Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(48)

The boy turned and considered me. “How are you feeling?”

I’m sure I paled, for he smiled, pleased, and pushed past me to rejoin his mother.

It was at that moment that I knew for sure: she was poisoning me. I didn’t know how she was doing it, but there was no other explanation. I felt myself going hot all over, then cold. I shivered. I was seriously ill, and she was poisoning me. I thought about all the sick people I had helped—helped yes, but not returned to the vigorous people they had once been! They were the gray, shadow people now: teeth, organs, skin—all ruined. I put my hand to my head and tugged experimentally on my hair. It seemed as strong as ever, and none came away in my hand. But my mind! Wasn’t it my mind that I could feel most affected? This was not like me: worrying, being afraid. The scene at the falls the day before, falling to the grass, unable to rise… why had I not been the one to go to the edge and peer over as Aleksey had done? God, even the thought of that brought back a wave of sickness, and I held tight to Xavier’s neck, drawing comfort from his solid certainty. I heard a noise and spun around, my knife in my hand. Aleksey threw up his hands, his eyes wide. “God’s teeth, Nikolai, what is wrong with you?”

I pulled him close to me, close to Xavier’s neck, and whispered, “She is poisoning me.”

He stepped back sharply. He regarded me carefully. I thought he was going to say that I was being fooled by my sickness, that my mind was poisoned by ague alone, but he did not. He nodded and said simply, “We are leaving now. Pack up and saddle the horses. I will go and tell the major.”

I had never loved him as much as I did then. I only nodded and watched him walk away.

I do not, therefore, blame Aleksey at all for what followed. He tried. He did try to leave.

We both did.





Chapter Eleven


BY THE time I had the horses ready to travel, the sun was fully up and the breath of the falls had burnt off the river.

I could not find anyone in the palisade, so concluded they had gone to the river to pursue their idea of attempting to cross it. Now that I knew I was leaving, I actually did feel better and rode with some dignity restored to find Aleksey. I was even planning a sweat lodge in my mind so I could build one when we returned home.

What I could not understand was how she had managed it. She had not eaten with us once since the very first night. Being a woman amongst a group of men unknown to her, she had elected (or her husband had elected for her) to remain with her child and eat in their tent with him. The food had come from the major’s supplies initially, and then Aleksey and I had hunted game, butchered it, and brought it to the fire. We had all sat around watching it cook, and she, once more, had not been present. So how? I remembered the unnerving proximity of the boy watching me as I’d bled the moose, but he had not come close enough to touch either it or me.

I even thought once again about the green that had poisoned Aleksey’s father. I had thought much about this since that incident, despite other events overtaking me somewhat. I still did not understand how a color could kill, nor why it should be green that did so, when for all other intents and purposes green was a wonderful, healing hue. We lived surrounded by green of so many shades I could not capture them all even if I were a painter and had many lifetimes to attempt it. But I had never felt as healthy as I did living in these forests, surrounded by green. Perhaps my old friend in England had been right: God punished those who tried to copy his design for nature in artifice. But I was not wearing green and neither to my knowledge was anyone else in the group. Could poison be put in other things? What had she acquired access to of mine? She had touched me that first day, worn my shirt even, but surely that….

I stopped my incipient panic and remonstrated with myself as I rode, until I realized I was doing this out loud. Was not talking to yourself the first sign that you were joining the ranks of the poor imbeciles that jiggered and giggled and spoke incessant nonsense as they cowered away in doorways, filthy and ragged and…? Good God, no wonder Aleksey had given me such a strange look earlier. I took out my knife and made a cut across my palm, concentrating on the pain, watching the well of blood. I had intended this to calm me, but something about seeing my blood made me frown. Blood… my shirt…. The thought eluded me. I clenched my fist, closed my eyes, and swallowed. I would master this. I could be sick in body, for was I not like any other man in this? But I would not be sick in my mind. That was up to me, as I had already proved to myself, conquering my fear of being on a ship. I actually managed a smile, and wondered if I could persuade Aleksey to try his cure upon me. I liked his remedy. I took to it the first time he allowed me to do it to him, and I have prized it ever since.




I FOUND the group by the river. The colony had been erected only a few hundred feet behind the water, but it was on slightly raised ground, so even a surge would probably not have affected it. I would not have lived that close to this flow for anything. It would be like living next to a whirlpool, its siren call always tempting me…. I squeezed my fist, felt the pain, and clenched my jaw. I was in control. I dismounted some distance from the sandy beach they were standing upon and beckoned Aleksey closer.

“Have you told them?”

He nodded. He was grim. I knew this went very against the grain for him—on par with desertion, almost. He would take a long time to get over this. I admired him even more for the sacrifice. He added shortly, “Major Parkinson understands, I am sure. After all, they do not need us now. They have discovered sandbars in the river—well, I suppose they are not sand, for that would be washed away—have you seen that current? Yes, of course you have. Anyway, rocky islands, and they think they can…. But you do not want to hear this. What is wrong?” He twisted around to see what I was staring at.