Greyveil

You don't panic. You'll panic later, probably in the shower, if they have showers here.

Right now you wipe Noodle's mouth with your sleeve, turn him on his side so he can't choke, and listen to his breathing. Fast, wet, but steady. His heart is going like a hummingbird's. When he finishes being sick he shivers and burrows into your neck and makes a small, miserable sound that you feel in your teeth.

"I know," you whisper. "I know, baby. I've got you."

You grab the fire tongs and drag the brazier away from the nest, all the way to the far wall under the window, and shove the shutter open. Cold mountain air pours in. The smell of pennies and lilies starts to thin.

Then you get a clean cloth from your trauma bag, wrap your hand in it, and scoop a handful of the fresh grey ash from the edge of the brazier into an empty specimen cup.

You label it. Brazier, 9:00 p.m. Old habits.

"Fenwould!" The old healer left an hour ago. You stick your head into the corridor. A guard in a grey cloak stares at you. "Where does Master Fenwould sleep?"

"Lady Ava, it's past midnight, the Master Healer—"

"I don't care what time it is. Take me to him or take me to the prince."

The guard looks at Noodle shivering in your arms, at the grey sludge down your front, and decides he'd rather take you to Fenwould.

The Master Healer of Stormhold sleeps in a narrow room full of drying herbs, in a nightcap. He opens the door already scowling. Then he sees your face.

"What happened?"

You hold up the cup. "Smell this."

"What is it, Ava? What's happened?" He takes it, sniffs once, and every bit of color drains out of his face so fast that you put a hand out in case he falls.

"Where did you get this?"

"Noodle's brazier. They changed the coals twenty minutes before he crashed. Same pattern all day. Every time." You take a breath. "What is it?"

Fenwould sits down heavily on his bed. He looks a hundred years old.

"Greyveil," he says. "A salt. It's mined deep in the mountain, in the old seams. Harmless to touch, harmless to humans in small amounts. But burned," he holds the cup away from him like it might bite, "burned, it makes a fume that settles in a dragon's fire-heart and chokes it. Slowly. A grown dragon would sicken over months. An egg…" He looks up at you. "An egg would fail. Exactly the way his egg failed."

The floor tilts a little under your feet. You shift Noodle higher on your shoulder.

"So the egg wasn't just sick. Someone was poisoning it."

"For weeks. Months, perhaps." His voice cracks. "And I sat by that egg and chanted and told the prince it was the will of the storm."

"Fenwould. Listen to me." You make your voice calm and slow, your charge-nurse voice. "This was fresh coal. Tonight. Somebody put this in his brazier tonight, after he hatched, after everybody saw him alive. They're still doing it."

The door bangs open behind you.

Kieran fills the frame. He's half-dressed, shirt unlaced, barefoot on the stone, and his eyes have gone from storm-grey to pure molten silver. The temperature in the tiny room jumps ten degrees. The herbs hanging from the ceiling rustle.

"The guard said my son was sick." He crosses the room in two strides and puts a hand on Noodle's back, and Noodle, for once, doesn't bite him. He just chirps weakly. Kieran's hand is shaking. "What's wrong with him?"

You tell him. Short sentences. The pattern, the brazier, the smell, the cup. Fenwould tells him the rest.

Kieran doesn't shout. That's the scary part. He goes completely still, and the silver in his eyes burns so bright it throws light on the walls.

"The coals come from the Chancellery stores," Fenwould says. "Any coal-keeper could have carried them. Any servant could have passed the bucket. A dozen hands, Highness, maybe more."

"Then I'll question a dozen hands." Kieran's voice is barely above a whisper. "Tonight."

"There's something else." Fenwould looks at you, and then away, like he doesn't want to be the one to say it. "Highness. The imprint."

"What about it?"

"An imprinted hatchling in its first year lives on its imprint. On that heartbeat. If the imprint dies…" He swallows. "The hatchling grieves. It stops eating. It fades. Every healer knows it. Every noble family knows it."

You feel it land in the room like a stone dropped in water.

Kieran turns his head slowly and looks at you.

"Poison the heir," Fenwould goes on, very quietly, "and someone might find the poison. There would be an inquiry. Questions. But a human, a stranger who fell out of the sky, who nobody knows, who nobody would miss…" He spreads his hands. "If she dies, the prince's heir dies of grief within the month. No poison in him at all. No one to blame. Only sorrow."

Noodle hiccups against your neck.

You don't feel afraid yet. You feel cold, all over, in a clear, sharp way, like the moment a trauma patient's pressure drops and the room goes quiet.

"So I'm the target," you say.

Nobody answers. Nobody has to.

Kieran makes a sound in his chest, low, like distant thunder. "Nobody touches her."

"Highness—"

"Nobody touches her," he repeats, and this time it's not to Fenwould. He's looking at you. "Do you understand me? Not while she's on this mountain. Not while she's carrying my son."

You don't know what to do with the look on his face, so you do what you always do. You get practical.

"Okay. No more braziers. He sleeps with me tonight, window open. I'll watch his breathing. Fenwould, can you write down everything you know about greyveil? Symptoms, antidotes, anything." You look at Kieran. "And you find out who's been carrying those buckets."

He nods once, a sharp jerk of his chin, and he's gone.

It's past midnight when a guard walks you back to your guest room to change your ruined clothes. Noodle is asleep in a sling you've made out of a bedsheet, finally, his breathing slow and even against your chest.

You open the door, light the lamp, and stop.

On the small table by the bed there's a tray. On the tray there's a covered silver cup, and a folded napkin, and a little card in neat handwriting: For the nurse, with the kitchen's compliments. To help you sleep.

Steam curls up from under the lid. You lift it.

Warm milk, with cinnamon floating on top. It smells kind and sweet and homey.

And underneath the cinnamon, faint but unmistakable, it smells like wet pennies and lilies.