Chapter 14: The Wrong Kind of Tea

The door opened and it was Nessa, and I had the letter in my hand and no time to put it back.

She stood in the doorway with a basket of washing on her hip and her mouth open, and she looked at the letter, and then at the box, and then at me.

"You went through Maeve's letters," she said.

"I did."

"She will skin you."

"She will try." I held up the letter. "Nessa. Come in and shut the door."

She came in and shut the door, and I showed her the line at the bottom. She read it slowly, moving her lips, and then she looked up at me.

"That is the same line," she said. "The one the clerk said was in your mother's file."

"Word for word."

"That cannot be a coincidence."

"No." I put the letter back in the box, in the right place, and closed the clasp. "It cannot. But I cannot take this letter to the Alpha, because if I do Maeve will know I have been in her room and she will have the box locked by supper, and I will have lost my only copy of the one piece of paper that links my mother to the Council's business."

Nessa put the basket down. "What do we do?"

"We do nothing. You go back to the kitchen and talk about the weather and forget you saw me in here. And I go and find a woman at the end of the pier."

She nodded, hard, twice, and picked up her basket and went out. I heard her say something to the boatmen on the stairs about the state of the weather, and her voice was admirably steady.

I did not get to the pier that afternoon.

At six o'clock, while I was in the sickroom boiling comfrey root for Ronan's bandage, a young wolf named Colm came down the corridor with a tray. He was one of the boatmen, a boy of maybe nineteen with a thatch of pale brown hair and a soft, anxious face, and he carried the tray as if it might go off in his hands.

"Healer," he said. "Maeve says the Alpha is to have his tea."

"Put it down. I'll take it in."

"He said to say it is from the kitchen. He said the healer is not to be troubled with it, she has enough to do." Colm set the tray on the shelf. "I am to wait and bring the cup back."

There was a cup on the tray, and a small pot, and the pot was steaming. I lifted the lid and put my nose over it.

I have been smelling medicines since I was old enough to hold a spoon. I know comfrey and valerian and willow bark and yarrow, and I know the smell of the coast, and I know the smell of a thing that has gone bad. But there is one smell I know better than any of them, because it is the smell my mother taught me first, wrapped in oilcloth, kept in a tin of its own.

Wolfsbane has a smell like a church and a grave at the same time. It is sweet and it is cold and it sits at the back of your nose and does not leave.

I put the lid down very gently on the pot.

"Colm," I said. "Who made this tea?"

"Cook made it. It is the same tea the Alpha has every evening. Valerian and something, for his sleep."

"Did Cook hand you the tray?"

"She did." He was watching my face now, and his own had gone uncertain. "Is it wrong?"

"Where is Cook now?"

"In the kitchen. Healer, is something wrong with the tea?"

I picked up the pot and carried it out of the sickroom and along the corridor and into the kitchen, and Colm came after me saying healer, healer, in a voice that got smaller every time.

The kitchen was full. Cook was at the stove, a round red-faced woman with grey in her hair, and two of the young wolves were at the table with bread, and Nessa was by the basin with her sleeves rolled, and the whole room looked up when I came in and set the pot down in the middle of the table hard enough to slop it.

"Who put wolfsbane in the Alpha's tea?" I said.

Nobody said a word. The two at the table put down their bread. Cook turned round from the stove with her hands wet.

"There is no wolfsbane in that pot," she said. "I made it myself. Valerian and honey."

"Then smell it."

She came over and lifted the lid and put her nose to it, and her face did a thing I have seen a hundred times. It is the face of someone who knows a smell and cannot believe it is there.

"I did not put that in," she said. "I swear on my mother. I did not put that in."

"I know you did not." I looked round the kitchen. "Someone did. Someone came into this kitchen between the pot going on the stove and the tray leaving it, and they put wolfsbane in the Alpha's tea. Wolfsbane does not kill a wolf all at once. It makes him weak. It makes his healing slow. It makes him shake and stumble and it makes a sick man sicker, and a sick man who is already dying would not notice the difference."

Nessa had gone white. The two young wolves at the table were staring at me.

"Who came into this kitchen?" I said. "Think. Anyone at all. Anyone who did not have business here."

And then Colm, who had been standing at the back with his hands twisting in his shirt, said in a small voice, "The Beta came in. Just for a minute. She said she wanted a cup for herself."

The room went so quiet I could hear the fire.

"Thank you, Colm," I said. "Nessa, take this pot up to the sickroom and put it on the shelf, and do not let anyone near it, and do not pour it down the sink. I want it kept."

I went out into the hall, and Ronan was coming down the stairs with his shirt open and his bandage showing, and he stopped on the third step and looked at my face.

"What has happened?"

"Someone in this house is poisoning you," I said. "A little at a time. In your tea."

He came down the rest of the stairs very slowly.

"Who?"

"I do not know. I know they have access to the kitchen and I know they knew the pot was for you and I know they were in this house tonight." I looked up at him. "Alpha. You have a rogue on the north ridge drawing spirals on your beach and you have a Council envoy who writes everything down and now you have someone in your own kitchen who wants you weak. I need to know what is going on in this pack, and I need to know it tonight. No more tomorrow."

Ronan looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "Come up to my room. I will tell you about Elara."

Behind me, at the top of the stairs, I heard a door close, very softly, and when I looked up there was nobody there.