—was it pity? or temptation?—but he kept his voice flat. “Nobody can see him. Not without permission from the regent.”

“The what?”

“Your uncle.”

—

Claude was in his study when Anya burst in. It was a magnificent high-ceilinged room, the table lit by a fine-wrought silver chandelier. He was with the chancellor, old Rillian Gerund, sitting opposite other men and a woman in senior military uniform.

Her uncle was addressing one of the men. “And what progress with the new garrison, Melza?”

The door rebounded as she came to halt halfway across the room. He looked up. “What is it, Anya?”

“I need to see my father,” she said.

They looked dismayed to see her there, with the old accusatory-looking bird perched on her forearm. Rillian Gerund visibly flinched.

“Anya,” said Claude. “I think you’re old enough to understand why I can’t allow that.”

She was doing it wrong, she knew. If she was going to get what she wanted, she needed to pretend harder, better, more carefully. The disguise that was easiest, she knew, was “sweet little girl.” It was a disguise that nobody bothers to see through. All her training had been for this.

She lowered her eyelashes, and smiled the seventh official smile— winsome —and Claude’s face relaxed. “I’m very sorry to interrupt—it’s just, please, that I need to see him,” she said.

“Sweet child,” her uncle said. “I understand. But truly, it’s impossible. Your father is a dangerous man.”

Anya looked at him. “Dangerous?”

She thought: If you say that again, I will bite off your face. I’ll tear off your ears.

She said: “I wouldn’t go into the cell. I just need to talk to him. Please.”

“My dear niece, you can no more go to see your father than you can your grandfather. In fact, you shouldn’t be in the castle at all. I’m arranging for you to be sent to a school while all of this is worked out.”

I can’t leave him. I’ll fight every single person who tries to make me. I’ll kill them.

“That’s very kind of you, but I don’t want to go to school. I just want to see my father.”

Claude looked around at the soldiers, all of whom were watching him carefully. “Come with me, Anya. We will talk in private.”

He led her through his study to a smaller room, with a desk covered in papers and books. “Listen to me,” he said. “You must try to forget him. Will you be good, and sweet, and commendable, and do your best to accept what we cannot change? And in return I will care for you.”

I would rather drink an ocean of your snot. I would sooner kiss a karkadann.

“I know my father,” she said. “I know he loved my grandfather as much as I love him.”

“It is possible to love a man and yet to kill him.” Anya was unsure if she imagined the spasm that crossed his face. “The evidence against him is clear.”

“But that’s just it!” said Anya. “It’s not! I was talking to Dr. Ferrara, and she said she thinks the poison was smuggled in from the Outerlands! And my father hasn’t left the island in more than a year, you know that. So my father couldn’t have done it!”

“That is pure supposition, not science.”

Claude was leaning against his desk, and as she watched, he made a swift movement behind his back, tense and quick, pulling a sheaf of papers to half cover a tiny black book.

He was hiding something.

The book was as small as her palm. A scrap of paper stuck out from it. She saw two letters: AR.

A sudden thought rang through her. AR for Argus? Her father.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Claude,” said Anya. “I’ll go now. May I hug you?”

“Of course you can, my dear,” said Claude, and reached out his white-gloved hand toward her.

She lifted her chin and walked straight into his arms. He stroked her hair. His face, as he released her, was satisfied.

“Good girl. You’ll do as you’re told, won’t you?”

He did not see that in her hand there was now a tiny black book. She made a fist around it.

“I can hear the gaganas calling me,” she said. As she turned to go, she saw him brushing off his white embroidered gloves, as if she were something a little grubby, a little disgusting.

—

The book, when she got it back to her bedroom, was bitterly dis-appointing. Her heart had leaped with hope, but it meant nothing. The binding was some kind of snakeskin, and the book itself was written in a rune, which even old Vrano did not recognize.

“Shall I eat it?” asked Coren. “Get rid of the evidence of theft?”

The square of paper, which had looked so promising, read: EST HIC LIBER MUSEI METROPOLITANI ARTIUM . Nothing to do with her father: Artium , whatever that meant, not Argus . She shoved the book deep into her pocket.

But her uncle’s words had given her another idea. You can no more go to see your father than you can your grandfather. She would go to see the only witness of the crime.