The Poison Throne Read Online Free Page A

down before he waded through the crowd and snatched her from the bottom step. He swung her in a twirling arc that stole the breath from her and had the kitchen staff laughing and clutching for bits and pieces put in peril by his flying robes.
    Good Lord, he’s strong! she thought in surprise as he lifted her high. He was all deceptive grace, this new Razi, his powerful strength well hidden, his muscle so close to the bone as to make him look skinny. You’ve been working with horses , she thought, recognising the type of wiry power that the work gave to a body.
    He flung her out and held her at arm’s length. She hung like a cat in his hands, suspended under the armpits, her feet dangling above the ground, laughing. He looked her in the face and then up and down as if marvelling at her. This close up, she could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes. She noticed that there were fine lines around his eyes and mouth. The harsh African sun and five years of uncertainty must have added them to his young face, and she was suddenly fighting a lump in her throat. Razi. It really was him. Razi. Here and now. Alive.
    “Hello, big brother,” she said, her voice not quite steady, and he hugged her to him with a strangled laugh. He squeezed her so tightly that she had to knock him on the back to let him know she couldn’t breathe.
    They parted, breathless and laughing, their eyes shiny, and Razi kept his hand on her shoulder as if to stop her from flying away.
    “You’re in my way, you tinker’s whelps.” Marni’s gravelly voice boomed behind them and they turned to grin at her, her preposterous face, her cloud of frizzy orange hair. She scowled at them, couldn’t keep it up and beamed her gap-toothed smile on them instead, batting them with her huge hands so that they knocked into each other like nine-pins, giggling. “Your dad’s still determined to turn you into a man, is he?” she growled, eyeing Wynter’s uniform. “Ah well,” she said, not quite able to hide her pride in Lorcan’s unorthodox parenting. “’Tis a damn site better’n marryin’ you off to some musty Lord.”
    Marni practically carried them, one under each arm, and deposited them in a corner out of the way. She laid the table with bread and cheese and cold chicken, a bowl of salt, a bowl of mustard paste, two knives and a fork. She met Razi’s inquiring eye as she set down two beakers of cold milk and rolled her eyes to heaven.
    “It’s been boiled!” she exclaimed impatiently, “God forbid there should be humours in it,” and she lumbered off, wiping her hands on her apron and scowling at some under-chef who was slicing something too thin. Razi smiled to himself and took a piece of chicken onto his plate while Wynter began to pile bread and chicken and cheese onto her own.
    Razi played with his meat, shredding it into a pile of neat strips, then shoving it around with his finger. He eyed the amount of food Wynter was packing away and a slow grin began to creep up his face, making his big dark eyes dance with suppressed laughter. Wynter’s mouth was too full to permit any kind of conversation, but their eyes kept meeting as she shovelled yet more food down her. It was just like the old days, when they could make each other dissolve into giggles simply by looking.
    “Stop it!” she warned, spraying breadcrumbs from a too full mouth, “I’ll choke!”
    He grinned wider and contrived an innocent expression that only made her worse. Razi’s grin, her full belly and all around them the kitchen doing its work – it was so wonderful, so right that Wynter thought she might start to cry if she wasn’t careful.
    She took a deep breath, saw some similar emotion in Razi’s face and the two of them looked away from each other suddenly, taking great interest in the convoluted machinations of the kitchen. Marni glanced over at them, a moment of unguarded tenderness on her face, then she turned away, scolding some poor scuttling man who was in her