But since Locke is still here, it seems as if none of the three acorns were found. Maybe none of them even left her bower.
I should give it to him, let him decide for himself what to do with it. But all I keep thinking about is the note on Balekin’s desk, the note that seemed to implicate Balekin in Liriope’s murder. Should I tell Locke everything?
I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after, but what you do with it must not be tied to me.
I turn the words over in my mind the way I turned the acorn in my hand, and I feel the same seams.
There’s something odd about that sentence.
I copy it out again on a piece of paper to be sure I remember it correctly. When I first read it, the note seemed to imply that Queen Orlagh had located a deadly poison for Balekin. But blusher mushrooms—while rare—grow wild, even on this island. I picked blusher mushrooms in the Milkwood, beside the black-thorned bees, who build their hives high in the trees （an antidote can be made with their honey, I learned recently from all my reading）。 Blusher mushrooms aren’t dangerous if you don’t drink the red liquid.
What if Queen Orlagh’s note didn’t mean that she’d found blusher mushrooms and she was going to give them to Balekin? What if by “know the provenance,” Orlagh literally just meant that she knew where particular blusher mushrooms had come from? After all, she says “what you do with it” and not “what you do with them.” She’s cautioning him about what he’s going to do with the knowledge, not the actual mushrooms.
Which means he’s not going to poison Dain.
It also means that Balekin may have uncovered who’d caused Locke’s mother’s death, if he found out who had the blusher mushrooms that killed her. The answer could have been there, among the other papers that I, in my eagerness, had overlooked.
I have to go back. I have to get back into the tower. Today, before the coronation is any closer. Because maybe Balekin isn’t going to try to kill Dain at all and the Court of Shadows has the wrong idea. Or, if they have the right idea, he isn’t going to do it with blusher mushrooms.
Gulping down my tea, I find the servant garb in the back of my closet. I take down my hair and arrange it in an approximation of the rough braid that the girls in Balekin’s house wore. I tuck my knife high on my thigh and shake out some of my silver box of salt into my pocket. Then I grab for my cloak, toe on my leather shoes, and am out the door, palms starting to sweat.
I have learned a lot more since my first foray into Hollow Hall, enough to make me understand better the risks I was taking. That does nothing for my nerves. Given what I saw of him with Cardan, I am not at all confident I could endure what Balekin would do to me if he caught me.
Taking a deep breath, I remind myself not to get caught.
That’s what the Roach says a spy’s real job is. The information is secondary. The job is not to get caught.
In the hall, I pass Oriana. She looks me up and down. I have to resist the urge to pull the cloak more tightly around myself. She is wearing a gown the color of unripe mulberries, and her hair is pulled slightly back. The very tips of her pointed ears are covered in shimmering crystal cuffs. I am a little envious of them. If I wore them, they’d disguise the human roundness of my own ears.
“You came home very late last night,” she says, annoyance pulling at her mouth. “You missed dinner, and your father was expecting you to spar with him.”
“I’ll do better,” I say, then instantly regret the declaration because I am probably not going to be back for dinner tonight, either. “Tomorrow. I’ll start doing better tomorrow.”
“Faithless creature,” Oriana says, looking at me as though through the sheer intensity of her gaze she might ferret out my secrets. “You’re scheming.”
I am so tired of her suspicion, so very tired.