Lia squeezed the water from her hair, arranged her cloak and rucksack. She found some bread that Pasqua had packed and ate it hungrily along with strips of cool beef and broke off some cheese from the small slab. In her rucksack, she saw the bundle she had packed and opened it quickly, staring at the apple she was saving for Colvin. She stared at it, studying the splotches on the skin and then held it to her nose and smelled it. There was the scent, the reminder of Muirwood. Her thoughts turned to the Cider Orchard, at the trees which produced the fruit she held in her hand. Somehow the Queen Dowager was claiming Muirwood through its fruit. The price of cider had tripled. Perhaps she was arranging that – buying up all the casks after it left the grounds. She had come to Muirwood for Whitsunday and had offered free cider to those who had been allowed to dance around the maypole. The Aldermaston of Augustin had been drinking the cider. It was the drink that Marciana was offered in the tower in Lambeth.

In her mind, the pieces clove together making a whole. The Queen Dowager was corrupting the kingdom through Muirwood’s cider. Was there a poison she was adding to it which enabled her to control the minds of others? Such a harmless thing, a cup of cider, an innocent thing. But what if it was being twisted to serve her purposes?

The Medium whispered to her as she stared at the Leering. Yes, there were poisons. Dahomey was the land of poisons and serpents and subtlety. In her mind, she saw a symbol – two intertwining serpents forming a circle. She had seen it before, in her mind, when Kieran Ven had shared with her when the Blight would strike. In the deepest reaches of her thoughts, she realized that the symbol was connected to the coming of the Blight.

Just as clearly, she realized that she was going to where that symbol would be found.

CHAPTER ELEVEN:

The Cider Orchard

The middle of an orchard of apple trees was a peculiar place to hold a meeting, but Martin did as he was told and patrolled the edges of it, alert for signs of intruders, while the Prince and the Aldermaston inspected the fruit and conferred quietly together. A few awkward learners had ventured towards the rows of trees to spy, but Martin waved them on with a growl in his voice and a curt nod to move on. After making the rounds twice, he ventured back into the trees and easily found them.

The look on the Aldermaston’s face alarmed Martin. He had a chalky pallor, his eyes intense on the Prince’s face. As Martin approached, the Aldermaston gave him a look full of daggers, his teeth baring into a hiss. “We are not finished speaking,” he said tightly, unable to control his anger at the interruption.

“It is all right,” the Prince said. “I wish him to know.”

“But I do not wish it,” the Aldermaston replied stiffly. His face was warped with angles and wrinkles, with an expression of emotions flashing hot and cool across his brow. “I have never encountered someone so Gifted in the Medium. If what you say is true…”

The Prince gave him an arch look, then a twisted smile. “If? You doubt already? That does not bode well for me, Aldermaston.”

He clenched his jaw and his fists. “I am reeling from what you have told me. The preciseness of your visions. The way you describe events that have not occurred as though they were in the past. I am unfamiliar with the Gift of Seering. I do not mean that I doubt your word.”

The Prince approached a thin tree and rubbed his hand along the bark. He stared from the base and up the trunk to the first crown of limbs. “My grandfather had this Gift. My own father did not or else he would not have plummeted to his death from Pent Tower. I cannot imagine choosing that fate.”

“But to know of your own death…beforehand. How have you endured it?”

The Prince stared at the bark closely, his fingers slowly stroking it. “The same way you will learn to,” he answered softly. “It is a burden to know the future. And a blessing. Look at this tree, Aldermaston. The fruit is nearly ripe. Soon you will harvest it. You have that knowledge because you have seen it before. The ripening and the harvest is a familiar experience. So it is with the future.” His voice grew husky. “This grove will be a place dear to her heart.” He winced saying the words and Martin caught the glint of an unshed tear in his eye, invisible to the Aldermaston.

The Aldermaston bristled, his emotions flaring to anger again. “Your…your daughter, as you said.”

The Prince turned and looked at him, a penetrating look. “In time, you will care for her as if you had been permitted to rear your own. She will heal the chasm in your heart that was breached when your lady died last year. Though I cannot expect it of you now.”