Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(45)

“Thanks.” I slipped through the door before anyone else. I wasn’t staying outside in the open.

Emerald smiled when she saw me, the skin near her ears wrinkling under her mask and giving it away. A table was set up in the middle of the building, and plants—green, prickly, smooth, striped, flowering, and dripping sap—were laid out for us. She gestured to the spread.

“Eat the nonpoisonous ones.”

Lady, help me. I wasn’t hungry for this. I nudged the hooded blue flowers aside with my sleeve, careful to keep them from brushing my skin. The mottled branch with white flowers went next, and I studied the yucca for a long while. This small piece wouldn’t kill me without cooking, but it would be unpleasant. That must count.

I pushed it away. A bright-yellow dandelion was next in line. It looked like a dandelion, smelled like a dandelion, and it didn’t sting when I rubbed it against the inside of my wrist. I held it to my lips. Nothing. I set it aside.

A pale purple trumpet flower gave off a foul scent. The leaves were dangerous and teethed, and I pushed it into the pile with the hooded flower and yucca. Anything with that scent wasn’t for eating.

The final plant was a creeping, dull-green cactus sprouting violent pink flowers. The baker back in Tulen had one of these in her window box, and I’d never tried to eat it. I plucked one of the flowers, spied a speck of nectar at the base of it, and sniffed. It wasn’t much—a little sweetness under the normal scents of dirt and growth. I smeared it on the inside of my arm.

“I’m not eating those.” I waved to the ones shoved aside and stared at my arm. I wasn’t itching or puffing up. I nibbled on the dandelion. “Tastes like grass.”

Emerald nodded. “And the other one?”

“Grass.” I chewed on the petal. “Flowery grass.”

They could do with sweetening, but I wasn’t dying.

“Stand here. Give nothing away.” Emerald cleared the table and laid out new pieces of the plants I’d been tested on.

I was being tested on poisons and secret keeping then.

No one died. Ten took forever but lived, and Fifteen nearly ate the hooded flowers. I nibbled on my roll the whole time, going over the layout of Seve’s life and roof in my head.

Exhaustion dragged my eyelids down. I slipped away from the group and back to my room. I needed sleep, not manners and more bandages. I fell into bed without even removing my boots.

“You need to wake up.”

I jerked up, arms flying out and knife tearing through the air.

Maud sighed across the room with my dinner in hand. “You have tutoring.”

I dropped my knife. Little silver flecks spotted my sight, and I steadied myself. Blurry, fading memories of silver and blood, eyes in the darkness, prickled over my skin. I wrapped my arms around myself.

I was finally going to get answers.

I was finally going to make Seve beg. Blood owed and blood paid.

“You look peaky.” Maud leaned in front of me, staying an arm’s length away, and narrowed her eyes. “How are your stitches?”

I reared back. “Fine. I look how I always look.”

“Malnourished and unkempt, yes,” Maud said with the air of superiority that reminded me more of an older sister scolding her sibling than a servant. Not like I’d been holding her to normal servant standards. I liked this bluntness. Kept us both mostly honest. “But you look exceptionally tired today.”

“Least I’m exceptional at something.” I shrugged. “You ever met Nicolas del Contes?”

He’d the rune-scrawled face of a hawk and the legs of a stork, easy to spot and easier to recognize, and I needed to know as much about him as he knew about me.

Maud frowned. “He’s always skulking about, knowing things he shouldn’t. He’s nice, but it makes me jittery to think he’s watching even if it’s for Our Queen. Asked me how my siblings were once. I nearly died.”

So he was a spy. And a bad one if everyone knew it, which meant he probably hired out folks to research us while he followed us around as a distraction from the real spies. I’d nothing to worry about long as I kept on as I’d been doing. He’d have stopped me if he knew what I’d truly been up to.

And if I didn’t talk to him anymore, he couldn’t drag any other secrets from me.

“He’s interesting,” I said.

“That’s one way to describe him.” She pursed her lips and smoothed out the wrinkles in my slept-in dress. “Regardless, I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Me too.”

Getting ready was a rushed affair. Maud tossing clean clothes at me over the screen while I sucked down a bowl of soup. She sniffed as I walked out the door.

“You smell like sweat and dust.” She pulled a small vial from her pocket and unstopped it. The watered-down, clean scent of peonies washed over me. “Completely unfit for seeing your lady.”

I froze as she tapped her fingertips to either side of my neck, smearing the scent of spring against my skin. I swallowed. “She’s not my lady.”

“Of course not.” She tucked the perfume back into her pocket. It must’ve been hers—a treat she’d bought after working hard. She’d not poison me with so much on the line. “But best not suffocate her.”

I’d write “Maud did it” on my arm soon as I was out the door.