QUESTION: What is an exiled girl with a false crown?
ANSWER: A True Queen.
—The Tear Book of Riddles
They left the Queen’s Wing at dawn by one of Mace’s tunnels, through a passage in darkness and then down a square staircase that seemed to descend forever. Kelsea moved along half in a dream, for the jewel wouldn’t let her think clearly. She saw many faces in her mind now: Arlen Thorne; the Fetch; the cold-eyed woman with the high cheekbones. By the time they crossed the drawbridge, Kelsea was certain that this woman was the Red Queen of Mortmesne. She couldn’t say how she knew.
She had expected to be overjoyed at being outside again, but the jewel wouldn’t let her enjoy the outdoors either. Once they cleared New London, apparently free of pursuit, the sapphire began to pull Kelsea along. There was no other way to describe it; the thing exerted physical force, as though a string were tied beneath her rib cage. She was being hauled in a nearly straight line east, and if she tried to go in a different direction, the jewel flared into unbearable heat and Kelsea’s stomach was racked with nausea, so much so that she could barely stay on her mount.
She couldn’t keep this state of affairs secret from Pen for long, and Pen insisted on telling Mace. The troop had stopped to water the horses on the shores of the Crithe, on a low knoll that sloped down to the edge of the river. Except for Galen and Cae, whom Mace had left behind to guard the Queen’s Wing, Kelsea’s entire Guard was here, standing or crouching on the riverbank. She didn’t know what Mace had told them, but it couldn’t have been good; she’d caught several skeptical glances throughout the journey, and Dyer in particular looked as though he’d swallowed a lemon. As Pen, Mace, and Kelsea moved off to have a private conference on the other side of the knoll, she heard Dyer mutter, “Fucking waste of time.”
When Kelsea produced the jewel, it was once again glowing so brightly that the two men needed to cover their eyes.
“Where’s it taking you?” Pen asked.
“East.”
“Why don’t you just take it off?” Mace demanded.
Kelsea, feeling strangely reluctant, reached up and unclasped the necklace. But when she pulled the chain from her neck, she felt diminished. It was a dreadful feeling, like being drained.
“Jesus, she’s turning white.”
Pen shook his head. “She can’t take it off, sir.” He took the necklace from Kelsea and clasped it around her neck. Relief flooded her body, the sensation almost narcotic.
What is happening to me?
“Christ’s sake, Pen,” Mace muttered disgustedly. “What the hell do we do with these magic things?”
“We could follow the Queen, sir. No one needs to know where she’s getting her directions from.”
“I’ve got nothing better,” Mace muttered, shooting Kelsea an irritated glance. “But it’ll cause trouble. The rest are already pissed off about being out here at all.”
Kelsea shook her head. “You know, Lazarus, at this moment I don’t really care whether you believe me or not. But later on I will remember that you did not.”
“Do, Lady. Do that.”
They walked back toward the top of the knoll, and Kelsea tucked the sapphire beneath the shirt of her uniform, shielding her eyes from the sun. The blue thread of the Crithe wound its way east; they could barely see the Caddell, miles to the south. The two rivers ran nearly parallel courses, but their beds were dissimilar; the Crithe twisted and turned where the Caddell merely meandered. There was no sign of Thorne along either river, and yet Kelsea wasn’t discouraged. The sapphire pulled at her, drawing her toward what she sought.
Mace took the bridle of his stallion from Wellmer, announcing casually, “From now on, the Queen will lead. We follow her.”
There was some grumbling from the group, and Dyer pursed his lips and let out a loud, expressive sigh. But it appeared that would be the extent of argument. They mounted up, and Kibb and Coryn resumed the good-natured argument about the quality of their horses that had sustained them for much of the journey. Save for Mace and Dyer, the troop seemed to have resigned themselves to a silly errand, just as if Kelsea had taken it into her head to go pleasure boating on the Crithe.
Fine. So long as it gets me where I’m going.
“We could split, Lady,” Mace suggested quietly. “Send you off with four or five men and—”
“No,” Kelsea replied, clutching her sapphire. “Don’t even try it, Lazarus. Turning aside would drive me mad now.”
“Perhaps you’re mad already, Majesty. Did that ever occur to you?”
It had occurred to Kelsea, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She gripped the reins and turned her horse east, allowing him to find his own way forward along the riverbank. Immediately the pressure in her chest eased, and she closed her eyes in relief.
The next day, they ran onto the ruts of enormous wheels caked into the mud of the Mort Road. The sight stopped Mace cold, and Kelsea took a spiteful pleasure in his surprise, though she could tell he still wasn’t convinced. Sometimes the tracks left the road and crossed the country, but they were always easy to spot, and Kelsea knew where Thorne was going now: cutting a nearly straight line east toward the Argive Pass, the same route always taken by the shipment. There were other places to get a caravan across the border, but the Argive gave direct access to the Pike Hill, a straight slope to Demesne. Speed would be important to Thorne, so it must be important to Kelsea as well. On the first night, when her guard made plans to camp, Kelsea told them firmly that they were welcome to stop, but she would keep riding. The resulting night’s travel earned her no friends, but Kelsea didn’t care. She was being driven now, driven by a great vein of blue fire in her head that seemed to widen with each passing hour.
On the second night, Mace finally commanded them to stop and rest. Kelsea, realizing that she had pushed herself to exhaustion, made no argument. They camped in an enormous field of wildflowers just beyond the end of the Crithe. Kelsea had never seen such a field; it stretched out like an ocean, dappled with every color of the rainbow. The flowers, unfamiliar to Kelsea, smelled like strawberries, and the grass was so soft that the troop didn’t even bother to set up tents; they simply piled onto bedrolls in the field. Kelsea, who had expected to toss and turn for hours with the torment in her head, fell asleep at once. When she woke, she felt restored, and she picked several of the flowers, tucking them into her cloak for luck. Everyone seemed to wake in a good mood, and most of her guards began to treat Kelsea in their old fashion, joking lightly with her as they rode. Even Mhurn, who had been avoiding her since the incident at her audience, dropped back to ride on her left as the morning went on.
“Well met, Mhurn.”
“Lady.”
“Come to try to talk me out of it as well?”
“No, Lady.” Mhurn shook his head. “I know you’re telling the truth.”
She looked up at him, startled. “You do?”
“Mhurn!” Mace barked from the front of the troop. “Up here now!”
Mhurn shook his reins and his horse darted around several others to reach the front. Kelsea stared after him, and then shook her head. On her other side, Pen was frowning, his hand on his sword, and Kelsea felt a pulse of low, banked anger. She wished she could forgive Pen for that scene in her chamber, but she simply couldn’t. He of all people should have believed her; he knew she was no hysteric. Pen seemed to feel her anger, for he turned to give her a defiant look.
“Yes, Lady?”
“If I’d been forced to leave the Keep alone, if Lazarus hadn’t allowed any of the Guard to come with me, would you still have come, Pen?”
“I’m sworn, Majesty.”
“But sworn to whom? If it came down to a choice between the Captain of Guard and myself, which way would you go?”
“Don’t force me to answer that, Lady.”
“I won’t, Pen, not today. But you either trust me or you don’t. And if you don’t, I no longer want you as my close guard.”
Pen stared at her, his eyes wounded. “Lady, I thought only of your safety.”
Kelsea turned away, suddenly furious with him, with all of them . . . except Mhurn. It had been more than a month, and many of them had come to know her, but nothing had really changed. She was still the girl they’d brought like a piece of baggage from Barty and Carlin’s cottage, the girl who couldn’t ride, who could barely be trusted to put up her own tent. It was Mace they listened to, whose word counted, and in the final judgment even Mace had treated her like a wayward child. When Pen tried to speak to her again, she didn’t answer.
The terrible pull of the east only increased as the day progressed, becoming less a physical tug than a mental compulsion. Something was dragging Kelsea’s mind along without the slightest concern whether the rest of her followed. Her chest throbbed, the sapphire throbbed, and they seemed to feed each other, the jewel and the anger, each of them growing beyond their own borders until just after noon, when Wellmer called a sudden halt.
The entire company drew rein just over the rise of a small hill that was covered with wheat and dotted with purple flowers. To the east, Mount Ellyre and Mount Willingham rose to blot out the horizon, the deep blue V between them marking the ravine of the Argive Pass. Wellmer pointed toward the base of the mountains, where the Mort Road disappeared in a series of switchbacks.
“There, Lady.”
They all stood in their stirrups, Kelsea craning her neck to get a better view. Some ten miles distant, buried in the foothills, was a long black shadow snaking its way upward.
“A fissure in the rock,” Dyer muttered.
“No, sir.” Wellmer’s face was white, but he firmed his jaw and turned to Kelsea. “Cages, Majesty, all in a line. I can see the bars.”
“How many cages?”
“Eight.”
“Bullshit!” Elston roared from the back of the troop. “How the hell could Thorne build new cages in secret?”
“It doesn’t matter how. It’s done.” Kelsea felt Mace’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look at him. On her right, Pen was staring at the foothills, his jaw twitching. “We have to reach them before they get out of the Argive. Once they come down from the mountains, Mort soldiers will be waiting to escort them to Demesne.”
“How can you know that, Majesty?” Dyer asked. His tone was remarkably humble; it sounded almost like an honest question.
“I just know.”
Now they all turned to Mace, seeking validation. An hour ago, this would have enraged Kelsea all over again, but now she could only stare at the caravan, making its slow way up the foothills. At least one of those cages was filled with children. How many villages like the one she’d seen? How many people?
Mace spoke slowly, refusing to meet Kelsea’s gaze. “I apologize, Majesty. Thorne has outsmarted me again, and I promise you, it’s the last time.”
Kelsea didn’t acknowledge his words, only shook her reins, anxious to go on. She stared at the dark line silhouetted against the foothills, shivering, trying not to wonder how she might come out of this on the other side.
East.
The voice was in her mind, but it seemed to be all around her, its words vibrating against her skin. “Let’s ride on. We need to catch them by nightfall.”
“Do we have a plan, Lady?” Dyer asked.
“Certainly.” She had no plan at all. “Come, daylight’s wasting.”
When Javel wiped his brow, his hand came away soaking wet. The day was brutally, unseasonably hot, and driving the mules forward was exhausting work. Thorne had planned the bulk of their route through the Almont to avoid the most heavily populated towns and villages; sensible enough, but as a consequence they’d sometimes been forced to take rough roads that had seen no repair for a long time. By the time they reached the end of the Crithe, Javel could already feel his sickness over this whole enterprise beginning to overtake him, but he turned forward and thought of Allie.
The people in the cages wouldn’t be quiet. They could hardly be expected to, but their pleading was something that Javel had never considered back in New London. Even Thorne might not have considered it, although being Thorne, he probably didn’t care either way. Javel could see him up ahead through the bars of the cage, guiding his horse forward as serenely as a king out for a picnic. Javel pulled the flask from his pocket and took a sip of whiskey, which burned his parched throat. Thorne would give him hell if he saw him drinking, but Javel hardly cared at this point. He’d packed three full flasks into his saddlebags, knowing that he would need them before the journey was over.
Thorne had decided that four men were necessary to guard each cage. There were several nobles in addition to Lord Tare, as well as a fair smattering of the Tearling army. The Baedencourt brothers had also produced two more Caden, Dwyne and Avile; both were well-known fighters, which made the rest of the group feel better. But even for a conspiracy, they were all curiously detached from each other, brought together by a common purpose like a group of wanderers stranded in the Cadarese desert. There was no love, and precious little respect. Brother Matthew and the little pickpocket, Alain, had taken a palpable dislike to each other. Lord Tare kept himself removed, riding ahead as a scout. Javel resented the presence of the Baedencourt brothers, who didn’t even appear to have sobered up for the journey, and he’d spent the past few days with one eye on his cage and the other on Keller, who had begun to worry him more and more.
They had raided twelve villages along the shores of the Crithe. There had been almost no young men and so there’d been very little actual fighting. But Javel had noticed that Keller’s disappearances into houses and huts took a long time, and that some of the women Keller brought out, particularly the young ones, had seen rough handling, their clothing ripped and stained with blood. Javel had considered raising the subject with Thorne, appealing to him on his level: wouldn’t damage to the merchandise mean reduced value? But there had been no opportunity to speak privately with Thorne, and finally Javel had swallowed his disgust, bit by bit, just as he’d been forced to swallow everything else in this business. The progression was terribly easy: one bulwark after another fell inside his mind, like sand castles under the tide, until he worried that one day he might wake up and find himself actually become Arlen Thorne, so debased that everything seemed acceptable.
Allie.
The villages were so isolated that it seemed unlikely anyone would have time to mount a pursuit, but Thorne had insisted on the extra guards all the same, and Javel was forced to admit that Thorne was right. The recent rains had raised the level of the Crithe, and extra men were needed to get the cages across the Beth Ford. It didn’t hurt to be overly cautious either, for the cages were vulnerable—made of simple wood, built to undertake only a few journeys, easier to attack.
“Please,” a woman whimpered from the cage beside Javel, so close that he jumped. “My sons. Please. Can’t they be in here with me?”
Javel shut his eyes and then opened them. The children were the worst part of this business, the worst part of every shipment. But Thorne had explained that the Red Queen valued the children highly, perhaps more than anything else they might bring. Javel himself had seized several: two small girls from Lowell, a toddler and baby boy from Haven, and, in Haymarket, a baby girl right out of her cradle. The children’s cages were fourth and fifth in line, right in the center of the shipment, and Javel thanked God that he hadn’t been assigned to guard them, though he could hear them well enough. The babies, particularly those too young for weaning, had squalled almost continuously for the first two days of the journey. Now, mercifully, they had fallen silent, and so had nearly all of the prisoners, their throats too dry to beg. Thorne had barely brought enough water for the guards and mules; he said that more than a few liters apiece would slow them down.
Right now I need you, Javel thought, staring at Thorne through the bars of the cage. But if I ever catch you alone, just once, on a dark night in the Gut . . . I won’t be fooled again.
“Please,” the woman croaked. “My little one, my baby. He’s only five months old.”
Javel shut his eyes again, wishing he had put her in a different cage. She had blonde hair, just like Allie’s, and when he had yanked her son from her arms, he’d been assaulted by a sudden and terrible certainty: Allie could see him. She could see everything he’d done. The certainty had faded a bit as the caravan moved along and dawn faded into morning, but it had raised a new problem, one that Javel had not considered before: how would he account to Allie for her release? She was a good woman; she would rather die than buy her freedom by the misery of others. What would she say when she found out what he had done?
When Javel was ten, his father had taken him to see the slaughterhouse where he worked, a squat building made of cheap wood. Maybe Father had intended it as a learning experience, or maybe he meant for Javel to follow in his footsteps, but either way, the outing had backfired. The line of steers, dozens of them, had waited dumbly to enter the building through its huge door. But the cows inside the building weren’t dumb at all; there was a cacophony of sound, mooing and screeching, and behind that the thudding of heavy blows.
“Where do they come out?” Javel asked. But his father didn’t answer, merely looked at him until Javel understood. “You kill them?”
“Where d’you think beef comes from, son? For that matter, where d’you think money comes from?”
When they entered the slaughterhouse, the smell had hit Javel instantly, blood and the rich reek of rotten entrails, and he’d lost his breakfast violently all over his father’s shoes. He would remember that smell all his life, but it was the door of the slaughterhouse that planted the real hooks in Javel’s child’s mind: the wide-open door, the yawning darkness beyond. The steers went in, they screamed in the darkness, and they didn’t come out again.
Six years ago, when Allie had gone to Mortmesne, Javel had ridden quietly behind the shipment for several days, not knowing what he planned to do. He could see Allie in the fourth cage, her bright blonde hair visible even from a distance, but the bars put infinite miles between them. And even if he found a way to successfully attack the shipment—a feat no one had ever managed—where would they go?
At least the steer didn’t know what was coming. Allie’s doom had been in her eyes that entire summer; it was one of the few things Javel remembered clearly. Mortmesne would have only one use for such a beautiful woman, just as a slaughterhouse had only one use for steers. They went in, and they didn’t come out again. But now he would snatch Allie back. Javel could almost see her now, a dim shape in the darkened doorway, and he no longer heard the woman beside him, begging for her sons. Eventually she stopped.
As the day got hotter, the mules began to act up. They were Cadarese mules, bred for strain and scorching temperatures, but they seemed to like the cargo no more than Javel did. He’d avoided whipping them throughout the journey, but finally it couldn’t be helped, and he and Arne Baedencourt stationed themselves up at the front of the third cage, whips at the ready whenever a mule began to lag. It did no good. The caravan slowed, and then slowed further, until Thorne himself rode toward the cages and yelled at Ian, the mules’ handler. “We need to reach Demesne by tomorrow night! What’s wrong with your mules?”
“Can’t say!” Ian shouted back. “The heat, maybe! They need more water!”
Good luck with that, Javel thought. They’d passed the end of the Crithe yesterday, and now they were more than halfway up the foothills that set the base of the Clayton Mountains. Even after the rains, there was no water this high up. Several hundred feet ahead, they would go through the Argive Pass and then run straight down the Pike Hill to Demesne. If only the damned mules could make it a few more hours, they could rest and it would be an easy trek the rest of the way.
The heat finally reached its pinnacle and held there as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. Several times Javel saw Alain, stationed on the cage ahead of him, sneaking cups of water to the prisoners. Javel thought of reprimanding him; if Thorne caught Alain wasting water that should have gone to the mules, they would all hear about it. But Javel remained silent.
Near sunset, the woman in the cage, who was apparently blessed with a throat of iron, started up again. She was more difficult to ignore this time; soon Javel knew that her sons were named Jeffrey and William, that her husband had been killed in a construction accident two months ago, that she was pregnant once more and sure it was a girl this time. This last fact bothered Javel most of all, though he couldn’t say why. Allie had never gotten pregnant; Gate Guards made enough to afford good contraception, and both he and Allie deemed children too much of a risk in uncertain times. The decision had seemed so clear-cut then, but now Javel was merely sorry, and wearier than he could say. He wondered why Thorne hadn’t thought of this, that they might take a woman whose pregnancy wasn’t visible yet. Very soon she would have little value as a slave; she wouldn’t be able to work, and no man wanted a pregnant woman for his toy.
It’s Thorne’s problem, it’s Thorne’s problem.
After the last excruciating mile uphill, they finished the rise at dusk and brought the line of cages into the Argive Pass. The sides of the ravine were steep but not sheer, dotted with boulders and outcroppings that jutted sharply from the slope. Broken stonework, the wreck of the Argive Tower, littered the floor of the valley. Greenery had long since deserted the Argive, and the constant trek of shipments had further eroded what arid vegetation was left. In the half-light of dusk, the pass was a deep brown gorge with dim purple sky at the top, stretching nearly a mile from east to west.
The mules were at the end of their strength, but Javel refrained from pointing this out to Thorne. He’d find out soon enough, when the poor beasts simply stopped moving despite all the whips in the world. They would have to stop for the night, although Javel didn’t expect to get any sleep, not with those cages only yards away. He thought of Allie again. What would he tell her? Not the truth, certainly; her eyes would take on that brittle, blank look, Allie’s form of disappointment.
What if she doesn’t care?
But Javel refused to think of how Allie might have changed during the years in Mortmesne. Telling her was out of the question; he would have to come up with a lie.
As the sun set, clouds gathered overhead. Javel heard some grumbling; Dwyne, the leader of the four Caden, muttered loudly to his companions that it was convenient to receive shade just when the sun was gone. The Caden had made this journey many times during the Regency, and it was a comfort to have Dwyne and Avile, if not the dissipated Baedencourts. Yet even Dwyne seemed uneasy. The clouds had gathered fast, and were darkening even faster. If a storm broke overnight, it would slow the caravan’s progress down the Pike Hill. But a storm would also give the prisoners some water. Perhaps when they stopped, Javel could even give the pregnant woman some time with her sons. Thorne would never allow it, but Alain had been sneaking around under Thorne’s nose all day. Maybe Javel could do the same. He straightened up in his saddle, feeling better at the thought. It was a small thing, but a thing he could do.
The clouds deepened inexorably overhead, and at some point, almost without warning, darkness fell on the pass.
How many?” Mace hissed.
“I count twenty-nine,” Wellmer whispered back. “Several more I can’t see behind the cages. Wait—”
Kelsea waited, uncomfortably aware of the group of shadows who surrounded her. Mace and Pen were beside her, yes, but anyone could pull a knife in the dark. She was undeniably vulnerable here. She waited, her anxiety increasing, until Wellmer crawled back behind the boulder where half the troop crouched concealed. “Caden down there, sir. Dwyne and another I don’t recognize.”
“Damn, and they never work in twos. There’ll be more of them.”
After several seconds of hunting for a pocket, Wellmer tucked his spyglass away in the neck of his army uniform. They had left the horses far behind, at the mouth of the Pass, and everyone seemed to have simultaneously discovered that their uniforms had no pockets. Kelsea pulled at the neck of her own uniform; it was sewn of cheap material that made her skin itch. The army garb seemed to sit strangely on all of the Guard; she’d caught many of them twisting and adjusting themselves all day, even Pen, who seemed to be able to blend like a chameleon into whatever surrounded him.
But the black of the uniforms was good for concealment, since the sky still held the barest hint of a cold amber moon. The other half of Kelsea’s guard was about fifteen feet away, tucked behind a second boulder, and Kelsea couldn’t even pick them out; they were simply a dark mass against the side of the ravine. She was more worried about concealing her sapphire. The moment they’d entered the Argive Pass, the horrible heat inside her chest had cooled down to a low pulse that was almost pleasant by comparison. The jewel’s light had dimmed as well, but Kelsea didn’t trust the thin fabric of the uniform to block it entirely.
Metal rasped on leather behind her, the sound of a knife being drawn, and Kelsea drew into herself, trying to compress her body into the tiniest ball possible. Her pulse was thudding now, so loudly that it seemed they would all be able to hear it, and her forehead was chilled with sweat. The wound on her shoulder tightened in remembered agony. Which of the men around her had done it?
“We’re outnumbered, Lady,” Mace told her. “Not badly, but we can’t simply make a frontal attack. Not with the Caden down there.”
“Wellmer, can’t you pick them off?”
“I can shoot, Lady, but only two or three before they take cover and douse the light.”
Mace tapped Venner on the shoulder, whispered to him, and sent him to the other boulder. “We’ve got Wellmer and three more decent archers. We’ll send two across the pass, so the rest can’t take cover behind the cages. If we take the Caden first, that’ll even things up a bit.”
“They might put out the fires at any point,” Pen warned softly. “We should act soon, before we lose the advantage of the light.”
Kelsea grabbed Mace’s wrist. “The people in the cages are the priority. Make very sure they understand.”
Venner crept back, three dark forms behind him. They huddled with Mace, conversing in whispers, and Kelsea wiped her sweating forehead, determined not to give in to the paranoia that had come over her in the dark. “Wellmer, give me your spyglass.”
The eight cages had been doubled up in a horseshoe so that their gates faced inward. Kelsea was relieved to see that the cages had no iron. They looked to be hastily assembled affairs of mere wood, and the bars, rather than interlocking links, were thick, vertical wooden planks. Even if the wood was Tearling oak, the bars should be vulnerable to a concerted attack with axes.
Wellmer had spotted outliers stationed around the caravan, but the bulk of Thorne’s men were concentrated within the horseshoe. Kelsea squinted through the spyglass, focusing on the men around the campfire. She knew very few of them. There was a well-dressed, heavyset man, clearly a noble, whom she remembered from her first audience, though she couldn’t recall his name. Several men whom she thought might be with the Census. A good chunk of her own army, so careless that they hadn’t even bothered to wear civilian clothing. And there was the man himself, Arlen Thorne, right in the middle of the circle. Her sapphire gave a small tremor against her chest. Nothing better could be expected from Thorne, but all the same Kelsea felt betrayed, betrayed by the just world she’d understood from her childhood. All of her plans, all of the good she wanted to accomplish . . . could it really be subverted by one man?
“Elston.” She passed him the spyglass. “Right at noon around the fire.”
“Motherfucker,” Elston muttered, peering through the glass. Mace sighed, but he’d given up trying to clean up the guards’ speech on this journey. Kelsea had heard many new words in the past few days. From overheard conversations, she knew that Elston hated Arlen Thorne; it was something to do with a woman, but no one would give Kelsea the whole story.
“I want him alive, Elston,” she murmured. “Bring him to me, and I’ll let you design his dungeon.”
Several of her Guard chuckled.
“Five more minutes, Lady, and we can go,” Mace whispered. “Give Tom and Kibb time to work their way across.”
Kelsea nodded, feeling adrenaline flood her body. The guards drew their swords as quietly as they could, but Kelsea could still hear each rasp of metal against leather, and she fought down a stifling feeling. The sapphire pulsed like a drum against her chest, or maybe inside her chest, she couldn’t tell anymore.
“Lady, I ask you for the last time to stay up here with Pen and Venner. If we fail, you can still get away.”
“Lazarus.” Kelsea smiled gently at his silhouette beside her. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you think, Lady. You can blame it on your damned jewel if you want, but I understand that the shadow of your mother is making you both angry and reckless. That combination is dangerous to us all.”
Kelsea seemed to have no capacity for anger at the moment; all of her energy was directed toward the campsite below. “You have your faults too, Lazarus. You’re stubborn, and your life of weapons has closed sections of your mind that would be better left open. And yet I’ve grown to trust you in spite of all that. Maybe you could trust me as well.”
There was no answer in the dark.
“Pen and Venner will stay with me at all times. Yes?”
“Lady,” they murmured.
“I’d like you to stay with me as well, Lazarus. All right?”
“Fine. But you’re not to engage, Lady. Venner says your footwork is atrocious.”
“I won’t pick up a weapon, Lazarus. You have my word.”
After several minutes, Mace gave a birdlike whistle that faded away easily under the wind. The troop spread out among the boulders, and each began to work his own quiet way down the side of the ravine.
For once, Thorne had taken Javel’s advice, and they’d established camp in the narrowest part of the Argive, leaving only two sides of the caravan to defend. Javel had meant to stay awake and see if he could give the pregnant woman some time with her sons, but exhaustion had finally won out. He decided to get at least a few hours’ sleep and then deal with the matter. He settled his bedroll and curled up in front of the enormous fire, his legs shuddering in pleasure at the heat. Gate Guards rarely had reason to ride more than a few miles, and the long journey had taxed Javel’s weak thigh muscles. He began to drop off toward sleep, dozing in longer and longer intervals, and he’d nearly reached oblivion when the first scream jerked him awake.
Javel sat up. In the dim firelight he could see nothing but the rest of the men, all of them looking around sleepily, as confused as he was.
“Archers!” someone shouted from behind the cages. “They’re—” The shout cut off as suddenly as it had begun, reduced to a shallow gurgling.
“Arm yourselves!” Thorne commanded. He was already on his feet, looking as though he hadn’t slept at all. Two men sprung up from the fire and tore off into the darkness, but before they got very far one of them went down with an arrow in his back.
Archers, Javel thought, bemused. On the hillside. He wondered if he were still asleep. He used to sleepwalk; Allie had told him so. Thoughts of Allie galvanized him, and he jumped up, drawing his sword and staring around wildly, seeing nothing beyond the circle of the firelight. Another arrow hissed through the darkness above his head.
“Put out the fire!” Dwyne shouted. “We’re sitting ducks!”
Javel hauled his bedding from the ground and threw it onto the fire pit. The fabric wasn’t heavy enough; the bedroll began to smolder, fire blooming through the layers of wool.
“We need more!” Javel waved at the befuddled men around him. “Give me your bedrolls!”
Sleepily, they began to rise and bundle up their blankets. Javel wanted to scream in frustration.
“Move!” Dwyne elbowed past him, carrying a huge pile of bedding, and threw it onto the fire. The light dimmed and then died, the air thick with the smell of scorched wool. Out in the darkness behind the cages, swords clashed and the air was suddenly rent with the high, unbearable scream of a wounded horse.
“Riders west!” someone shouted. “I hear them!”
“We’re encircled,” Dwyne muttered. “I told that damned bureaucrat it was a poor place to camp.”
Javel flushed, hoping Dwyne wouldn’t find out that Javel had suggested the pass as a stopping place. Javel had never dealt directly with any of the Caden before; they existed on a high plane, out of reach. Perhaps it was silly, but he still found himself longing for respect from the big man in the red cloak.
Thorne reached them in the darkness and grasped Javel’s shoulder, thin breath hissing unpleasantly against Javel’s ear. “Dwyne. What do we do? We need light.”
“No, we don’t. If they’re a rescue party, the archers won’t risk hitting the prisoners. We have a better chance in the dark.”
“But we can’t just wait here! When day comes, we’ll be easy prey.”
The impact of metal on metal rang from all sides now, drowning out Dwyne’s reply. A sword glinted in the anemic moonlight, some ten feet away, and Javel raised his own sword in preparation, his heart hammering. Dwyne began to laugh.
“What can possibly be funny?” asked Thorne.
“It’s the Tear army, man! Look at the uniforms!”
Javel could see nothing, but he grunted his agreement so Dwyne wouldn’t know.
“I can probably deal with all of them by myself, dark or no. Wait here.” Dwyne drew his sword and hurried away. When his footsteps had faded, Javel repressed a moment of stifling, amorphous fright. Having Thorne next to him in the dark was no comfort at all.
“He’s full of shit,” Thorne was muttering again. “We need light. Enough light to—”
He clenched Javel’s arm again, hard enough that Javel winced.
“Get a torch.”
Kelsea was still crawling forward, Pen and Venner on either side, when the fire went out, robbing them of light.
“The archers took at least four,” Mace whispered behind her. “I don’t know if they got Dwyne though; be on your guard.”
“How are those cages fastened? Could anyone see?”
“No,” replied Pen, “but they’re definitely not steel. I think they’re just plain old wood.”
Kelsea was suddenly furious at the unknown builder of the cages. Thorne was no carpenter, but someone had built cages for him, all the same.
“Hooves,” Venner whispered. “To the west.”
The four went silent, and after a moment Kelsea, too, could hear multiple horsemen, coming down into the valley from the western opening of the pass.
“Three or four,” Mace whispered. “If they’re more Caden, we’re in trouble.”
“Should we move, sir?” asked Pen.
Kelsea looked around. In the dim starlight, she could see the outline of a few chunks of stone ahead of them and a large boulder to her left, but nothing else. There was nowhere to go except back up on the hillside.
“No,” Mace replied. “Let’s move behind that boulder and they should pass right by us. If not, there aren’t many of them. We’ll be able to cover the Queen’s retreat.”
The hooves were growing louder. Following Mace’s lead, Kelsea crawled along on her belly toward the boulder. The ground was covered with tiny, sharp rocks that bit into her palms, making her hiss. She told herself not to be such a pansy and cursed inside, using Elston’s word.
Mace led their crawling train behind the boulder and they leaned back against it, facing the campsite. Kelsea could dimly glimpse the barred silhouette of one of the cages against the deep blue-black sky, nothing else, but she could hear plenty. The sound of steel on steel resonated everywhere, and the night was alive with the groans of the wounded. She remembered her earlier paranoia and felt a flush of hot shame creep across her face. The sapphire, as though sensing her misery, pulsed in response. The hoofbeats drew nearer.
“Where—”
“Quiet.” Mace’s voice brooked no argument.
Several riders came past the boulder, their silhouettes barely visible against the grey backdrop of the ravine. They halted perhaps twenty feet from Kelsea’s hiding place and the air was filled with the sound of overtaxed horses, their breaths whickering in the night.
“What now?” a man asked in a low voice.
“It’s a mess,” replied another. “We need light.”
“We should wait for the fighting to die down a bit.”
“No. We’ll find Alain first,” a new voice commanded, and Kelsea jerked to attention. She scrambled to her feet and moved forward before Mace could stop her. Four black silhouettes turned, drawing swords as she approached, but Kelsea only smiled. Certainty was upon her, a certainty that had nothing to do with the man’s voice and everything to do with the sudden bloom of warmth in her chest.
“Well met, Father of Thieves.”
“Holy hell.” One of the horsemen rode toward her and drew rein some five feet away. Although Kelsea could see nothing but a black shadow against the sky, she could have sworn that he was looking down and seeing her.
Mace reached her then, grabbing her around the waist. “Behind me, Lady.”
“No, Lazarus,” Kelsea replied, her eyes on the tall shadow in front of her. “Keep your attention elsewhere.”
“What?”
“Tear Queen,” the Fetch remarked quietly. “It seems I did underestimate you, after all.”
Kelsea heard Pen and Venner coming up behind her, and she held up a hand. “Both of you, stand down.”
The Fetch regarded her in silence. Although Kelsea could see nothing of his face, she sensed that she really had surprised him, maybe for the first time. It comforted her, made her feel less of a child to his adult, and she straightened up, staring back at him defiantly. He dismounted and approached, and Kelsea felt Mace edge up on his toes beside her. She placed a restraining hand on his chest.
“Sir?” Pen asked, his voice high and anxious, younger than Kelsea had ever heard it.
“Christ. Stand down, Pen.”
The Fetch reached out with one hand, and Kelsea instinctively drew back. But he only touched the very edges of her hair, cropped close around her head, and spoke softly. “Look what you’ve done to yourself.”
Kelsea wondered how he could see her short hair when she could barely see anything at all. As his words sank in, however, she flushed and snapped, “Why are you here?”
“We’ve come after Thorne’s little tea party. Alain is here somewhere; he’s been spying out the lay of the land for weeks.”
Alain, the blond man who was so quick with cards. Kelsea hadn’t seen him anywhere around the campfire.
“The better question is: why are you here, Tear Queen?”
Good question. Even Mace, for all of his grumbling, hadn’t asked Kelsea why. She thought for a moment, trying to come up with an honest answer, for she sensed the Fetch would know if she lied. The jewel continued to throb between her breasts, driving her to action, but she willed it to be still. “I’m here to keep my word. I promised this would never happen again.”
“You could’ve kept your word from the Keep, you know. You have an entire army at your disposal these days.”
Kelsea flinched at the sarcasm in his voice, but drew herself up to her full height. “A long time ago, before ascending the throne, the king pledged himself to die for his kingdom, if necessary. It was the only way the system worked.”
“You’re ready to die here?”
“I’ve been ready to die for this land since the day we met, Father of Thieves.”
The Fetch’s head tilted to the left. When he spoke, his voice was softer than Kelsea had ever heard it. “I’ve waited a long time for you, Tear Queen. Longer than you can imagine.”
Kelsea blushed and looked away, not understanding what he meant, only knowing that it wasn’t what she wanted him to mean.
“Hold out your hand.”
She obeyed and felt him place something cold in her palm. Exploring it with her fingers, she realized it was a necklace, a necklace with a cold pendant that had already begun warming against her skin.
“Whatever comes of this, Tear Queen, you’ve earned that back.”
To Kelsea’s left, much closer than the rest of the battle, came the dull, wet slap of a sword hitting flesh, and a man screamed, his voice high and terrified in the dark. Kelsea backed behind Mace, who raised his sword.
“I owe you the Queen’s life, rascal,” Mace hissed. “I won’t hinder you, so long as you pose no threat to her. But clear away now, before you bring them all down on us.”
“Agreed,” the Fetch replied. “We go.” He swung back up on his horse, becoming once more a dark silhouette against the sky. “Luck to you, Tear Queen. May we meet again when this business is done.”
Still blushing, Kelsea found the clasp of the second necklace, reached up, and hooked it around her neck. Her heart seemed to jog inside her chest, creating heat that spread throughout her veins. She heard a crackling sound like static electricity, looked down, and found that the second sapphire was glowing like a tiny sun, emitting small flares of light. She tucked the pendant inside her uniform and heard an audible click, like a key turning in a lock. Her sight skewed crazily; she blinked and saw a different world, black buildings against a white skyline, but when she blinked again, it was gone.
The Fetch and his companions turned and rode farther into the Pass, causing renewed warning cries and several shrieks of terror from the direction of the campfire. Meanwhile, Kelsea and her three guards crept back behind the other side of the boulder, away from the fighting, and sat down, staring outward toward the mouth of the pass.
“Sir?” Pen asked.
“Later, Pen.”
Kelsea expected Mace to begin a lecture of some kind, about running away, about the Fetch, about recklessness in general. But he didn’t. She could see the gleam of his drawn sword, and another shine of metal that she assumed was his mace. But the gleam was blue, not moonlight. Kelsea looked down and realized that her two jewels were now glowing so brightly that she could see both of them through the fabric of her uniform. She clasped them in her right hand, trying to block the light. Whatever had begun in her chest was steadily progressing now; her heart was hammering away much too fast, and her veins felt as though they’d been pumped full of fire. She was waiting for something terrible to happen, something she couldn’t see.
Of course, she realized suddenly. I only kept the second necklace in my pocket before. I never put it on.
She closed her eyes and there it was again: a skyline, full of tall buildings, dozens of them, even taller than the Keep. Madness seemed to be there, beckoning, a city of madness that existed only in her head. More screaming came from the center of the battle, bringing Kelsea back to herself. She opened her eyes to merciful darkness, saw Pen peering around the edge of the boulder.
“They’ve lit the fire again.”
“Fools,” Mace muttered. “Wellmer will pick them off easily.”
Kelsea peeked around Pen. Light glowed against the sky several hundred feet away, right in the center of the campsite. Her jewel was trying to drive her forward, somehow, but she had promised Mace and she willed it to be silent. The screaming from the center of the pass continued, and Kelsea’s pulse ratcheted higher, recognizing that this was the terrible thing, the thing she’d been waiting for. She suddenly pinpointed the source of her anxiety. “That’s a woman’s voice.”
Pen moved a few more feet out from the boulder, and even in the dim glow of the distant fire, Kelsea saw his face turn white. “Christ.”
“What is it?”
“Women.” His voice sounded as though it came through water. “They’ve lit a cage of women.”
Before she had time to think, Kelsea was running.
“Lady! Damn it!” Mace’s shouts seemed very far away. Women’s screams echoed off the walls of the pass, seeming to fill the night from horizon to horizon. The two sapphires bounced free of her uniform, ablaze now, and Kelsea found that she could see everything, each boulder and blade of grass limned in blue. She’d never been much of a runner, but the jewels were giving her strength and she ran fast, faster than she ever had in her life, sprinting toward the brightening bloom of the fire.
Javel didn’t know what had happened. He’d gone to find a torch for Thorne, hardly aware of what he was doing. His mind was still full of Allie, wondering what would happen to her if they failed. He sensed that Thorne’s men were losing the battle. They hadn’t gotten the fire out quickly enough, and the archers must have done great damage from the hillside because he couldn’t move a foot without tripping over a body. More horsemen had arrived while he was searching for the torch; the sound seemed to push Thorne into a panic, so Javel knew they were not part of the plan. They were going to lose the fight, and then what would become of Allie?
Finally Javel found a discarded torch lying on the far side of the fire pit and returned to Thorne, who took the torch without thanks and moved away out of earshot.
Good riddance, Javel thought darkly. But once Thorne disappeared, he didn’t know what to do. He was a Gate Guard, not a soldier, and this wasn’t the Gut, with its comfort of walls and cramped streets. Javel had always hated nature. The walls of the pass were tall, ghostly boundaries on the world. He didn’t want to move, and though he could hear fighting all around him, he recoiled from the idea of engaging an enemy he couldn’t see. His experience with combat had been limited to the repulsion of two or three gate crashers, lunatics who showed up intending to fight their way into the Keep. He’d never killed a man before.
Am I a coward?
The prisoners had found their voices again once the attack started, and now they screamed for help, a slaughterhouse sound that made him want to clap his hands to his ears. He thought of trying to get the pregnant woman out, but he could see nothing, and he was afraid. He thought of Keller, of the young girls who filled the caravans. Several had been raped; Javel could no longer deny it now, even to himself. One of them, surely no more than twelve, had done nothing but sob brokenly all the way from Haymarket. Javel thought of those drunken nights in the Gut, nights when he’d idly contemplated finding child traffickers, bringing them to justice, doing heroic things. But morning always came, sunlight and hangovers ruining his best plans. This was different, Javel realized. This was dark work; there was no morning here. And so much could be accomplished in the dark.
He sheathed his sword and pulled the knife from his belt, waiting. Gate Guards always stuck together, and a few minutes later Keller found him, as Javel had known he would.
“Not really our scene, is it, Javel?”
“No,” Javel agreed. “Never thought I’d long to be back on the gate in the middle of the night.” They stood quietly in the dark for a moment, Javel gathering his courage, feeling adrenaline flood his body. “Does that cage door look loose to you?”
“What door? I can’t see anything.”
“Over there, to the left.”
The moment Keller turned, Javel snaked an arm around his neck. Keller was big, but Javel was quick, and he was able to draw his knife across Keller’s throat and dance backward before Keller’s hands found him. Keller gurgled, gasping for breath in the dark, then Javel heard a satisfying thump as his huge body collapsed to the ground. Javel’s heart blazed with satisfaction, a great dawn breaking inside his mind and flooding his veins with courage. What should he do next?
He knew immediately: he would open the doors. He would open the doors of the cages, just as the Queen had done on the Keep Lawn that day, and let everyone out.
He stumbled toward the caravan, but tripped over another body. Men were still fighting all around him and the ground was littered with corpses. Thorne was right; they needed light.
Just as Javel thought this, he realized that he could see; a thin amber glow illuminated several pairs of fighters and the first few cages on either side of the horseshoe. Someone had lit a fire. Dwyne would be angry, but Javel felt only relief.
That was when the screaming started for real. A woman positively shrieked, her voice ascending in a terrible, eldritch wail that went on and on until Javel had to clap his hands over his ears. He sank to his knees, thinking: Surely she must run out of breath. And she might have, but he couldn’t tell, because suddenly they were all screaming, an entire world of women crying out.
Javel turned, saw the fire, and realized what Thorne had done.
The fourth cage on the left was aflame at one end, the door already obliterated. Thorne stood perhaps ten feet away, torch in hand, staring at the fire, and Javel saw evil in those bright blue eyes, not malevolence but something much worse: an evil born of lack of self-awareness, an evil that didn’t know it was evil and therefore could justify anything.
Evil that did the math.
The women in the cage shrieked as they crushed themselves against the far wall. But the fire was coming for them, inching its way across the floor of the cage. Two women had already caught fire; Javel could see them easily through the crude wooden bars. One was William and Jeffrey’s mother. She was beating at the flames that had taken her skirt and screaming at the other women for help, but none of them noticed in their mad push to get away. The second woman was nothing but a blazing torch, a dark, writhing shape with arms that waved madly from inside the fire. While Javel watched, in a span of time that seemed endless, her arms sank to her sides and her body simply collapsed. She had no face anymore, only a blackened thing that burned madly, spreading flame along the cage floor.
The rest of the women continued to scream, a bloodcurdling cacophony that Javel knew he would hear in his head for the rest of his life. They screamed endlessly, and all of them seemed to have Allie’s voice.
Javel lunged for the Baedencourt brothers’ belongings, which lay on the other side of the dead campfire. Hugo Baedencourt always carried an axe; both brothers had been sent out on the first watch, but an axe was no use in combat. Javel tore through the sack of weapons, pushing aside swords and a bow before he came upon the axe, a strong, gleaming thing in his hands. It was too heavy for him, but he found that he could lift it, and once he reached the cage, he found that he could swing it as well. Jeffrey and William’s mother was burning now, her hair and face on fire. Her dress had gone up first and Javel knew, in the part of the mind that remained cold and suspended in such situations, that the baby inside her was already dead. But even the flames couldn’t stop the woman’s iron voice. She screamed and screamed into the night.
Javel swung the first crushing blow against the bars. Wood splintered, but they held.
I’m not strong enough.
He swallowed the thought and swung again, ignoring a rending tear in the muscle of his left shoulder. Allie was upon him, standing there looking at him affectionately, long before they were married, neither of them thinking of the lottery, of anything at all.
Stench had filled the air now, a gut-churning mixture of burning wool and charred skin. Javel was losing the race against the fire, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop swinging the axe. Jeffrey and William’s mother died somewhere in the middle of the race; one second she was screaming, the next she was not, and in one cold blink, Javel decided to kill Arlen Thorne. But Thorne was already gone; he’d thrown away his torch and fled into the darkness.
The women were still crushed against the far wall of the cage, but only those in back continued to scream now; smoke had overwhelmed the women closest to the fire and they could only cough wretchedly. Several had flames licking at their skirts. Javel’s own eyes were watering, burning with smoke, and the skin on his arms felt as though it was beginning to bake. He ignored everything and swung again, feeling the axe bite cleanly through one of the bars. But only one. It was too late.
Allie I’m so sorry.
His skin was on fire. Javel dropped the axe and sank to his knees. He clapped his hands to his ears but he could still hear them screaming.
Then the world filled with blue light.
Some fifty feet from the burning cage, Kelsea became aware that several riders had moved to flank her as she ran. The Fetch’s men, their faces masked in black, and they paced her, launching arrows as they went. She might have been hallucinating but she no longer cared. Nothing mattered now but the cages, the women. Her responsibility. She was the Queen of the Tearling.
Several of Thorne’s men tried to approach her as she ran, their swords upraised and murder in their faces. But a series of blue flares enveloped them and took them down. Kelsea felt that the light wasn’t coming from the jewels at all, but from inside her own head. She merely thought to kill them and they were gone. Her breath tore at her throat, but she couldn’t slow down. The jewels pulled her onward toward the flames.
She skidded around the last boulder and baking heat hit her like a wall, pushing her back. Women had crowded mindlessly at one end of the flaming cage, but the fire had already reached them. A grey-haired man was down in front, attacking the bars with an axe, but he didn’t appear to be making a dent.
Tearling oak, Kelsea thought. The women were trapped. Worse yet, flames were already licking at the bars of the next cage; if they couldn’t put out the fire, the entire caravan would go up. They needed water, but there was none for miles. Kelsea tightened her fists in despair, so that her nails bit into her palms, drawing blood. If someone had offered her a trade right now, her life for those people in the cage, she would have taken it easily and without fear, just as a mother would unthinkingly trade her life for her child’s. But there was no one to trade with. All of Kelsea’s good intentions had come to this in the end.
I would give everything if I could, she thought, and knew in that second that it was true.
The two jewels exploded in blue light, and she felt current slam into her body, voltage coursing through every nerve. The force of it shoved her backward. She felt twice her own size, every hair on her body standing on end and her muscles straining against their own walls.
Her despair vanished.
The entire pass was illuminated now, washed in blue, each shadow brighter than the next. Kelsea could see everything, still and quiet and suspended. All around her were struggling figures, frozen in the light.
Wellmer up on the hillside to her left, perched on the edge of a boulder with an arrow nocked into his bow and his jaw clenched in concentration;
Elston, his eyes red with fire and murder, chasing Arlen Thorne along the rocky floor of the ravine;
Alain, back behind one of the cages with a knife in his hand, killing the wounded, his mouth open to shout;
the Fetch, down by the end of the caravan, wearing his horrible mask, fighting a big man in a red cloak;
the man who’d attacked the cages with his axe, on his knees now, weeping, his face consumed with agony, regret that spanned years;
but most of all, the women in the cage, standing right in the path of the flames.
It’s better to die clean.
Voltage poured through Kelsea, so much that her body couldn’t hold it; it was as though she’d taken a bolt of lightning. If there was a God, he would feel like this, standing astride the world. But Kelsea was terrified, sensing that if she wanted to break the world in half she could do it, of course she could, but there was more here than she knew. Everything came with a price.
Water.
There was no choice here. If there was a price, she would have to pay it. She reached out, her arms stretching far beyond their span. Water was there, she could sense it, almost taste it. She called for it, screamed for it, and felt electricity burst from her, a vast current that had appeared from nowhere and now went the same way.
Thunder shattered above the pass, trembling the ground. The jewels went cold and dark, and the pass was suddenly covered once more in firelit night. Everything began to move again; women screamed, men shouted, swords clashed. But Kelsea merely stood there in the dark, waiting, with each hair on her body standing on end.
Water cascaded from the sky, a flood so thick that it obscured the moonlight. It fell on Kelsea like a wall, knocking her to the ground and tumbling her along the floor of the ravine, gushing up her nose and into her lungs. But Kelsea drifted pleasantly now, her mind vacant of everything but the need to sleep, an inviting darkness somewhere beyond her vision.
The Crossing, she realized. The real Crossing. I can almost see it.
Kelsea closed her eyes and crossed.
The Queen of Mortmesne stood on her balcony, staring across her domain. She’d begun to come here when she was wakeful, which was nearly every night now. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, and small things had begun to slip. She’d forgotten to sign a set of execution orders one night, and the next morning the crowd had gathered in Cutter’s Square and waited . . . and waited. The King of Cadare had invited her for a visit and she’d mistaken the date by a week, confusing her servants and necessitating some unpacking. One night they’d brought her a requested slave and she’d already been fast asleep. These things were small, and Beryll caught most of them, but sooner or later someone besides Beryll would notice and it would become a problem.
It was the girl, always the girl. The Queen wanted a look at the girl, wanted it so badly that she’d even gathered her generals and broached the possibility of a state visit to the Tearling. They rarely vetoed her suggestions, but they’d done so this time, and the Queen had eventually admitted their point. The overture would be a sign of weakness, and a pointless one; the girl would likely refuse. But even if she accepted, there were hidden dangers. By now the Queen could see that the girl was an unknown quantity, nothing like her mother at all. Worse, the girl’s guard was captained by the Mace, who was not an unknown quantity. Even Ducarte didn’t want to tangle with the Mace yet, not without more information and advantages than they held at present. The Mace was a terror, the girl was a blind spot, and both of these things boded ill.
The Queen liked this balcony; it was two floors above her chambers, at the top of one of the Palais’s many turrets. She could see for miles in every direction: across the vastness of her land to Callae in the east, Cadare in the south, and due west to the Tearling. The Tearling, which had given her no trouble for almost twenty years, and now it felt as though she’d stepped into an anthill. It was a disaster. Thorne’s shipment would arrive tomorrow, and it would work as a stopgap, but it wouldn’t resolve the larger problem. If she allowed the Tearling to evade tribute, it would be only a matter of time before the others followed suit.
The domestic situation was no better. The Queen had ruled her kingdom with an iron grip for over a century, but now the lack of new slaves had created a novel problem: internal unrest. The Queen’s spies reported that Mort nobles had been gathering in secret, in larger and larger groups. The commanders of her army weren’t so secretive; they voiced their displeasure to anyone who would listen. The northern cities, particularly Cite Marche, had reported increasing levels of popular unrest. Cite Marche was full of young radicals, most of whom had never owned a single slave, but they scented opportunity in the spread of discontent.
I will have to invade the Tearling, the Queen realized, troubled. She moved to the southwest corner of the balcony and looked out beyond the city, to the dark shadow that blanketed the vastness of the Champs Demesne. She had mobilized her army weeks ago but then delayed sending it, something in her gut counseling caution. Invasion was simpler, but also riskier, and the Queen didn’t care for unquantified risk. A victory could carry unintended consequences. She didn’t want more land to police; she wanted things to go on quietly, as they always had, with each surrounding kingdom paying tribute and doing as it was told. If she were forced to take real military action, it would delay the project, keep things from moving forward.
But she didn’t really have a choice anymore. Thorne’s assessment was clear: the girl would not be bought. She showed dangerous strains of her grandmother, Arla, and even something more.
Who was the father?
Some mornings, the Queen thought that everything hinged on this question. She was a geneticist, perhaps the most advanced geneticist since the Crossing, and she appreciated the power of bloodlines to create change, even abrupt, aberrant change, from generation to generation. Both Elyssa and her Regent had been so easy to manage, constrained by vanity and lack of imagination. There was no reason the girl should be so different, unless some entirely original strain had been introduced to the mix. The Regent had always refused to tell her the identity of the girl’s father; she should have forced the information from him years ago, but it hadn’t seemed that critical. Only now, when he had disappeared and her plans had ground to a halt, did she see that the girl’s paternity might matter more than anything else.
I’ve grown complacent, the Queen realized suddenly. Everything had been so easy for so long . . . but the complacent ruler stood at the whim of any indignity evolution could produce, even a nineteen-year-old girl who should have been dead years before.
Something was happening on the Tear border.
The Queen narrowed her eyes, trying to understand what she was seeing. It was just past midnight, and the sky was clear all the way to the border, where the two mountains, Willingham and Ellyre, rose high above the forest, their snow-covered peaks visible by a thin sliver of moon. Useful landmarks, those mountains; the Queen had always been grateful to know exactly where the Tear began, to be able to keep an eye on it from a distance.
Now lightning rent the sky above the Argive Pass, illuminating roiling black storm clouds. The Queen was unimpressed; she could summon lightning herself if she cared to, it was a parlor trick. But this lightning wasn’t white, it was blue. The bright blue of a sapphire.
Fear trickled inside her, making her belly contract, and she narrowed her eyes at the western horizon, trying desperately to see. But magic, like all strengths, was constrained not only by the user but by the audience, and now she could see nothing. She’d never been able to see the girl, not even once. Only in dreams.
The Queen whirled and left her balcony, startling her guards, who froze for a moment before falling into place behind her. She hurried down the circular staircase toward her quarters, not caring whether they could keep up. Premonition was suddenly upon her, unbidden, a sense of disaster. Something terrible was happening on the border, some catastrophe that could wreck all of her plans.
Juliette, the Queen’s head page, was stationed at the door to her quarters. The Queen would have preferred Beryll for this duty, Beryll whose loyalty was unquestioned. But he was an old man now, and he needed his sleep. Juliette was a tall, muscular blonde of about twenty-five, strong and capable, but so young that the Queen wondered what she could possibly know about anything. The price of a long, long life was suddenly clear, laid out in the younger woman’s bright, somehow stupid face.
All of my people have grown old.
“Bring me a child,” she snapped at Juliette. “A boy, nine or ten. Drug him hard.”
Juliette bowed and went swiftly down the hallway. The Queen passed into her quarters and found that someone had already drawn the curtains. Normally, she loved her room with its curtains closed, so that the walls and ceiling were nothing but an unbroken field of crimson silk. It was like being inside a cocoon, and she’d often taken pride in thinking of herself that way, as a creature who’d broken free of the walls of her prison and emerged stronger than before, stronger than anyone had ever imagined she would be. But now she took no pleasure in her surroundings. The dark thing would be angry at being summoned, and even angrier at a request for help.
There was no other option. Her own gifts had failed.
Her guard had prepared for her return; a large, healthy fire burned in the enormous fireplace. That was good. One less thing to do. The Queen rummaged through her drawers until she found a knife and a clean white towel. Then she cleared away the furniture in front of the fireplace, dragging sofa and chairs away to leave a wide space on the stone hearth. When she finished, she found that she was breathing hard, her pulse thudding in her ears.
I’m afraid, she thought miserably. It’s been a long time.
Someone knocked. The Queen opened the door and found Juliette standing there, a young Cadarese boy in her arms. He was the right age, but very skinny, his face slack with unconsciousness. When the Queen lifted an eyelid, she found his pupils dilated almost to the rim of the iris.
“Good.” The Queen took the child in her arms, not liking the warm feel of his thin body. “No disturbances, not for anything, no matter what you hear.”
Juliette bowed again and backed away to the far side of the hall. The night guard stationed against the wall gave Juliette’s ass a frankly lascivious glance, and the Queen paused briefly on the threshold, thinking that she should do something about that. Her pages weren’t supposed to suffer any sort of harassment; it was one of the perks of a difficult job.
Fuck it, she thought resentfully. Beryll could sort it out tomorrow.
She slammed the door with one shoulder, carried the boy to her bed, and dumped him on top of the coverlet. His breathing was deep and even, and the Queen stared at him for a moment, her thoughts moving in various directions. She didn’t particularly like children; they made too much noise and demanded too much energy. She’d never wanted a child herself, not even when she was young. Children were simply a necessary cog in the machine, something to be tolerated. It was only when they were quiet like this that she found them bearable, that she could regret what had to be done.
There were several pedophiles in high positions in her military. The Queen felt a strange, sickly contempt for these men, unable to understand what was wrong with them. Genetics gave her no answers; there was nothing sexual in children. Some people were simply broken, something inside them grown wrong and twisted. These men were diseased, and the Queen made a special point of never touching them, not even to shake hands.
But she needed them, needed them badly. When they weren’t being what they were, they were incredibly useful, and Ducarte in particular was invaluable. The trick was not to think of these things, not while she watched the sleeping child in front of her, utterly vulnerable on the bed.
Someday, she thought, when everything is completed, I’ll rid the land of all of them. I’ll go from one end of the New World to the other, scraping out the rot, and I’ll start in the Fairwitch.
But for tonight, she needed the child. And she should act quickly, before the drug began to wear off.
Picking up the knife, the Queen reached down and made a shallow slice across the boy’s forearm. Blood welled up in a fat line and she blotted it with the towel, soaking the white cotton. The boy didn’t even stir; a good sign. Maybe she could get through this more cleanly than last time.
The Queen took off her gown and underclothes, leaving them in a scarlet puddle on the floor behind her. She dropped to her knees on the stone hearth and whispered a few words of a language long gone, then sat back on her heels and waited, gritting her teeth. The stone of the floor was hard and sharp, digging into her knees, but the dark thing liked that, just as it liked to have her naked. It appreciated discomfort, enjoyed it in some way she didn’t fully understand. If she kept her panties on, or put down a pillow to soften the floor, it would notice.
A voice spoke from the fire, a low, toneless voice that couldn’t be identified as either male or female. At the sound of it, gooseflesh broke out on the Queen’s arms.
“What is your need?”
She swallowed, wiping perspiration from her forehead. “I need . . . advice.”
“You need help,” the dark thing corrected, its voice expectant. “What will you give in return?”
She leaned forward, as far as she dared, and threw the bloody towel into the fire. Despite the heat, her nipples had hardened to tiny points, as though she were cold, or excited. Crackling sounds filled the room as the flames consumed the towel.
“Innocent blood,” the dark thing remarked. “It is good to taste.”
The air in front of the fireplace began to darken and coalesce. As always, the Queen stared at this phenomenon, trying to understand what she was seeing. The space in front of her was turning a rich black, a dark, fathomless hole opening there. It looked as though oil were condensing right out of the air.
“What troubles you, Mort Queen?”
“The Tearling,” the Queen replied, unhappy to find that her voice wasn’t entirely steady. The creature in the fire needed her just as much as she needed it, she reminded herself. “The new Queen of the Tearling.”
“The Tear heir. You’ve been unable to yoke her; I have been watching.”
“I couldn’t see what happened on the border tonight. I can’t see the girl at all.”
The hole in front of the fire widened now, pulsing blackly in the firelight. “I do not come to listen to you complain. Ask your question.”
“What happened on the border tonight?”
“Tonight is nothing. There is no time here.”
The Queen pursed her lips and tried again. “Arlen Thorne was bringing a clandestine shipment of Tear across the border. Did something happen?”
“He failed.” There was no emotion in its voice, no human tone at all. “There will be no shipment.”
“How did he fail? Was the girl there?”
“The Tear heir holds both jewels now.”
The Queen’s stomach dropped unpleasantly, and she looked down at the hearth, considering various choices. All of them led to the same place. “I must invade the Tearling and kill the girl.”
“You will not invade the Tearling.”
“I have no choice. I have to kill her before she learns to use them.”
The black mass in front of the Queen trembled suddenly, like a door frame struck by a heavy blow. A spear of flame shot from the fire, crossing the hearth to bury itself in the skin of her right hip. She cried out and fell backward, rolling against the carpet until the flames were extinguished. Her hip had burned black, and it squalled in agony when she tried to sit up. She lay on the floor, panting.
When she looked up, the black mass in the air was gone. Instead, a man towered above her, handsome beyond words. His pure black hair swept back from a perfect patrician face, gaunt cheekbones offset by a thick, full-lipped mouth. A beautiful man, but the Queen wasn’t fooled by that beauty anymore. Red eyes glittered coldly down at her.
“As high as I set you, I can bring you low,” the dark thing informed her steadily. “I have lived longer even than you, Mort Queen. I see the beginning and the end. You will not harm the Tear heir.”
“Will I fail?” She couldn’t imagine it; the Tearling had no steel and a lounging army with a geriatric commander. Even the girl couldn’t change that. “Will an invasion fail?”
“You will not invade the Tearling,” the dark thing repeated.
“What am I to do?” she asked in desperation. “My army is restless. The people are restless.”
“Your problems are not mine, Mort Queen. Your problems are merely motes of dust in my sight. Now give me my price.”
Shaking, the Queen pointed toward the bed. She didn’t dare disobey the thing above her, but without new slaves, the situation would continue to worsen. She thought of her recurring dream, which came every night now: the man in grey, the necklace, the girl, the firestorm behind her. The real reason for her insomnia had become painfully obvious; she was afraid to sleep.
Behind her, she heard a slithering noise, the low hiss of the thing’s breath. She curled up tightly on the floor, cradling her injured hip, and wrapped an arm around her head, trying not to listen. But it was no good. A gurgling sound came from the direction of the bed, and then the slave boy screamed, his high, unbroken voice echoing around the walls of the chamber. The Queen tightened her arms around her head, tensing the muscles of her ears until there was only a thick roaring inside her eardrums. She stayed that way, eyes and ears shut tightly, until it seemed that hours must have passed, that it must be done.
She rolled over, opened her eyes, and screamed. The dark thing was right above her, its face inches from her own, its red gaze staring down at her. Its full lips were smeared with blood.
“I sense your disobedience, Mort Queen. Even now, I can taste it in my mouth. But betrayal has a price; I know that better than anyone. Harm the Tear heir, and you will feel my wrath, darker than your darkest dream. Do you wish that?”
The Queen shook her head frantically. Her nipples were rock-hard now, almost aching, and she moaned as the thing slithered off her, licking the last of the blood from its lips. The fire went out, plunging the room into darkness.
The Queen rolled to her other side. Grasping the oak foot of her bed, she began the slow process of hauling herself to her feet. Her hip shrieked as she made it into a squat. She explored the deep, angry welt with her fingers . . . a bad burn, one that would scar. A surgeon could fix it, but use of a surgeon would also prove that she could still be injured. No, the Queen realized, she would have to live with the scar.
Crossing the room by touch, she fumbled around at her desk. There was a candle on her bedside table, but she couldn’t bear to go over there in the dark. Something brushed her hand and the Queen gave a small squeal of fright. But it was only a spider, scuttling along in its own alien doings. Her other hand closed on the unmistakable shape of a candle and she lit it, gasping with relief. Her chambers were empty. She was alone.
The Queen wiped sweat from her forehead and cheeks; the rest of her naked body was damp as well. But her legs moved as though driven, propelling her to stand beside the bed. Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the boy.
He had been bled. Even by candlelight, she could see the pallor beneath his dark skin. The thing always used the cut she’d made; the first few times, she’d asked her pages to check the bodies for other incisions, but eventually she stopped. It wasn’t anything she wanted to know. The boy’s spine was arched nearly to breaking, one arm pulled so far from its socket that it hung limp and twisted behind him on the scarlet bedspread. His mouth was wide, frozen in a scream. His eyes were empty sockets, drained even of blood, viscous holes that stared past the Queen at nothing.
What do they see? she wondered. Certainly not the same pretty face the dark thing put on for her. All of them looked like this; there were subtle variations, but it was always the same. If not for the eyes, she might have thought the boy dead from pure fright.
Now her stomach began to churn, bile climbing up the back of her throat. The Queen turned and ran for the bathroom, one hand clamped across her mouth, her eyes wide and hunted.
She nearly made it.