It was both sweet and strong, with a light fizz and a powerful kick. Zoe wanted to guzzle the whole thing down but, watching how slowly Jaker sipped his, she thought it wise to follow suit. “You ought to sell this up at the palace,” she said.
“We’re already working on that,” Jaker said with a laugh. “But I think there’s a bigger market among the Five Families. They like to outdo each other when they entertain.”
“So how’s business been?” Zoe asked, and they spent another fifteen minutes talking trade in a little more depth than they had with Ilene and Melvin.
“All of that is very interesting,” Zoe said, and she meant it sincerely. “But I had a question that Barlow said you might be able to answer.” She pulled out the twist of paper and slowly unwound it, flattening it on the table. “Do you have any idea what this is? And what it’s for?”
Both men leaned forward, Barlow merely curious but Jaker appraising. Like Zoe had, Jaker prodded the loose, dried leaves, taking a pinch between his fingers and rubbing it to dust. He sniffed at the residue and then cautiously tasted the end of his finger. When he straightened up to look over at her, his face was very serious.
“Are you dying?” he asked.
Zoe stared at him. “Am I—no. No, I’m fine—this isn’t for me. But you’re saying—” She couldn’t absorb the implications. “Whoever would take this drug is sick? Really sick?”
Jaker nodded. He hadn’t lifted his gaze from her face; he seemed to be trying to reassure himself that she wasn’t lying. “This is a pretty high-quality batch,” he said. “Not cut too many times with sugar or garbage herbs. Very potent. Risky, though. If you are taking it, Zoe, I can find you something a little safer.”
“I’m not. Jaker, I swear I’m not. If I seem stunned, it’s because—the person who is using the drug—it’s a little shocking.”
Jaker nodded and didn’t press for more details. “Where’d you get it?”
“A shop down by the canal shanties.”
“I hope you weren’t the one buying it, then,” Barlow put in. “That’s a bad place to wander.”
She shook her head. “No, a friend of mine saw—someone—entering the shop. He got curious and followed, and then bought a sample for himself. But we didn’t know what it was.”
“It’s called renaissance,” Jaker said. “New life.”
“And someone would only take it if he was—if he was dying?”
Jaker nodded again. “That’s its primary usage. It slows down the progress of a couple of the worst diseases. Adds maybe a year to your life. Maybe two. And takes away a lot of the pain, so they say.”
“Sounds like a pretty good drug, then! I’ll keep it in mind if I’m ever stricken with something fatal.”
“But it’s got consequences,” Jaker warned. “Sometimes it eliminates your symptoms so completely that you forget you’re sick. You show fresh energy—you think you can do what you want. You push yourself too hard and—” He cocked his head to one side, eyes shut, tongue protruding, mimicking a dead man. Straightening up, he said, “You can die just like that.”
“What other side effects?”
Jaker tapped the side of his head. “You start to lose some mental ability. You forget things. Some people turn childlike. They say if you take it too long, you can actually become senile or demented. I saw an addict once, raving like a lunatic. Not a pretty sight.”
Everything he said made Zoe turn colder and more afraid, though fear had clamped hard on her heart with his very first reaction to the drug. King Vernon was dying. There was no other explanation. Dying, and Darien Serlast knew it. And Darien was using the riskiest imaginable method to keep him alive another season, another year. And lying to everyone else in the palace while he did it.
Who else knew about the precarious state of the king’s health?
Zoe was also puzzling over something Jaker had just said. “If people take it too long, they get senile,” she repeated slowly. “Take it too long.”
He nodded. “Years. I’ve seen it.”
“But if the only people who take it are dying—does it really keep them alive for years?”
“Oh, it has another use,” Jaker said. “Not one you would be interested in.”
Now Barlow was grinning. “Renaissance,” he said. “Gives a man new life.”
At Zoe’s look of bewilderment, Jaker added, “Improved virility. Enhances his ability to perform. There’s a certain kind of professional man who needs renaissance just to do his job.”
Barlow burst out laughing at that, but Zoe was just in a deeper state of shock.
She knew now who had fathered Romelle’s baby.
THIRTY
Zoe’s tendency was to share everything with Annova and Calvin, but even she realized that this information was too dangerous to repeat. Begging them to forgive her, she asked if they would leave her alone to meet with Darien Serlast, whenever he deigned to respond to her urgent summons. She had gotten home from Barlow’s place at midnight; the message went out at dawn. In reply she had gotten only As soon as I can. But he would come. She knew he would.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to Annova for the hundredth time. “But you’ll have to leave as soon as he gets here.”
“Stop apologizing,” Annova said. “Do you think I tell you everything? Everyone has secrets.”
“You’ll find it out soon enough, I suppose,” Zoe said. “But it shouldn’t be from me.”
True sunset was just streaking through the false sunset of Annova’s gauze curtains when Darien presented himself at Zoe’s door. They had laid out a light repast, not sure when he would arrive or if he would be looking for a meal. Zoe had been nibbling all afternoon, but it wasn’t as if she was hungry. Her stomach was still a knot of worry and consternation. How could the king be dying?
Annova ushered Darien inside, then took Calvin’s hand and hurried out, closing the door behind her. Darien waited in the middle of the room, watching Zoe as she stood near the window. She had a sudden need for sunshine, for as long as it lasted before the onrushing night.
“Every instinct tells me I’m not going to like what you have to say,” Darien observed in a quiet voice. “Has there been an attempt on your life? Have you discovered another half sister? Have you decided to leave the city despite all my entreaties?”
“I have learned one of your secrets—the worst one, I hope,” she said.
His expression shifted instantly from an open look of concern to a closed mask of neutrality. “It’s true I have secrets,” he said. “I’m not certain which one you would consider the worst.”
“Which fills me with deep disquiet,” she said, “that you could think you have more than one that is as bad as this.”
He came across the room, his face troubled. As was the case so often, he was dressed all in black; his wool overrobe swirled almost to his ankles as he walked. He was a dark, steady presence, a wedge of mountain, a massive oak that could not be brought down by any storm. She would have trusted him, too, if she had been dying, if she had needed some bulwark against that greatest of all terrors.
She almost whispered her question. “How much longer do you expect Vernon to live?”
He closed his eyes and swayed backward, for just a moment trembling against a high wind. Then his lids snapped open and he braced himself, planting his feet more firmly on the floor as if determined not to lose his balance.
He didn’t deny it, which she considered a great gift. Instead, he said merely, “How much do you know?”
“He is taking a restorative drug known as renaissance. It will extend his life by a year or two, though it will slowly sap his mental acuity. I am only guessing, but I think he has been taking it for a year at least. Which means he can’t have much more than another year to live.”
He nodded and said, “And how did you discover this?”
“My friend Calvin followed the king’s valet into a south city apothecary’s shop and ordered the same drug, just for curiosity’s sake
. Someone else I know—a trader—told me what it was for.”
Now Darien’s eyes closed for a longer stretch of time; he appeared to wait out a spasm of pain. “Then all of them know—all your friends—”
“No,” she said sharply. “I did not share with Calvin the details of the drug, nor did I tell the trader the identity of the patient. I know you think I am careless and indiscreet, but even I know that some things do not bear repeating.”
He was regarding her again, his gray eyes a little warmer. “I have that to thank you for, then.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
He hesitated, then sighed and moved toward the table with its assortment of tempting foods. “Can we at least sit?” he said. “I am tired unto death myself.”
They settled at the table and Zoe found herself uncharacteristically moved to take care of him, pouring his water, filling a plate with delicacies, asking if he needed anything else. He looked exhausted, and no wonder. No doubt he spent most of his energy every day maintaining the fiction that the king was healthy. She rarely felt sorry for Darien Serlast, but at this moment it was clear he deserved some kindness.
He ate three dainty sandwiches, finishing each one in two bites, and drained his entire glass of water. Zoe poured him another one, stirring in a teaspoon of crushed fruit. “The king fell ill early last year,” Darien said with no more prompting. “In early Quinnelay. Everyone was sick with one cough or another, so at first no one thought much of it. But he did not get better and he did not get better. Elidon was worried, but, of course, we had to proceed with caution. When you send for a physician to see the king, the whole nation is uneasy. Particularly when his daughters are so young—and none has yet been named heir.”
“One of those problems he could have solved quite easily,” Zoe pointed out. “Just pick his successor.”
“Two things made the selection a far from simple process,” Darien said. “One, Natalie had not yet been born, and Vernon wanted to see if Romelle might bear a son.”
All of Zoe’s sympathy for Vernon evaporated in an instant. “Of all the narrow-minded, ill-considered, disastrous reasons to put your entire kingdom in jeopardy—”
Darien managed to produce a faint smile. “I am in complete agreement with you,” he said. “I am prepared to believe women make much better leaders than men do. Mirti and Elidon, for instance, would be splendid rulers, either one of them.”
“So once Romelle only managed to produce another girl, what kept him from choosing his heir? You said there were two reasons.”
“Any choice would have had to be ratified by all five primes,” Darien said, “and one of the primes was missing.”
Zoe stared at him for so long that he had time to eat another sandwich. “Are you telling me—after all this time—after all the reasons you gave me, all the lies you told me about why you came to fetch me from the village—this was the real reason? This was why I suddenly had to be in Chialto, at the palace, under your watchful eye? So I could fulfill my part as prime?”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment, though he still watched her from under his lowered brows. “It was an urgent necessity that you be present to ratify the choice of the king’s successor,” he said in a quiet voice. “The stability of the kingdom depended on it. And yet, all of the other reasons I gave you were true. The king was negotiating with his wives, and your name was put forward as a choice for his fifth bride. I did promise your father, and my own, that I would come for you when Navarr was dying. These were not lies. But they did not matter to me as much as the knowledge that the fifth prime had to be on hand or we could never choose the next ruler of Welce.”
She made a strangled sound of exasperation and shook her head, trying to dissipate her incredulity and her ire. But how could she be surprised or even annoyed? It had always been clear he had secrets, some of them monstrous. She was not sure she could entirely blame him for concealing this particular ungainly and terrifying truth.
“Very well, then, you came searching for me, but at the same time you did what you could to keep Vernon alive,” she said, bringing the conversation back to its original topic. “When did he start taking the drug?”
“By the middle of Quinncoru last year. As I said, we went to some trouble to bring in a physician in stealth, and we pretended that Elidon was the sick one. She spent a great deal of time languishing in her quarters and depriving herself of food, so that she would look pale and thin. Vernon came to her rooms to be present when the physician examined her.” Darien shrugged. “He was fairly quick to make the diagnosis and to lay out our wretched options. He was honest about the repercussions we might face with the renaissance, but the alternative was unthinkable. The king to be dead within a quintile. We all agreed we would risk the drug.”
“Who was in on the agreement?”
“The king, Elidon, and me.”
“And the doctor.”
“An elay man. Elidon’s nephew and utterly reliable.” He must have seen the skepticism on her face because he almost smiled again. “Obviously, or this news would have gotten out long before now.”
She was forced to agree that was true. “So none of the other wives know?”
He shook his head.
“And none of the other primes? Not even Mirti?”
“I would not be surprised to learn Mirti has guessed. But she has said nothing—at least, to any of us. Kayle and Nelson and Taro—no.”
“The king’s valet—the one who buys the illicit drugs—he must know something.”
Darien nodded. “Again, I’m sure he has his suspicions, but he has not voiced them. He is utterly loyal. He has been with Vernon since they were both boys.”
“Still. You must know this is a secret that cannot be kept forever.”
“I am astonished it has not been discovered before now.”
“How much longer do you think he has before—he has to live?”
“Two quintiles, maybe four. For a while, his deterioration was so greatly slowed that I began to think he had been misdiagnosed. That he was actually recovering. He seemed quite strong last summer—in fact, the only symptoms I even saw in him were the ones caused by the drug.”
Zoe remembered the king’s oddly vulnerable manner that day in Ilene’s shop, his inability to choose a buckle for his shoe. “A childishness in his behavior,” she murmured. “A loss of focus.”
“Exactly. But other than that, he seemed quite healthy. Hearty, even.”
“When did you realize that this burst of vigor was not, unfortunately, a sign of recovery?”
“When we decided to take him off the drug for a couple of ninedays. Actually, it was only a few days. That quickly we saw him lose ground. His pain returned. His nausea. He couldn’t sleep for the headaches. We put him back on the renaissance—and increased the dosage at that.” He shook his head. “There was no more lying to ourselves. He is a very sick man.”
“So you have until, perhaps, the end of the year before he dies.”
“Yes. And less time before he becomes so weakened it will be impossible to conceal his condition.”
“So now it has become urgent that his heir be identified.”
Darien nodded. “It is our constant conversation to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the three girls. Josetta is the oldest and thus the one who will soonest be an adult, which means the regency period would be that much shorter. But if, as I would hope, the next queen sits on the throne for thirty or forty years, perhaps a regency that is only three years longer should not be a foremost consideration. Is Corene the better candidate? She certainly has more strength of will than Josetta. She is quick-witted and passionate, while Josetta is cautious and sometimes timid. I am far from certain who would be a better queen.”
“You don’t even consider Natalie?”
He shrugged. “She is barely a year old, and I, at least, cannot judge her personality well enough to gauge how fit she would be to rule. But an even bigger barrier, I think, is the i
dea of a twenty-year regency. Certainly I am not eager to spend so much of my life in such a role.”
“And are you so convinced that you would be picked for the position?”
His face showed the ghost of a smile. “Who else?”
“I can think of a couple of women who would consider themselves qualified to stand beside their daughters and lead.”
“I would trust Elidon’s guidance, but Seterre or Alys as regent? Seterre would divide loyalties and pit factions against each other, leaving the court fractured and at odds. Alys would beggar the kingdom and then send us into war to refill our coffers. She would randomly elevate favorites and banish those who disagreed with her. Who knows? She might dispatch assassins in stealth to rid herself of the councilors she particularly distrusted.”
His tone was so bitter that Zoe had a hard time hiding her astonishment. “You despise her more than I realized.”
“And even more than that,” he said.
“What happens if the king dies without naming his successor?”
Darien slumped back in his chair, weariness once again evident on his face. “Oh, then I suppose the brangling and the scheming and the plotting begin in earnest. The queens will each lobby for their favorites, but the primes will have to do the real job of choosing the next monarch. I hope you can bring yourself to be impartial.”
Zoe smiled. “Who do you think the other four would favor?”
“Kayle would choose Corene, for Wald’s sake,” Darien said instantly. “Nelson is new enough to power this time around that he would probably follow your lead. Mirti always has her own agenda, so she is hard to predict. But she’s unlikely to change her mind once she makes it up. As for Taro, he likes little Natalie because he is fond of Romelle.”
“You realize there is yet another option, one that is sure to be obvious to everyone very soon.”
He caught his breath. She thought he might actually have forgotten. “I am not used to including a fourth child in my calculations,” he admitted.
“I think you must,” Zoe said. “I think we have solved the mystery of who sired the child Romelle is carrying now. The renaissance drug has given Vernon new virility, and that baby is his. The king’s subjects—and the primes of the Five Families—might simply decide to hand over the crown to the only one of the four children who is truly the offspring of the king.”