Tomorrow's Kingdom by Maureen Fergus

looked a little peaked. In truth, you look disgusting, and you smell worse. But I didn’t come here to give you a lecture about your personal hygiene. I’m afraid I have some tragic news. The king—”
    â€œIs dead,” rasped the nursemaid, her colourless eyes flicking toward him. “I know. I heard.”
    Mordecai felt a hot stab of disappointment at her reaction—or, rather, at her lack thereof. “What do you mean ‘you heard’?” he snapped. “Who could you possibly have heard it from?”
    The cow shrugged her bony shoulders.
    Mordecai eyed her malevolently, wondering if heought to beat the answer out of her. Deciding he did not wish to give her the satisfaction of thinking he truly cared what she heard from whom, he hastened on to impart the second bit of information he’d been looking forward to sharing with her.
    â€œI wish I could tell you that he died an easy death, but he did not.”
    The nursemaid said nothing for a long moment. Then she cleared her throat and said, “You smothered him, then?”
    â€œThe gods smothered him—drowned him in his own stinking juices,” replied Mordecai, wrinkling his nose to emphasize how nauseating the king’s bloody phlegm had smelled by the end. “And do you know what else? Aside from informing me that he was content to let you die in agony if it meant furthering his own pathetic little plans to defeat me, the king never once mentioned you. Not in casual conversation, not during his fever dreams, not even as he gasped out his final, tortured breaths.”
    The cow did not seem the least bothered by the revelation that she’d been sacrificed and forgotten. On the contrary, she actually seemed to glow at the knowledge that her beloved king had fought the enemy of his people to the very end.
    â€œHis Majesty was kind and brave,” she said with quiet satisfaction. “I hope he was given a proper state funeral.”
    â€œHe was, but only because the great lords insisted upon it,” replied Mordecai, his mood darkening dangerously. “If it had been up to me alone, I’d have dumped the fool’s naked corpse onto the slag heap and been done with it.”
    â€œAnd what of His Majesty’s twin?” asked the nursemaid, her chains clinking softly as she shifted upon her bed of rotting straw. “Does she yet wander the kingdom seeking the healing pool, or did the poor thing return empty-handed only to watch her brother die?”
    At the mention of the healing pool, Mordecai’s dark mood vanished, and his spirits soared. Clutching the locket that contained the miraculous leafy sprig that showed no signs of wilting, he said, “The queen returned to watch her brother die—but she did not return empty-handed.”
    â€œPerhaps not empty-handed—but not with a map to any healing pool,” guessed the cow.
    â€œOh?” said Mordecai, striving to sound nonchalant. “What makes you so sure?”
    â€œBesides the fact that you’re still crippled, the queen loved her brother,” replied the nursemaid. “If she and her Gypsy lover had found a pool of waters with the power to cure his cursèd cough, His Majesty would be alive today.”
    Mordecai’s dark eyes bulged with outrage. “How many times do I have to tell you that the cockroach is not … the queen’s … LOVER !” he shrieked, kicking out at the silver platter so hard that it overturned with a clatter, scattering grass and clover across the muck and slime.
    Startled, the cow jumped; in the shadows, unseen things scuttled about, squeaking in distress. Pushing himself to his feet so violently that he wrenched a muscle in his back, Mordecai snatched the cow’s own crochet needle from the pocket of his robe and started toward her. She turned her head and shrank against the wall, but it was no use. With the aid of a nearby bar of iron, Mordecaiknocked her