"This is a horrible idea."

"You have a better one? I thought not."

The two Marlfoxes skittered towards the kitchen, capes swaying behind them. Gelltor scowled when Predak hid behind the doorway. She peered through to make sure the coast was clear.

"This is stupid. Why are we doin' this again? And yes, I could come up with a better plan; you and Mokkan aren't the ones who always plan everything," Gelltor said with a touch of bitterness.

"Shut up, Gelltor," Predak said, slipping through the doorway. It was easy to use the steam and cluttered shelves to shield herself, and she and Gelltor wove towards the head of the kitchen, unnoticed by the cooking staff. Thick aromas of bread, meat, and other food saturated the air. "And mayhaps if you're that keen to come up with something, come up with it first. In the meantime, keep an eye out."

Gelltor made a sour face, but he said nothing as he and Predak passed behind a row of hanging pots. He kept his ears pricked as Predak crept forward towards a row of unattended food on a cart, a steaming selection of soup and shrimp and meat in fine silverware: dishes intended for the queen herself.

Predak retrieved a tiny bottle from her pocket filed with dark green powder—courtesy of Vannan—and quickly and mutely went to work adding it in the food. She glanced about to make sure no one was slinking up behind her. The rats who had been attending the cart were retrieving more ingredients from another kitchen station and chatting. Gelltor had her back, but it didn't hurt to be careful.

Usually, the siblings were free to go where they willed. Castle Marl was their home. Excluding Silth's quarters, the palace was their domain. But Silth herself, as of late, had been extending her reach beyond her kingdom within a kingdom. The queen's bad humor had reached an all time high, Predak thought, and so had a new stroke of shrewd paranoia. Predak added the powder to another soup. And she thought Gelltor had a temper. She'd never seen Ascrod and Ziral thrown out of a room faster. Well, now they knew who Lantur got her aim from.

Silth had drawn her suspicions tighter around her than her blankets, and she sniped at Mokkan and Lantur and eyed all of them on equal levels of distrust. Her spies abounded. Silth forbade any of her children to hang about her room without her request, demanded that the staff tell her if the siblings so much as stepped foot in the kitchen hall, and ordered that her food be brought straight to her room after being prepared in a different section of the kitchen than that of her children's food.

She probably believed they were trying to poison her, Predak thought. She shook more of Vannan's sleeping draught into the food. Well, mother wasn't entirely wrong.

Mother's temper was taking a toll on all of them, and Vannan, Predak, and Gelltor had quietly agreed that she needed to be stifled: for her good and their own. Mokkan, Ziral, and Lantur didn't know, but that didn't matter. Vannan had suggested the plan to the other three first. The four had mulled it over. After the day Ascrod slammed his head against the doorframe on his hasty way out of Silth's room and Vannan spent a fruitless hour trying to calm the queen's violent vanity, and Predak and Gelltor spent all of their morning tiptoeing on eggshells to avoid her wrath, the siblings were all too ready to enact the plan.

The last of the sleeping draught sprinkled out of the glass, and Predak slid the empty vial into her pocket. She was about to disappear into the kitchen smoke when a rat rounded the corner, holding a string of smoked fish. It saw Predak kneeling behind Silth's cart and squeaked in alarm.

Gelltor grabbed the rat and jerked it down before it had a chance to move.

"It'd be a good idea if you kept quiet, lest you loose your tongue or find your head on a pike," he said, voice low, and the rat swallowed, feeling Gelltor's hand around its throat.

"Got it," it shrilled. "N-not goin' to say anything."

Gelltor held onto the rat for another second and let its big eyes bulge before he let it go. It picked up its string of fish from the floor and scrambled to join the others, wild-eyed. Predak slid back next to him.

"Done?" Gelltor said.

"Done," Predak said. She rose and brushed past a cutlery station, swaying two hanging silver spoons. "Now let's depart before another one of mother's eyes sees us."

Gelltor and Predak left the kitchen without any incident. They slid into seats at the end of the table as the servants began bringing the food out.

Ascrod leaned over the table. "Did you do it?" he whispered.

"Shut up, Ascrod; you'll give it away," Predak muttered. She kicked his ankle to shove him back down in his chair. Gelltor was disappointed he had no poleaxe to covertly whack him in the shin.

At the other end of the table, Vannan chatted sedately with Mokkan and Ziral. She glanced up from her chalice and met Gelltor and Predak's eyes, her snout lowered. Predak gave her a faint nod. For a split second, Vannan's head bobbed and she returned it, and then she was back in conversation with Mokkan and Ziral, rotating her chalice in her hand like nothing had happened.

"What secrets are you keeping from us now?" A trill rose from Gelltor's other side. Lantur's petite face peered around her brother's shoulder.

"None of your business, Lantur," Gelltor said. He turned his shoulder to her. Unlike Ascrod, Lantur was a younger sibling he couldn't afford to shove unless circumstances demanded it.

Lantur huffed, but her sly eyes roved over them all, and Predak knew she would twist the story out of Ascrod within the hour or put it together herself by evening's end. As it was, she sat back in her chair, tipping her nose and appearing to be far above the standing rats serving her.

"Rude, brother," she said. "I see why you let Predak do the speaking."

"I don't—she doesn't speak for me," Gelltor hissed, but he gave up and turned to his food. He, Predak, and Ascrod began talking, Lantur sewed herself into the discussion after the beginning, and all of them fell into conversation about gleaming, glittering treasures lost in the dark of Mossflower's wood.

Not a word was spoken of the quiet castle chambers several floors above.