Rejected, Replaced and Forgotten novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Turns

The false Luna cannot tie the knot the King was bandaged with and Lenna's fingers tie it without thought; she agrees to make the tonic and refuses to lie, and the Lycan King fills the doorway and names her scent.

I was still holding the jar when the door opened behind me.

"Put that down," said the tall woman.

She had followed me after all, with Sabra a step behind.

She looked at the jar.

"It's got my handwriting on it," I said.

"It has a label on it. Most jars do."

"It says Lenna W."

The silence that followed was not an empty one.

Sabra's smile did not move, but her hand tightened on her silver comb.

"Our old healer's apprentice was called Lenna," said the tall woman at last.

"She ran off five years ago and she's dead in a ditch somewhere."

"If you've seen her work, you've seen a dead girl's work."

"And my father told the guards he'd never seen me."

"Did he?" she said. "Then he never has."

She put out her hand for the jar, and I put it back on the shelf instead.

"Whose handwriting is this?" I asked. "Mine looks exactly like it."

"Then you'll write a very good tonic," said Sabra brightly. "Mother, show her what the King's herald left."

The tall woman took a folded square of paper from her belt.

On it was a drawing of a bandage, tied off with a knot in three twisting turns.

"The King was bound with this," said Sabra. "The herald says it's a Stonefall knot. Healers' apprentices learn it here and nowhere else."

"Then you know it," I said.

"Of course." She took a strip of linen from the bench. "Of course I do."

She wrapped it round her wrist, twisted it once, twice, and pulled.

It came apart in her fingers.

She tried again, and the second knot was a lump.

The third was worse, and I saw the muscle jump in her jaw.

"It's a pack secret," she said. "I'm out of practice."

"May I?" I asked.

I did not want to.

I had no idea why I said it.

She flung the linen at me, and I caught it, and my hands began to move.

Under, over, tuck, pull, a half twist, tuck.

Three turns, tight and flat, with the end tucked down and hidden so it could not catch on anything.

I had never tied it in my life, and it took less than a breath.

I held up my wrist.

Sabra stared at it.

So did her mother.

"Beautiful," whispered Sabra, with such venom that I almost laughed.

"If you were who you look like," the tall woman said very quietly, "you would be dead."

"Then tell me who I look like."

"I'm telling you that it is better for everyone that you are a herbalist from Ferry's End."

"Better for who?"

She said nothing.

I looked at the two of them, the mother stiff as a gatepost and the daughter holding her comb.

A woman who thought she was safe would have thrown me out.

These two wanted something from me even more than they wanted me gone.

I thought of Maud on her knees in the dirt, with the enforcer stepping over her.

I thought of the label, and of my own handwriting.

If I walked out now I would know nothing, and I would spend the rest of my life dreaming of torches.

"I'll make your tonic," I said.

Sabra let out her breath.

"But I won't lie for you."

"I'll mix it and stand where you tell me, and if the King asks me a question I'll answer it."

"You will say you are the Luna's assistant," said the tall woman.

"I'll say whatever's true."

"Then you'll say very little," said Sabra, and the smile came back. "That should suit a girl like you."

They left me alone with the jars.

I stood with my back against the shelves and my pulse loud in my ears.

My hands knew where everything was.

I reached for dried thyme without looking and found the wolfsbane at the back of the second shelf.

I set a flask of spring water to warm over the lamp.

Thyme and wolfsbane, I thought, and could not say why my eyes stung.

I was crushing the leaves in the mortar when the horns went off over the roof, three long blasts that rattled the jars.

Boots thundered on the floor above.

A hundred voices rose in the hall.

Over them I heard one voice, deep and unhurried, giving orders.

"He's early," I heard Sabra shriek somewhere. "Why is he early?"

I kept grinding.

Footsteps came down the east stair, slow and heavy, taking the steps one at a time, and not stopping at the fourth.

My pestle slowed.

Somebody ducked under the low beam.

The door, which I had not shut, swung wide.

A man filled the doorway entirely.

He had to bend his head to look in.

I saw the fur collar first, then the silver cuff, then the tawny hair coming loose from its tie.

His nostrils flared, and his eyes went from storm-blue to pale gold in the dim light.

"Thyme," said the Lycan King, very low. "Wolfsbane. Snow."

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