The Crown Of Yensupov (Book 3) Read Free Page B

sludge dribbled down her wrinkled chin and stained her large pores red.
    Earwig eyes were dreamy when chewing the slimy mushroom. As she watched Earwig feed, the old woman remembered a rat once sipped a drop or two that boiled over onto the hearth. The rodent screeched and died bolting from the room. The poor cook had had to keep her nose covered and only boiled the concoction out in the yard after that incident. She soon disappeared from the kitchen garden, when Magnosious was out of his lair.
    “That’s not strong enough,” Earwig said, wiping her face with the dissolving sleeve of her nightgown. “Go to the cellar and find another mushroom.”
    “Back to the cellar, back to the cellar, find another mushroom. There ain’t no end to this,” the old woman grumbled, as the tattered soles of her boots smacked on the stone stairs. Trying to watch her step, the old woman’s greasy hair flipped into her mouth. She spat it out and knocked it aside with her knobby fingers, only to see a tuft catch in a ragged fingernail and fly off beside her. “Mushrooms, mushrooms, and more of them nasty mushrooms …”
    She had boiled an earlier batch in a cauldron with boar’s feet. The brew dissolved the tendons, cartilage, and even hooves with all the caustic things the woman threw in at Earwig’s explicit instructions. When the pot cooled, the old hag had sprinkled the red mushroom spores on the gelatinous goop and tossed in the mushroom for good measure.
    In three days, the result had turned black and something had grown in the coagulated slush. The hag approached. Something moved about in the liquid. It bubbled, belched, and wiggled about in the kettle like a huge, reddish-black maggot.
    “Nasty,” the old woman said. She’d stepped back, put her hand to her chest, and stared at the thing undulating in the pot.
    “Good thing the cauldron has to stay in the cellar, where it’s dark and cool. I don’t thinks I could sleep at night if that thing got out. Miss Irkin says the thing grows good, where it’s dark and cool. I’ve half a mind to tie a cord around it and dump it in the latrine. I could haul it up when she wants it. I’s terrified of that there slimy, wriggling maggot, but I done brewed the thing up as Miss Irkin told me to.”
    On hearing of the horror in the pot, Earwig had cackled. “I want you to go to the cellar twice a day and draw off the broth in the cauldron. Bring it here for me to drink. Got that?”
    “How’s I supposed to get the broth without that thing grabbing me?”
    “Don’t be silly, you old fool, it only eats what we feed it.”
    “What does we feed it?” the wary servant had asked; her suspicious face pinched.
    “Boil a cauldron of boar’s feet with turtle bile and chitlins to feed the thing. That should keep it fat and happy so I’ll have a steady supply of broth to neutralize the curse and rebuild my strength.”
    “Uh-huh,” the old woman responded, as she backed out of the room, still staring at Earwig.
    The broth did indeed revive the witch, but it changed her innards to a state not unlike tanned leather. While Earwig lived, she slowly darkened to strange colors of red and purple as the mysterious brew worked through her body and out through the pores of her wrinkled sagging skin. The pupils of her eyes turned red, and the irises turned permanently yellow. Her red-on-yellow eyes made her frightening to behold. They stood out on her marbled skin, which seemed a mass of bruises in various stages of development. Her teeth stubble turned deep purple like old dried blood. Only her frame still gave any impression she was human.
    “What does it matter to me what I look like?” Earwig said. “My only claim to the throne was through Minnabec, but the fool drowned while I was convalescing.”
    “What’s that you say, dearie?” the old woman asked, turning back from the fire.
    “What difference does it make what I look like now? The duke’s dead; that ends my claim to the