In comparing the Glynn Queen to the Red Queen, we find few similarities. They were very different rulers, and we now know that they were motivated by very different goals. I should note that both queens displayed iron will, a shared ability to take the quickest route to what needed to be done. Yet history also gives us ample demonstration that the Glynn Queen, unlike the Red Queen, often tempered her judgments with pity. Indeed, many historians find this to be the crucial difference between the two . . .
—PROFESSOR JESSICA FENN, LECTURE TRANSCRIPT, UNIVERSITY OF THE TEARLING, 458 MARCH
Lady.”
Something cool swiped her forehead, and Kelsea turned her head, trying to ignore it. Mace had awakened her out of . . . nothing. No dream she could remember, only a sleep as cool and dark and endless as she’d ever had in her life, thousands of miles traveled in unfathomable waters. Her own Crossing, and she had no urge to return.
“Lady.”
Mace’s voice was tight with anxiety. She should wake up and let him know she was all right. But the darkness was so warm. It was like being wrapped in velvet.
“She’s breathing too slowly. We should get her to a doctor.”
“What doctor could help her now?”
“I just thought—”
“They don’t train doctors in magic, Pen, only healers, and most of them are frauds anyway. We just have to wait.”
Kelsea could hear each of them breathing above her, Mace heavy and Pen shallow. Her senses had sharpened; emerging from the depths one layer at a time, she could hear a man singing softly and the whinny of a horse some distance away.
“Did she bring the flood, sir?”
“God knows, Pen.”
“Did the old Queen ever do anything like that?”
“Elyssa?” Mace began to laugh. “Christ, I watched Elyssa wear both jewels for years, and their most extraordinary feat was getting stuck in her dress. We were in the middle of a reception for the Cadarese, and it took us thirty minutes to untangle the damned things with her modesty intact.”
“I think the Queen brought the flood. I think it took everything out of her.”
“She’s breathing, Pen. She’s alive. Let’s not look beyond that.”
“Then why doesn’t she wake?”
Pen’s voice was filled with something close to grief, and Kelsea realized that it was time now, that she couldn’t make them wait any longer. Breaking through the dark warmth in her head, she opened her eyes. Once again she found herself in a blue tent; time might almost have doubled back to that morning when she’d woken and seen the Fetch sitting there.
“Ah, thank Christ,” Mace muttered above her. Kelsea’s eyes were drawn first to a bright red patch at his shoulder. His uniform was torn and stained with blood. Pen, kneeling beside him, had no visible wounds, but Kelsea still found Pen the graver case; his eyes were circled dark, the rest of his face ghost-white.
Both of them reached to help her sit up, Pen for her hands and Mace behind her back. Kelsea expected to have a headache, but as she sat up, she found instead that her head felt wonderfully clear, miles wide. She reached up and found both necklaces, still around her neck.
“Don’t worry; we didn’t dare touch them,” Mace told her dryly.
“I hardly dare touch them.”
“How do you feel, Lady?”
“Good. Too good. How long did I sleep?”
“A day and a half.”
“Are you both all right?”
“We’re fine, Lady.”
She pointed to Mace’s wounded shoulder. “I see someone finally got through your guard.”
“There were three of them, Lady, and one was switch-handed. If Venner finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“What about the women?”
Mace and Pen looked at each other uncomfortably.
“Speak up!”
“Three lost,” Mace replied gruffly.
“But you saved twenty-two, Majesty,” Pen added, throwing Mace a dark look that, mercifully, he missed. “Twenty-two women. They’re fine, and so are the others. They’re on their way home.”
“What of the Guard?”
“We lost Tom, Lady.” Mace wiped his forehead with one palm. It was a commonplace gesture, but very expressive in Mace’s case; Kelsea thought it was the closest he would let himself come to grief. But she hadn’t known Tom well, so she wouldn’t shed tears.
“What else?”
“It only stopped raining early this morning, Lady. We were waiting for you to wake up, but I had to make some decisions.”
“Your decisions are usually acceptable, Lazarus.”
“I sent the caravan back. There were a couple of children left motherless, but a woman from their village said that she would look after them.”
Kelsea grabbed his arm, clutching just beneath the elbow. “Is he all right?”
Pen’s brow furrowed, but Mace gave her an irritated look; he knew exactly who she meant. She braced herself, anticipating a lecture, but Mace was a good man; he took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh. “He’s fine, Lady. They all left yesterday, shortly after dawn.”
Kelsea’s heart sank, but that was nothing Mace needed to know, so she stretched, eliciting several satisfying cracks in her back. As she pushed herself to her feet, she caught the two guards giving each other a hard glance.
“What?”
“There are things to deal with outside, Majesty.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Weather could change everything. They’d camped in Thorne’s spot, right at the base of the valley that formed the Argive. The entire pass was washed in sunlight, and Kelsea saw that the ravine that had seemed so forbidding at night was actually extraordinarily beautiful, a stark, spare beauty built of bare land and white rock. The walls of the pass gleamed like marble above Kelsea’s head.
Her guard was seated around the remains of Thorne’s campfire, but upon her approach they stood up, and to her surprise, all of them bowed, even Dyer. Kelsea’s black army uniform was streaked and stained with mud, and her hair was undoubtedly a fright, but they didn’t seem to care about that. They stood waiting, and after a moment Kelsea realized they weren’t waiting for orders from Mace. They were waiting for her.
“Where are the cages? The caravan?”
“I sent it back the way it came, Lady. The prisoners couldn’t walk all the way home and most of the mules survived, so we busted off the tops of the cages and turned them into rolling wagons so they could ride comfortably. They should be well into the Almont by now, heading home.”
Kelsea nodded, finding this a good solution. Splintered pieces of the roofs and bars still littered the bottom of the pass. At the far side of the ravine, a line of smoke curled into the air. “What’s on fire over there?”
“Tom, Lady,” Mace replied, his voice tight. “No family, and it’s what he would have wanted. No ceremony.”
Kelsea looked around at the group, marking a second man missing. “Where’s Fell?”
“I sent him back to New London, Lady, with several women who looked like they could use a shopping trip in the big city.”
“That’s tasteful, Lazarus. They could have died, and you sent them back to spread propaganda.”
“It is what it is, Lady. And Fell needed to get indoors anyway; he took some sort of lung illness from the wet.”
“Is anyone else injured?”
“Only Elston’s pride, Lady,” Kibb piped up.
Elston gave his friend a ferocious glare and then looked down at his feet. “Forgive me, Majesty. I failed to take Arlen Thorne. He got away clean.”
“You’re forgiven, Elston. Thorne’s a tough mark.”
Bitter laughter erupted from the ground. Looking through several sets of legs, Kelsea saw a man, bound at the wrists, sitting beside the campfire.
“Who’s that?”
“Stand, you!” Dyer growled, prodding the prisoner with his foot. The man rose wearily, as though he had a ton of granite between his shoulders. Kelsea’s brow quirked, something rippling in her memory. The prisoner wasn’t old, perhaps thirty or thirty-five, but his hair was already mostly grey. He looked at her with vacant apathy.
“Javel, Lady. A Gate Guard, and the only survivor who didn’t escape. He didn’t try to run.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do with him?”
“He’s a traitor, Lady,” Dyer told her. “He’s already confessed to opening the Keep Gate for the Graham heir.”
“On Thorne’s orders?”
“So he says, Lady.”
“How did you extract that information?”
“Extract? Christ, Lady, we didn’t have to do a thing. He would’ve screamed it in the town square if he could.”
Kelsea turned back to the prisoner. In spite of the sun’s warmth, a nasty shiver went down her spine. This man looked just as Carroll had looked in the clearing: all hope gone, and something inside him already dead. “How did a Gate Guard get mixed up with Thorne?”
Mace shrugged. “His wife was shipped six years ago. I’m guessing Thorne offered to get her back.”
Kelsea’s memory was tugging harder now, and she moved closer, signaling to Coryn and Dyer to back off. The prisoner was clearly no threat to anyone; indeed, he looked like he wanted to do nothing more than fall down dead where he stood.
“He’s a traitor, Lady,” Dyer repeated. “There’s only one fate for a traitor.”
Kelsea nodded, knowing this was true. But out of the blur of that night, which now seemed centuries ago, her mind suddenly dug up a vivid picture: this man, an axe in his hand, swinging wildly at the bars of the cage. She waited for a moment, listening, waiting for Carlin to speak up, to tell her what to do. But there was nothing. She hadn’t heard Carlin’s voice in a long time. She considered the prisoner for a moment longer, then turned to Dyer. “Take him back to the Keep and put him in a cell.”
“He’s a traitor, Majesty! Make an example of him, and the next bastard Thorne asks will think twice!”
“No,” Kelsea replied firmly. Her sapphires gave a light throb, the first thing she’d felt from them since waking. “Take him back, and go easy on him. He won’t try to flee.”
Dyer’s jaw clenched for a moment, but then he nodded. “Lady.”
Kelsea had expected Mace to disagree, but he remained oddly silent. “Can we go now?”
“A moment more, Lady.” Mace held out an arm, watching while Dyer led Javel away, behind a boulder. “We’ve business to settle here. Business of the Guard.”
Elston and Kibb leaped across the grass and laid hold of Mhurn, who’d already begun to bolt at Mace’s words. Elston lifted him bodily off the ground, letting him struggle against the air, while Kibb began to bind his legs.
“What—”
“Our traitor, Lady.”
Kelsea’s mouth dropped open. “Are you certain?”
“Quite certain, Lady.” Mace picked up a saddlebag from the ground and dug through its contents until he produced a leather pouch, carefully rolled and sealed, the way one would pack diamonds or other valuables. Unrolling the pouch, he rifled through it and held one hand out for her inspection. “See here.”
Kelsea moved closer, peering at the substance in his palm. It was a fine white powder, almost like flour. “Opium?”
“Not just opium, Lady,” Coryn remarked from the campfire. “High-grade morphiate. Someone took a lot of care to cook this stuff. We found needles as well.”
Kelsea whirled around, horrified. “Heroin?”
“Not quite, Majesty. Not even the Cadarese have been able to synthesize heroin. But they will one day, I have no doubt.”
Kelsea closed her eyes, rubbing her temples. When William Tear had sailed from America to create his kingdom on a hill, he’d managed to eradicate narcotics for a brief time. But the drug trade had clawed its way back; humanity would never stop wanting to ride that particular carousel. Heroin . . . it was the worst development Kelsea could imagine.
“How did you find out?”
“Arliss. He and Thorne compete in several markets. Not an ounce of narcotic moves through New London without going through Thorne’s backyard, Lady. It’s the easiest thing in the world, to suborn an addict by cutting off his supply.”
“You had no idea of his addiction?”
“If I had, Lady, he would have been gone.”
Kelsea turned and approached Mhurn, who still dangled within Elston’s massive arms while Kibb bound his wrists.
“Well, Mhurn, anything to say?”
“Nothing, Majesty.” He refused to meet her gaze. “Nothing to excuse.”
Kelsea stared at him, this man who’d smuggled an assassin into the Queen’s Wing, who’d stuck a knife in her back, and found herself remembering that night by the campfire, the tears in his eyes during the ugly scene with Lady Andrews. Carlin had no sympathy for addicts; an addict, she’d told Kelsea, was innately and strategically weak, since his addiction could always be used to break him. Carlin’s voice might have fallen silent in Kelsea’s mind, but she still knew what Carlin would say: Mhurn was a traitor, and he deserved execution.
Barty had been more lenient about such failings. Once, he’d explained to Kelsea that addiction was like having a crack in your life. “It’s a deep crack, and deadly, Kel, but you can build guards around it. You can put up a fence.”
Staring at Mhurn now, Kelsea felt no anger, only pity. It would be nearly impossible to conceal such an addiction, since Mace saw everything. Mhurn must have been in constant withdrawal almost every day of his life.
“Do you confess to treachery, Mhurn?”
“Yes.”
Kelsea looked around and saw that the rest of the Guard had closed in around them, their gazes cold. She turned back to Mhurn, anxious to forestall them, to prolong his life. “When did you become addicted?”
“What does it matter, at this late date?”
“It matters.”
“Two years ago.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Mace roared, unable to contain himself. “A Queen’s Guard with a drug habit? Where did you suppose that would end?”
“Here.”
“You’re a dead man.”
“I’ve been dead since the invasion, sir. It’s only the past few years I’ve begun to rot.”
“What a load of shit.”
“You’ve no idea what I’ve lost.”
“We’ve all lost something, you self-pitying ass.” Cold fury laced Mace’s voice. “But we’re Queen’s Guards. We don’t sell our honor. We don’t abandon our vows.”
He turned to Kelsea. “This is best handled out here, Lady, among ourselves. Give us permission to finish him.”
“Not yet. Elston, are you getting tired?”
“Are you kidding, Lady? I could hold this faithless bastard all day.” Elston flexed his arms, causing Mhurn to groan and struggle. There was an audible snap as one of his ribs broke.
“Enough.”
Elston subsided. Kibb had finished tying Mhurn’s hands and feet, and now Mhurn merely dangled from Elston’s arms like a bound doll, his blond hair hanging limply in his face. Kelsea suddenly recalled something he had said that night out in the Reddick Forest: that the crimes of soldiers came from two sources—situation or leadership. The other prisoner, the Gate Guard, had picked up an axe in the last extremity and tried to right his wrong, but Mhurn had not. His was a difficult situation, to be sure, but was Kelsea’s leadership also to blame? From Mace, she knew that Mhurn was a gifted swordsman, not quite of Pen’s caliber, but impressive. He was also one of the most levelheaded of the guards, the one Mace trusted when something needed to be done tactfully. It was a terrible loss of a valuable man, and try as she might, Kelsea could feel no anger, only sorrow and the certainty that this tragedy could have been avoided somehow, that she had missed something crucial along the way.
“Coryn, do you know how to inject him with that stuff?”
“I’ve injected men with antibiotics before, Lady, but I know little of morphia. I might as easily kill him.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there now. Give him a decent dose.”
“Lady!” Mace barked. “He doesn’t deserve that!”
“My decision, Lazarus.”
Kelsea watched with covert interest as Coryn went to work, lighting a small flame and heating the white powder in one of his medical tins. As it liquefied, the morphine collapsed into itself like a tiny building. But when Coryn had filled one of his syringes, Kelsea turned away, unable to watch him give Mhurn the injection.
“All done, Lady.”
Turning back, she marked the hard angles of Mhurn’s face, softened now, and the hazy look in those cold, beautiful eyes. His entire body appeared to have gone limp. How could a drug work so quickly?
“What happened to you in the Mort invasion, Mhurn?”
“You heard me tell it, Majesty.”
“I’ve heard two versions now, Mhurn, and neither was complete. What happened to you?”
Mhurn stared dreamily over her shoulder. When he spoke, his voice had a disconnected quality that made Kelsea’s stomach clench. “We lived in Concord, Lady, on the shores of the Crithe. Our village was isolated; we didn’t even know the Mort were coming until a warning rider came through. But then we could see the shadow on the horizon . . . the smoke from their fires . . . the vultures that followed them in the sky. We fled our village, but we weren’t quick enough. My daughter was sick, my wife had never learned to ride, and at any rate we had only one horse. They caught us halfway between the Crithe and the Caddell. My wife was bad, Lady, but Alma, my daughter . . . she was taken by Ducarte himself, dragged along in the train of the Mort army for miles. I found her body months later, in the piles of dead left by the Mort after they withdrew from the Keep Lawn. She was covered with bruises . . . worse than bruises. I see her always, Lady. Except when I’m on the needle . . . that’s the only time I’m blind.
“So you’re wrong, sir,” he continued, turning to Mace, “if you think I care how I die, or when.”
“You never told us any of that,” Mace snapped back.
“Can you blame me?”
“Carroll would never have taken you into the Guard if he’d known you were so fucked in the head.”
Kelsea had heard enough. She reached down and pulled out her knife, the knife that Barty had given her so long ago. Barty had been a Queen’s Guard once; would he have wanted this?
Mace’s jaw dropped as she straightened. “Lady, any of us would gladly do this for you! You don’t have to—”
“Of course I do, Lazarus. This is a traitor to the Crown. I’m the Crown.”
Mhurn looked up, his dilated pupils gradually focusing on her knife, and he smiled hazily. “They don’t understand, Lady, but I do. You’ve done me a kindness, and now you mean to do me an honor as well.”
Kelsea’s eyes filled with tears. She looked up at Elston, seeing his huge form as a blur. “Hold him steady, Elston. I won’t be able to do this twice.”
“Done, Lady.”
Kelsea dashed the tears away, grabbed a handful of Mhurn’s blond hair, and yanked his head upright. She spotted his carotid artery, pulsing gently at the corner of his throat. Barty always said to avoid the carotid, if possible; an imprecise cut would end up covering the cutter in blood. She gripped her knife tightly, suddenly sure that this was what Barty would have wanted: for her to do a clean job. She placed the edge of the blade flat against the right side of Mhurn’s throat, then drew it across in a quick, sharp movement. Warm crimson spurted over her knife hand but Kelsea ignored it, holding Mhurn’s head up long enough to see the widening red smile, the blood beginning to sheet down his throat. His blue eyes stared dreamily into hers for another minute, then she let go of his hair and backed away, watching his head sink slowly toward his chest.
“That’s well done, Majesty,” Venner remarked. “A good, clean slice.”
Kelsea sat down on the ground, crying now, and leaned her head on her crossed arms.
“Leave her alone for a minute,” Mace ordered roughly. “Put him on the fire. Coryn, you take charge of the rest of that crap in the pouch; maybe Arliss can make something of it when we get home.”
They all moved away then, except for one guard who sat down beside her. Pen.
“Lady,” he murmured. “It’s time to go.”
Kelsea nodded, but it seemed she couldn’t stop crying; the tears continued to leak out no matter how she worked to get control. Her breath came in thick, asthmatic gasps. After a moment she felt Pen’s hand on hers, gently wiping away the blood.
“Pen!”
Pen’s hand vanished.
“Get her up! We’ve stayed too long already!”
Pen’s reached beneath Kelsea’s arm, his touch impersonal now, and lifted her from the ground. He held her up as she stumbled along, heading for the pile of boulders where the horses waited inside their makeshift paddock. When she reached Dyer, who was holding her horse, she climbed up automatically, wiping her face on her sleeve.
“Can we go, Lady?”
Kelsea turned to stare behind them, toward the eastern end of the pass. She could see nothing beyond; the rise was too steep. There was no time, but she had the sudden urge to tiptoe up to the edge of the slope, to peek over and behold Mortmesne, this land she’d seen only in dreams. But they were all waiting for her. She wiped the last tears from her cheeks. Mhurn’s face was in her mind, but she clenched the reins in her fist and wiped that image clean as well. “All right. Let’s go home.”
Once they got out of the Argive, they made good time. The pass itself was sticky with mud, but as soon as they started downhill, the land quickly became dry as a bone. It had only rained over the pass. From time to time, Kelsea reached up and clutched the sapphires beneath her shirt. She could feel nothing from them today, but she wasn’t deceived; they wouldn’t stay quiet for long. She thought of the nausea she’d felt on the outward journey, the way her mind had been forced forward. The dying sensation when she tried to take one of them off.
What will they do to me?
From their vantage in the foothills, they could see the dark train of the caravan, perhaps half a day’s ride ahead, snaking its way across the grasslands. Mace had questioned the villagers well into the night while Kelsea slept, eliciting several interesting facts. Thorne had raided a total of twelve villages along the shores of the Crithe, villages where the men went off together each spring to trade goods in New London. Thorne’s men had come the very night after the men had departed, setting fires to create confusion before they broke into houses and grabbed women and children.
Kelsea felt a chill steal down her spine, remembering that bitterly cold morning in the village, the screams of the woman as she lost her sons. She had no urge to intercept the caravan, but she worried about all of those women and children, alone without guard. It seemed important to keep them within sight.
And what could you do if they were attacked, you and your fifteen guards? her mind jeered.
I could do a lot, Kelsea replied darkly, remembering the vast blue light, the voltage that had flared inside her. I could do plenty.
But deep down, she was sure there was no danger out here anymore. Coryn had had the good sense to loose Thorne’s horses; the few men who’d escaped would be stuck on foot, and it was a very long walk to anywhere. They’d found several of the horses already, grazing in the foothills, and Mace had been able to slip a rope around their necks. He’d given one of the extra horses to the Gate Guard, Javel, though Dyer had tied the man’s legs to his saddle and now remained close behind him, watching him with a hawk’s eye. Kelsea didn’t think it was necessary. In her mind, she saw Javel hacking at the burning cage, his face bathed in soot.
There’s something more to him, she thought, and Mace sees it too.
When they drew even with the caravan, still a thin shadow several miles to the north, Mace allowed the troop to slow down and keep pace. The sun had crossed a good part of the sky, and they’d covered more than half the distance back to the Crithe when Mace called a halt.
“What is it?”
“A rider,” he replied, staring toward the caravan. “Wellmer, get up here!”
It was indeed a single rider, galloping for all he was worth across the countryside from the north. He rode so fast that he left a cloud of dust behind him, despite the fact that the country was mostly grass.
Elston, Pen, and Mace drew together in a triangle around Kelsea, who felt her stomach tightening. What could have gone wrong now?
“He’s Caden,” Pen murmured. “I see the cloak.”
“But only a messenger,” Mace remarked thoughtfully. “I’m going to guess we’re in a lot of trouble for the death of Dwyne.”
“He’s dead?” Kelsea asked.
Mace’s eyes never left the rider. “Your friend killed him. But the Caden have no way of knowing that. They’ll think it was us.”
“Well, they’ve tried to kill me before. I can’t be in more trouble than I was already.”
“It’s not like the Caden to send one man for anything, Lady. Let’s err on the side of caution and just wait here.”
Kelsea scanned the country around them: wide stretches of grassland and wheat, with some patches of rock, all the way to the blue line of the Crithe. It seemed almost a different country now, but the change wasn’t in the land; it was in Kelsea.
“Sir?” Wellmer rode up from the rear with his bow already in hand. “He’s got a Caden cloak, all right, but he has a child with him.”
“What?”
“A small boy, maybe five or six years old.”
Mace frowned for a moment, thinking. Then his brow smoothed out and he smiled, that genuinely pleased smile that Kelsea saw so rarely. “Fortune, you happy bitch.”
“What is it?”
“Many of the Caden have bastards around the kingdom, Lady, but Caden aren’t particularly suited for fatherhood. The more decent ones usually just give the woman a sum of money and leave.”
“Good for them.”
“You don’t see affection very often,” Mace continued, as though Kelsea hadn’t spoken, “but I’ve heard tell of a few Caden who try to live a secret life on the side, a normal life with a woman and family concealed. They’re very careful about it, for it would be a fantastic piece of leverage. I think Thorne may have been stupid enough to snatch a Caden’s child. Who is it, Wellmer?”
“I don’t know all of them by sight yet, sir.”
“Describe him.”
“Sandy hair. A bruiser. He has a sword and short knife. And an ugly scar across his forehead.”
Elston, Pen, and Mace turned to stare at each other, and an entire conversation passed between them in the space of a few seconds.
“What?” Kelsea asked.
“Let’s see what he does,” Mace told Elston, then turned to Pen. “You watch only the Queen’s safety, understand? Nothing else.”
The Caden pulled his horse to a halt perhaps fifty yards away. Kelsea saw that he did indeed have a small child tucked in one arm; he lowered the boy carefully toward the ground before climbing down himself. “Who is he?”
“Merritt, Lady,” Mace replied. “The Caden don’t have a single leader; they’re too factional. But Merritt wields considerable power among them, even more than Dwyne.”
“If the child was a secret, there’s probably a woman in one of those villages as well,” Elston cautioned. “We need to handle this carefully.”
“Agreed.”
Now Merritt took his horse’s bridle in one hand, his son’s hand in the other, and began to walk toward Kelsea, his movements slow and cautious. He was indeed blond and heavily built, towering over the child beside him. But there was clear affection between them; it was obvious in the way the man shrank his strides to match the boy’s, the way the boy looked up at him every few moments, as though to be sure he was still there.
“Extraordinary,” Mace remarked quietly, then raised his voice. “Come no closer!”
Merritt stopped short. His son stared at him in confusion, and Merritt picked him up and set him in the crook of his arm. Kelsea could see the scar on Merritt’s forehead now, a truly nasty gash that had apparently seen no stitches. It wasn’t the distended wound that a childhood injury would leave; rather, it looked fairly recent, an ugly red line against his pale forehead.
“Is the Queen with you?”
“I am!”
“Pen,” Mace growled, “stay sharp.”
Merritt murmured to his son for a moment and then set him down. He raised his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender and ventured a few steps closer. Kelsea expected Mace to object, but he merely drew his sword and moved to stand in front of her as Merritt approached.
“I’m Merritt of the Caden, Majesty.”
“Well met. Did you come to kill me?”
“We no longer seek your death, Majesty. There’s no profit in it.”
The small boy had crept up behind his father to wrap an arm around his leg, and now Merritt reached down without thinking and picked him up again. “According to Sean, it’s you I have to thank for his life.”
“Many lives were saved last night. I’m glad your boy is one of them.”
“Will the Mace allow me to come a bit closer?”
Mace nodded. “You may come within five feet, if you keep your arms around your son at all times.”
“That’s a lot of care for someone traveling openly across flat country in daylight.”
Mace bristled, but said nothing. As Merritt came closer, Kelsea saw that the boy was falling asleep, his dark head tucked into the curve of his father’s neck. Merritt halted perhaps seven feet away, and Kelsea’s gaze was drawn automatically to the scar on his forehead, but when he looked her in the eye, she found that she couldn’t look away. Despite his bruiser’s build, his eyes were a bright and perceptive grey.
“I’ll be gone from New London for a time, Majesty, perhaps a month, to hide my family. But I’m an honorable man, and you’ve given me my son’s life. So you have my word: I will never raise a hand against you, and if it’s within my power to do you a similar favor, I will.”
He gestured toward the caravan on the northern horizon. “I apologize also for those of my brothers you found in this business. They were working on their own. I doubt we’d have approved this action if it had come to a vote.”
Kelsea raised her eyebrows, surprised. She wouldn’t have thought of the Caden as a democratic body.
“Should you need my assistance, find a baker’s boy named Nick down in the Wells,” Merritt continued, speaking to Mace now. “He’ll know how to get a message to me, and he’ll do it quietly.”
He bowed to Kelsea and turned to walk back to his horse, his gait slow so as not to wake the child. He remounted with the boy still in the crook of one arm (how strong he must be! Kelsea thought; she could barely haul herself and her own armor into a saddle) and began to trot west.
“Well, that was something,” Kelsea remarked.
“More than something, Lady,” Mace replied. “The Caden bow to no one. I think he meant every word.”
They watched Merritt until he was no more than a speck against the tan of the grasslands, and only then did Mace seem to relax. He snapped his fingers, particularly at Kibb, who showed signs of climbing down from his horse. “Back at it!”
They rode west. The shining cerulean line of the Crithe grew closer as they traveled, until it resolved itself into a bright ribbon of water running alongside them. The caravan would need to ford the Crithe, and that would take some effort, yet Kelsea found that she wasn’t worried about anything at the moment. She’d checked her sapphires often, but they simply hung there, heavy and cold. For today, at least, they were only jewels.
They kept within sight of the caravan until it reached the close-set group of villages along the Crithe. Mace had directed the villagers to cut weight as they went, leaving empty cages behind, and Wellmer assured Kelsea that the caravan was gradually being dismantled from village to village. No one would use Thorne’s handiwork again, not for anything but firewood.
But he can always build more, Kelsea’s mind warned. The thought made her jaw clench; if only they’d managed to take Thorne! She couldn’t be angry at Elston, but she didn’t underestimate the danger of having Thorne out there, on the loose. It might take him some time to regroup, but he wouldn’t be idle for long.
When the caravan reached the final village, Kelsea and her Guard finally turned away and headed for New London, rejoining the Mort Road. Their travel was uneventful. The guards talked quietly among themselves during the journey. Coryn, who’d had the presence of mind to gather all the water he could carry in the Argive, periodically passed around bottles. A couple of times they were treated to the truly horrible sound of Kibb singing riding songs, until Kelsea finally threatened to throw him out of her Guard if he didn’t shut up.
She spent much of the journey talking to Wellmer, with whom she’d had little conversation before. He told her that he’d been fifteen, living on the streets of New London and earning his bread by hustling games of darts, when Mace had found him. “He taught me to shoot, Lady. He said there wasn’t that much difference between archery and darts, and there isn’t. It’s in the eye.”
Kelsea looked up ahead, to where Mace led the company. “What if you failed to make the switch? Would he have thrown you back to the streets?”
“Probably. Dyer always says there’s no room for deadweight in the Queen’s Guard.”
That sounded like Dyer, fair but hard, probably true. Looking around her, Kelsea saw no signs of grief over Mhurn; indeed, her guards didn’t discuss him at all, and Kelsea wondered if he meant nothing to them now, if Queen’s Guards were able to cut their deadweight as easily as the caravan. She couldn’t forget about Mhurn so easily; the image of his empty, drug-hazed eyes recurred to her constantly as they traversed the Mort Road. She looked at the land around her, the deep amber of the wheat cut by the yellow line of the road, and wished that she could make it a softer world.
On the final night of the journey, they camped within sight of New London, atop a shallow rise on the banks of the Caddell. Her guards fell gratefully to their bedrolls, but Kelsea, who had slept soundly each night since they’d left the Argive, found herself wakeful. She tossed and fidgeted for perhaps an hour, then finally got up, wrapped herself in her cloak, and crept away from Pen, proud when he failed to wake.
She found Mace sitting some twenty feet down the side of the hill, looking out across the Caddell and the Almont Plain beyond, a pale blue shadow in the darkness. He didn’t even turn around as she approached.
“Can’t sleep, Lady?”
Feeling around on the ground, Kelsea found a broad, flat rock that would hold her comfortably and sat down beside him. “I never know what I’ll see when I sleep these days, Lazarus.”
“Where’s Pen?”
“Sleeping.”
“Ah.” He looped his arms around his legs. “We’ll undoubtedly discuss that at some point, but for now, I’m glad you found me alone, Lady. It’s time for me to offer my resignation.”
“Why?”
Mace chuckled bitterly. “You know, Lady, all those years I watched Carroll do this job, I envied him. I was better than him at so many things, you see. . . . I could read people better, I was a better fighter, I had better discipline. Each time the Regent tried to disband us, to cut off our salaries, I was the one who made sure it didn’t happen. I always assumed that when my turn came, I would be a better captain than Carroll. But pride has done me in.”
Kelsea bit her lip. Despite the events of the past week, she had never even considered asking Mace to resign. Who else could possibly do his job? She opened her mouth to tell him so, and then closed it. Maudlin sentiment would cut no ice here. “You’ve had several spectacular failures in security lately, Lazarus.”
“Indeed, Lady.”
“Disappointing, and yet I forgive you those failures.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
Kelsea thought for a moment, then continued, “That day in my chamber, when you and Pen grabbed hold of me, I could have killed you. Did you know that?”
“Not at the time, Majesty. But now I don’t doubt that it’s so.”
“I could kill you now, Lazarus, for all your vaunted prowess with sword and mace. And before I asked you to resign, I would kill you. I’m safest with you here beside me, not out there beside someone else.”
“I’m sworn to you, Lady. That doesn’t end when I resign.”
“So you say now. But even you can’t predict what circumstance may do. I won’t take the chance, and I don’t accept your resignation.”
She grabbed his arm, not hard, but not too gently either. “But make no mistake: if you ever refuse to obey a direct order of mine again, I will kill you. Anger almost made me do it once, and could easily make me do it again. I’m not a child any longer, Lazarus, nor am I a fool. I’m either the Queen or I’m not . . . there can be no grey.”
Mace swallowed; she heard it clearly in the dark. “You’re the Queen, Lady.”
“I’m sorry to threaten you, Lazarus. It’s not what I want.”
“I don’t fear death, Lady.”
She nodded. Mace didn’t fear anything; she already knew that.
“But I don’t want to die at your hands.”
Kelsea’s lips parted, and she stared at the twinkling line of the Caddell, unable to respond.
“What now, Lady?”
“Now we continue, Lazarus. We prepare for the war that we both know is coming. We figure out how to feed and educate and doctor all of these people. But even more than that . . .” She turned back to him. “I’ve been thinking for a long time about the shipment, about all those Tear in Mortmesne.”
You have? her mind asked, bewildered. When? And it came to Kelsea: while she’d slept. Something from that dark period strained to break the surface, but then it faded without a ripple, and the pool in her head lay still. She had dreamed; she’d dreamed of so many things that her mind had wiped itself clean.
“Many of the allotted are dead now, Lady. Worked to death or killed for their organs.”
“I know that. But organs can’t be the primary use for Mort slaves; Arliss says the transplant surgery hasn’t been perfected. There’s no money in it yet. No, it’ll be the two old standbys: labor and sex. I’m sure many of them are dead, but humanity always finds a way to survive this ordeal. I think more must still be alive.”
“So?”
“I don’t know yet. But something, Lazarus. Something.”
Mace shook his head. “I have several spies in Demesne, Lady, but none where you’re talking about, which is the Auctioneer’s Office. The Mort are a population under the boot; it’s difficult to turn them.”
“Carlin always used to tell me that people under tyranny needed only a swift kick to awaken them.”
Mace remained silent for a long moment.
“What?”
“Lady, your foster parents are dead.”
The words hit Kelsea like a punch to the stomach. She turned to him, opening her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Dyer found them there, Lady, when he went for the books. Both of them, some weeks dead.”
“How?”
“They were sitting in their parlor, mugs of tea in front of them, a bottle of cyanide on the table. Dyer’s no detective, but it was an easy scene to read. They waited until you left, poured their tea, and laced it. They would’ve been dead by the time the Caden reached the cottage.”
Kelsea stared at the river, feeling the warmth of tears on her cheeks. She should have known. She remembered Barty and Carlin in the weeks before her departure, the haphazard way they’d packed, the lack of urgency. The awful whiteness of their faces that morning in front of the cottage. All of their talk of Petaluma had been a show for Kelsea’s benefit. They had never planned to leave.
“Did you know this when you came to the cottage?”
“No.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell me?”
“For the same reason I haven’t told you, Lady: to save you anguish. Believe me, theirs was an honorable act. No matter where they went or how well they hid themselves, Barty and the Lady Glynn would always have been a danger to you.”
“Why?”
“They raised you, Lady. They had the sort of information no one else could discover: your likes and dislikes, what moves you, your weaknesses, who you really are.”
“What could anyone do with that?”
“Ah, Lady, that’s the sort of information that enemies value most. I use such intelligence myself, to suborn spies and create havoc. Pressure points are incredibly valuable. Moreover, Lady, what if someone had captured your foster parents, offered them to you for ransom, threatened them with harm? What would you have been willing to give?”
Kelsea had no answer. She couldn’t seem to get beyond the fact that she would never see Barty again. She thought of her chair, of Kelsea’s Patch, which sat right in the sunlight through the cottage window. More tears came now, burning like acid behind her eyelids.
“The Lady Glynn was a historian of the pre-Crossing, Lady, and Barty was a Queen’s Guard. They knew what they were getting into eighteen years ago, when I delivered you to their door.”
“You said you didn’t know!”
“I didn’t, Lady, but they did. Listen closely, for I will only tell this tale once.” Mace considered for a moment, then continued. “Eighteen years ago, I rode up to that cottage in the Reddick with you strapped to my chest. It was raining hard; we’d been on the road for three straight days, and it had rained the entire time. We rigged up a waterproof sling for me to carry you in, but even so, by the end of the journey, you were nearly wet through.”
Despite her grief, Kelsea was fascinated. “Did I cry?”
“Not a bit, Lady. You absolutely loved that sling. The burn on your arm was still healing, but so long as we were riding along, you never cried once. The only time I had to quiet you was when you began to laugh.
“When we got to the cottage, it was the Lady Glynn who answered the door. You did cry a bit when I unstrapped you from the sling; I’ve always thought that, even then, you knew somehow that the ride was over. But when I handed you to the Lady Glynn, you quieted instantly and went to sleep in her arms.”
“Carlin held me?” This seemed so unlikely that Kelsea wondered whether Mace was making up the entire story.
“She did, Lady. Barty offered me dinner, much to his lady’s displeasure, so we sat down to eat. By the end of the meal, I could see that Barty had already fallen in love with you; it was plain in his face.”
Kelsea closed her eyes, feeling more tears trickle from beneath the lids.
“When we were done eating, Barty offered to let me spend the night, but I wanted to be gone before the rain would no longer hide my tracks. When I’d repacked my saddle, I went in to bid them good-bye and found the three of you in the front room. I think they’d forgotten I was there. They saw nothing but you.”
Kelsea’s stomach gave a slow, sick lurch.
“Barty said, ‘Let me hold her.’ So the Lady Glynn handed you to him, and then—I’ll never forget, Lady—she said, ‘From now on, it will be you . . . the love must come from you.’
“Barty looked as baffled as I was, until she explained. ‘This is our great work, Barty. Children need love, but they also need stiffening, and you’ll be no help with that. Give her whatever she wants, and she’ll turn into her mother. She has to hate one of us, at least a little, so that she can walk out the door and not look back.’ ”
Kelsea closed her eyes.
“They knew, Lady. They always knew. They made a sacrifice, and you should weep, but you should also honor them for it.”
Kelsea wept, glad that Mace neither sought to comfort her nor tried to leave. He merely sat beside her, his arms wrapped around his knees, staring at the Caddell, until Kelsea’s tears reduced themselves to hitching gasps, then to slow breaths that whistled in and out of her throat.
“You should return to your bed, Lady. We get an early start tomorrow.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Try, and I’ll go easy on Pen for letting you sneak away.”
Kelsea opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t care about Pen, and then closed it. Somewhere on the return journey, all of her anger at Pen had faded away. It had been a child’s anger, she realized, implacable and unproductive . . . the sort that had always disappointed Carlin the most.
Putting a hand on Mace’s shoulder, Kelsea boosted herself up, wiping her face. But five steps away, she turned around. “What have you lost, Lazarus?”
“Lady?”
“You told Mhurn that you’d all lost something. What have you lost?”
“Everything.”
Kelsea shrank from the bitterness in his voice. “Have you gained something now?”
“I have, Lady, and I value it. Go to sleep.”