Mery crossed his arms, looking bored. “Icertainly haven’t.”
“But someone else did,” Sita pressed. “By your command.”
Mery shrugged.
Sita covered her mouth with her hand. She was so stupid.Of coursethat’s how he did it. The cooks made the king’s honey cakes especially for him because he adored them so much—and they were so sweet that they could easily disguise the bitterness of poison. It was such an obvious choice that it irritated her to not have thought of it sooner.
Still, knowing the cakes were poisoned didn’t explain everything.
“I still don’t understand how the poison could go unnoticed,”she said. “The priest said they tasted all the food when Father first got sick, and no one else was affected. They must have tasted the honey cakes too—Father’s the only one who eats them.”
Mery smiled. “It’s adeliciouspuzzle, isn’t it?” He bent to pluck a red poppy from a flower bed, twirling it in his fingers. “Some might say that poison is a coward’s weapon. That the only honorable way to kill a man is face-to-face, with a blade. But I would argue that if done well, poisoning is an art unto itself.”
He lifted the flower to his nose and smelled it with his eyes closed. “First, you must consider which poison to use. There are dozens, you know—plants, minerals, venom—each with their own gruesome effects. Only by making yourself a regular at the House of Life can one study all of them in detail, and only after many hours of research might you find the perfect poison for the job. A common additive, for instance, used to make yellow paint, and often mixed with copper to make tools more durable. Few even know it’s poisonous at all. Its harmful effects are only mentioned in a single obscure papyrus.
“Next, the dosage. It’s easy to kill someone by pouring poison into his wine cup and watching him die on the spot. You’ve done the job—but at what cost? Everyone will know it was murder, and unless you’re very, very lucky, or everyone around you is very, very stupid, they’ll eventually figure out it was you who did it.”
Sita sat heavily on a stone by the fishpond, feeling like she often did after losing a game of Hounds and Jackals, and being forced to listen to Mery explain exactly how he beat her.
“No,” Mery went on, “if you want the job done right, you can’t be so artless. You have to choose a poison that’s not only obscure, but also harmless in small doses. So harmless that if someone ate, for instance, a single poisoned honey cake—or eventwopoisoned honey cakes—they’d feel just fine. But if you ate them every day, one little sweet at a time, well…” Mery opened his hands,as if to reveal a wonder inside. “At first you’d simply have a little stomachache. But then it would get worse, and worse, andworse.”
He took one last look at the poppy and cast it to the ground. “Until one day you’d just die. And everyone would be awfully sad and blame it on a demon or a curse or the annual pest, and the priests, having given their very best effort, would shrug their shoulders and say that the gods work in mysterious ways.” He chuckled. “That’s all conjecture, of course. But if someone I knew came up with a plan like that, I’d applaud their ingenuity. Wouldn’t you?”
Sita closed her eyes, her mind reeling with the implications of her brother’s words. “Mery,” she whispered, trying hard to control the growing hysteria in her voice. “Father isn’t the only one eating those cakes.”
Mery’s eyebrows rose, and for once, he looked surprised. She took a grim satisfaction in that.
I guess you didn’t plan for everything, did you?she thought.
“Maet,” he said, realization dawning.
“Yes, Maet! She could die because of you! Father has been sharing those cakes with her. He’s still doing it, even now! We have to stop this! Maybe if she doesn’t eat any more, she could survive, and then—”
“No.”
The word was solid. Final. Like a stone being laid over a grave.
“No one can know.” Mery took her face in one hand and pulled her toward him, as if for a kiss. His hand still held the scent of the poppy, earthy and sweet, with a hint of smoke. “And we don’t stop until it’s done. If we tell them the cakes are poison—if anyone finds out—they’ll kill us, Sitamun. Not just me. They’ll kill you too. Do you understand? Or do you think your throat is too pretty to cut? You may have the purest blood, sister, but there are a dozen other girls waiting to take your place.”
Sita let out a choked sob. “I can’t keep doing this,” she said,gripping the scarab amulet in her hand. “Ican’t—”
Mery’s expression softened. “Oh yes, you can.” Mery whispered, his lips lovingly shaping each word, “Not for me, but for the kingdom. For our people. This is the hard part. But soon, thiswill all be in the past. Remember all the fun we used to have? We’ll have it again, you and me, I promise. And we’ll bring all Khetara along with us. All right?”
Sita sniffed, tears rolling down her cheeks. There was something unsettling, a hidden message that she couldn’t decipher in what he said. But she was too sad, too tired, and too confused to fight him. He was Mery the beautiful, the brilliant, the future king. Who was she to question his decisions, no matter how monstrous they might seem?
She thought of the pile of dead birds on the ship, and how much she abhorred fowling.
Ah, but you’ll like them very much when Cook roasts them for your supper tonight, won’t you, little kitten?
Mery had done the vile deed, but she and the rest of the kingdom would benefit from it. Perhaps it was cowardly to enjoy the meat her brother provided for the table, while complaining about what he had to do to get it there.
Have courage, she told herself, wiping the tears from her face.
“All right,” she replied.
Her brother replied with a heart-melting smile. “Now, forget about this ugliness and get yourself ready for the evening meal. Tonight, we feast on the spoils of the hunt!”
After he left, Sita stayed by the fishpond for a long while, staring down into the water. Finally, she stood, and there was a sudden flutter of wings. A falcon rose from a rosebush, launching into the air. There was something small and wet lying on the ground nearby. Sita stepped toward it and saw the half-eaten remains of one of the long-tailed monkeys, its little mouth open, its glossy innards spilling out onto the stone tiles. Feeling sick, Sita glanced over to the sycamore tree, where she could see the other monkey watching from the branches, silent and alone.
