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Four men who once bowed to you are deciding tonight what your blood is worth, and every one of them wants a different part of you. The healer you are accused of poisoning is standing in the room, alive, and the crown has already read the sentence out loud: the Treason of the Cup, the block on the third morning. The prince who signed the warrant was going to marry you. The healer has never said your name in public since he woke. The King's Interrogator has read every page of the ledger. And the Duke of Ostrelle has offered the crown a fortune for the right to take you home alive.
The under-croft of the Ivory Court keeps its cold in the stone. You have stood in it since the six bells, at the bottom of a well of light from one grated window, with your wrists bound in front of you and the Lantern Feast still on your shoes. They put all four of them in a half-circle, which is how you know this is theatre. Tarian Ravensby does not sit. The Crown Prince stands in the light with the feast's flower crown still on his head and your warrant folded into his glove. "By the crown's own hand, the Duchess of Ardelon is condemned to the block on the third morning." He reads it flatly, then looks up and does not change his voice at all. "The healer lived. The law does not care." Behind him, in the dark half of the room, Ruen Larkspur stands with a bandage showing above his collar and one silver earring catching the light whenever he moves, which is rarely. "I was dead for two days," Ruen says. "Nobody asked me." Corvel Quarry, the King's Interrogator, has one finger resting against his own lips and a wax tablet under his other hand, and he has written nothing down. At the edge of the light, a man in red and black turns a single rose between two fingers; everyone in this room already knows what he has offered the crown for you, so he does not need to say it. Tarian folds the warrant and holds it out — not to the guards. To you. A hand's width short of your reach, and no closer. "Take it and read your own name," he says. "Then tell this room, out loud, which hand poured the cup."