Stitching Snow (25 page)

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nonstop to reach you. This may be beyond all understanding, but I can only hope it is not beyond you, for my daughter’s sake.”

“Come closer, and I’ll do what I can.” The man crawled forward on his knees until he could lay his daughter at the queen’s feet. Olivia slowly raised her arms in front of her.

Then everything came unhinged.

The lights fll ickered and dimmed. Something shuddered through the air, rattling the chandeliers—low-frequency sound, felt more than heard, I imagined. It left behind a persistent buzz in my ears. Olivia made elaborate gestures, seeming to gather something from the air. My eyes had to be malfunctioning, because a sort of aura appeared around her.

Hologram. That’s why she made him come to her. The projectors
are set for that spot.

Doors slammed at the front of the ballroom, and everyone shouted and turned. Everyone except Dane and me. A wave of dizziness rushed over me—that Transition attempt earlier had been a bad idea—but I kept my eyes locked on Olivia, every movement, every detail.

When the doors slammed, Olivia twisted one of the enor-mous rings she wore. Then she very distinctly waved that hand in the direction of the man and his child. The ring had to contain an airborne antidote, probably with some kind of pressurized release mechanism. Very clever.

As the lights steadied and the rattling faded, Olivia dramati-cally collapsed into Father’s waiting arms.

I shifted my gaze to the girl. Hard to tell, but it looked like she breathed a bit easier.

Cheers erupted among the guests, praising the power of 235

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Queen Olivia and cursing the Exile scum until Father gestured for silence.

“Take this man and his daughter to the hospital,” he said to his aides. “Keep us updated on their condition. My friends, I regret to cut our festivities short, but the queen and I must travel to Goodland Province immediately to remedy this evil.” The dismissal sparked excited whispers as the crowd drifted toward the public doors, marveling at what they’d just wit-nessed. They were too busy prattling to see Father and Olivia exchange a knowing glance. Dane steered me the opposite direction, to one of the private exits that would get us more directly to the residential wing. My feet felt disconnected from my body, and the buzzing remained in my ears.

“Quite a show the queen put on,” Dane said once we were in our rooms. “Are you okay?”

I was pacing to keep myself from tearing my gown to shreds, just for the sake of destroying something. The buzzing had moved to my hands as well, like I could feel sound through them. “No, I’m not okay. Did you see that little girl? One more day with that poison inside her and she might have died.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean you. Are you feeling all right?”

“What?” Everything blurred at the edges, including my wits. One little Transition shouldn’t have worn me that much.

I pushed through it. “I’m fi ne, I just—I need to think. We need to
do
something.”

Dane moved to stop my pacing, but I just changed my route to check the room’s temperature controls. They had to be botched, because it was much warmer than that.

“We
will
do something. Can you just slow down?” His words clicked together in my head. It made sense. “That’s 236

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the problem! We’re going too slow.” I raised my skirt enough to pull the knife strapped to my leg. “We should kill them both now, before they leave for Goodland.” Pieces of the blurry world snapped back into focus—too much focus and not enough, if such a thing were possible—as Dane intercepted me. Except it wasn’t Dane. It was someone else.

I couldn’t see past the cruel edges of his face.

An intruder . . . a spy.

I tried to back away, but the man grabbed my wrist and squeezed a pressure point. The bolt of pain forced me to drop the knife.

Instinct took over. I swung my free hand at him, but he caught it easily.

“What did you do to Dane? Let me go!” He didn’t. He spoke in a guttural language I couldn’t understand.

Something locked around my knees, immobilizing me before I could give the intruder’s shins a sharp kick. The man’s gaze shifted several sniffs below my eyes, giving me another reason to glare. He released my hands and reached around my neck.

“Don’t touch me!” I tried to shove him back, but my arms had turned to sludge sometime in the last ten seconds. When my strength failed me, I went to my fi nall weapon, unleashing obscenities like I hadn’t since Dane fi rst kidnapped me.

The man made no response other than a tightening of his jaw.

Then he closed a fi st on the apple pendant I wore and yanked so hard, I thought my neck would break before the chain did.

More words failed to make sense as the man disappeared into the blur surrounding me. Then a familiar electronic voice mimicked the words.

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That explained what was holding my knees.

“Dimwit, you useless blazing scrap-heap! Is there anyone you
won’t
let reprogram you?” The buzzing in my ears got so loud, I could barely hear myself.

The man returned with an injector in his hand.

I struggled so hard, I overbalanced Dimwit. My knee, hip, and elbow slammed against the fll oor. The intruder stood over me, blocking the light.

A shadow standing over me, the shadow that makes my heart
stop . . .
I couldn’t breathe. My cheeks were wet. I didn’t want to die. When he knelt by me, I lashed out again, hitting and scratching and doing anything I could to make him back off.

“I won’t let you!” I screamed.

Never trust Olivia.

Mother’s voice. It made no sense. I didn’t trust Olivia, but that hadn’t stopped her guard from lying in wait to assassinate me.

Find the truth.

“Essie, please! It was the necklace.” That broke through. The necklace. Olivia’s gift.

She’d poisoned me.

238

22

EVERY INSTINCT SAID TO FIGHT,

but the tiny corner of my

mind that whispered “poison” forced the rest back long enough for the injector to touch my neck.

Then fi re. The buzzing throughout my body turned into a jittering fll ame in every vein, every pore. I might have screamed. I might have died. Then just as quickly as the fi re had come, it was gone. Left in its place was a vague feeling that I might be sick.

“Essie, I’m sorry. Dimwit, move, let’s get her up.” It was Dane. It always had been Dane, not some shadowy Midnight Blade assassin. I couldn’t help holding tight as he moved me to a chair, reassuring myself that he was solid and real. Once my head cleared a sniff, though, I glared at the injector on the fll oor.

“What was that supposed to do, kill me before the poison did?”

His hand rested on my knee. Defi nitely real. “No, that poison S T I T C H I N G S N O W

wouldn’t have killed you. It just makes you behave erratically.

The antitoxin is uncomfortable, but it works fast.”
Uncomfortable
didn’t begin to describe it, but I latched on to the more important information. “How did you know? Olivia has her poisons concocted in the labs, and you didn’t even know about them until I told you.”

“She didn’t concoct this one. Kip told me about it. It’s old.

Extract of the river lily. Back around the War of Exile, your ancestors used it on people to make them think they’d been controlled by Candarans.”

The War of Exile. What we called the Liberation on Windsong. I touched my neck, feeling the emerging bruise left by the necklace. “Why wouldn’t Olivia use a deadly poison, then?” Dane heaved a tense sigh. “If I had to guess, I’d say she wanted the strange behavior to discredit you, making it easier to kill you without making your father suspicious.”

“Lovely. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.”

“You should rest. Do you need help getting to bed?” I pushed myself to my feet. A little wobbly, but kicking off my shoes helped with that. “No, I can manage. Dimwit, come here.” I fll ipped the switch to deactivate the drone’s voice. “Get back to work, you.”

“Back to work with what?” Dane asked.

“What do you mean, what? The plan.”

“What does Dimwit have to do with the plan?” My head was still foggy from the clash of poison and antitoxin, but I could’ve sworn I’d told him. Maybe I’d forgotten.

Thinking about it made my head hurt, and I groaned. “Tell you later, when I don’t feel like I’ve been wrestling a harri-harra.” 240

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“All right. And Essie?” he called after me. “No more gifts from Olivia.”

“Agreed.”

Olivia and Father were away in Goodland Province for several days. Reports came through the networks that the queen’s presence alone had eased the plague, and all the victims were recovering. After they fi nished, they set about inspecting the outland border defenses.

Their absence put Dane and me at a standstill, even after two days of post-poison recovery. Father had left instructions for me to keep busy approving plans to renovate the royal quarters to replace the current suite and other such drudgery. Dane was supposed to review applications for additional guards in the Silver Dagger. We had better things to do, but we were too far from the Candaran fll eet to make our move on high-security areas of the palace, we hadn’t made any inroads with the governors, and we’d confi rmed we couldn’t get any useful information from the main computer networks.

I needed to move, to do something. Olivia had proved she wasn’t wasting time, so I couldn’t afford to, either. Otherwise, she’d kill me before I could make a difference.

“We have to get out of here,” I said on the thirteenth day.

Looking at the fll oor plans from the royal architect gave me a royal headache. “If we want evidence, we’re going to have to go out and fi nd it. Talk to people or something.”

“I know. But we need your father’s permission to go anywhere, and he won’t be back for three more days.” 241

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“Maybe once he’s back, I can get him to tell me the truth himself. I’ve been playing along. If he thinks I’m going to follow his example, maybe he’ll tell me how things really work around here.”

“Maybe.” It wasn’t hard to see how much Dane
didn’t
like any idea that meant more time in my father’s company. “What we really need is a contingency plan.”

“Contingency plan for what?”

“The queen.”

I instinctively touched my mother’s locket. I’d been wearing it every day since the ball, as soon as Dane and I verifi ed it hadn’t been tampered with. “Dimwit’s on it.”

“That secret project of his? You never did fi ll me in.” I sat next to where the drone stood fi ddling with some fabric swatches I’d left out and fll ipped the switch to turn its voice back on. “Dimwit, how’s your bumbling going?”

“Dimwit bumble Dimwit.”

“How are people reacting?”

“People smile yell people. Dimwit dumb-drones kick Dimwit.”

It must have run into some of the cleaning drones. “Anyone try to stop you?”

The drone beeped three times. “Dimwit lost Dimwit people help.”

I turned to Dane. “I’ve told it to bumble around the palace whenever we don’t need it for anything else, get people used to seeing it as my unhinged-but-harmless pet.” His eyes turned suspicious. “Why?”

“So when it wanders into the queen’s wardrobe, anyone who catches it will think it’s just lost as usual.” 242

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“And what’s he going to do in the queen’s wardrobe?”

“Spray everything with thederol.”

He sat in the chair opposite me. “Why? That’ll wash off easily enough.”

“Not from the metalwork on all her shoes and the accents on everything else. Thederol binds to metal. And I’ll be carrying this.” I pulled a pressurized cylinder from my pocket. “Do you know what happens when thederol is exposed to varitane gas?” Dane’s eyes widened. “Essie, if you’re too close when it ignites—”

“That’s why it’s a last resort. Only if she gets me cornered and you’re not around.”

“And why didn’t you tell me about this plan before?” The sudden accusation in his voice startled me. “I meant to tell you—honestly, I thought I had, but I guess things got so busy with receptions and meetings, then everything that happened at the ball. What does it matter anyway? I’m telling you now.”

“The one part of this that isn’t an act is that my job is to protect you. I watched Tobias take you away. I couldn’t stop him and I didn’t know if I could get you back. But when I did, I swore I’d do everything I could to make sure no one else would hurt you.” The fi re in his eyes was back. So was the knot in my chest.

I ignored it. “You can’t stop life from happening. Life is pain.”

“Self-destructive ideas like that are exactly why I need to know everything.”

Everything.
The word was too big, sparking a fi re of my own that reached too far into the dark corners. Dane had no business in those corners.

“Keeping secrets kept me alive.”

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“When the secret involves combustible chemicals, it can get you killed,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to keep it a secret! Besides, I know more about those chemicals than you do. The drones use them all the time in the mines.”

“You know a thing or two about being reckless, too, don’t you?”

I was on my feet without consciously deciding to stand.

“Says the boy who
kidnapped me
.” Dane fll inched but didn’t back down. “Is that it? You still don’t trust me?”

I did. I knew I did, but I was too annoyed to tell him so. “You haven’t exactly made it easy to know what to believe.” He stood as well, which meant I had to look up. “I think you’re just making excuses.”

“Of course I am. That’s what royals are best at.” I scooped up the slate with the idiotic fll oor plans and stalked off to my room. “Turn Dimwit’s voice off and send it back to its bumbling.”

“Absolutely, Your Highness.”

Your Highness.
The cool metal of my mother’s locket beneath my shirt seemed to pulse a mild rebuke, reminding me exactly how fake the implied superiority was.