Long May She Reign(72)

“And my father? What have they done with him?”

“He is at Newsam Manor, too,” Holt said. “Unharmed, we believe.”

“Has Sten made any threats against him?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Norling said. “He claims he is keeping your father for trial, after you have been captured. To see if he was involved in the murders, too.”

“But he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t.”

Except—I couldn’t know that. Not for certain. All I knew was that I hadn’t been involved. Would my father have been that desperate to increase our influence? I didn’t think so, but it was possible. Anything was possible.

“Do you have any more evidence about who was involved in the murders?”

“Not yet, Your Majesty,” Norling said. “We lost a powerful resource in Thorn, and I admit, we have been distracted with more immediate matters of security.”

“But, Your Majesty, it grieves me to inform you that there have been more rumors about you,” Holt said. “Notably, about you and William Fitzroy.”

“Me and Fitzroy?”

“Nobles had of course noticed that you have grown closer, since the murders. Many are speculating that you intend to marry him, perhaps that the two of you schemed together to put yourselves on the throne. Nonsense, of course, but it is sordid enough for people to enjoy spreading it.”

“If they’ve noticed we weren’t friends before, how could we have plotted together?”

“They say you were concealing your relationship, to protect yourselves. Absolute nonsense. But still, I must warn you again—be wary of Fitzroy. Both because any contact with him threatens your position, and because we do not know that he was not involved.”

“We’ve also lost a lot more of our guards,” Norling said, into the quiet that followed Holt’s statement. “They seem to think they’ll die if they remain. I recommend making it clear that leaving is not an option.”

“No,” I said softly. “No, I can’t threaten them into staying, if they think they’re going to die.”

“Then we must increase our remaining guards’ patrols immediately,” Holt said. “Increase the work hours of those who remain. And we will have to recruit more people from the city.”

“Untrained! Untested!” Norling said. “Who knows if we can trust them? What sort of men will want to become guards at such a time, with Torsten Wolff bearing down on us?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Holt snapped. “We must get it done.” He sighed, pressing his hands on the table. “It will be all right. We are seeing more true believers by the day. People want to support their queen.”

“True believers?” I sat straighter, apprehension prickling through me.

“Your campaign is working. People are talking about your goodness, your new scientific discovery. Some are calling it a sign that the Forgotten want to keep you safe.”

“It’s science,” I said. “Not divine intervention.”

“But if people use it to support you . . . do not mistake me, Your Majesty. You still face a lot of opposition in the city, and a lot of mistrust. We are trying to stop people from speaking against you and your court, although it is difficult to do so when we have so few men at our disposal. But you have supporters, too. We can use this to our advantage.”

But what advantage, I wondered, as I walked down to my lab after the meeting. What was Holt’s goal? I couldn’t forget his words about clearing out the weeds. If the murderer was on my side, as Sten suspected, if he had killed them for me . . .

I had to find more evidence.

I tested every part of the cake I could separate, but the results weren’t particularly revealing. The arsenic was in the sponge. It was in the icing. The flakes of actual gold were safe to eat, but the rest of the cake was deadly.

“It could just be in the sponge,” Naomi said, peering over my shoulder at my notes. “It might have left traces on the icing, after so long.”

“Possibly.” Then I shook my head. “Then there’d be traces of it on the gold flakes, too. Unless the gold is interfering with the results? But why would it? It’s unreactive.” I tapped my pen on the table. Think. “We need the recipe. It’d be pointless slipping the poison into both the cake and the icing, too much risk. So it must have been hidden in one of the ingredients. What ingredients are in both cake and icing?”

“Sugar,” Madeleine said. “Sugar and water.”

“It could have been hidden in the sugar, maybe,” I said. The arsenic powder would probably mix well with sugar granules, if no one looked too closely. But then the recipe would have gone wrong. It wouldn’t have been sweet enough, unless the cook knew to compensate.

But if someone had diluted the arsenic in water, what could we possibly do next? The killer couldn’t have added it to the palace water system—everyone would have died, far sooner, and not only at the banquet. So someone with access to the kitchens must have added it that night. Which once again narrowed the list of suspects down to pretty much anybody.

“If it was in the water . . .” Madeleine closed her eyes. “What if it was an accident? The king was unwell. So what if someone was poisoning him gradually? Not enough for anyone to notice, but slowly. Over time, it might look normal to anyone in the kitchens. Someone doing their job, putting something in the king’s water. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had his own special supply.”