Page 16 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The King’s Chamber

Her grandfather’s body was lying in state, untouched upon his bed, for exactly seventy hours: one for each year of his life. On the seventy-first hour, his funeral would be held. It was a royal custom, dating back hundreds of years. It allowed the spirit to bid farewell to the body.

“I’m going to break into Grandfather’s bedroom,” said Anya to the birds. “To look for clues.”

Anya waited for darkness, and went via the secret passages, so that she would not be seen out of bed.

She moved by the glow of a cracked phoenix feather, which, once broken, would shine for a few hours.

It gave off a magnificent scent of bonfires.

The feather and the light of the spiders together were enough to guide her through the labyrinth; she was grateful for them, though their spiderwebs caught in her hair and face.

She came, stealthy, careful-footed, from behind the mermaid painting, just before the bend in the corridor that led to the king’s chamber.

There was a guard posted outside the door. Anya recognized him; it was the man who had shot Felin. There was stubble on his cheeks. All the guards were normally clean-shaven, so, she thought, he had clearly been there a long time.

“I need you to distract him,” Anya whispered to the gaganas. “So I can get in, right? I don’t care how—anything.” There were no castle rules, now, that could bind her.

Gallia croaked and began to mutter possible subterfuges. While she was thinking the subtle thoughts of a cunning strategist, Coren flew headfirst into the hallway chandelier.

The candles swung wildly and went out. The corridor went dark. Glass cascaded to the ground, and Coren cried out in high, desperate squawks.

“Help! I’m wounded! Alas! A royal gagana, wounded!” And then, as the guard stood stunned, “I said I’m injured ! Help me!”

The guard ran to help, and Anya pushed at the door.

It was locked. She fumbled in the dark and found the single sprig of rascovnic she had put in her pocket.

She crushed it in her fingers, as she had seen her father do, and pressed it into the keyhole.

There was a rich scent of earth, and a clicking sound, and she slipped inside, Gallia and Vrano flying after her.

The room was familiar to her. She looked around quickly, breathing hard. It was large and sumptuous, with velvet curtains and a great four-poster bed. Nothing had been taken or disturbed.

Her grandfather lay beneath a sheet. She held her breath and pulled it back.

She had loved him; despite his failings, she had been taught to love him.

She looked down at the old man, and her whole body flinched away.

She had never seen a dead body, and his had not been a peaceful end: his face said so.

Terror rose in her, alone in the dark room with death. She forced herself not to turn and run.

“Courage, Anya,” she whispered. It was just a body; his soul had flown on. She must look carefully.

There was a smell that she had never encountered before, of something metallic and acrid. He was still clad in the clothes he had died in, and a fleck of dark purple-red liquid lay on his collar, and another on his beard: a fleck of poison.

She took scissors from his desk and cut the piece of cloth from his collar where the poison had fallen.

Every bit of her recoiled as she did it; her hands shook, to be so close to the old man’s anguished face.

But even the tiniest amount of the poison might help her identify it, and if she could identify it, she’d be closer to knowing who had committed the murder.

She put the cloth in her pocket, then looked again at his face.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Before, she had thought only of her father. Now she thought of the old man, with his long, beautiful hands and stern, stubborn face, and the weight of his rule. He looked vulnerable in death in a way she had never seen him look in life.

Anya wanted to make some gesture of love for the man who looked now so entirely alone.

She hesitated—and then she bent down and softly kissed his forehead, as a parent might do for their child.

The gesture had its own power. The ice-cold air in the room seemed to warm, and the dark seemed a little less black.

She said his name. “Go well, Grandfather.” She replaced the sheet.

Vrano gave a long, low caw. “Hurry, child.”

Anya began to search, fast and urgent.

She pulled open the low chests on each side of the bed; looked into the huge engraved-oak wardrobe; looked behind the pictures; rummaged through the waste bin.

She peered inside the chimney, breathing in soot.

She was about to turn away when she saw a blur of white above her head.

Anya held the bright gold light of the phoenix feather high into the passage of the chimney.

Wedged in among the stones, high above her reach, there was a pair of white leather gloves, embroidered in gold along the cuffs. The fingers, she could see, were stained with flecks of purple-red liquid: poison.

Anya’s whole body stopped. Her heart and lungs halted in her chest; her blood ceased to flow. She knew those gloves. She had seen them hundreds of times.

They belonged to her uncle.

Understanding swept over her so suddenly that she had to steady herself, nausea swelling in her throat. She breathed, “Claude.”

The second son; the son who would never be king. The son who had always been closer to old Halam, who had charmed and cajoled his way into the old man’s confidence. The son who watched his older brother’s enthusiasms with disdain.

He had killed his own father. He had betrayed his own brother. Anya’s heart beat again, but now it beat with white-hot rage.

She remembered how her uncle had embraced her father in the ballroom. How her father had looked so surprised, and so glad. Claude must have slipped the vial of poison into her father’s pocket in that moment. She was certain of it.

“Do you see her face?” whispered Vrano to Gallia. “I have never seen an expression like that on a child.”

She had seen Claude, she thought, by the mermaid picture, seen him right by the passageway that connected the ballroom and the East Wing. He must have been using it. He wouldn’t want to be seen near the king’s rooms; he could go there in secret. There had been a spiderweb on his face.

She needed the gloves. They would change everything. They were the evidence that would free her father.

She jumped for them, stretching her fingers. They were inches too high.

“Let me.” Gallia flew up the chimney but then fell back with a cry. “The poison,” she gasped. “The scent is strong.” She made to fly closer again, but Anya stopped her.

“Don’t, don’t!” said Anya. “What if you got some in your beak? It could kill you! I can do it.” Anya tried to brace her hands and feet against the walls, to climb up the chimney, but the gap was too wide to stretch across.

She sprinted for a chair at the far end of the room—she only had to reach them!

“This is it! This is the proof,” she said to Gallia.

But suddenly there were voices outside, one in anger, the other in placation. The second was the guard. The first was her uncle.

Anya turned to Gallia. She caught sight of herself in the mirror: her face was gray with horror in the moonlight.

The handle of the door twisted.