I tried not to react when it hurt, but I didn’t fool her. “Will my hand be better than his nose?”
She smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve treated this kind of thing on the battlefield many times. You’ll be fine. And I know a neat trick.”
By now the cloth around my hand and wrist had begun to stiffen. She produced a sword hilt, the blade neatly removed, and pressed the grip into my injured palm. “Now hold this as tightly as you can while the bandages harden. That way the cast will set in the right shape. You won’t have as much wrist movement, but you also won’t drop it every time you parry a blow.”
I did as she instructed while she cleaned up the remaining cloth strips and leftover plaster. In a few minutes, she removed the hilt from my hand, and sure enough, the cast retained the shape of my grip.
“See?” She put the sword hilt back on its shelf. “You won’t win any swordsmanship awards, of course.”
“I wouldn’t on my best day.”
She handed me a black sling. “If the pain gets too much, use this to keep your hand above your heart. It might also remove the temptation to use it as a battering ram. But the more you can stand having it down, the faster it’ll heal.”
I put the sling in my pocket and hopped off the table. “Not bad. Where’d you learn to do that thing with the sword, anyway?”
“I apprenticed during the last years of King Marcus’s military campaigns, doing battlefield triage. If a soldier wasn’t dead, he needed to be able to return to the fight. I worked this out myself.”
“Was your teacher a moon priestess?”
Her eyes flashed with a surprising degree of anger. “No. Medicine is a science on Grand Bruan, not some superstitious hocus-pocus.”
In every other kingdom I’d visited, moon priestesses were respected as healers. “I’ve seen them do some pretty amazing things,” I said cautiously.
“Yeah, well, knowing you have to stop the bleeding is easy. Understanding where the blood comes from is a hell of a lot harder.”
“I’m not trying to pick a fight, you know.”
She took a deep breath, then sheepishly smiled. “Sorry. If your fingers get numb, come see me immediately. It means either your hand’s grown more swollen or the cast is too tight. Either way you could end up with gangrene.”
“Oh, I can practically guarantee I’ll need to come see you.”
She flashed those magnificent eyes at me. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“I will if you really want me to,” I said seriously. And I meant it. I gave her a moment to respond, but she let it pass. “So can I ask you something off topic?”
“Off which topic?” Her smile returned full strength.
I smiled back; heck, I grinned like the last man alive after a three-day battle. “It’s about Queen Jennifer. What kind of woman is she?”
“Out of your league, I’m afraid.”
“No, seriously. You said you’d seen her true nature, and I need some insight. This place has more secrets than flies on a manure wagon, and I don’t know who to trust.”
“You seem to trust Bob Kay.”
“Sure. He has the keys to my shackles. And I trust you.”
Her eyebrows went up. “That a fact?”
“You know it is. But after you two, I’m flapping in the breeze. Drake seems decent, but he’s thrown his lot in with Jennifer, who”-I glanced at the door to make sure no one stood waiting for the doctor and overheard me-“I definitely don’t trust.”
“Why?”
The words to tell her about the previous night left my brain, passed through my throat, and made it all the way to my teeth before I choked them back down. “Instinct,” I said instead.
“You really think she’s a poisoner?”
“It’s a woman’s way. No offense.”
“None taken. It’d be my way, too. We all use the talents we’re given.”
“And, no, I don’t think she did it. But that doesn’t automatically mean I trust her. How well do you know her?”
Iris wiped her hands with a towel. “Hm. I first met her right after I’d finished my apprenticeship. They were both really young, you know. We all were. Marcus was crowned when he was fifteen and married Jennifer when he was seventeen. And that was… wow, nearly twenty years ago.” She shook her head at the passage of so much time. “When did I get to be thirty?”
“Do you like her?”
She laughed. “Who I like is completely beside the point in this job. But between you, me, and the mice in the walls, no. Not at all. Okay, wait, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t like the snotty little girl Marcus courted. The woman she is now… she’s different. Stronger. More dedicated.”
“What changed?”
Iris shrugged. “Who knows? Back then she was a teenager. Now forty’s peeking over the horizon. People change a lot in those years.”
Again I wanted to tell her what I’d overheard the night before, but decided to hold back until I better understood the Grand Bruan dynamics. I trusted Iris, but my instincts were not infallible. “So do you think she could do what she’s accused of? Poison a knight as a warning to the others?”
Her face crinkled delightfully as she thought about it. “The spoiled girl Marc married?” she said at last. “Yes, I can believe it. But the woman she is now? No.”
“I see. Well… thanks. I have to meet with the king again, so I should probably be going.”
A touch of mischief again shone in her eyes. “I would like to check the cast before you leave to go back to wherever you came from. So we’ll see each other at least once more.”
“At least. And after that?”
“After that is after that.” She tossed the rag into a bin. “I’m a military doctor. I go where the battles are.”
I held up my bandaged hand. “I doubt I could manage a whole battle, but I could put on a hell of a skirmish.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I’d love to discuss tactics with you, but I have work to do. I will see you later, though.” And the kiss she gave me was the best promise I’d ever had.
As I wound back through the castle corridors behind Bob Kay, my wrists again secured, I scanned every hallway junction for Agravaine’s crew. They never appeared. If they weren’t hunting me, what were they doing?
TEN
By the time I met again with the king and queen, my cast itched something fierce.
I joined Bob Kay and the royal couple in the same room where Jennifer had received us the night before. Once again Bob wound up the slack in my manacles, just in case. Drake greeted us dressed in casual trousers and an old favorite shirt with the sleeves ripped out to accommodate his considerable arms. Jennifer wore a simple dress and a lone strand of pearls, and her hair hung loose and unadorned. The queen’s maids, including Rebecca, had withdrawn to give us privacy. I wondered if they were listening behind a door, or peering through a hidden peephole. I’d gain nothing by embracing my paranoia, though.
Drake bolted the door behind us. “So, we seem to have both a murder and a public relations crisis. I believe if we resolve the first, the second will take care of itself.” He nodded at my hand. “Iris fixed you up, I see.”
“She did.” I hoped he would also tell Bob to release me, but that didn’t happen.
Instead he continued, “So we’re agreed there’s a murderer in the building somewhere, who wants to make the queen look guilty.”
“No,” I corrected him. I’d finally pondered my way through something that had bothered me all along. “Even as a frame, this is a poor job. There are lots of kingdoms where the queen might kill someone with impunity, but not this one. We know murdering Patrice wasn’t the goal, and neither was killing Gillian or framing the queen.”
Jennifer spoke for the first time. “Then what was the point, Mr. LaCrosse?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t gotten that far yet. I suppose it could just be a way to disrupt things. Sow dissent. Start people talking. And whoever planned it didn’t care if someone had to die.”
“Or they simply wanted Gillian dead,” Jennifer said. “Why must there be a plot behind it?”