“And it is spreading, no matter what I do,” said the king unemotionally. “The hearts you have brought today will replace some of the store, but as you can see, they rot as rapidly as I can replace them. And the kingdom rots with them.”
“What if they were stored somewhere else?” asked another sorceress. “If the tainted jars are separated from the new?”
“It makes no difference,” said the king. “The corruption is not spreading from one to the other as they touch. Somehow, it is in the hearts themselves, even those that have been here for a hundred years.”
“Then how?” cried Clarissa. “How is that possible? The jars are sealed with magic, protected by magic wards! Nothing should be able to touch them!”
“It is a magic-made sickness, but I know not by whom,” said the king. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked a little on his feet, surveying the vast storeroom of corrupted hearts. “I have used all my skills to try to find out what exactly is causing this, and how to stop it. But even with my centuries of knowledge, I have found nothing. How any magic but my own could possibly have entered the kingdom, I do not know.”
The sorceresses murmured among themselves, sweet as a morning chorus, if you didn’t know what they were talking about.
“Luckily,” he said, “Clarissa has discovered that Sylvester’s little pet has some kind of resistance to magic. She is harder to bespell, and appeared to lose none of her heart at all when Sylvester accidentally caught her in his enchantment, leaving her untouched by the mold. If we can’t stop the corruption from spreading, we can at least inoculate new hearts against it, using whatever we can find out from hers.”
Resistance? That was something to chew on later, when I had time to think. Certainly, Sylvester hadn’t actually taken any of my heart with his wayward spell: just hooked it like a fish on a line. If I had been more susceptible to enchantment, would his magic have torn out a piece? Would I be like Nat or Jol right now?
“For now, we will keep these new hearts separate from the others, and hope that we will be able to treat them with that inoculation. Even if we are able to replicate whatever it is that gives this girl her resistance, however, we have lost far too many hearts for this harvest to be enough. We are losing a century’s worth of them, or more.”
The sorceresses were silent.
Only Clarissa spoke up. “It is impossible to replace that many,” she said. “And without them, we will never be able to keep the kingdom protected.”
“Protected? My dear, we won’t even be able to keep italive. And it is not impossible,” said the king. “Just costly.”
“You have always told us to keep the balance,” said another one of the sorceresses. “We can’t take too many.”
“We shall start at the outskirts of the kingdom,” said the king, “We need fresh meat and produce to supplement our magic, and the closest farms and villages can bring it to us much quicker. We need as many workers there as possible. Farther out, we don’t require such a ... dense population.”
“We could survive without the food,” said Clarissa.
“Wecould, for a time, but the city folk wouldn’t last as long on our enchanted produce before their bodies needed the real thing. And what is a king with no subjects?”
A moment of silence—and then Clarissa said, “Then we must take the girl’s heart as soon as possible, before we leave, or all our efforts will be in vain.”
“I quite agree, my dear,” said the king.
He turned, and his eyes fixed directly on my face. And he smiled.
17
Stupid. I should have run when I had the chance, dealt with the heartsickness. Then, even though I would never have been healed, I would at least have been able to see Da one more time before I succumbed. And it had been such a faint hope, taking a heart to the Weftwitch—even fainter now that I had seen the state of them.
I made a convulsive movement, thinking to at least attempt to run, but there was a spell upon me that had me frozen to the spot. I felt even more of a fool standing there in my mobcap and apron, and the underdress beneath, in front of the richly dressed magic-workers. I wondered again where Cornelius had gotten to.
I had a feeling the king had known I had been here all along and had let me see what I had seen deliberately. To what end, I had no idea.
“And here she is,” he said.
The sorceresses glared at me collectively, like one creature with many limbs and eyes—a malevolent spider. The thralls moved nary a muscle. I tried desperately to will myself into the Other Palace again—but of course, it didn’t exist here in the Room of Hearts, and there was nowhere to go.
“Clever of you, my dear, to find a way out of your bonds,” the king said to me, “but I am aware of all that goes on in my palace. All the layers of it. It will not work again. I’m afraid I need you. You are going to prove crucial to the kingdom’s survival, if that is of any comfort.”
I glared at him. Glaring was about all I could do, as it didn’t require movement.
“Of course, first your heart has to be extracted. Clarissa has volunteered. In fact, she seemed eager for the task.” The king smiled at her, exposing those terrible teeth again.
Where was Sylvester? I wondered again. Was he slumped in his throne room, playing with some frivolous magic? Did he know what was happening, or even care? Clarissa smiled at me, more a baring of teeth than a true smile.
“I will return when you have finished, my dear,” said the king, letting one hand rest on the smooth slope of her shoulder. She shuddered a little under his touch, but did not drop her gaze from mine.
