“I would sooner not,” I told him, retreating as he advanced.

Seeing my wariness, he paused. “You have taken poison,” he told me carefully. “It is fully a miracle of Chranzuli that you still live. This is a purge that will flush it from your body. Take it, and you may still live.”

“There is nothing left in my body to purge,” I told him bluntly, and then caught at a table as I began to shake. “I knew I had been poisoned when I left you last night.”

“And you said nothing to me?” He was incredulous. He turned back to the door, where Kettricken now peeked in timidly. Her hair was in tousled braids, and her eyes red with weeping. “It is averted, small thanks to you,” her brother told her severely. “Go and make him a salty broth from some of last night’s meat. And bring a sweet pastry as well. Enough for both of us. And tea. Go on now, you foolish girl!”

Kettricken scampered off like a child. Rurisk gestured at the bed. “Come. Trust me enough to sit down. Before you upset the table with your shaking. I am speaking plainly to you. You and I, FitzChivalry, we have no time for this distrust. There is much we must speak of, you and I.”

I sat down, not out of trust so much as for fear I would otherwise collapse. Without formality, Rurisk sat down on the end of the bed. “My sister,” he said gravely, “is impetuous. Poor Verity will find her more child than woman, I fear, and much of that is my fault, I have spoiled her so. But although that explains her fondness for me, it does not excuse her poisoning of a guest. Especially not on the eve of her wedding to his uncle.”

“I think I would have felt much the same about it at any time,” I said, and Rurisk threw back his head and laughed.

“There is much of your father in you. So would he have said, I am sure. But I must explain. She came to me days ago, to tell me that you were coming to make an end of me. I told her then that it was not her concern, and I would take care of it. But, as I have said, she is impulsive. Yesterday she saw an opportunity and took it. With no regard as to how the death of a guest might affect a carefully negotiated wedding. She thought only to do away with you before vows bound her to the Six Duchies and made such an act unthinkable. I should have suspected it when she took you so quickly to the gardens.”

“The herbs she gave me?”

He nodded, and I felt a fool. “But after you had eaten them, you spoke so fair to her that she came to doubt you could be what it was said you were. So she asked you, but you turned the question aside by pretending to not understand. So again she doubted you. Still, it should not have taken her all night to come to me with her tale of what she had done, and her doubts of the wisdom of it. For that, I apologize.”

“Too late to apologize. I have already forgiven you,” I heard myself say.

Rurisk looked at me. “That was your father’s saying as well.” He glanced at the door a moment before Kettricken came through it. Once she was within the room, he slid the screen shut and took the tray from her. “Sit down,” he told her sternly. “And see another way of dealing with an assassin.” He lifted a heavy mug from the tray and drank deeply of it before passing it to me. He shot Kettricken another glance. “And if that was poisoned, you have just killed your brother as well.” He broke an apple pastry into three portions. “Select one,” he told me, and then took that one for himself, and gave the next I chose to Kettricken. “So you may see there is nothing amiss with this food.”

“I see small reason why you would give me poison this morning after coming to tell me I was poisoned last night,” I admitted. Still, my palate was alive, questing for the slightest mistaste. But there was none. It was rich, flaky pastry stuffed with ripe apples and spices. Even if I had not been so empty, it would have been delicious.

“Exactly,” Rurisk said in a sticky voice, and then swallowed. “And, if you were an assassin”—here he shot a warning to silence to Kettricken—“you would find yourself in the same position. Some murders are only profitable if no one else knows they were murders. Such would be my death. Were you to slay me now, indeed, were I to die within the next six months, Kettricken and Jonqui both would be shrieking to the stars that I had been assassinated. Scarcely a good foundation for an alliance of peoples. Do you agree?”

I managed a nod. The warm broth in the mug had stilled most of my trembling, and the sweet pastry tasted fit for a god.

“So. We agree that were you an assassin, there would now be no profit to carrying out my murder. Indeed, there would be a very great loss to you if I died. For my father does not look on this alliance with the favor that I do. Oh, he knows it is wise, for now. But I see it as more than wise. I see it as necessary.