Free The Last Knight by Hilari Bell Page A

lost. The big front room was the herbarium—every rafter hung with bunches of leaves. Pots and bottles filled the shelves and tables, jostling against mortars, braziers, cooling jars, and page after page of notes and recipes, both loose and bound. There was even a distillery in one corner.
    Mistress Agnes swept notes, pots, and the wired-together bones of a human hand off three stools and seated herself.
    “I don’t believe for one minute that my sister killed her husband,” she announced. “He was a stuffy old goat, but he’d kept their bargain and she was content with it. She had no reason! None! But Sir Bertram insists that she was the only one who could have, because she’s a skilled herb-mixer. Well, sirs, so am I and so are many others—that isn’t enough to condemn her!”
    “Yet you were the one who examined Sir Herbert. Is it certain, Mistress, that he died of poison?”
    Mistress Agnes gnawed her lower lip, desire to defend her sister warring visibly with her habit of telling the truth.
    “It’s certain,” she admitted. “And poisoned with magic too. You know that usually all magic does is increase the natural effects of healing herbs? It can be sensed, faintly, for a few hours to a few days, depending on the herb, the dosage, and, oh, all manner of things. And it doesn’t linger in the body except under very unusual circumstances.”
    This was a point in Ceciel’s favor. Anyone who can read or memorize the formulas can mix herbs into potions, but an herb-talker, who locates and deals with magica plants, must have the sensing Gift. And according to Sir Bertram, Ceciel didn’t. She could have purchased magica herbs, but then there would be a witness.
    Sir Michael was frowning. “I understood that you examined him many days after his death and still sensed magic.”
    She nodded grimly. “In his liver, his kidneys, his teeth, and his genitals, so intense there it felt like it would burn the skin from my palm. I’ve never seen anything like that—especially not in a human body.”
    Sir Michael was nodding, as if this told him something, but I was grateful when she went on, “It was the magic built up in his kidneys that killed him, for they were…deforming. The only way to get such a concentration of magic in particular organs would be to take magica potions—regularly, often, and for a long period of time.” Her hands twisted in her apron, but her voice was steady. “I know that makes it look like Cece, but why would she do such a thing? She and Sir Herbert had struck a bargain and she was content with it. She would never —”
    “Forgive me, Mistress, but can you say for certain what she might do if her husband thought to put her off? I’ve heard—”
    “Faugh! You’ve been listening to that old goat Bertram. They were as content together as most, and he’d no wish to put her aside.”
    There was a moment of silence while Sir Michael frowned over the conflicting stories. He and Mistress Agnes were so intent on each other that the sound of horses coming into the yard disturbed neither of them. I looked out the window, but the glass was so thickly distorted that all I could see was that four men had ridden into the yard and dismounted.
    “But suppose, Mistress, that his anger at your sister’s deceit had grown over the years. Suppose he—”
    Mistress Agnes’s brows snapped together. “What deceit?” she demanded, in a voice that would have warned a sensible man.
    Sir Michael continued, “I refer to her not telling Sir Herbert that she was Giftless and—”
    “Be hanged to Sir Bertram if he told you that!” Mistress Agnes rose to her feet, hissing like a boiling kettle. “I know Bertram didn’t like her, but I never thought he’d lie. It was in this very room, in my presence, that she told Sir Herbert that her line was Gifted, but that she wasn’t. And why not? Gifts have been known to skip a generation and go on strong as before. Sir Herbert had no—”
    The hall door