He saw Daleina flinch-he'd shocked her. He'd known he would. Compassion welled up in her eyes, her beautiful eyes, and he looked away and forced himself to continue: "She slipped bloodwood into his dinners-he always had a roast pork sandwich, and she cured it with salt and bloodwood. Never let me have any and only ate a little herself, though in retrospect I think she must have regurgitated it afterward to avoid any symptoms. When I asked her about it, later, she said she was merely helping nature along. He'd been complaining of pains in his legs, she said. That's it. Just pains, the ordinary stiffness that you'd develop from a life of high-altitude tree cutting, the kind that could be eased with a soak in hot water. She had no other reason, even claimed to love him, though I doubt she has the ability to love anyone."
Daleina was quiet for a moment. "How old were you?"
"Eight."
"And that's when you left?"
He heard the sympathy in her voice and wished he could wrap it around him like a cloak, but he didn't deserve it. "No, that's when she accelerated my lessons, teaching me about plants and herbs and poisons. I left when I was twelve, after she used me to kill our neighbor, an elderly man whose snoring kept my mother awake at night."
Glancing at Daleina, he expected to see sympathy mutate into revulsion in her eyes-he'd confessed to murdering a helpless old man-but instead there was only more pity, which wasn't better. He looked away from her at the tapestries that filled her walls with rich greens, golds, and blues. "Hamon?" Her voice was gentle. "Why are you telling me this?"
"That's how I knew about glory vines . . . and about nightend berries," he said. Daleina flinched at the mention of the berries that had ended her predecessor's life. "She knew-knows-about all sorts of obscure plants and their uses, mainly because she doesn't feel bound by any ethics when it comes to experimentation. She may-and this is very much only a dim possibility-have some shred of knowledge that could help you."
Suddenly, Daleina's eyes widened, and he knew she had leaped to guess where his thoughts had taken him. "You want to ask her about the False Death."
"I don't. Because if I reach out to her, she will know where I am, and she will come to see me." For years, he'd kept himself away from her, mostly by traveling, first with Healer Popol and then with Champion Ven, staying in the outer villages and away from cities, but if he contacted her, he'd have to tell her where he was, if only so her response could find him. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn't merely send word. She'd come here, whether or not she could-or would-help. "But if I don't . . ."
"You're asking my permission to invite this . . . your mother here?" Her words were careful. She'd become more careful with her words and her tone since she'd been crowned. If he hadn't known her, he would have thought she was measuring the decision of what to ask the cook to prepare for dinner.
"You misunderstand me. I am not asking. I am going to invite her. If there's a chance there's knowledge she has that could help you, then I must. I am telling you as a warning: if"-when-"she comes, she is as likely to want to kill you as to heal you. You must not trust her. Ever."
"I have to say this sounds somewhat like a bad idea."
He studied her, the warmth of the morning sun filtering through her hair, making it glow like a halo around her face. Her eyes were bright, awake, healthy, and beautiful. She had a way of looking at you that made you feel as if you mattered, that she would do anything she could to keep you safe, that she was devoted to you. He knew she looked at everyone that way, that she felt personally responsible for their safety, but it still warmed him and made him want to work that much harder to keep her alive and well. "You dying is a bad idea, and I'm not going to let it happen." If that meant reaching out to the demons of his childhood, then he would. "I'd walk through fire for you."
She looked on the verge of saying at least a half-dozen things, considering, then discarding them. At last, she only said, "I'll keep a bucket of water handy."
He loved her more in that moment than he ever had.
Chapter 10
It wasn't that Ven disliked young children.
On the whole, he had no strong feelings about them one way or another, except when they were dead, which was sad, wasteful, and made him want to bash things. Live children . . . he hadn't spent much time with them since he was one. He was impressed with their ability to annoy one another.