The mark of the true hero is that the most heroic of his deeds is done in secret. We never hear of it. And yet somehow, my friends, we know.
—Father Tyler’s Collected Sermons, FROM THE ARVATH ARCHIVE
Wake up, girl.”
Kelsea opened her eyes to a sky of such brilliant blue that she thought she must still be dreaming. But a quick glance around showed her that it was a tent. She was lying on the ground, wrapped in the skin of some animal. Not deer, which she would have recognized, but it was warm, so warm that she was reluctant to rise.
She looked up at the speaker, a man dressed entirely in dark blue. His voice was a pleasant baritone, distinctive enough that she recognized him even without his awful mask. He was clean-shaven and handsome, with sharp cheekbones and good humor in the set of his mouth. He was also considerably younger than she had guessed on the riverbank, certainly no more than twenty-five, his hair still thick and dark and his unlined face dominated by a pair of large black eyes that gave Kelsea pause; those eyes were much older than twenty-five.
“Where’s your handsome face today?”
“I’m home now,” he replied easily. “No point in dressing up.”
Kelsea busied herself with sitting upright, though the movement brought a strong warning twinge from the right side of her neck. Exploring the area gently with her fingers, she found a stitched gash, covered with some sort of sticky poultice.
“It will heal well. I tended you myself.”
“Thank you,” Kelsea replied, then realized that she wasn’t wearing her own clothing, but a gown of some sort of white cloth, linen perhaps. She reached up to touch her hair and found it smooth and soft; someone had given her a bath. She looked up at him, her cheeks reddening.
“Yes, me as well.” His smile widened. “But you needn’t worry, girl. You’re far too plain for my taste.”
The words hurt, and badly, but Kelsea hid the sting with only a slight tightening of her face. “Where’s my cloak?”
“Over there.” He flicked his thumb toward a pile of clothing in the corner. “But there’s nothing in it. It would take a better man than me to resist hunting for this.”
He held out one hand to display a dangling sapphire necklace. Kelsea reached up and found her own necklace still around her neck.
“They’re optimistic, girl, to let you have both. Some said the King’s jewel had been lost altogether.”
Kelsea restrained herself from reaching for the second necklace, since he so obviously wished her to. But her eyes followed the sapphire as it swung back and forth.
“You’ve never worn this necklace,” he remarked.
“How do you know?”
“If you had worn it, the jewel would never have allowed me to take it from you.”
“What?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “Don’t you know anything of these jewels?”
“I know they’re mine.”
“And what have you done to earn them? Born to a second-rate queen with a burn on your arm.”
Second-rate. What did that mean? Kelsea filed the comment away, speaking carefully. “I would not have wished for any of this.”
“Perhaps not.”
Something in his tone chilled Kelsea, warned her that she was in danger here. And yet why should that be, when he had saved her life on the riverbank? She watched the jewel, blue sparkles reflecting across her skin, while she concentrated on the problem. Bargaining required something to bargain with. She needed information. “May I ask your name, sir?”
“Unimportant. You may call me the Fetch.” He leaned back, awaiting her reaction.
“The name means nothing to me.”
“Really?”
“I was raised in isolation, you see.”
“Well, you would know my name otherwise. The Regent has a high price on my head, growing all the time.”
“For what?”
“I stole his horse. Among other things.”
“You’re a thief?”
“The world is full of thieves. If anything, I am the father of thieves.”
Kelsea smiled against her will. “Is that why you all wear masks?”
“Of course. People are envious of the gifts they don’t have.”
“Perhaps they just don’t like criminals.”
“One needn’t be a criminal to get in trouble, girl. There’s a handsome reward for your head as well.”
“My head,” Kelsea repeated faintly.
“Yes, your head. Your uncle offers twice as much if it’s recognizable upon delivery. A present for the Mort bitch, no doubt; I suppose she wishes to hang it somewhere. But your uncle demands the jewels and your arm, as proof.”
Carlin’s words about the fates of rulers reappeared in Kelsea’s mind. She tried to picture her head atop a pike and couldn’t. Carlin and Barty rarely spoke about the Raleigh Regent, Kelsea’s uncle, but there was no mistaking their tone. They held him in low esteem, and that low esteem had trickled down to Kelsea. The fact that her uncle wanted to kill her had never bothered her; he had never seemed important, not the way her mother was important. He was only an obstacle to be surmounted. She returned her attention to the Fetch and took a deep breath; he had drawn his knife now. It sat balanced on one knee.
“So, girl,” the Fetch continued in a deceptively pleasant voice, “what to do with you?”
Kelsea’s stomach tightened further, her mind racing. This man wouldn’t want her to beg.
I must prove that I’m worth something. Quickly.
“If you’re such a wanted man, I’ll be in a position to offer you clemency.”
“You will indeed, should you survive to sit on the throne for more than a few hours, and I doubt you will.”
“But I may,” Kelsea replied firmly. The wound on her neck gave a hard twinge, but she ignored it, recalling Carroll’s words in the clearing. “I’m made of stronger stuff than I appear.”
The Fetch stared at her, long and intently. He wanted something from her, Kelsea realized, though she couldn’t imagine what it might be. With each passing second, she became more uncomfortable, but she couldn’t look away. Finally, she blurted out the question in the back of her mind. “Why did you call my mother a second-rate queen?”
“You think she was first-rate, I suppose.”
“I don’t know anything about her. No one would tell me.”
His eyes widened. “Impossible. Carlin Glynn is an extraordinarily capable woman. We could have picked no one better.”
Kelsea’s mouth dropped open. No one but her mother’s guard knew where she’d been raised, or the Regent’s men would have been at the door of their cottage years before. She waited for the Fetch to continue, but he said nothing. Finally she asked, “How is it that you knew where I was, but the Mort and the Caden didn’t?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “The Mort are thugs, and the Caden didn’t start looking for you until your uncle grew desperate enough to pay their rates, which are exorbitant. If the Caden had been looking for you from the beginning, you’d have been dead years ago. Your mother didn’t hide you that well; she lacked imagination.”
Kelsea managed to hold her face still, but it wasn’t easy. He talked about her mother so contemptuously, but Carlin had never said anything bad about Queen Elyssa.
But she wouldn’t have, would she? Kelsea’s mind whispered unpleasantly. She promised.
“Why do you dislike my mother so much? Did she wrong you somehow?”
The Fetch tipped his head to one side, his gaze calculating. “You’re very young, girl. Incredibly young to be a queen.”
“Will you tell me your grievance with my mother?”
“I see no reason to.”
“Fine.” Kelsea crossed her arms. “Then I’ll continue to think of her as first-rate.”
The Fetch smiled appreciatively. “Young you may be, but you have more brains than your mother ever had on a good day.”
Kelsea’s wound was aching badly now. A fine mist of sweat had sprung up on her brow, and he seemed to notice it only a moment after she did herself. “Tip your head.”
Kelsea did so without thinking. The Fetch reached into his clothing and pulled out a pouch, then began to apply something wet to her neck. Kelsea braced herself for the sting that didn’t come. His fingers were soft on her skin. Within a few seconds, Kelsea realized that she should have been more protective of her person, and shut her eyes, resigned. A phrase from one of Carlin’s books occurred to her: any plausible scoundrel . . . Her own foolishness made her toes clench.
The anesthetic worked quickly; within a few seconds, the pain had dulled to a low pulse. The Fetch released Kelsea’s neck and pocketed the pouch. “Later, some mead should take care of the rest of the pain.”
“Don’t patronize me!” Kelsea snapped; she was angry at herself for finding this man attractive, and it seemed very important that he not know. “If you mean to kill me, be done with it!”
“In my own time.” The Fetch’s black eyes gleamed with something that Kelsea thought might be respect. “You surprise me, girl.”
“Did you expect me to beg?”
“Had you done so, I would have killed you on the spot.”
“Why?”
“Your mother was a beggar.”
“I’m not my mother.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Why don’t you tell me what it is you want?”
“We want you to be a queen.”
Kelsea heard the implication easily. “As my mother was not?”
“Have you any idea who your father was?”
“No, and I don’t care.”
“I do. I’ve a bet with one of my men.”
“A bet?”
His eyes twinkled. “Your paternity is one of the great wagering items in this kingdom. I know an old woman living in a village far to the south who backed her horse almost twenty years ago, and she’s been waiting for the truth to come out ever since. The field is, shall we say, quite wide.”
“How charming.”
“You’re royalty, girl. Nothing in your life will be personal anymore.”
Kelsea pursed her lips, annoyed at the turn of the conversation. Her father, like her uncle, had never seemed particularly important. Her mother was the important one, the woman who ruled the kingdom. Whoever Kelsea’s father was, he had apparently abandoned her at birth . . . but that abandonment had never hurt the way her mother’s had. Kelsea remembered days spent waiting in front of the picture window in the front room of the cottage; eventually, the sun would always set, and still her mother hadn’t come.
“We’ve waited a long time to see what you were made of, girl,” the Fetch remarked. “I cajole and threaten by turns, and now I’m no further. You’re not what we expected.”
“Who is we?”
The Fetch gestured behind him. Kelsea realized that she could hear men’s voices outside the tent, and, slightly more distant, someone chopping wood.
“What holds your group together?”
“That’s a perceptive question, so of course you’ll get no answer.” He sprang to his feet, the movement so sudden that Kelsea flinched and drew her knees together. Had she a knife and he nothing at all, this man would still have her dead in less than a minute. He reminded her of Mace: a man of latent violence, its employment all the more deadly for the fact that he held it in such low esteem. She’d forgotten to ask about Mace, she realized, but now wasn’t the time. She felt dim relief when the Fetch tucked his knife back into the band at his waist.
“Dress yourself, girl, and come outside.”
When he had disappeared through the tent flap, Kelsea turned her attention to the pile of dark-hued clothing on the ground. Men’s clothes, and far too big for her, but perhaps that was for the best. Kelsea didn’t flatter herself that she had a shapely figure.
Who cares about your figure?
No one, she answered Carlin grumpily, pulling the crumpled linen gown over her head. She wasn’t fool enough to miss the danger here: a man who was handsome, intelligent, and more than slightly bad. Not all of Carlin’s books had been nonfiction.
But I’m doing no harm, she insisted. If I know the danger, it lessens the harm.
Even inside her head, this statement didn’t ring entirely true. The Fetch had left moments ago, but she was already anxious to follow him outside and see him again.
Don’t be a fool, her mind snapped. You’re too ugly for him, he said so.
She had finished dressing now. Combing her fingers through her hair, she stood and peered out of the tent.
They must have brought her a long way south. The country surrounding the camp was no longer forest or even farmland; they were on top of a high, flat hill covered with weedy grass parched yellow by the sun. Similar hills surrounded them on all sides, a sea of rolling yellow. The land hadn’t yet begun to drop into desert, but they couldn’t be far from the Cadarese border.
At first glance, Kelsea would have taken the camp for that of a circus troupe: several tents dyed gaudy shades of red, yellow, and blue, situated around a stone fire pit. Something was cooking, for smoke drifted lazily into the air and Kelsea could smell roasting meat. On the other side of the pit, a short blond man dressed in the same sort of shapeless clothing as Kelsea herself was chopping wood.
Closer to Kelsea’s tent, three men were huddled together, talking in low voices. One of them was the Fetch; another, judging by his height and shoulders, could only be the enormous Morgan. He had blond hair and a round face that remained friendly as Kelsea approached. The third man was black, which gave Kelsea pause for a moment. She’d never seen a black person before, and she was fascinated by the man’s skin, which gleamed in the sunlight.
None of them bowed to her, not that Kelsea had expected them to. The Fetch beckoned her, and Kelsea moved forward, taking plenty of time about it so that he knew she didn’t jump to his command. As she drew nearer, he gestured to his two companions. “My associates, Morgan and Lear. They won’t harm you.”
“Unless you tell them to.”
“Of course.”
Kelsea squatted down and found the three of them gazing at her with an assessment that she could only describe as clinical. Her sense of danger doubled. But if they killed her, she reasoned, her uncle would remain on the throne. He might even become king, since he was the last of the line. It wasn’t much of a bargaining chip, but it was something. According to Carlin, the Regent was not loved in the Tearling, but maybe Carlin had lied to her about that too. Kelsea looked off into the distance, trying to tamp down her frustration. Her mother, the Regent, the Red Queen . . . she needed someone to tell her the truth.
What if the truth isn’t anything you want to hear?
She still wanted to know. And, she realized, someone did have answers. “Where’s Lazarus?”
“Your Mace? Over there.” The Fetch gestured toward a bright red tent some thirty feet away. One of his men, broad and sandy-haired, stood on guard.
“Can I see him?”
“Be my guest, girl. See if you can get him to settle down; he’s been making a nuisance of himself.”
Kelsea headed for the tent, a bit worried. They didn’t seem to be vicious men, but they were hard, and Mace didn’t strike her as a model prisoner. The man in front of the red tent stared at her, but she nodded at him and he allowed her to pass.
Mace was lying on the floor, blindfolded and bound securely to a peg in the ground. His wounds appeared to have been stitched just as skillfully as Kelsea’s, but ropes were coiled around his wrists and ankles, and a secondary line had been tied up around his neck in a noose. Kelsea hissed involuntarily, and at the sound Mace turned his head. “Have you been harmed, Lady?”
“No.” Mindful of the man stationed outside the tent, Kelsea seated herself cross-legged on the floor beside him and spoke in a low voice. “Only a few threats against my life.”
“If they were going to kill you, you’d be dead. Your uncle has no use for you alive.”
“They’re not—” Kelsea lowered her voice even further, struggling to express the strange impression she’d received. “I don’t think they’re sent from my uncle. They want something from me, but they won’t tell me what it is.”
“I don’t suppose you could untie me? They’ve found a knot I can’t slip.”
“I don’t think further flight is the way, Lazarus. We wouldn’t escape these men.”
“Wouldn’t you rather call me Mace?”
“Carroll didn’t.”
“Carroll and I, Lady, have a long history.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Kelsea considered it, realizing that she always thought of him as Mace in her head. “Still, I prefer Lazarus. It’s a name of good omen.”
“As you like.” Mace shifted, the ropes binding his wrists and ankles visibly expanding as he tried to stretch his muscles.
“Are you in pain?”
“Discomfort. Certainly I’ve been in worse places. How did we escape from the river?”
“Magic.”
“What sort of—”
“Lazarus,” Kelsea cut in firmly. “I need some answers.”
He winced visibly, shifting against his bonds.
“I know my uncle placed a price on my head. But what has he done to the Tearling?”
“Pick something, Lady. Your uncle’s probably done it.”
“Explain.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t have this discussion with you, Lady.”
“Why? Were you in my uncle’s guard?”
“No.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but he merely lay there. Somehow Kelsea knew that his eyes were shut tightly, even beneath the blindfold, like a man under heavy interrogation. She bit down on her cheek, hard, trying to keep a rein on her temper. “I don’t understand how I’m supposed to make smart decisions without knowing everything.”
“Why dwell on the past, Lady? You have the power to make your own future.”
“What of my dolls and dresses?”
“I poked you with a stick to see if you’d fight back. And you did.”
“What if I order you to tell me?”
“Order away, Lady, and see how far you get.”
She thought for a moment, then decided not to. It was the wrong road to take with Mace; order though she might, he would be guided by his own judgment. After watching him shift restlessly in his bindings for another minute, Kelsea felt the last of her annoyance give way to pity. They’d trussed him up very hard; he barely had room to stretch.
“How’s your head?”
“It’s fine. Bastard hit me just hard enough, in just the right place. A good shot.”
“Have they fed you?”
“Yes.”
“Carroll told me that you were the one who smuggled me from the Keep when I was a baby.”
“I was.”
“Have you always been a Queen’s Guard?”
“Since my fifteenth year.”
“Have you ever regretted choosing this life?”
“Not once.” Mace moved again, his legs stretching and then relaxing, and Kelsea watched, astonished, as one foot slipped free of its coil of ropes.
“How did you do that?”
“Anyone can do it, Lady, if they take the trouble to practice.” He flexed his foot, working the stiffness out. “Another hour and I’ll have a hand out as well.”
Kelsea stared at him for a moment, then scrambled to her feet. “Do you have family, Lazarus?”
“No, Lady.”
“I want you for my Captain of Guard. Think on it while you escape.”
She left the tent before he could reply.
The sun was beginning to sink, leaving only a dark line of cloud topped with orange on the horizon. Looking around the camp, Kelsea found the Fetch leaning against a tree, staring at her, his gaze flat and speculative. When she met his eye, he smiled, a dark and frozen smile that made her flinch.
Not just a thief, but a murderer as well. Beneath the handsome man, Kelsea sensed another man, a terrible one, with a life as black as the water in an ice-covered lake. A murderer many, many times.
The idea should have brought horror. Kelsea waited for a long moment, but what came instead was an even worse realization: it didn’t matter at all.
Dinner was an unexpectedly lavish affair. The meat Kelsea had smelled earlier turned out to be venison, and a much better specimen than she’d eaten several days ago. There were boiled eggs, which surprised Kelsea until she caught sight of a small chicken coop out behind her own tent. Morgan had been baking bread over the fire pit for most of the day, and it turned out perfect, crusted on the outside and soft on the inside. The sandy-haired man, Howell, poured her a cup of mead, which Kelsea had never tasted and treated with great wariness. Alcohol and governing went together badly; her books seemed to indicate that alcohol went badly with everything.
She ate little. For the first time in a very long while, she was conscious of her weight. The cottage had always been well stocked with food, and Kelsea usually had second helpings at dinner without a thought. But now she pecked at her meal, not wanting them to think she was a glutton. Not wanting him to think so. He sat beside her, and there might as well have been an invisible cord that tugged at her when he smiled or laughed.
The Fetch urged Kelsea to tell them of her childhood in the cottage. She couldn’t imagine why he would be interested, but he pressed her, and so she told them, blushing occasionally at the intensity of their gazes. The mead must have loosened her tongue, for she suddenly had many things to say. She told them about Barty and Carlin, about the cottage, about her lessons. Every day, Barty had her in the morning until lunch, and then Carlin had her until dinnertime. Carlin taught her from books, Barty taught her outside. She told them that she knew how to skin a deer and smoke the meat to last for months, that she could snare a rabbit in a homemade cage, that she was handy with her knife but not fast enough. She told them that every night after dinner, she began a book of fiction, reading just for herself, and usually finished it before bedtime.
“A fast reader, are you?” Morgan asked.
“Very fast,” Kelsea replied, blushing.
“It doesn’t sound like you’ve had much fun.”
“I don’t think the point was for me to have fun.” Kelsea took another sip of mead. “I’m certainly making up for it now, anyway.”
“We’ve rarely been accused of being fun,” the Fetch remarked. “You clearly have no head for alcohol.”
Kelsea frowned and put her cup back down on the table. “I do like this stuff, though.”
“Apparently. But slow down, or I’ll have How cut you off.”
Kelsea blushed again, and they all laughed.
At the urging of the others, the black man, Lear, stood up and told the tale of the White Ship, which had sunk in the Crossing and taken most of American medical expertise with it. Lear told the tale well, much better than Carlin, who was no storyteller, and Kelsea found herself with tears in her eyes as the ship went down.
“Why did they put all of the doctors in one ship?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense for each ship to have its own doctor?”
“The equipment,” Lear replied, with a slight sniff that told Kelsea he liked to tell stories, but didn’t appreciate having to answer questions afterward. “Lifesaving medical equipment was the one technology that William Tear allowed them to bring on the Crossing. But it was lost all the same, along with the rest of medicine.”
“Not entirely lost,” Kelsea replied. “Carlin told me that there’s birth control available in the Tear.”
“Indigenous birth control. They had to rediscover it when they landed, mostly by trial and error with local plant life. Real science has never existed in the Tearling.”
Kelsea frowned, wondering why Carlin hadn’t told her that. But of course, to Carlin, birth control was just one of many figures to take into account on a population chart. The Fetch sat down beside her and she felt blood rush to her cheeks. It was a dangerous subject to think about while he was next to her in the dark.
After dinner was cleared, they pushed two tables together and taught her how to play at poker. Kelsea, who had never even seen playing cards before, took a pure pleasure in the game, the first time she’d taken real pleasure in anything since the Queen’s Guard had come to Carlin’s door.
The Fetch sat beside her and peered at her cards. Kelsea found herself blushing from time to time, and prayed that he wouldn’t notice. He was undeniably attractive, but the real source of his charm was something very different: he obviously didn’t care one whit what Kelsea thought of him. She wondered if he cared what anyone thought.
After a few hands, she seemed to be getting the hang of the game, though it was difficult to remember the many ways to get the high hand. The Fetch ceased to comment on her discard choices, which Kelsea took as a compliment. However, she continued to lose each hand and couldn’t understand why. The mechanics of the game were simple enough, and most of the time prudence counseled that she fold. Each time she did so, however, the hand was usually won by a lower set of cards, and each time, the Fetch chortled into his mug.
Finally a scruffy blond man (Kelsea was fairly certain his name was Alain), while collecting the cards to shuffle and deal, caught Kelsea’s eye and commented, “You have dire need of a poker face.”
“Agreed, girl,” said the Fetch. “Every thought you have is written plain in your eyes.”
Kelsea took another gulp of mead. “Carlin says I’m an open book.”
“Well, you’d better fix that, and fast. Should we decide not to kill you, you’ll find yourself in a den of snakes. Honesty will serve you ill.”
His casual talk of killing her made Kelsea’s stomach clench, but she attempted to school her face to blankness.
“Better,” the Fetch remarked.
“Why can’t you make this decision about killing me and be done with it?” Kelsea asked. The mead seemed to have cleared her head even while muddling it, and she longed for a straight answer.
“We wanted to see what sort of queen you look to be.”
“Why not just give me a test, then?”
“A test!” The Fetch’s grin broadened, and his black eyes gleamed. “What an interesting idea.”
“This is a fine game,” grumbled Howell. He had a wide, painful-looking scar on his right hand that appeared to be a burn mark. Of course he wanted to get back to play; he won the most often, with the worst cards.
“We’re going to play a different game now,” the Fetch announced, pushing Kelsea none too gently off the bench. “It’s a proper examination, girl. Get yourself over there.”
“I’ve had too much mead to take an examination.”
“Too bad.”
Kelsea glared at him but moved away from the bench, noticing with slight astonishment that she was unsteady on her feet. The five men turned from the table to watch her. Alain, who had been dealing, snapped the cards in one last shuffle and then pocketed them in a movement too quick to follow.
The Fetch leaned forward and placed his hands beneath his chin, studying her closely. “What will you do should you become a queen indeed?”
“What will I do?”
“Have you any policy in mind?”
The Fetch spoke lightly, but his black eyes were grave. Beneath the question, Kelsea sensed an infinite and deadly patience, perversely coupled with a desperate need for her answer. A test indeed, and she knew instinctively that if she answered incorrectly, the conversation was done.
She opened her mouth, not knowing what she would say, and Carlin’s words spilled out into the darkness, Carlin’s vision, reiterated so often in the library that Kelsea now spoke the words in a litany as practiced as though she read from the Bible of God’s Church. “I’ll govern for the good of the governed. I’ll make sure that every citizen is properly educated and doctored. I’ll cease wasteful spending and ease the burden on the poor through redistribution of land and goods and taxation. I’ll restore the rule of law in this kingdom and drive out the influence of Mortmesne—”
“So you do know of it!” Lear barked.
“Of Mortmesne?” She looked at him blankly. “I know that Mortmesne’s hold over this kingdom grows all the time.”
“What else of Mortmesne?” boomed Morgan, his huge form bearlike in the firelight.
Kelsea shrugged. “I’ve read of the early years of the Red Reign. And I’ve been told that my uncle has likely made alliance with the Red Queen.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really. Some information on Mort customs.”
“The Mort Treaty?”
“What’s that?”
“Great God,” murmured Howell.
“Even her guardians sworn to secrecy,” the Fetch told the rest of them, shaking his head. “We should have known.”
Kelsea thought of Carlin’s face, her voice, always so laden with regret: I promised.
“What is the Mort Treaty?”
“You do at least know of the Mort invasion?”
“Yes,” Kelsea replied eagerly, glad to finally know something. “They made it all the way to the walls of the Keep.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.”
The Fetch turned away from her and stared off into the darkness. Kelsea looked up at the night sky, and she saw thousands upon thousands of stars. They were miles from everything out here, and the sky was enormous. When she looked back at the group of men, she was dizzy, and nearly stumbled before catching herself.
“No more mead for you,” Howell announced, shaking his head.
“She’s not drunk,” Morgan disagreed. “She’s lost her legs, but there’s nothing wrong with her wits.”
The Fetch returned to them then, with the decisive air of a man who had made a difficult decision. “Lear, tell us a story.”
“What story?”
“A Brief History of the Mort Invasion, from Crossing to Disaster.”
Kelsea narrowed her eyes; he was treating her like a child again. He turned to her and grinned, almost as though he’d read her thoughts.
“I’ve never told that as a story,” Lear remarked.
“Well, make a good tale of it, if you can.”
Lear cleared his throat, took a sip of mead, and locked his gaze on Kelsea. There was no charity there, none at all, and Kelsea had to fight not to look down at her feet.
“Once upon a time, there was a kingdom called the Tearling. It was founded by a man named William Tear, a utopian who dreamed of a land of plenty for all. But ironically, the Tearling was a kingdom of scarce resources, for the British and Americans had not been fortunate in their choice of landing place. The Tearling had no ores, no manufacturing. The Tear were farmers; all they had to offer was the food they grew, the meat they raised, and a limited amount of good lumber from their indigenous oaks. Life was difficult, basic necessities were hard to come by, and over the years many Tear became poor and illiterate. They had to buy everything else from the lands surrounding, and since they were stuck in a hard place, the price wasn’t cheap.
“The neighboring kingdom had been luckier in the Crossing. It had everything that the Tearling lacked. It had doctors with access to centuries of European knowledge. It had masons, decent horses, and some of the technology that William Tear had forbidden. Most important of all, it had vast deposits of iron and tin in the ground, so it had not only mining but an army with superior weapons of steel edge. This kingdom was New Europe, and for a long time it was content to be rich and invulnerable, to have its citizens live and die in health and comfort.”
Kelsea nodded; she knew all of this already. But Lear’s voice was deep and hypnotic, and he did make it sound like a fairy tale, like something from Carlin’s Complete Brothers Grimm back at home. Kelsea wondered if Mace could hear the tale in his tent, whether he’d worked his other hand free. Her mind felt wildly out of focus, and she shook her head to clear it as Lear continued.
“But toward the end of the second Tear century a sorceress appeared, seeking the rule of New Europe for herself. She slaughtered the democratically elected representatives, their wives, even their children in cradles. Citizens who resisted woke to find their families dead, their homes on fire. It took nearly half a century to subdue the populace, but eventually democracy gave way to dictatorship, and everyone in the surrounding kingdoms forgot that this rich land had once been New Europe; instead it became Mortmesne, the Dead Hand. And likewise, everyone forgot that this sorceress had no name. She became the Red Queen of Mortmesne, and today, one hundred and thirteen years later, she still holds her throne.
“But unlike her predecessors, the Red Queen wasn’t content to control only her own kingdom; she wanted the entire New World. After consolidating her rule, she turned her attention to the Mort army, building it into a vast and powerful machine that could not be defeated. And some forty years ago, she began to move beyond her own borders. She took Cadare first, then Callae. These countries surrendered easily, and now they’re subject to Mortmesne. They pay tribute, as any good colony would. They allow Mort garrisons to quarter in their homes and patrol their streets. There is no resistance.”
“That’s not true, though,” Kelsea objected. “Mortmesne had an uprising. Carlin told me about it. The Red Queen sent all the rebels to Callae, into exile.”
Lear glared at her, and the Fetch chuckled. “You can’t interrupt him when he’s telling a tale, girl. The Callae uprising lasted about twenty minutes; he’s right to omit it.”
Kelsea bit her lip, embarrassed. Lear gave her a warning glance before continuing. “But when the Red Queen had reduced these nations to colonies and finally turned her attention to the Tearling, she found trouble in the form of Queen Arla.”
My grandmother, Kelsea thought. Arla the Just.
“Queen Arla was sickly all her life, but she had brains and courage, and she liked being the queen of a free nation. All of the landowners in the kingdom, particularly God’s Church, were worried about their land, and they demanded that she reach a settlement with the Red Queen. The Tearling army was weak and poorly organized, utterly outmatched by the Mort. Nevertheless, Queen Arla refused all Mort overtures and challenged the Red Queen to take this kingdom by force. So Mortmesne invaded the eastern Tearling.
“The Tearling army fought well, perhaps better than anyone could have anticipated. But they had weapons of wood and a few black-market swords, while the Mort army was armed and armored with iron. They had steel-edged blades and steel arrowheads, and they carved their way through the Tear with little difficulty. The Mort had already taken the eastern half of the country by the time Queen Arla died of pneumonia in the winter of 284. She left two surviving children: the Crown Princess Elyssa, and her younger brother Thomas. Elyssa began to make overtures of peace to the Mort Queen almost immediately upon taking the throne. But she couldn’t offer tribute, even if she’d been so inclined. There simply wasn’t enough money.”
“Why not lumber?” Kelsea asked. “I thought the surrounding kingdoms valued Tear oak.”
Lear glared at her; she had interrupted him again. “Not enough. Mort pine is of poorer quality than Tear oak, but you can build with it if you need to. Negotiations failed, and the Mort army made straight for New London. The road to the capital was wholesale rape and slaughter, and the Mort left a trail of burned villages in their wake.”
Kelsea thought of Mhurn’s story, of the man who had lost his wife and child. She stared up at the night sky. Where were the rest of her guards now?
“The situation was desperate. The Mort army was about to breach the walls of the Keep when Queen Elyssa finally came to an agreement with the Red Queen. The Mort Treaty was signed only a few days later, and it’s kept the peace ever since.”
“And the Mort? Did they withdraw?”
“Yes. Under the terms of the treaty, they left the city several days later and withdrew across the countryside. Strictly speaking, there were no further casualties.”
“Lear,” the Fetch cut in. “Have some more ale.”
Kelsea’s insides warmed with pride. Why had Carlin never told her any of this? This was the sort of tale she’d always wanted to hear. Queen Elyssa, the hero! She imagined her mother, barricaded in the Keep with the Mort hordes just outside and her food stores dwindling, sending secret messages back and forth to Demesne. Victory snatched from the very jaws of disaster. It was like something from one of Carlin’s books. And yet . . . and yet . . . as she looked around the table, she saw that none of the men were smiling.
“It’s a good story,” she ventured, turning to Lear. “And you told it very well. But what does it have to do with me?”
“Look at me, girl.”
She turned and found the Fetch staring at her, his gaze as grim as the rest.
“Why haven’t you begged for your life?”
Kelsea’s brow furrowed. What on earth did he want from her? “Why would I beg?”
“It’s the accepted course for captives, to offer everything in return for their lives.”
He was playing with her again, Kelsea realized, and the idea set off a flare of anger deep inside her. She drew a long, shaky breath before replying, “You know, Barty told me a story once. In the early years after the Crossing, there was a Tear farmer whose son took gravely ill. This was before the British ships arrived in the Tearling, so there were no doctors at all. The son grew sicker and sicker, and the father believed that he would die. He was consumed by grief.
“But one day a tall man in a black cloak showed up. He said he was a healer, that he could cure the son’s illness, but only for a price: the father must give him one of the son’s fingers to appease the man’s god. The father had his doubts about the man’s abilities, but he thought it a good bargain: one useless little finger for his son’s life, and of course the healer would only take the finger if he succeeded. The father watched for two days as the healer worked over his son with spells and herbs, and lo and behold, the son was cured.
“The father tried to think of a way to go back on the bargain, but he couldn’t, for the man in the black cloak had begun to frighten him very much. So he waited until his son was asleep, then he fetched a knife and sliced off the little finger of the boy’s left hand. He wrapped the hand with cloth and staunched the bleeding. But without antibiotics, the wound soon became infected with gangrene, and the son died all the same.
“The father turned to the healer, furious, and demanded an explanation. The healer drew off his black cloak to reveal a terrible darkness, a scarecrow shape of nothing. The father cowered, covering his face, but the shape only announced, ‘I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.’ ”
Lear was nodding slowly, the first smile she had ever seen flickering about his mouth.
“What’s your point?” the Fetch asked.
“Everyone dies eventually. I think it’s better to die clean.”
He watched her a moment longer, then leaned forward and held up the second necklace so that the sapphire swung back and forth above the table, catching the firelight. The jewel seemed very large, so deep that Kelsea could look beneath its surface and see something moving, dark and far away. She reached for it, but the Fetch pulled the necklace back.
“You’ve passed half of the test, girl. You’ve said all of the right things. We’re going to let you live.”
The men around the table seemed to relax all at once. Alain took the cards out and began shuffling them again. Howell got up and went for more ale.
“But,” the Fetch continued in a low voice, “words are the easy part.”
Kelsea waited. He spoke lightly, but his eyes were grave in the firelight.
“I don’t think you’ll survive long enough to truly rule this kingdom. You’re bright and good-hearted, perhaps even brave. But you’re also young and woefully naive. The protection of the Mace may extend your life beyond its appointed time, but he can’t save you. However . . .”
He took Kelsea’s chin in one hand, spearing her with his black gaze. “Should you ever gain the throne in truth, I expect to see your policies implemented. They’re much in need of refinement, and likely doomed to failure in execution, but they’re good policies, and they show an understanding of political history that most monarchs never take the trouble to achieve. You’ll rule by the principles you’ve outlined, and you’ll attempt to cure the blight on this land, no matter what it costs you. This is my test, and if you fail, you will answer to me.”
Kelsea raised her eyebrows, trying to hide the shiver that passed through her. “You think you could get to me once I’m in the Keep?”
“I can get to anyone in this kingdom. I am more dangerous than the Mort, more dangerous than the Caden. I’ve stolen many things from the Regent, and he’s been under my knife. I could’ve killed him many times over, but that I had to wait.”
“For what?”
“For you, Tear Queen.”
Then he was up and gone from the table in one fluid motion, and Kelsea was left staring after him, her face burning where his fingers had been.