Chapter 4: Then Fight Me

The old cook looked up at Cassien from the floor.

He did not beg.

He only looked, the way Cassien's grandfather's dogs used to look when a storm was coming.

One of Corvain's men had a fist in his white hair.

"He made the soup," Cassien said.

Nobody heard him.

He climbed onto his chair and then onto the high table, among the plates and the spilled wine.

Every face in the Hall of Lamps had to look up at him.

"He made the soup!" he shouted. "I made the wine."

The hall went still.

"The poison was mine. I poured it into the ewer in the passage with my own hands."

"That old man couldn't tell nightbell from mustard."

Corvain laughed, delighted.

"There. The consort confesses. Majesty, the law on an attempt against your life is very clear."

"Is it?" said Isandor.

He was still sitting and had not stood once through any of it.

He reached down, picked the blackened cup up off the floor, and set it on the table in front of him.

"My consort's hand was quicker than his temper," he told the hall.

He turned the black cup slowly with one finger.

"He poisoned the first cup, and he knocked it out of my hand before I could drink. I take that as his answer."

A rustle went through the court.

"Majesty, that is not how the law works!"

"It's how I work, cousin."

Isandor looked at the men holding the cook.

"Let him go. He will be on a barge home tonight with his wages and a pension."

The men looked at Corvain.

Isandor did not raise his voice.

"I said let him go."

They let go.

The cook got up slowly, bowed to Cassien rather than to the Emperor, and walked out of the hall on his own feet.

Cassien climbed down off the table.

His legs did not feel like his own.

Corvain came along the high table toward Maelis, who stood behind Cassien's empty chair.

He took her by the upper arm, hard enough to make her wince.

"And this one carried the vial, I suppose. The little widow. They breed them sly in Lisvaine. Sly, and grateful for any warm bed."

Cassien hit him.

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