Free The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black Page B

person ever does.
    A woman sitting beside Lord Borodin reaches her hand down. A fat ruby glistens as she holds out a tiny wing of quail. Grease slicks her fingers.
    Once, Elienad took a bitter-tasting rasher of bacon from Lord Nikitin and was sick for a week. He knows he should learn from that encounter, but the smell of the food makes his mouth water and he takes the wing as gently as he can. The tiny bones crunch easily between his teeth, filling his mouth with the taste of salt and marrow. It wakes his appetite, makes his stomach hurt with the desire to tear, to rend. The woman allows him to lick her hand clean.
    * * * *
    There is a boy who lives in the castle of Dunbardain, although no servant is quite sure in which room he sleeps. He dresses too shabbily to be a nobleman's son; he does not wear the livery of a page nor has he the rags of a groom. His tutors are scholars who have been disgraced or discredited: drunks and lunatics who fall asleep during his lessons. His hair is too long and his breeches are too tight. No one has any idea who his mother is or why he is allowed to run wild in a palace.
    * * * *
    When they start dying, it is the master of the dog fights who is first accused. After all, if he allowed one of the wolves to get free, he should have let the guard know. But he claims that all his wolves are chained in their cages and offers to show anyone who doesn't believe him. Even as he stands over the body of the first child, with her guts torn out of her body and gobbets bitten out of her flesh, he argues that it can't be one of his wolves.
    "Look at all these partial bites,” he says, pointing with a silver cane as he covers his nose with a scented handkerchief. “It didn't know how to kill. You think one of my wolves would win if they hesitated like that?"
    His assistant, who is still young enough to become attached to the dogs when they are pups and cries himself to sleep when one of them dies, walks three steps off to vomit behind a hedgerow.
    With the second child, there are no hesitation marks, nor with the third or the fourth. Stories of dark, liquid shapes outside windows and whispers through locks spread through the city like a fever.
    "Whosoever kills the beast,” the king proclaims, “he will rule after me."
    There are a group of knights there at the announcement, one of whom the king favors. The king knew Toran's father and has watched over the boy as he grew into the fierce-looking young man standing before him. Toran has killed wolves before, in the north. Everyone knows the king hopes it will be Toran who kills this wolf and takes the crown.
    As the others are leaving, Toran walks toward the king. The king's wolf bares his teeth and makes a sound, deep in his throat. The knight hesitates.
    "Stop that, Elienad,” the king says, knocking his knee into the wolf's muzzle. Courtiers stare. Everyone thinks the same thought and the king knows it, flushes.
    "He is always with you, is he not?” Toran asks. The king narrows his eyes, furious, until he realizes that Toran is giving him a chance to speak without a protestation seeming like a sign of guilt.
    "Of course he is,” says the king. “With me or locked up.” This is not true, but he says it with such authority that it seems true. Besides, the courtiers will tell one another, later, when the king is gone. Besides, the king's wolf would be seen slipping back into the palace. The king's wolf would surely have killed a nearby child. The killer could not be the wolf they have fed and cosseted and stroked.
    Elienad sits, chews on the fur around one paw like it itches. His gaze rests on the ground.
    Toran nods, unsure about whether he should have spoken. The king nods too, once, with a slight smile.
    "Walk with me,” the king says.
    The two men walk together down one of the labyrinthine hallways with the wolf trotting close behind.
    * * * *
    "It is time to send him away,” the king's chamberlain says softly. He is old and always chilled; he