The Tasters Guild

Also by Susannah Appelbaum:

The Hollow Bettle
The Poisons of Caux, Book I

For Harper and Henry,
the Winds blow just for you

Previously, in
BOOK I

The Deadly Nightshades were cruel and villainous rulers, and in that they took great pride. They enjoyed misery, so naturally they perpetuated mistrust and deceit among their subjects. Replacing Caux’s long traditions of scholarship and healing, King and Queen Nightshade preferred instead to use herbs to poison rather than cure. To dine in their uneasy realm of Caux was to take your very life in your hands—indeed, you were unlikely to survive your next meal without a Guild-accredited taster by your side.

Poison Ivy did not need a taster at all—she was a poisoner of some skill and therefore quite well suited to detecting it. Yet, somehow, she got not one taster—but two. The first, Sorrel Flux, tried to kill her. Flux was idle and, Ivy would soon learn, a servant of the evil forces bent on her destruction. The second, Rowan Truax, was escaping the powerful Tasters’ Guild, and its evil Director, Vidal Verjouce. But with Rowan’s help, Ivy would eventually make it to Templar—and hopefully to Pimcaux—to fulfill a secret and ancient Prophecy.

There was once a time when poison was not the way of the land. It was a time long ago—of earlier, magical kings. Caux’s wisest sages still whispered of this great Prophecy, which told of the coming of a child who would cure their King—their one, true King—the Good King Verdigris, who lay ailing in a self-imposed exile in the sisterland of Pimcaux.

The Noble Child of the Prophecy, as it turned out, was Poison Ivy, whose penchant for making exquisite and deadly poisons—with her vast knowledge of herbs—also lent itself to healing. On the run in the ancient land, Ivy and the taster Rowan were pursued by a gruesome Outrider—a tongueless servant of the Tasters’ Guild. Ivy left behind her uncle’s tavern and her beloved crow, Shoo, taking only her red bettle—a hollow jewel with the power to ward off poison.

The pair traveled deep within the ancient forests in search of her missing uncle Cecil, an apotheopath, or healer. With the help of
The Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux
, her friend Axle’s masterwork, they reached the walled city of Templar, where the Deadly Nightshades were taking refuge from the Windy Season.

There, Ivy discovered the Doorway to Pimcaux in the Nightshades’ castle—but too late. The Winds slammed it shut, leaving the corrupt Sorrel Flux and her mother, Clothilde, on the other side, and Ivy to fend off the murderous impulses of the Guild’s Director on her own.

But her hollow bettle hatched—it was in fact something of a butterfly—and, indeed, all the bettles in the land followed suit. Vidal Verjouce retreated to the Tasters’ Guild to plan his revenge while all of Caux celebrated the end of the evil Nightshade regime.

Yet there still remained the great and ancient Prophecy.

Ivy and Rowan must together enter the foreboding city of Rocamadour—and the Tasters’ Guild itself—a city that no outsider has ever successfully penetrated. There, the two must find the only other Doorway to Pimcaux.

Plants—all plants—have secrets. To unlock them is power, as the apotheopaths knew.

—The Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux
Axlerod D. Roux