Step 8b: ...poison the man who made your life hell

The Great Hall was alive with noise when Ivelle arrived, a sea of sound and faces that momentarily swamped her. Her eyes found Prince Eirifold across the room. He sat at the long, narrow table on the dais overlooking the feast, not quite at its center—that honor was reserved for the king and queen—but just to the right of it. Lillian sat at his side, face demure, the picture of a perfect princess. As Ivelle watched, Lillian leaned over to whisper something in Eirifold's ear.

Ivelle's stomach clenched. She searched for some sign that the mandragar was affecting him. But his movements seemed normal, if a little on edge. He whispered something back at Lillian, looking worried. Lillian smiled.

Ivelle's gaze traveled across the table. Next to Eirifold, Queen Ysette sliced her vegetables placidly, seemingly doing her best to ignore King Gorlin, who was swilling his wine with sneering unpleasantness. Every so often, the king would lean to his right and say something to Prince Harvald, Miriam's betrothed, and the pair of them would smirk.

Hesitantly, one hand still tight on Saffron's harness lest he try to make a run for it, Ivelle edged into the room, trying to catch Eirifold's eye. Unfortunately, her befeathered hat and garish jacket caught the eye of someone else instead.

"Jester!" The king beckoned her forward imperiously. "Come here."

Heart sinking, Ivelle made her way up to the dais, Saffron's little belled hat tinkling after her.

"My daughter-in-law tells me the prince is quite fond of you," said the king, waving a meat-bedecked fork at her. "Come closer. I want a look at you."

He leaned forward on his elbows, until their faces were inches apart. Ivelle had never been so near the king before, and she would gladly have traded the experience for pretty much anything else. King Gorlin might have been handsome in his prime, but the excesses of the monarchy (and his cask-a-day habit) had not done any favors for his skin or his stomach. He was, in essence, a beer belly on legs.

"You don't look like your jests are worth much." He took another bite of venison, frowning as he chewed. "I suppose the prince likes you for your other attributes, eh? Come closer, I said."

Terror buzzed in her ears. She tried to grasp onto anger instead. Anger, anger was an emotion she could use, anger wouldn't make her mind go numb and stupid when she needed it most. She inched forward, trying to keep a healthy distance between herself and the king, but somehow he managed to catch her chin in his hand. He turned her face back and forth, scrutinizing her like one might scrutinize a farm animal, to Ivelle's immense disgust.

"Never known my boy to take an interest in women. I was beginning to think he didn't have it in him." Releasing Ivelle, Gorlin clapped Eirifold on the shoulder. "Well done. Perhaps you might plant a bun in Lillian's oven next?"

Well, this conversation just took a turn for the awkward.

"I..." Eirifold shot Ivelle a look that was half horror, half apology. (Beside him, Lillian was twirling her spaghetti with a delicateness that was slightly too deliberate to be genuine.) "I think there's been a misunderstanding. Ivelle has been delightfully amusing, a top-notch jester to lift my spirits when I was unhappy, but I am, of course, thoroughly devoted to my beloved bride–"

"Lifting your spirits, is that what they're calling it these days?" There was definitely a hint of malice in the king's tone. He leaned closer to Eirifold, lowering his voice just enough that he was out of earshot of the rest of the crowd. "Honestly, I could care less who you tup in your spare time, as long as you spawn an heir to legitimize our hold over Castrena. Put a honeysuckle in her hoo-ha. A watermelon in her wagon. Don't make me have to beget an heir on her myself. Understood?"

The queen coughed. Her delicate fingers fluttered atop her fan. Her pale eyes speared Eirifold coolly. "What your father means to say is that this marriage is very important to Estrella. You've been putting off marrying Lillian for years, but now is the time to do your duty. Do we make ourselves clear?"

Eirifold's jaw tensed, and Ivelle thought he might retort. She recognized the exact moment when he realized talking back would do more harm than good. She'd seen it so often in her reflection back home.

"As clear as a Windexed window," Eirifold muttered.

"What was that?"

"Yes, Mother."

With more force than was necessary, he shoved some bread in his mouth.

Ivelle's heart ached for Eirifold. Having shitty parents sucked—she knew that better than anyone—and it sucked even more when you knew talking back would just bring down their wrath on your head.

Or on the heads of the people you cared about.

"Jester."

Ivelle turned. From the end of the table, Mariel crooked a finger at her.

"A word?" she said.

Ivelle was all too relieved to have an excuse not to be at the center of King Gorlin's attention any longer. She sidestepped a few paces, trying to put as much distance between herself and the king, and leaned across the table toward the princess.

Mariel beckoned her closer, bracelets glittering in the candlelight, until Ivelle's ear hovered a few inches away from Mariel's lips.

"Lillian told me you know how my mother died. She told me you'd seen her dead body."

Bewildered, Ivelle could only gape at the princess. "What're you—"

"Meet me on the balcony fifteen minutes after your performance is over," Mariel hissed. "We'll talk more then."

Has she gone completely loco? What the fuck is she on about? But the princess had already leaned back in her chair, and Ivelle couldn't respond, not in front of King Gorlin and all the rest, without everyone hearing her.

"What are you whispering about?" said Prince Harvald obnoxiously.

"Nothing important." Mariel smiled, her glance a touch spiteful, though Harvard didn't seem to notice. "I was merely requesting a few special jests the bride and groom might find entertaining. We all know how excited they are to finally be married—just as I am delighted to be your betrothed."

Her voice was heavy with irony.

As Ivelle frowned at the princess, trying to puzzle out her next move, Harvald leaned over the lamb stew tureen and grabbed Ivelle's arm.

"If you're taking requests, I have one too," he leered.

"Sorry!" Ivelle wrenched her arm out of his grasp before he could mutter what was sure to be something very lewd and inappropriate in her ear. "I'm closed for requests at the moment!"

She hopped down onto the stage. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is time for the jests to begin!

"I must apologize in advance! I am not that skilled a jester. But that's no surprise, is it? If Prince Eirifold would stop tossing jesters off of balconies, I suspect there would be more takers for the job!"

A great jest, Prince Eirifold had advised her, was about roasting as many nobles and unpopular political ideas as possible without crossing the line such that someone decided to throw you in prison. When Ivelle had asked how the Hell she was supposed to do that when she knew nothing about politics, Eirifold had offered to write the whole thing himself.

Ivelle hoped he knew what he was doing.

Amidst shocked laughter from one of the more outrageous parts of her script, Ivelle shot a worried glance at Eirifold. Lillian sat next to him, her expression betraying nothing. Her calm demeanor did not reassure Ivelle in the slightest. Had she already slipped poison into Eirifold's meal?

"If reporters would stop trying to sneak into the palace for a second, they might see that nothing untoward is going on here, but instead they seem determined to get eaten by tigers," Ivelle declared, to more laughter from the raucous crowd. "But you know how the saying goes: The pen is mightier than the sword... but tiger stomach acid is mightier than either one of those. Lord Saffro— I mean, my dog, Pickles— has perfected a dramatic re-enactment of the last reporter-tiger encounter."

Said dramatic re-enactment involved a stuffed tiger attached to a stick, which Ivelle brandished dramatically, and a lot of squealing and undignified flopping about on the part of Lord Saffron. Ivelle could tell Saffron was annoyed at the indignity, but a few choice threats from Eirifold the previous day, combined with the promise of regaining his humanity, had done its work. Saffron performed his part with begrudging compliance, although he did make a point to release a turd alarmingly close to Ivelle's boot.

As the raucous laughter died down, Ivelle cautiously sidestepped the turd. "At least the wood fae haven't been as much of a nuisance as the reporters," she remarked. "Or perhaps they have been, but they've used their memory magic to brainwash us into forgetting..." This part didn't get quite as many laughs as she had hoped, probably because the fae tended to make anyone who met them feel vaguely unsettled although Ivelle was too busy concentrating on avoiding the turds to notice where the laughs were and were not coming from. Ivelle added, with a nervous titter: "Hopefully I won't get a curse placed on my firstborn child for saying that."

Ivelle continued on a similar vein for a while, going on riffs about a lot of political references she wished she understood better and hoping she wasn't offending too many people in the process. She had just finished a long discourse related to the trade agreements with some foreign nation that King Gorlin had recently decided to invade (with a helpful re-enactment by Lord Saffron), when Prince Harvald stood up.

At first, Ivelle thought he'd taken offense to something she'd said. She frantically reviewed her last thirty seconds of monologue, searching her memory for anything derogatory about Prince Harvald or the land of Luntz.

Then she noticed Harvald's face was green. The prince's alabaster skin was soaked in sweat; his eyes were glassy, his fingers bloodless.

"I..." Harvald slurred, swaying on his feet. "I think... I'm going to faint."

He toppled, face first, into his soup.

Ignoring the soggy potatoes splattering to the floor. Mariel leapt from her seat. She grabbed the prince's shoulder and tried to pull his head from the soup bowl. But the prince's body had begun to writhe in spastic jerks, and one of them almost sent Mariel careening across the table.

Ivelle watched, frozen with shock, as guards poured in from all corners of the room. They dragged Prince Harvald's face from the tureen, scattering lamb and carrots across the soupy floor. The prince's body twitched horribly, and his lips were rapidly turning an ugly shade of blue. Boils erupted over his skin, streaking his suit with blood as they burst and oozed.

"Does anybody know CPR?" someone shrieked.

"Fetch the court doctor," Queen Ysette commanded. Next to her, Eirifold looked on, horrified. Mariel was helping the guards clear a space to set Harvald down. Lillian crouched in her seat, a trembling hand pressed against her mouth.

The court doctor hurried forward, nearly hurling himself across the table in his haste to examine Harvald, who was now making ugly wheezing sounds.

"Quiet!" cried the court doctor as the watching guests murmured in shock. "Be silent, please!"

For a few minutes, the Great Hall fell eerily silent—the only noise, Prince Harvald's labored breaths, which grew more raspy and strained with each passing second. Ivelle craned her neck to stare past the doctor and the guards, trying to see the prince, but a wall of bodies obscured him from view.

And then, the wheezing stopped. Silence filled the gap where the next breath should have been. Ivelle waited, waited for the prince to breathe again, waited for something to cover the awful silence.

A low murmur started up from the crowd, ebbing in volume as the court doctor raised a quelling hand. He bent down over Prince Harvald's limp and then straightened up grimly and said:

"Prince Harvald is dead."

"Ulpf," said the king in response.

His face was very green.

He toppled more slowly than Harvald—the measured, dramatic topple of a man who is doing his utmost to hold himself upright, but losing the battle with gravity. His body collided with the table, sending a wave of soup and venison crashing to the floor. The poor table, which had already taken a beating that day and had never been intended to hold multiple grown men in the first place, gave a sad creak and collapsed beneath him, sending even more food careening across the floor.

Pandemonium reigned in the hall. The sudden upswing in volume roused Ivelle from her stupor. She hurried across the remains of the table toward the place where she'd last seen Eirifold.

But it was hard to find him. There were too many people in the way. She had to push her way through a maelstrom of guards, all of whom were hurrying to provide aid to the king. She ducked around a man carrying what looked like a small defibrillator and almost crashed into Lillian.

"Where's Eirifold?" Ivelle demanded.

"What are you—"

"I'm right here." A warm hand grabbed her arm, and Ivelle spun around to stare into the prince's ashen face. "Ivelle, you need to get out of here."

"What?"

"Please Ivelle, please go." His voice was earnest. "I don't want you getting in tr—erk."

He rubbed his chest, looking suddenly anxious.

"Eirifold?"

"I'm all right," he said, unconvincingly. "It's going to be all right, Ivelle. But you need to leave, now, before they start blocking the exits."

"First, I need to warn you. About Lillian. She's—Eirifold, are you okay?"

A sheen of sweat had appeared on his brow. He swayed on his feet, reaching out toward a chair to stabilize himself.

The bottom dropped out of Ivelle's stomach.

"Eirifold?"

He shot her a weak smile—

And collapsed onto the floor.