Four Dead Queens(97)

“I . . .” My legs threatened to fold. “What do you mean?”

“Kera.” I wished he would stop saying my name. I didn’t want him to be the last person to say it. Anyone but him.

“You were good, too good, at your job,” he said. “Sadly, running away was never something you did well.” He held out a hand. “I always tried to teach you . . .”

Get in quick. Get out quicker.

“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t do it.” But the look on his face confirmed it. He wasn’t lying.

He grinned. “I needed an assassin, but it’s not easy to hire one. Not without having to share my plan with a stranger—someone who could easily betray me. About a year ago, I realized I already had the perfect assassin.” A year ago . . . when Mackiel started acting strangely toward me. Distant. “I already had someone with the skills to get in and out without anyone noticing. My sweet little Kera. My best dipper. I’d trained you well.”

“But I didn’t kill them.” I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. It wasn’t possible.

“You did, darlin’. You just don’t remember. Do these look familiar?” He held something out in his palm.

“Comm chips,” I muttered.

Mackiel shook his head. “They’re more than that.”

“What are they?” I didn’t want him to answer.

“Amazing little things.” He picked up one of the chips and held it to his eye. “They’re a new kind of comm chip, more evolved. And illegal, as they have a few unwanted side effects.” He shrugged. “But you know my friends on the wall?” Friends was hardly the word I’d have used for the wall guards Mackiel blackmailed. “They were happy to inform me of the latest shipment of this banned Eonist tech. The chips were to be delivered to a Ludist official to see if they could be used for entertainment purposes. All I had to do was intercept the delivery.”

Then he had been telling the truth about the original recipient of the comm chips being dead.

“You did well stealing these from the messenger and ensuring I didn’t get my hands on them by ingesting them. Ingenious of you, really. I was planning to force-feed them to you or hide them in your food, but it was best you didn’t know my involvement.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Poor Kera. Don’t you see? It was the chips that contained the plans to murder the queens. My plans. Before you stole them for me, the chips were blank. Harmless. But things get interesting when you record thoughts onto them.” He flashed his canine teeth and my stomach turned. “When I learned you were trying to redeliver the chips at the House of Concord, I paid you a visit to ensure you were going to head to the palace,” he said. “You thought your decision to come here was your own. You thought your mind was your own.”

I’d stolen the chips for Mackiel. I’d ingested them to prevent Mackiel from getting his hands on them.

Mackiel. Mackiel. Mackiel. It had always been him.

“What do they do?” My voice was barely audible, the truth pressing down on me.

“They’re a form of control.” His deep-set kohl-lined eyes watched me closely. “Once they’ve been ingested, you only need to set off three little triggers.” He tossed the chip into the air and caught it in his other hand. “Touch the murder weapon.” He ran a finger around his bare wrist. “Enter the palace.” He gestured to our surroundings. “See the queens.” He grinned, wiggling four fingers at me. “Then nothing will stop you from enacting the plan—my plan.” He knocked a finger down one at a time. “You, my perfect assassin.”

Control.

I stared at my hands. They were shaking. “One of your games, Mackiel?”

His face softened for a moment. “I’m afraid not.”

“Then I did kill them?”

“Yes. I know it’s hard to understand, as you don’t remember, but you did, and all the evidence proves you did. In fact, the inspector found traces of each and every queen’s DNA on your dipper bracelet. They even found your hair on Queen Stessa’s drowned body. That’s what they were waiting for—concrete evidence—before you could be sentenced.”

I remembered holding the knife in my hand as I sliced Queen Iris’s throat, but that was the comm chips. I didn’t feel the handle turn slick and warm as blood coated the blade. I didn’t smell the rust of blood.

Not me. It couldn’t have been me.

Only, Mackiel was saying the comm chips weren’t merely instructions for the assassin, but controlled the assassin’s body as well as their senses. And I couldn’t deny what my bracelet could turn into. I’d been carrying a deadly weapon while I was in the palace. I’d had the weapon for months, made complete when Mackiel gave me the locket for successfully stealing the comm case. This was his plan all along, set in motion a year ago.

I began shaking my head wildly. “No, no, no, no, no.”

I was the assassin. Mackiel’s assassin. Varin had been right; he’d seen me with the bottle of poison because I had poisoned Queen Marguerite. My hair had been wet and perfumed because I’d drowned Queen Stessa. And my dress, splattered in blood—I’d thought it was from my split knee, but now I realized the truth. It was Queen Iris’s blood. And I couldn’t deny I’d been right there when Queen Corra had been consumed by smoke and ash.