Chapter 24

King Marnaigne sat at the side of an oversized sleigh bed in a long damask robe, looking surprisingly small against the suite's sheer sumptuousness.

Like the rest of the palace, the king's chambers were done up in black and gold, with so much gilding along the walls and ceiling, I had to squint against its luster. A canopy draped over the bed and down the back wall. Heavy silk cords drew the dark satin up into decadent scallops. The Marnaigne emblem—a great bull—topped the frame, standing straight and proud, chest puffed against the world. Rubies the size of robins' eggs winked from its eyes, and it appeared to be made of solid gold.

I absently wondered if the king ever worried the weight of it might split the bed timbers and come crashing down on him in the middle of the night.

"Curtsy," Aloysius hissed, jerking my attention back to the present as he performed a deep bow himself. "Your Majesty."

Sweeping one leg behind me, I sank to one knee and lowered my head, feeling miserably uncoordinated. "Your Majesty," I repeated, then bobbed back up.

There was no response. He appeared to be studying his fingers, picking at a hangnail.

I hoped it was a hangnail.

"Your Majesty?"

He flicked aside a bit of something I'd rather forgot I saw and turned to us. "Is this the girl they said would cure me? The one who lives with Death?"

Aloysius nodded.

As King Marnaigne stood, his robe parted, revealing just how far the disease had spread. "So you've come to gape upon your fallen monarch. Well…what do you think?" He threw back his arms, showing more affected area.

I tilted my head, trying to make sense of what my eyes saw.

Was that…gold?

He started to laugh, a bitter, red sound, and shook his head. He turned to Aloysius. "She says nothing. Is she mute? A simpleton? Struck dumb by all of this?" The robe came off then, leaving him completely naked and exposing the full extent of his sickness.

I wanted to take a step back but held my ground.

"I'm told she's quite gifted, Your Majesty. Blessed by the Dreaded End." Aloysius nudged me forward, but my feet would not budge.

Marnaigne scoffed. "What a blessing. Go on and look, then, girl. Then run. They all run. The maids, the doctors, even that damned farce of a seer. Everyone runs."

If it was true, I certainly couldn't fault them. In all the books Merrick had plied me with, I'd never come across anything like this.

The king's body…shivered.

Series of muscles spasms twitched around the landscape of his flesh, causing fingers to twitch, shoulders to tic. As I watched, hisside began to jerk, as if being tugged on a line.

The king rubbed at it irritably, softly at first, massaging the muscles, then with firmer fingers. He pushed into the skin harder and harder as the twitching continued, finally raking his fingernails over the spot until the skin broke open, releasing an oily fluid that was neither blood nor bile.

I wanted to step forward to better see it, but something continued to hold me back. This fluid looked dangerous.

Feeling the oil run down his rib cage, Marnaigne swore and swiped at it, smearing it across his torso, where it shimmered like gold luster. Another tic began, this time along the biceps of his left arm, and he began scratching there, repeating the process.

I felt the king watching me, gauging my reaction. Waiting for me to turn and run, like the other healers and charlatans promising cures.

After a long moment, I took a step forward.

"When did you first begin to feel as though something was off?" I asked, unpacking a satchel. I spread the tools over a credenza, keenly aware of how their surgical steel clashed against the opulent mother-of-pearl top.

We were in the king's private study.

Marnaigne lay stretched out across the large table at its center, completely naked save for a plush towel covering his groin.

Servants had rushed forward to drape a canvas cloth over the polished mahogany before the king had lain down. The fabric was now smeared with gold and scarlet as weeping fluids dripped down Marnaigne's body, creating a macabre painting.

"A month ago, perhaps a little more." He closed his eyes, breathing out a sigh.

I lifted one of his arms, watching as the muscles twitched, leaping to life of their own volition. Marnaigne had already scratched the skin raw, and more of the shimmering gold trickled out. It was a thin, viscous fluid—like diluted paint—and was uncomfortably warm beneath my gloved hands.

He winced as I pressed into his biceps, forcing more fluid to well up. I rubbed it between my fingertips, marveling at its iridescent hue. Nothing in the human body should ever be that color.

"I'd been in my council chambers, discussing the skirmishes in the north." He paused. "Have you…have you heard anything about my brother? It's been so long since I've left the palace. I never know what people around town are saying."

I shrugged helplessly.

I remembered Mama's stories of the bastard older brother, Baudouin, who had exiled himself deep in the northern territories after the old king had died. I remembered her snorting over rumors that the wrong brother had ascended the throne.

I remembered too the trampled roads I'd noticed on our journey here. The king had mentioned skirmishes. Had an army marched down those roads?

"With all due respect, Your Majesty, I'm more interested in hearing about you," I said carefully.

He sighed. "I'd just left the council when I felt a twitch at my eye. Here." He touched his face. "It grew worse throughout the day, and later that night, when I was reading a bedtime story to my youngest, it became quite painful. I went to one of her mirrors, blinking to dislodge the irritation, when a trickle of gold fell, like tears. More gold fell as both my eyes continued to twitch. It was actually quite lovely, like I was going to a masque. Euphemia suggested we ought to host a ball." His jaw clenched. "Then there were more twitches, more tics. Not just in my eyes, but in my fingers, along the sides of my hands. My arms and torso, my legs and feet. Even…" He gestured to the towel.

"And the twitches…" I paused, unsure of how to phrase the question. "Do they feel…like normal tics?"

"There's nothing normal about this!" King Marnaigne snapped, his anger sudden and booming.

"Of course not, Your Majesty." I hurried to appease him. His outburst reminded me of Merrick's bad moods, brought on sharp and swift and without warning. "I only meant…could you describe what they feel like? It's obvious that they're quite…severe." He stared up at the ceiling in stony silence. "Are you in any pain?"

"I look like a freak of nature, of course it pains me!" Marnaigne struck his hand against the table with enough force to splinter off a bit of gold decoration from the legs.

"Physical pain," I clarified, keeping a steady voice.

"The…" His hand suddenly jerked to life as he struggled to find the words. "The…twitches or tics or whatever you want to call them—the shivers —are uncomfortable, certainly. The tremors can be quite strong. But the worst of it…" He sighed. "When one of the…attacks begins…I can feel the oil moving beneath myskin."

"The oil," I repeated, wanting him to further explain without putting my words into his mouth.

"This gold…stuff," he said with frustration. "I can feel it moving in my body, like a living thing. I know it's not supposed to be inside of me, and I just want to…I just want to…"

As he spoke, his cheek began to tremble, caught in a spasm, and before I could stop him, the king slashed at his face, freeing the fluid beneath. It dripped down his chin, giving him an otherworldly leer.

"You shouldn't do that," I said, wrestling his hands away.

"I can't stop," he protested, his voice rising to a whine. "I don't want it in me. It just…it has to come out. I have to free it. I have to…" He swiped at his cheek again, releasing more of the gold.

"Have you tried to not scratch at it?" I asked, struggling to grasp his hands. They were slick and slippery with the fluid. "I know it must be uncomfortable, but what would happen if you try to make it through one of these…attacks…without hurting yourself, without freeing the gold?"

He shook his head, miserable. "It doesn't matter. It comes out all the same."

"How?"

"Through my pores, through my eyes, through my nose, through…anywhere it can." King Marnaigne winced, sitting upright, grabbing at his knee as it began to tremor.

"There was a footman who was sick," Aloysius spoke up. I'd had him remain in the far corner of the room, there to answer any questions I might have but a safe distance from the king and his mess. "They tied him to his bedposts to keep him from harming himself. The gold came anyway. Toward the end…he went mad with the pain, likening it to having metal filings shoved through his skin, excoriating the wounds raw with every breath he took. He struggled against the bindings with such wild force that his wrists snapped. He worked himself free and promptly slit his own throat."

I gasped at the sudden and swift end of the valet's tale.

Aloysius flexed his fingers, studiously avoiding my eyes, unfinished. "I'm told that the…material…closed up over the incision, keeping him alive for quite some time…. He had to perform the suicide three times before it took."

My stomach flipped over as I imagined the poor man's blood running together with the brilliant gold. "How ghastly."

"Don't forget that maid, before him. I caught this from her, I'm sure of it," King Marnaigne stated without ceremony.

"A maid?" I echoed. "I'll need to examine her as well."

Aloysius sucked in a deep breath. "I'm afraid that's impossible. She too is dead."

My chest deflated. "I'm sorry to hear that." I paused, weighing my words with care. "Did she…succumb to the disease or was there…an outside force?"

Aloysius ground his back teeth with a grimace. "Her mother, in an attempt to heal the wounds, wrapped her in wet leather dressings. She believed that as the leather dried, it would tighten the skin, closing off the pores and stopping the flow of…fluid."

"I assume it did not help?"

The king squirmed uncomfortably from the table. "With nowhere else to go, the gold began pouring out of the girl's mouth, dribbling out in clotted streaks. She suffocated."

"Drowned, to be more precise," Aloysius added, the words clipped. "There was another healer at court then." His pale eyes floated up to the ceiling, as if inspecting for cobwebs. "He asked permission to autopsy the body. The girl's lungs were filled with the gold, thoroughly saturated. She could draw no breath because there was simply no room for air."

I took a deep breath of my own, suddenly aware of the way my chest expanded so fully. I'd never thought to be grateful for that before.

"How curious," I muttered. "Could someone bring up a basin of hot water and some towels?" Aloysius gestured toward one of the servants. "And you believe you caught this from the maid? Did she have occasion to come into close contact with you?"

His face turned stony before he shifted away, and I understood immediately just how close their contact had been.

"I'm not here to pass judgment on you, Your Majesty. I'm only trying to determine how this spreads. Is anyone else at court ill?"

Aloysius shook his head. "Not that we're aware of, but the tremors occur across the body at random. It's possible someone is hidingit."

I frowned, thinking this through. "If the maid had it first…is there reason to believe she might have also spread it to the footman?" I didn't dare to meet the king's eyes.

"It's very likely," Aloysius supplied after a long silence.

"I don't mean to pry, Your Majesty, but is there anyone else you might have passed it along to?"

"Of course not!" He struck the tabletop as another tremor shivered across his face like lightning.

I raised my hands in defense. "I meant nothing by it, sir, just—"

I was saved as the door opened and servants rolled in a cart full of towels, basins of hot water, and soap.

"What's this for?" he snapped as I dipped the cloths into the steaming water.

"I want to try washing you—"

A cry of indignation escaped from him. "You think this is all just dirt? You think I don't bathe?" He struggled to sit up, glaring daggers at Aloysius. "Who is this imbecile? Where did you drag her in from?"

I wanted to pinch the bridge of my nose to ward off my headache, but my hands were still gloved and covered in Marnaigne's fluids.

"I know it's not dirt, Your Majesty." I turned to my valise and pulled out a glass vial. "This is a mix I've made of yarrow and witch hazel." I removed the stopper and allowed him to smell it. His nose twitched, but I wasn't sure if it was from the smell or the Shivers. "They're very strong astringents."

King Marnaigne shrugged as if the word meant nothing to him.

"Astringents can help to draw water out of tissue. Your skin," I added helpfully. "We're going to try to draw out the…" I paused, feeling uncomfortable that there wasn't a proper term for the gold leaking out of the king's body.

From his corner, Aloysius made a soft noise. "I've heard the servants call it the Brilliance."

"The Brilliance," I repeated.

King Marnaigne fumed darkly. "Superstitious fools. You'll never guess what they claim all this is," he said, running his fingers over the gold dried across his body.

Wordlessly, I shook my head.

"Sins," he said, spitting the word as though it disgusted him. "They think the gods themselves have reached out and touched me. They think this is a purging of my sins. They think me capable of sin!" He struck the table again with a roar.

I kept my gaze studiously on the floor before me, letting him storm. Millennia ago, when the world was new, the Holy First had drawn up a list of one hundred sins, crimes against order and purity and her, that all mortals should seek to avoid. I tried not to tally up the number of sins I'd spotted since arriving within the king's chambers: excess, greed, vanity, and arrogance. Pretension and anger, wrath and rage. And there still was the matter of the maid….

It didn't bother me. The king's morality was his to hold or cast aside as he chose, but if the servants believed the Shivers was an act of cleansing sent from the gods…I could see the logic of their superstitions.

But they were superstitions all the same.

"Why don't you lie back, Your Majesty, and I can begin," I instructed once his outburst had died away. Being around the king felt more and more like conversing with Merrick when he was in a bad mood. You had to tiptoe around their furies and find little ways to sweeten their tempers without drawing attention to the work you were doing.

Marnaigne sighed but didn't protest. He settled back onto the table and I got to work.

"We'll start with the hot water, washing away all the dried pigments, and then, once you're clean, I'll use the astringent to draw out more of the Brilliance. If we can get all of it out, it may stop the tremors from occurring."

The first pass of the towels revealed a map of scratches and welts that had been hidden beneath the Brilliance. Some of the wounds looked infected, raw and red. I washed his chest and arms, cleaning everything till pink skin showed once more.

Moving on to his face, I swabbed the ragged skin as gently as I could. Though he was older, with crow's feet and lines across his forehead, I could still see a glimpse of the haughty young man from the portrait outside.

Even Aloysius smiled, seeing the result. "It's very good to see you, Your Majesty."

I took off the gloves and discarded them, feeling inordinately proud of myself.

Marnaigne sat up, swinging his legs off the table before crossing to a large mirror. Standing before it, arms held slightly out from his body, he marveled at his features. He turned to look at his back, then around again to his front, preening. I wondered when he had last seen himself so free of the Brilliance.

"Aloysius," he whispered, joy coloring his tone. "I'm me again."

But as he spoke, a tic began at his forehead, twitching with sporadic jumps. Fluid welled up, pushed from his pores as he dabbed frantically at his hairline.

I took a sharp breath as I saw the shade.

"Sire?" Aloysius asked, stepping forward.

A single line of burnished bronze ran down Marnaigne's face, cleaving it in half with a long, ugly slash.

Wiping it aside, the king smeared its dark shadow across his cheeks. He studied the remains on the back of his hand, his eyes wide with horror.

"Aloysius?" he murmured. His voice was thick with panic. "It's darkening."

Their eyes met in the mirror, acknowledging some secret I wasn't privy to, before the king burst into tears.

In an instant, the room erupted into chaos.

"Out! Get out!" Aloysius shouted, waving at the guards.

Marnaigne sank to his knees, weeping. The more he sobbed, the more Brilliance gathered across his spasming face. It ran down his cheeks like painted tears.

I had assumed Aloysius meant the guards, but they turned to me, crossing their halberds and ushering me back from the king.

"What are you doing? I need to help him!" I shouted as they herded me from the room, the points of their weapons glittering dangerously.

Before I could protest again, the door shut in my face, and in the silence of the empty hall, I heard a lock click into place.