The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(42)
Kellan reached the kitchens as the cook was lighting fires in the three enormous stoves while kitchen maids rushed about gathering ingredients for breakfast. When they saw him, they all froze, dropped into low curtsies, and waited for permission to continue.
The restlessness inside him scraped at his skin.
“Please don’t mind me,” he said as he reached for a shirella resting in a basket. The corkscrew-shaped fruit was larger than his palm, its pale blue skin smooth and inviting.
“That won’t be enough breakfast for you.” The cook, an employee at the castle since before Kellan’s birth, nodded sagely. “I’ll fry up some eggs and meat in a minute. Where should I send the plate?”
He smiled gratefully. “The council room, please.”
He’d get an early start. Outline his thoughts. His questions. Begin organizing the tasks he needed to delegate to others. And he’d run it all past his mother before the meeting began. His handling of the matter had to be perfect. If he showed a single sign of weakness, he would sow doubt about his ability to be a strong ruler.
There were those who wouldn’t hesitate to mount a coup against him if they thought they could get away with it.
By the time the council members began arriving, Kellan’s breakfast was a distant memory, and he had a stack of parchment in front of him with notes, lists, and topics he wanted discussed. His mother had looked it over, added a few thoughts of her own, and then squeezed his shoulder in a show of support before moving to the door to greet everyone as they came in.
Kellan didn’t waste any time. “Thank you all for being prompt,” he began. “I’ll get right to the point. We have a dangerous witch in the city, and people are panicking. It’s important that we have a strong, measured response, and equally important that our response is highly visible.”
“So we can give the witch plenty of warning that we’re coming?” Martin Roche asked, his double chin wobbling as he spoke. The buttons of his jacket strained to cover the ample expanse of his belly, and his pale, stubby fingers tugged at his collar as if he found it constricting.
“Coming at whom? Do we even have any leads?” Dinah Chauveau asked, her mouth tight. Her quarter had been hit hard by the spell last night too, though she’d been safe at Blue’s farmhouse, a situation that Kellan wanted to examine in more detail once he didn’t have a crisis and a betrothal to manage.
“Do we really want to announce to someone capable of creating a fire that can’t be extinguished that we’re openly hunting for them?” Georgiana Faure spoke, her skin paler than usual against the black of her dress. Deep wrinkles dug in around her mouth, which was perpetually pursed as if she’d recently sucked an unripe shirella.
“I agree,” Martin said, as if a decision had now been reached. “Best to move in secrecy, boy.”
It was the first test. The first slice of a sword to see if the prince had any weaknesses to exploit.
Kellan cut his gaze toward Martin and said coldly, “Did you just refer to me as boy?”
Martin sat back. “I simply—”
“A yes or no will do.” Kellan held the older man’s gaze and waited.
Martin blinked first. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”
To belabor the point would cost Kellan the ground he’d just won, so he turned away from Martin and said, “We need a public response because our people are panicking, and people do foolish things when they panic.”
Senet Aubert tapped the polished table with her bold red nails, her graceful spine ruler-straight, and her close-cut dark hair covered with a crimson headscarf. “My guards had to stop a small mob this morning from dragging our quarter’s alchemist out into the street on the accusation of being a witch. I think they might have tried to hang her if the guards hadn’t intervened.”
Kellan’s skin went cold, and he found his mother’s eyes in a moment of sheer, blind panic.
What if people in the Gaillard quarter were even now deciding that Blue might be responsible? In all his thoughts, his plans to approach the problem, it had never occurred to him that people might assume the city’s alchemists were to blame.
The queen lifted her chin, a clear signal that he was to show no emotion beyond complete resolve. He drew in a slow, measured breath and looked to his notes for a moment. Took control of his voice. His expression. Looked up and said calmly, “First order of business, then, is to assign a guard to each of your alchemists immediately. Any other occupations at possible risk of being blamed?”
When no one had any suggestions, he continued, “As I said, we need a public response to restore confidence in the city’s security. A show of going door-to-door, interviewing everyone, keeping an eye out for evidence of spell making within each home and business your guards approach.”
“Do you honestly think the witch who devastated our quarters is just leaving spell ingredients lying about?” Dinah asked, her tone kind, as if he was too young to realize how things actually worked.
He met her eyes. “Of course not. But this is just our public response. Maybe we’ll get lucky, but that’s not the point. We have to show people we’re working on this. That strong measures are being taken to assure their security.”
“And our private response?” Warrane Barbier, his maternal grandfather, spoke from his seat beside the queen. His dark eyes found his grandson’s, pride lurking in their depths, though his voice was gruff.