It Was Silver

CHAPTER 11

ISOLDE'S POV

Orren came for me shortly after midday.

I had been sitting beside the cold fireplace for most of the morning, listening to the quiet of the tower. The day before, the courtyard below my window had shaken with the sound of horses leaving the fortress, and the guards outside my door had not said a word about where the King had gone. I only knew that the riders had returned a short while ago, because I had heard the gates open again, and the whole tower had gone still.

When the key turned in the lock, I stood up so quickly that the blanket slid off my shoulders.

Orren stood in the doorway with a bandage wrapped around his left arm and a dark purple bruise spreading along the side of his neck, as if someone had gripped it very hard. His uniform was stained with mud, and there were deep shadows under his eyes. He looked like a man who had not slept in two days.

"His Majesty requires your presence in the war room," he said.

"Why?"

"He did not say." He stepped aside to let me pass. "You will stand where you are told, and you will not speak unless the King speaks to you. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

He studied my face for a moment longer, as if he wanted to say something else. Then he turned and walked down the corridor, and the two guards fell into step behind me.

The war room was on the ground floor of the keep, behind a pair of heavy double doors that two soldiers opened as we approached. It was a long room of gray stone with narrow windows set high in the walls, and a fire burning at one end. A great oak table stretched down the middle, covered in maps that were held flat by iron markers shaped like wolves.

Two soldiers in mud-stained armor stood beside the table with rolled papers in their hands. They did not look at me when I walked in.

Rhaelen sat at the head of the table in a plain black coat, reading a report. When Orren stopped in front of him, his eyes lifted for the briefest moment, found my face, and dropped back to the page. A muscle tightened along his jaw.

"Put her at the far end," he said, without looking up.

Orren led me down the length of the room to a spot beside a small side table near the wall. On it stood a plain clay pitcher and four cups, set out for whoever needed them. "Stand here," Orren said quietly, and then he walked back to the King's side.

I clasped my hands in front of me and stood very still.

For a long time, nobody spoke to me. The soldiers read out their reports in low, flat voices, about the pass at the southern border, the dead rogues, and the men who had been wounded. Rhaelen listened without interrupting, turning the pages one at a time. I watched his hands as he did it, and I remembered how violently they had shaken on the night he nearly strangled the servant. Now they were perfectly steady.

I did not understand why he had brought me here, and that frightened me more than if he had shouted. Orren had told me that the King hanged people for lies. I wondered if this was a test, and if I was already failing it just by standing in the room.

The door at the far end opened, and a young servant girl hurried in, carrying a second clay pitcher against her chest. She set it down on the side table beside me without looking up, and I recognized her at once. She was the maid who had almost tripped over my rug on the night of the note.

She was gone again before I could draw a breath. But I had seen her hands, and they were shaking.

My heart began to pound. I looked down at the pitcher, and then at the one that was already there, and I could not tell which of them held water that was safe to drink.

A faint voice stirred in the back of my mind.

…Tired…

I nearly gasped aloud. I pressed my lips together and kept my eyes fixed on the floor, my hands gripping each other so tightly that my fingers went numb.

…So tired… The voice was weaker than I remembered, hoarse and slow, as though it were speaking from the bottom of a deep well. …I hurt them. The men. I didn't mean to…

I looked up at Rhaelen without meaning to. He was bent over a map, rubbing two fingers against his temple, and for the first time, I noticed how pale he was beneath the firelight. His men had not been hurt only by the rogues. Somehow, I understood that, and the knowledge made my chest ache in a way I did not expect.

"Orren," Rhaelen said, not lifting his head. "Water."

Orren nodded and started toward me.

The voice in my head changed so suddenly that I flinched.

…Wait. Not that one. It burns. Stop him…

I stared at the pitchers. Orren was halfway down the room, his hand already stretching toward the nearest one. I could not tell him why. I could not call out a warning and tell him that the King's own wolf had spoken to me, and that I did not know which pitcher was poisoned. Nobody in the room would have understood. Nobody would have believed me.

…Not that one…

Orren was three steps away. I could only think of one thing to do.

I swung my arm sideways, as if I were reaching to steady myself, and drove my elbow into both pitchers at once.

They toppled off the table with a crash. Clay shattered against the stone floor, and cold water splashed across my skirt and the legs of the side table.

"I'm sorry," I gasped, stumbling back and pressing my hand to my chest. "I'm so sorry. I lost my balance."

Every head in the room had turned toward me. Rhaelen was on his feet with one hand on the hilt of his sword, and his cold dark eyes were fixed on my face. The two soldiers stood frozen by the map table. Orren had stopped in the middle of the room, his arm still stretched out in front of him.

Nobody spoke. Then a faint hissing sound rose from the floor.

I looked down. Where the water from the second pitcher had run across the wooden top of the side table, a thin line of smoke was curling up from the wood. The surface turned black, and then it began to bubble, and the oak sank inward as if something were eating through it. In a few seconds, a hole the size of my palm had opened in the table, its edges charred and smoking.

I could not move. Neither could anyone else.

Orren crouched down beside the ruined table, slowly leaning toward the blackened wood. I saw him inhale, and I saw the color drain from his face. When he raised his eyes to the King, his voice was rough and unsteady.

"Rhaelen," he said. "It was silver."