Seraphina(104)

“Oh, there you are, Lucian!” chirped Glisselda, who stood facing the door.

“Don’t!” cried Kiggs, lunging across the room toward his grandmother, who was the only person who’d put her glass all the way to her lips.

“I thought there might be a lovely view of the sunrise from up here,” continued his cousin, registering his actions but slowly. Her face fell as Kiggs grabbed the glass from her hand. “What’s going on?”

“Someone poisoned your mother. Something in the wine. We shouldn’t trust this wine either: I suspect it’s from the same source. Your glass, please, Lady Corongi,” said Kiggs. Lady Corongi handed over her glass, looking scandalized.

“I hope you’re wrong,” said the Queen, sitting down shakily on a stool. She leaned her elbow against a nearby table covered with books and charts. “I fear I had a swallow of mine before you burst through that door.”

“We need to get you to the physicians,” said Dame Okra, a certainty in her voice that no one dared question. She helped the Queen to her feet and led her to the stair.

“Dr. Ficus is at the Ardmagar’s suite,” Kiggs called after her, “but Dr. Johns should be—”

“I know where we’re going!” cried a cranky voice already halfway down.

“Selda, you didn’t drink a drop, I hope?” said Kiggs, turning to his cousin.

Selda leaned against the side of a bookcase as if she were dizzy, but said, “No. You burst in just in time. But what about you, Lady Corongi?”

The old woman shook her head curtly. Whatever poison may have been in the drink, it could not have compared with the poison she glared at the Earl of Apsig.

Josef had gone completely white. He handed the bottle to Kiggs and raised his hands as if in surrender. “Please,” he said, “I know this looks bad—”

“I notice you haven’t poured yourself a glass, Earl Josef,” said Kiggs lightly, setting the bottle on the worktable. “You’re not a saar, are you?”

“I am Samsamese!” sputtered Josef. “We do not partake of the devil’s …” He trailed off, and then turned wide-eyed to Lady Corongi. “You were counting on that. What was your plan, witch? The Queen and princess drink, you pretend to drink, you all collapse, and when I run for the physicians, what? You steal away in secret? You leave me to take the fall for your crimes?”

“Are you accusing this noble lady of something, you monster?” cried Glisselda, putting a protective arm around the petite woman’s shoulders. “She has been my teacher for almost my entire life!”

The whites of Josef’s eyes shone; he looked unbalanced. His lips moved as if he were performing some dread calculus in his head; he ran both hands through his blond hair. “Prince,” he croaked, “I can come up with nothing to persuade you. It is my word against hers.”

“You gave my aunt a bottle of poisoned wine,” said Kiggs. His earlier ire had turned to ice.

“I swear to you, I never suspected. Why would I question a gift her dear friend Lady Corongi told me to deliver?” He was flailing now, grasping for any argument he could. “You don’t know this wine here is poisoned—you assume so. What if it’s not?”

“I know you were in the cathedral the day Seraphina was stabbed,” said Kiggs, absently rearranging objects on his worktable.

“I saw you talking to Thomas Broadwick,” I said, folding my arms.

Josef shook his head vehemently. “I was delivering a message for the Sons of St. Ogdo. It was coded; I had no idea what it meant,” he pleaded.

“Liar!” I cried.

“Ask her!” he shouted back, pointing toward Lady Corongi. “She’s the one who put me in touch with the Sons. She’s the one who supplies them with intelligence from the palace. She is the mother of all my troubles!”

“Nonsense,” sniffed Lady Corongi, looking at his pointer finger as if it offended her more than anything he’d said. “Prince, I fail to see why you have not bound this miserable creature hand and foot already.”

Josef opened his mouth to retort, but at that very moment a horrifying sound—“Thluu-thluu-thluuuu!”—arose from somewhere near Kiggs. Princess Glisselda leaped onto a stool, crying, “St. Polypous’s legs, where is it?” Josef drew his dagger and looked around wildly.

Only Lady Corongi stood frozen, eyes wide with astonishment, as the voice lisped, “I see you there, impostor!”

I looked to Kiggs. He nodded at me and opened his hand behind his back, revealing my lizard-man figurine.

He said, “Who is it calling an impostor, Lady?”

Lady Corongi snapped out of her shock with a shudder. I faced her. Her fierce blue eyes met mine only for a second, but in that fragile eternity I glimpsed the mind behind the manners; in that endless instant, I knew.

Lady Corongi charged into Glisselda, who still stood on the stool. Glisselda screamed and folded in half over Corongi’s shoulder. The venerable lady whirled and bolted down the stairs.

Shock froze us in place for a heartbeat too long; Kiggs recovered first, grabbed my arm, and dragged me down into darkness after her. Josef shouted something after us, but whether he called to us or to Corongi, I could not discern. At the bottom of the stairs, Kiggs looked right and I looked left. I saw the edge of Lady Corongi’s skirt disappearing around a corner. We dashed after, following the faintest of trails—an open door, the ghost of her perfume, a curtain ruffled by a nonexistent breeze—until we reached a cabinet that had been pulled out from the wall, revealing an entrance to the passageways.