Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

Sarai stopped at the massive green copper doors of the physicians’ wing, which were currently standing open. “You may leave us here,” the empress said. The soldiers bowed and stepped away. Tirine started to as well, but Sarai laid her fingers atop the hand that was still resting on her shoulder, and Tirine stilled. “May I have the charm before you go, Tirine?”

Tirine bowed, and with her free hand pulled a palm-sized mirror from her pocket and handed it to the empress. Sarai accepted it and then waved her away.

The two sisters stepped into the physicians’ wing. This area was bright, full of wide windows and exotic potted plants that filled the air with the heady scent of blossoms, though they weren’t quite strong enough to block out the acrid smell of chemicals and vinegary cleaning solutions. Albinus was bent over next to a succulent plant nearly as tall as he was, carefully clipping off one of its spiny red protrusions with a tiny pair of shears. He straightened when he saw Sarai and set the plant clipping on a wheeled table at his side along with other leaves and bits of flowers, which he must be studying for medicinal uses.

“Cousins!” he said, his delighted tone at odds with the nervous way his eyes flickered from Sarai’s face to Elodie’s.

Sarai tilted her head. “I believe you mean, ‘Your Highnesses,’ don’t you, Albinus?”

He flinched. Elodie didn’t react to this outwardly, but her attention focused more sharply on Albinus, noting the way his fingers twitched and the way he was still holding tightly to the small shears even though he had already set the succulent cutting aside.

“Of course,” he said smoothly with a bow, one just deep enough to be respectful. His white-blond hair flopped over his forehead and he pushed it away. “Your Highnesses, I am cheered at your presence. Destroyer, I see that the assassin’s foul poison has damaged your eyes and, I assume, your magic. But not to worry, I have already prepared your treatment, and I am pleased to administer—”

“I shall administer her treatment,” Sarai said, cutting him off.

Elodie considered whether to say yet that she knew exactly what her “treatment” entailed and wished to refuse it, but reluctance glued the words in place until they could not escape. Once Elodie declared her knowledge and intentions, it would change everything between her and Sarai, and she wasn’t quite ready to do that just yet.

Albinus swallowed. “But…I may need to infuse it with extra strength, to account for any side effects the poisoning might—”

Sarai cut him off yet again. “You are dismissed, Albinus.”

It was a calculated move, to dismiss the royal physician from his own wing of the palace. Elodie expected him to take offense, but he seemed relieved instead, finally setting the shears down and leaving through the copper doors. He tapped a finger against them as he left and they shut silently behind him.

Elodie turned to her sister. “He seemed tense.”

Sarai stepped toward a nearby door that led to a smaller side room. “Fearing for one’s life often does that.”

“Why would he fear for his life?”

“Because I am considering ending it,” Sarai said, opening the door and waving Elodie in.

“A good reason for tension,” Elodie allowed. “And as I have never been overly fond of our cousin, I won’t try to dissuade you.” The casual words didn’t come close to expressing the anger she felt when she recalled Tal’s vision and her own matching dream-memories of Albinus standing at her father’s side, offering to fetch a poison to end her life. “But why, exactly, are you thinking of having him assassinated?”

Sarai stopped walking then and turned back to her sister. Her features were suddenly tight with fury. “I am not thinking of having him assassinated,” she said in a fearsome tone Elodie had heard only a few times before from her. “I am thinking of having him publicly gutted, drawn, quartered, and executed in the central palace courtyard.”

Elodie shied back a step before she caught herself. Before her stood not her beloved, if intimidating, older sister, but the merciless Iron Empress. Albinus must have done something very terrible indeed to cause a reaction like this, and to make Sarai consider taking such open action against him when he had several powerful allies in the palace. In fact, Elodie could only thing of one thing terrible enough to spur such fury.

There was a wide cot in the middle of the room. Elodie sat on its edge, making sure she was steady before she said, “He formulated the poison that the Saints used against me, didn’t he?”

Sarai let out a breath and the fury drained from her expression, coiling back into place deep within her. “My interrogations have uncovered information that confirms he has been supplying a Saints outpost with the poison for the last two years in anticipation of an attack like the one that was enacted on the train.”

“So he is a Saint?” Elodie found that very hard to believe. Albinus didn’t believe in anything except himself.

“No. He is an opportunist, and he wants the throne, and only you and I stand between him and it.”

Elodie considered this, then took a deep breath and let it out. “That bastard,” she said at last, with great feeling. She wasn’t quite sure what the feeling was, though. Anger, certainly. But fear was there too, a great and dark fear, because this was how she would spend the rest of her life once she refused to allow her sister to carry out the “treatment” that would have turned her back into the Destroyer. How many others would follow in Albinus’s footsteps once they knew she was a powerless misfire?

“I am sure he is even now scurrying off to meet with some rebel or other in hopes of finishing the job,” Sarai said dryly, “now that you are unprotected. But we shall soon fix that. Come, I’ll get the treatment set up.” Sarai turned to a shelf