They had played more subgenres of card games than he could remember, and yet each of them had become monotonous. At one point he had taken to teaching August sword fighting in the uninterrupted expanse of the throne room – the castle grounds were still too muddy for sparring – but August had hated the exercise as much as Siles had hated chess. They read books together, sometimes, but delving into separate worlds destroyed the point of sitting in the same room. What they really wanted to do was wander outside the castle, even just within the twenty-mile perimeter of the royal city, but Siles didn't want to run the risk. Tensions were high inside and outside the royal city, and he preferred a bored king to a dead one.

Several cards tumbled onto the floor, slipping mid-shuffle when they caught on something. Siles stared at the deck, then at the dropped cards. Shuffling was supposed to be second nature by now. August moved to pick up the dropped cards, but Siles held up a finger.

"Something is wrong."

Siles slid the remaining cards against each other, examining their movement and the way their surfaces glinted in the sunlight. Something had made them stickier than usual, and it wasn't the weather. Siles turned to the guards outside August's door. They had added additional guards as a precaution since the protests, which became useful now that Siles had found himself trapped in place.

"Get the royal alchemist," he told the closest guard. "Now."

August stared at him, and Siles knew he looked strange as he stood frozen in place like a mannequin. He held the cards away from himself as he explained, "There might be poison on the cards. I've probably spread it on my hands and clothes by shuffling the deck and I don't know where else it might be in this room. I wouldn't sit anywhere if I were you."

August reluctantly remained standing. "How do you think they got into my rooms?"

Siles squinted at the window, but it didn't appear to have been opened. "I imagine the culprit is a magician, most likely one of the ones living in the castle. There are no guards for your quarters, just for you, so I imagine they snuck in through the door while we were elsewhere. Of course, I'll place guards on your quarters from now on."

Poison was more terrifying than any armed intruder. Poison meant August's enemies were getting smarter, as they recognized that only chemical attacks could overcome both magic-resistance and mind-reading. There was a chance they wouldn't even find the attempted assassin, since August's ability to detect traitors only extended so far.

The royal alchemist interrupted Siles' thoughts as she swept through the doorway, her nose immediately scrunching as if she had smelled something terrible. That meant Siles was right. "Yikes," she said in her high, nasal tone. "This is a mess." She had always seemed like a different species to Siles, not just because of her strange voice and dwarfism, but because she moved and acted differently than any other magician he had met. He didn't like the way most magicians acted, at least, so her strangeness was welcome.

August's jaw dropped indignantly. "My quarters are perfectly tidy."

"She doesn't mean it like that," Siles said. He had worked with the alchemist before. She was the only magician with her ability that he had met, and nobody expected it to work the way that it did. The way she had described it, the poisons shone like vibrant colors. They were messy and chaotic like paint splatters to her.

"You really spread the poison everywhere," the alchemist complained. "It looks like it started out on the cards..." She darted forward, crouching lower than her already short height to examine the bottom of the table and Siles' hands. "It's a good thing you're wearing gloves. This one's orange; that means it's a skin poison."

August stared at Siles, waiting for an explanation. Siles obliged; "She sees poisons. It's her power. And she can get rid of them, most of the time."

The alchemist glanced at August and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. Abruptly, she folded over to bow, bouncing back afterwards into a standing position as if she were spring loaded. "Brigitte DaVey, at your service. I forgot the Queen had died so I didn't realize you were the King." She giggled to herself and added, "I was the one who checked the corpse for poison, too."

Siles cleared his throat. "Can you fix this?" he asked. He hadn't moved since she had entered the room. Her blasé behavior didn't mean they were safe, it just meant she knew what was going on. She had nothing to fear, as a natural immunity to all things poison had come along with all of the other aspects of her magic.

Brigitte looked at him as if noticing him for the first time, which was to say that she had probably forgotten he was there after she had seen the King. Her attention span was as short as she was. She smiled, exclaimed, "Right!", and snapped her fingers.

Siles felt something change, like dozens of tiny fingertips poking at his clothes, his gloves, the cards in his hands. Brigitte plucked the deck from his grip and added the cards from the floor to it, then pressed them between her bare palms until sparks of orange danced off the six of spades on top. The pressure on Siles' clothes turned to warmth as orange sparks leapt off him, too. Brigitte's decontamination process was the closest he had ever been to magic, and he had been grateful the first time he had required it years ago to discover that his magic immunity didn't repel her magic so long as the poison had only contaminated his clothes.

The cascade of sparks faded as soon as they had begun and Brigitte shoved the card deck into her coat pocket. Frayed holes decorated the coat like polka dots, despite the fact that castle magicians earned more than enough to pay a tailor for new clothes. She crouched again, squinting up at Siles' outstretched hands then down at the floor where the cards had lain. "Everything should be fine, but as a precaution I'm going to have you both remove your outer clothes and exit the room so I can do a thorough decontamination. The clothes will need to be destroyed, of course."

Siles remembered this step from the previous attempted poisoning. The Queen had been creepy about it, watching his every move despite the fact that she was decades older than him. Her skin had been as wrinkly as her undergarments. Siles shook the image from his mind as he shed his outer layers and thanked his luck that he would at least be able to keep his underwear on. He dropped his weapons in a pile separate from his clothes for Brigitte to thoroughly decontaminate along with the rest of the room.

"My clothes will probably fit you. You'll just have to roll the pants," August said as he pulled his own shirt over his head. He didn't stare, to Siles' relief.

Brigitte ignored the awkwardness, instead poking her head into August's bedroom. She darted back to the main room, giving them a thumbs up. "It's all safe in there. If you could exit through a secret door or something instead of the main door that would be safest."

There was a hidden door in August's bedroom, just as there was in every high-level set of chambers in the castle. Siles followed August through it and locked it behind them after they had changed into new clothes. The hidden door led to a dark and damp hallway which led to another door which led to the servant tunnels, so Siles led them through the tunnels to the hidden door of his own chambers as he retrieved his own clothes and backup weapons. He had become more lenient on some aspects of his appearance, but he was not going to let anybody see him walking around in the King's clothes. It wasn't even the implication of it that bothered him, it was simply the impudence of wearing a uniform of a higher rank than he possessed.

They gathered around Siles' fireplace after he had changed. His main room was a colorless and barren version of August's, but August didn't seem to mind the way the sofa chairs creaked and itched when he sat on them. He stared into the flames, a duller shade of orange than Brigitte's vibrant sparks, and mumbled half to himself and half to Siles, "I don't know what to do. I can't search the minds of everyone in the castle. They probably know not to think about it, too."

Siles added another log to the dwindling fire. He wished he had told one of the servants to clean the fireplace. It was still as black as the night in some parts and smeared grey on others, despite the white marble that shone through on the edges farthest from the flame.

"It'll be fine," Siles said as he stoked the fire. "We'll call a press conference, just like the one after Queen Samira died. The attempted assassin will show up to hear the news, since they're most likely a castle magician or at least a castle servant, and you can catch their thoughts then. They'll be the only one expecting to hear of a poisoning, ideally."

"And if I can't find them?"

Siles shrugged. "Then I'll announce that there was an attempted poisoning, that you're fine, and that people who have any information on the perpetrator will be generously rewarded. You could search the thoughts of anyone who steps forward with information to check how accurate it is."

August ran his hands through his hair as he tilted his head back to face the ceiling. "I'm going to die young, I know it."

"I'm not going to let you die young."

Siles didn't like leaving August alone in his chambers, but he doubted anyone who wanted to kill him would expect to find him there. Fortunately, the person Siles was looking for was exactly where he had expected her to be.

He knocked quietly on Amanda's door, in what he hoped was a subdued manner. He had practiced his serious and sorrowful face on the walk over, cursing August's sister once again for forcing him to unmask. When Amanda didn't open the door, he talked through it, "Councilmember Amanda. It's the King's Guard."

He heard boots scrambling on the other side, running to the door and pausing just on the other side. She was probably taking a moment to compose herself so he wouldn't realize she had rushed over so quickly. Siles smirked, then forced his mouth back into a frown. A few seconds later, the door opened. Amanda looked at him, then at the empty space behind him. "Yes? Where's the King?"

Siles stared at the painting on the other side of Amanda's room. It was a battle scene, of course, like the paintings that had decorated August's quarters when they had still been Queen Samira's. It was entirely possible that it was one of the paintings from the Queen's rooms, since her belongings had always had a habit of scattering throughout the castle once they had been abandoned. He found it easier to stare at the painting than Amanda's face as he tried to make August sound dead without actually lying. "The King is... well, his fate is the reason I am here. Unfortunately, I'm going to need you to arrange a conference with the castle magicians."

Amanda's eyebrows shot up in surprise along with her hand, which moved to cover the smile that had begun to form on her lips. "Is he alright?" she asked from behind her hand. "What will the conference be about?"

Siles released a weary sigh to buy himself time to think of a response. "The castle alchemist found a skin poison. But don't mention this to anyone. We don't want copycats to use the technique to take out future rulers. Just call for a conference and describe it as one of highest importance." He made a mental note to tell August that he had told Amanda about the poison, though not where it had been found.

"Understood, I'll keep it vague." Amanda's hand remained over her mouth. The action was futile, since Siles could still see the joy in the wrinkles on her cheeks, but it showed that she had at least some amount of decency. He doubted she would have shown the same decency if she hadn't known that he and August were friends. Several castle magicians had laughed when they had heard how Queen Samira had died.

August was still alive and well when Siles returned to his quarters and had taken up residence on Siles' bed. To be fair, it was the only comfortable piece of furniture in his chambers. Everything else itched or poked or scratched, as he had never found the time nor willingness to seek out replacements. August found no surprise in the fact that Amanda had smiled at the news.

"She's a real bastard. I've always thought she was a sober version of Samira. A sober bloodthirsty bastard."

A voice in the walls interrupted any reply Siles may have had. Amanda had found the audio-warping magician. "Castle magicians, report to the throne room for a conference on a matter of extreme importance. Abandon any tasks you may be occupied with. The throne room conference will begin in five minutes." The speaking walls went silent.

Siles stared at the silent wall, wondering whether he should put paintings in his rooms. If August ever visited again, he would want to make it more welcoming. He could probably send a servant to retrieve better furniture for him. But there were more pressing matters. Siles cleared his throat. "I told Amanda that someone tried to poison you, by the way. She doesn't know that it was the cards, though, so keep an ear out for that detail."

August stayed behind when Siles went to the conference, since they wouldn't be able to keep up the façade of his death if he was there. He could search their minds from one floor above, and he at least had key words to listen for. The difficult part would be describing the incident without immediately giving away that August hadn't died.

The throne room was full enough that Siles had to shove his way through the crowd to reach the front. He could have walked around to the throne-side entrance, but the time it took him to shove through the crowd would give August more time to search their thoughts as the magicians recognized that Siles was alone.

The throne sat on a raised stone platform, so this was where Siles stood. He hated the feeling of their eyes on his face, especially without the mask to hide behind. He hadn't been on duty when the late Queen had died, so he hadn't had to give that speech. In fact, he had rarely had to speak at all when he had worked for the Queen. Even at the Council meetings, he had only ever listened for her. In his first few years of service, she had called him the Mute due to his lack of response to her comments.

But now, the crowd had fallen silent on its own accord, and it was time for him to speak. Siles stared at the tear in the throne room tapestry on the other side of the room from when August's sword had gone flying during one of their practice bouts. Nobody else had noticed the tear, so they had decided not to get it fixed. It would have been a sad reminder, if August had actually been dead. Siles looked down from the tear, at the gathered crowd, and spoke, "There was an assassination attempt this morning. It occurred in the King's quarters, so we believe a castle magician or servant is responsible. Since the culprit acted indirectly, we cannot determine their identity based on the assassination alone. We ask that anyone who believes they have valuable information step forward so that we can identify the culprit before any future election processes can begin."

The mention of elections was toeing the line between lying and omitting the truth, but Siles never specified just how far in the future these elections would take place. Regardless, it marked the end of the portion of the speech where he would keep August's living status secret.

A magician spoke up before he could continue. "How did the King die?" she asked.

Before he could answer, a magician closer to the front of the crowd collapsed to the ground, shrieking as if he were burning alive. Siles calmly talked over his wails, "Well, as you can tell, he isn't dead. We just needed to get more information to find the almost-assassin and this was the best avenue to do so."

He stepped down from the stone platform and squinted at the screaming magician as he twisted and flailed. It looked like a seizure, except the seizing stopped and gave way to something much stranger. The magician rose to his feet like a marionette, his feet and arms swinging into place as he twirled on invisible strings to face the crowd.

His voice was worse, crawling from his throat in a high, raspy tone. "I tried to poison the King," he declared. "My punishment will be to scratch at the courtyard walls with my bare hands like the beast that I am until I die of infection or starvation or both."

Then his marionette legs carried him from the throne room, but his normal voice lunged forward, desperately battling the raspy drawl, pleading, "No! Make it stop! Make me stop! I can't control this! Help me! Please, do something!"

The crowd parted before him despite his pleas, the magicians terrified to touch him as if his punishment were infectious. Siles made a mental note to tell August to set the man to his stone-scratching on the opposite side of the castle as his rooms so that he wouldn't have to hear the sobbing when he tried to sleep.

"He managed not to think about the poison or the cards for a while, but when the girl asked about how I died his subconscious gave him away," August explained to Siles, having entered the throne room through the throne-side door. He looked miserable. Between the protests and the poisoning, he had probably terrified the majority of the royal city. Siles knew he didn't enjoy fear the same way the Queen had.

He and August headed back to his quarters without officially concluding the conference. They had accomplished what they had needed to accomplish and had proven their point. Siles doubted August wanted to see their wide eyes any longer than he needed to.

"I don't want to go to war anymore," August said after Siles shut the door to his rooms.

Siles wasn't surprised. August had a low capacity for violence, unlike his predecessor. "That's fine. Amanda won't bring it up anymore." She would be too scared to. Siles smiled at August in what he hoped was a comforting way. He would have been afraid of August, too, if he didn't have the ability to block him out. It wouldn't have even mattered that they were friends, not if the matter of his sanity was on the line.