Queens of Fennbirn (Three Dark Crowns 0.5)(22)

In the center of the room, pressed to their knees on the red, circular rug, are the naturalist queen and her co-conspirators. They are still children to her eye, though the queen and Juillenne Milone both glare at her with foolishly little fear. Natalia could have the little Milone poisoned. And the boy as well. They have committed a dire offense, and she would so very much like to give them to Katharine as a set to practice on.

As she thinks this, she glances at Juillenne Milone and nearly startles. The girl’s gaze is so intense that she must be able to read Natalia’s thoughts.

“We would speak,” says Cait Milone. It has been a long time since Natalia has seen her, but she seems as hard and proud as ever.

“Then speak,” Natalia says. “Though I do not know what you think you can say.”

Still, she listens as Cait pleads, insofar as Cait is capable of pleading, and turns a sympathetic ear to the tears of the boy’s mother, a woman named Annie Sandrin. Mostly though, she watches. She watches the way the two younger Milone women cling to the backs of chairs but not to each other. She sees the guilt-bent back of Cait’s husband. The confused, pale faces of the Sandrin men as they wonder how their boy got mixed up in a queen’s business.

And she watches the queen. Arsinoe. She has grown long and lanky in the five years since the Black Cottage. Her hair is chopped short, the ends uneven, and she is not a beauty, like her queen Katharine, or like the elemental Queen Mirabella is rumored to be. She is plain, with a stingy, downturned mouth, and the council’s spies in Wolf Spring say her gift has still to show.

To Natalia she looks like an easy kill.

“Natalia?” Genevieve prods her from her reverie. Apparently, the pleading and lamentation is over.

“Will the queen be allowed to speak?” asks Cait.

“It is not necessary to let the children speak,” says Cousin Lucian.

“But I would speak.”

Heads turn as Arsinoe gets to her feet.

“Then of course, Queen Arsinoe,” Natalia says. “We will hear you.”

“None of this was their fault.” Arsinoe gestures to the Milone girl and the dark-haired boy. “It was my idea. I told them to do it. I made them help me.”

Natalia does not believe her for a moment. But she will pretend. It would be perhaps too much to ask of Katharine yet anyway, to poison two children so close to her own age.

“If that is true, then they will not die.” Natalia looks at the two of them, the boy afraid and contrite, and the Milone girl still defiantly scowling. Everything about her screams defiance, except the desperate way she clings to the boy’s hand. “Joseph Sandrin will be banished to the mainland until he comes of age, or we see fit to retrieve him.”

Queen Arsinoe’s mouth falls open, but Juillenne Milone begins to shout, and every Milone in the room presses forward, as if to comfort her.

“She has quite the temper, Cait,” Natalia says. “You look almost frightened!” She raises her chin to Juillenne. “The Milone girl is sentenced to the Black Cottage. She will repay this crime through service as the next Midwife to the crown.”

“No!” Arsinoe and the boy start to cry and throw their arms around Juillenne. One of the younger Milone women slumps into her seat. Another bursts through the barrier of guards, and before Natalia can stop her, attaches herself to her sleeve.

“Please,” she says. “Let me go instead.”

“You should be glad. She could be dead. And there are many priestesses who would be thrilled by such a sentence. It is more honor than she deserves.”

“She is only a child. Have you no mercy? Are the Arrons truly as wicked as that?”

Natalia looks at her council of poisoners. The ill will toward them spreads by the day. So much so that she may have to dismiss some of them and appoint new members of other gifts. A warrior, perhaps. Or even someone giftless. That ought to appease the people.

“Very well,” she says, and sighs. “That will do.”

Katharine runs to greet Natalia the moment she comes through the front door, as she often does when she is not ill from poison training. Natalia stifles a smile and takes her time getting out of her gloves before lifting the cool glass of poison juice from Edmund’s silver tray. Katharine seems about to burst standing there, hands folded and trembling over her black skirt and ankles twisting in an odd little dance.

“Yes, Kat?” Natalia says finally, and Katharine takes her by the hand.

“They tell me something has happened! Something with Queen Arsinoe!”

Genevieve catches Natalia’s eye as she slips past in the foyer. “I will speak to the servants again about gossiping.”

Natalia nods. Katharine’s memories have faded. There is little danger in speaking of Arsinoe, or even Mirabella. They are only names to her now. Rivals. Though they have only discussed it in the broadest terms, Katharine knows that the other queens must be killed, and after five more years of training, and armed with a strong poisoner gift, she will be ready to do it.

“It was not the servants’ fault,” Katharine says quickly. “I was eavesdropping.”

“Eavesdropping,” Genevieve scoffs. “It is more likely that you were just silent for so long they forgot you were there, little mouse. I will speak to them.” She touches Natalia’s arm and leaves. Natalia gave her younger sister a place on the council only recently, but it seems to have centered her. Or at least she does not seem half as frivolous as she did before.