Malkum's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Malkum kept the rabbit alive for two days in a crate under his bed. He watched it eat, watched it sleep, and thought about the kitchen inspection. Jolt Jinx had drawn the layout for him on a napkin. Every crate opened at the gate. Every sack emptied. Every courier patted down twice, once at the outer door and once at the pantry. A blade the size of his thumb would be found. Going in bare-handed meant the first guard in the solarium would kill him before he crossed the tile. He needed a weapon that would pass a hand search and a table search, and he had three days to find one. He met Jolt Jinx on a low roof above the courier route. She sat with her boots over the edge and her three jars lined up beside her. Malkum said what he needed. She did not answer for a while. Then she picked up the middle jar, the one she never named to anyone, and set it in his hand. "Not the powder," she said. "The rabbit." He waited. "Feed it for a day. One pinch in the water. It stays in the meat. Cooked, raw, doesn't matter. Whoever eats it stops breathing inside a minute." Malkum looked at the jar. He looked at the crate wire under his coat, at the bright red animal turning its ear toward his voice. "You'd give this up," he said. Jolt Jinx shrugged. "He hung your sister. Bring the jar back if there's any left." She did not look at him when she said it. She stood up and walked to the far edge of the roof and stayed there until he climbed down. He went home and mixed one pinch into the water dish. The rabbit drank. By the next morning it ate normally and showed nothing. On Thursday the courier came at the fourth bell and Malkum handed over the cage at the service lane. The guard at the kitchen gate opened the door, checked the animal's teeth and coat, weighed it, and waved the courier through. Malkum watched from a stall across the lane until the kitchen door shut. He had no blade on him. He had no poison on him. Everything he needed was already inside the palace, breathing, waiting for the ninth bell. He walked back to his room and sat on the bed with his hands empty. The contract had five days left. The weapon was in place. Now he had to get himself into the solarium to watch the king eat, because a dead king behind a locked door was still a job unfinished, and no one had ever come out of that room alive either.