One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(58)

Sara and Luca stand on the deck already, but Mirabella walks quickly past them, tugging Billy behind her before either has a chance to speak. This is her crowd. Her moment. She opens her mouth with every eye upon her.

“No doubt you have heard what happened in Wolf Spring,” she says, loudly. “The death of my sister, the naturalist Queen Arsinoe, at the hands of the poisoner Queen Katharine.” She pauses to let the grumbling build, the disdainful whispers about the poisoners. “Now she thinks to come to Rolanth for the festival of the Reaping Moon. To have her triumph before all of you.”

The people start to shout, and she lets them, talking louder over the tops of their furrowed brows and shaking fists.

“She thinks to parade into our city—my city—and kill me as if it is sport. But she will not!”

Mirabella feels the whisper of robes at her shoulder, and Luca’s calm voice cuts through the noise.

“Mira,” she says. “What are you up to?”

Mirabella reaches back and takes Billy by the hand.

“Today I choose my king-consort! And he chooses me, uniting Wolf Spring and Rolanth under one crown!

“And today I challenge Queen Katharine to a duel!” she shouts. “A duel in Indrid Down! I would have you join me there, and we will put an end to this poisoner at last!”

Her people cheer. She raises Billy’s hand in hers, and the people cheer louder. This is what they have wanted. To see their chosen queen rise up and seize her throne.

“Mirabella,” Luca says. “This is not wise.”

“Perhaps not, but it is done,” says Mirabella. “Katharine thinks she will celebrate the Reaping Moon here. But by the time the Reaping Moon comes, she will already be dead.”





WOLF SPRING





Joseph wrings his rag out in his soap bucket and wrinkles his nose. Someone has thrown eggs against the windows of Gillespie’s Bookshop. A whole clutch of them it seems. And in the midday heat, the sticky, running yolks have already started to smell.

Joseph starts at the top and wipes down, the cloth and water not doing much but smearing the whole mess together. He should have brought a brush. And more buckets.

“Such a waste of good eggs.”

Joseph looks up and sees Madge, hawker of the best fried clams in the market, reflected in the window, a basket covered in blue cloth hooked over her arm. He nods to her, and her wizened eyes squint in disgust.

“If they had any brains in their head,” she says, “they’d have used rotten eggs. Then the smell’d be bad enough to have you throwing up on your own shoes.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Could have been anybody.”

Joseph dunks his rag again and goes back to cleaning. It could have been anybody. Barely a week has passed since Jules disappeared with Arsinoe’s body. Since the town learned about her legion curse. But how quickly they have turned on her. Her and everyone who loves her.

“He might not have even heard the eggs,” Madge says, her eyes on the black cloth Luke hung up inside to cover the windows. Black and crimson, for his queen. “It’s not like he’s peeked out here or left that house since it happened. He hasn’t even left his bed except to piss.”

“How would you know?” Joseph asks, and Madge flips back the cloth over her basket to reveal fried oysters and fresh baked bread. A little bottle of ale.

“Not up except to piss, I said, so who do you think’s been feeding him?”

Joseph smiles at the basket. Good old Madge.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he says. “They’ll see. My family’s had boats pulled out of slips at night, people too cowardly to revoke business face-to-face. They might stop coming to your stand.”

“Let them. Who needs them.” She pauses and sneers over her shoulder at anyone who might be watching. “The cursed deserve compassion. Understanding. Not to be pecked to death like a chicken with a dark spot.” She points a finger at the smearing of eggs. “And not the sentence the Council’s going to give her when she returns.”

Joseph scrapes eggshell from the window and says nothing. After a moment, Madge squeezes his shoulder and steps past him into the shop, quieting the cheerful brass bell with one hand.

It takes him nearly two hours to scrub the mess from the windows. When he is finished, his rag is ruined, mostly slime, and the water in his bucket is foul-smelling sludge. No matter how many times he rinses it, Gillespie’s will still smell slightly on very hot days. But it is better.

Joseph is stretching the knots out of his back and shoulders when a pretty black crow lands beside his bucket and peers inside.

“Aria,” he says, and she caws.

He looks around for Madrigal and finds her walking calmly toward him from the square. Her white shirtsleeves are rolled against the heat, and her black skirt is tied with a crimson sash.

“Still no word from Jules?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Nothing.”

“I thought she would be back by now.”

Madrigal shrugs.

“Digging a grave or building a pyre takes time,” she says. “Our Jules is all right. She’ll come back when it’s done.”

“And what if it isn’t done? What if Arsinoe is alive?”