Patience finally spent, he shooed us from the cellar. Alone again in the parlor, I had to admit, they’d learned a lot from their mistakes last November. Dencourt’s system was as safe as any I could think of.

“Unless Dencourt himself is the assassin,” Tom said.

That was possible. But now we were jumping at shadows. “So that’s it?” Sally said. “The Templars’ warning was false?”

“Well… we haven’t checked the food yet,” I said.

Tom was always up for a trip to a kitchen. “What are they serving?”

I shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

I shut Bridget in Sally’s room—I didn’t like the idea of leaving a plump little bird around cooks with large knives—before heading off to the kitchens. The cook we spoke to was a lot nicer than the steward. Sally made things even easier by not mentioning poison. Instead, she pretended His Majesty had sent her to ask what there’d be to eat.

“Here you go, miss,” he said, and he handed her a long and detailed list.

The kitchens had planned a spread on several tables. The list looked like the usual: meat, cheese, bread, sweets, and pastry.

“Can these be cooked with poison?” Sally asked quietly.

“Master Benedict said arsenic works best fresh,” I said. “I think you’d want to sprinkle it on after it was finished.”

“Wouldn’t that be noticed?”

Probably. Master Benedict’s notes explained that, in France, where arsenic was popular, a poisoner would usually mix it into someone’s plate. But from the looks of the menu, there wouldn’t be individual servings. Just finished dishes on the table, from which the patrons could take what they liked. Tom studied the list as Sally spoke.

“Would you be able to taste the poison?” Sally asked.

“No,” I said. “Arsenic has no taste. No smell, either. It’s why it’s used so much. If you can find some way of hiding it, your victim will never even know they were poisoned. The effects look the same as cholera. A lot of people have probably died thinking it was just an illness.”

“It has no taste?” Tom said, frowning at the list.

“None.”

“So if you mixed it in with something else?”

“It would taste like whatever it was mixed with. Why?”

He looked up, still frowning. “You called it white arsenic before. But is it actually white?”

“Yes, it’s a white powder. What are you getting at?”

“Here.” He showed us the list, pointing to the desserts and pastries at the bottom. “The cream puffs.”

“What about them?”

Tom, the baker’s son, had spotted what we’d missed. “You finish them off by dusting them with powdered sugar.”

Powdered sugar. White—just like arsenic. The assassin could mix it in at any time. And then…

Death by cream puff. Tom took that personally.

“What do we do?” Sally said.

“Warn the king,” Tom insisted. “And cancel the party.”

We’d warn the king, certainly. But as for canceling the party, Isaac’s point still stood. “Maybe we can catch the traitors in the act.”