Many families waited in front of the Keep that day, preparing themselves for grief. They couldn’t know that they were about to become players on the stage of history, and some to hold parts greater than they could ever have imagined.
—The Early History of the Tearling,
AS TOLD BY MERWINIAN
They entered New London several hours after midday. Kelsea was groggy with the heat, the punishing weight of her armor, and lack of sleep, but as they crossed the New London Bridge, the sheer size of the city slapped her awake.
The bridge had a toll gate, two men on either side making the collection. Mace produced ten pence from his cloak and managed the admirable trick of paying the gatekeeper while keeping his face covered. Kelsea studied the bridge. It was a marvel of engineering: at least fifty yards long, carved from grey blocks of granite and supported by six enormous pillars that jutted upward from the Caddell River. The Caddell would continue around the outer edge of the city, meandering some fifty miles southwest before it descended in falls over the cliffs and emptied into the Tearling Gulf. The water beneath the bridge was a deep azure.
“Don’t look too long at the water,” Mace murmured, and Kelsea jerked around to face forward.
New London had originally started as a small town, built by early settlers on one of the lower foothills of the Rice Mountains. But as the town grew into a city, it had spread from hill to hill, eventually becoming the Tear capital. Now New London covered the entire stretch of foothills, its buildings and streets rolling gently up and down to accommodate the topography. The Keep rose from the center of the city, an enormous obelisk of grey stone that dwarfed the buildings surrounding. In her mind, Kelsea had always pictured the Keep as an orderly structure, but the castle ascended ziggurat fashion, without symmetry: battlements and balconies on various levels, multiple nooks and crannies capable of concealment. The Keep had been constructed during the reign of Jonathan the Good, the second king of the Tearling; no one knew the name of the architect, but he must have been a marvel.
The rest of the city was less marvelous. Most of the buildings were poorly constructed of cheap wood, and they leaned haphazardly every which way. One good fire, Kelsea thought, and half the city would burn down.
Near the Keep, perhaps a mile distant, was another tower, pure white and perhaps half as tall, topped with a golden cross. That must be the Arvath, the seat of God’s Church. Close to the Keep, of course, although Mace had told her that the Regent had given in and allowed the Holy Father to build a private chapel within the Keep walls as well. Kelsea couldn’t tell if the cross atop the Arvath was gilded or made of real gold, but it shone brilliantly in the sun, and Kelsea narrowed her eyes at the sight. William Tear had forbidden the practice of organized religion in his utopia; according to Carlin, he had even thrown one man right over the side of his flagship when he found out the man had been proselytizing in secret. But now Christianity had rebounded as strongly as ever. Kelsea couldn’t say what her attitude toward God’s Church would have been if she’d grown up in a different house, if her values had not been so shaped by Carlin’s atheism. But it was too late; Kelsea’s distrust of the golden cross was instinctive and visceral, even though she knew that she would have to come to some sort of compromise with what it represented. She had never been good at compromise, even during the easy conflicts that arose in the cottage.
Mace rode silently beside her, occasionally pointing for a change of direction, as the bridge ended and the crowded thoroughfare entered the city proper. They both remained heavily cloaked and hooded. Mace believed that all routes to the Keep would be guarded, and Kelsea sensed the watchfulness in him, the way he occasionally shifted his position to place himself between her and something that had put his wind up.
Kelsea couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary, but how could she know what was ordinary? The streets were lined with stalls, merchants hawking everything from simple fruits and vegetables to exotic birds. An open-air market, Kelsea realized, one that grew ever more densely packed as she and Mace attempted to maneuver their horses farther into the city. There were shops as well, each with a gaily-colored placard out front, and Kelsea saw a tailor, a baker, a healer, a hairdresser, even a haberdasher! What sort of vanity supported a hat shop?
The crowd astounded her. After years with only Barty and Carlin, it was hard to accept so much humanity in one place. People were everywhere, and they came in so many varieties, tall and short, old and young, dark and fair, thin and round. Kelsea had met plenty of new people in the past few days, but she had never really considered before how many possibilities were presented by a single human face. She saw a man with a long, hooked nose, almost like the beak of a bird; a woman with long, wavy blonde hair that seemed to reflect the sun in thousands of sparkles. Everything seemed overly bright, enough to make Kelsea’s eyes water. And the sounds! All around Kelsea was the roar of innumerable voices raised at once, a clamor that she had never heard before. Individual voices pressed in on her from time to time, merchants shouting their wares or acquaintances greeting each other across the confusion of the road, but their voices were nothing compared to the overall roar of the crowd. It attacked Kelsea’s ears with a physical force that threatened to crush her eardrums, yet she found the chaos oddly comforting.
As they rounded one corner, a street performer caught Kelsea’s eye. He placed a rose in a vase, made an identical vase appear from nowhere, then made the rose vanish and reappear instantaneously in the second vase. Kelsea slowed her horse to watch. The magician vanished the rose and both vases entirely, and then reached into his own mouth and produced a snow-white kitten. The animal was clearly alive; it squirmed in his hands while the crowd applauded. The magician then presented the kitten to a small girl in the audience, who squealed with excitement.
Kelsea smiled, charmed. Most likely he was gifted only with extraordinary dexterity, not true magic, but she could see no slip in the flawless transition of objects.
“We court danger here, Lady,” murmured Mace.
“What danger?”
“Only a feeling. But my feelings on such matters are usually right.”
Kelsea shook the reins and her horse began to trot forward again. “The magician, Lazarus. Mark him for me.”
“Lady.”
As the day drew on, Kelsea began to share Mace’s anxiety. The novelty of the crowd was diminishing, and everywhere Kelsea looked, she sensed people staring at her. She felt more and more hunted, and wished simply for the journey to be over. She had no doubt Mace had chosen the best route, but still she began to long for an open, clear space where threats could arrive cleanly, an honest fight.
But she didn’t know how to fight.
Although New London had the feel of a labyrinth, some neighborhoods were clearly better off than others. The higher-end areas had well-tended roads and well-dressed citizens on the streets, even a few brick buildings with glass windows. But other areas had tightly packed pinewood buildings with no windows and denizens who slouched along the walls in a creeping, furtive manner. Sometimes Kelsea and Mace were forced to ride through a cloud of stench that suggested that the houses were plumbed poorly, or not at all.
This is what it smells like in February, Kelsea thought, sickened. What must it be like in high summer?
Halfway through a particularly run-down section, Kelsea realized she was in a blue district. The street was so narrow that it was really an alley. The buildings were all made of some cheap wood that Kelsea couldn’t even identify, and many buildings listed so far sideways that it seemed a miracle they were still standing. Occasionally Kelsea heard screams and the sound of things breaking as they passed. The air rang with laughter, a cold laughter that made her skin break out in gooseflesh.
Poorly dressed women appeared from the crooked doorways and leaned against walls, while Kelsea stared at them in helpless fascination from beneath the shelter of her hood. There was an indefinable air of squalor about the prostitutes, something that couldn’t be pinpointed. It wasn’t their clothing; certainly their dresses were neither more nor less fancy than many Kelsea had seen, and despite the considerable amount of flesh they displayed, it wasn’t the cut of the garments either. It was something in the eyes, in the way the eyes seemed to eat up the faces of even the heaviest women. They looked worn, the young as well as the old. Many of them appeared to have scars. Kelsea didn’t want to imagine the lives they must lead, but she couldn’t help it.
I’ll close this entire section down, she thought. Close it down and give them all real employment.
Carlin’s voice spoke up in her head. Will you regulate the length of their dresses as well? Perhaps forbid novels deemed too pornographic?
There’s a difference.
No difference. Blue laws are blue laws. If you wish to dictate private morality, march yourself over to the Arvath.
Mace directed her to the left, between two buildings, and Kelsea was relieved when they emerged onto a wide boulevard lined with neatly kept shops. The grey facade of the Keep was closer now, blotting out the surrounding mountains and most of the sky. Despite the width of the boulevard, it was so crowded that Kelsea and Mace were boxed in again, and could only muddle along at the crowd’s pace. There was more sunlight here, and Kelsea felt uneasy, exposed despite her cloak and hood. No one knew what she looked like, but Mace must cut a recognizable figure anywhere. He seemed to share the feeling, for he spurred his stallion forward until he was literally nudging the crowd of riders and pedestrians out of the way. A path opened before them, with some grumbling on either side.
“Straight ahead,” Mace muttered, “as quickly as we can.”
Still their progress was slow. Rake, who had behaved well throughout the journey, seemed to sense Kelsea’s anxiety and now began to resist her direction. Her efforts to control the horse quickly became exhausting in combination with the weight of Pen’s armor. She was sweating in thick drips that trickled down her neck and back, and Mace’s darting glances behind them became more frequent as they went. The crowds continued to pack them in more and more tightly as they approached the Keep.
“Can’t we take another way?”
“There’s no other way,” Mace replied. He was controlling his horse with only one hand now; the other was on his sword. “We’re out of time, Lady. Push on; not much farther now.”
For the next few minutes, Kelsea struggled to stay conscious. The late-afternoon sun bore down on her dark cloak, and the close quarters created by the crowd did nothing to relieve the feeling of suffocation. Twice she swayed in her saddle, and was only restored by Mace’s tight grip on her shoulder.
Finally the boulevard ended, branching off onto a wide field of grass that circled the Keep and its moat. At the sight of the Keep Lawn, Kelsea felt a moment of atavistic excitement. Here the Mort soldiers had gathered with their siege equipment, had nearly breached the walls, and then had been turned away at the last minute. The lawn sloped gently downhill toward the Keep, and almost directly below Kelsea, a wide stone bridge crossed the water, leading to the Keep Gate. Two lines of guards were stationed at even intervals along the edges of the bridge. The grey monolith of the Keep itself towered almost directly over Kelsea’s head, and staring at the top made her dizzy, forced her to look away.
The Keep Lawn was covered with people, and Kelsea’s first reaction was surprise: wasn’t her arrival supposed to be a secret? Adults, children, even the elderly streamed like water across the grass and down toward the moat. But this wasn’t at all how Kelsea had pictured this day in her daydreams. Where were the cheering masses, the flowers thrown? Some of these people were weeping, but not the happy tears that Kelsea had imagined. Like the farmers in the Almont, all of these people looked as though they could use several hundred good meals. They wore the same sort of clothing Kelsea had seen in the Almont as well: dark and shapeless wool. Deep misery was etched into each face. Kelsea felt a sudden wave of powerful anxiety. Something wasn’t right.
Another scan of the lawn revealed that while many of the people on the lawn were milling around, apparently loitering, some of them had organized into long, straight lines that stretched down to the edge of the moat. When the crowd parted, Kelsea saw that there were several tables down there, tables with men standing behind them, probably officials, given the deep, identical blue of their clothing. Kelsea felt relief, tinged with slight disappointment. These people hadn’t come to see her at all. They were here for something else. The lines were very long, and they weren’t moving. The entire crowd appeared to be waiting.
But for what?
She turned to Mace, who was keeping a sharp eye on the lawn, one hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. “Lazarus, what are all these people doing here?”
He didn’t answer, wouldn’t meet her eye. A cold noose seemed to tighten around her heart. The crowd shifted again, and Kelsea spotted something new, some sort of metal contraption beside the moat. She stood up in her stirrups to get a better look and saw a series of structures: low rectangular boxes, about ten feet tall. The tops and bottoms were wood, and the sides were metal. There were nine of them in a line, stretching all the way down the lawn toward the far corner of the Keep. Kelsea squinted (her eyesight had never been very good) and saw that the walls of the boxes were actually a series of metal bars. Time suddenly slipped backward, and she saw Barty, heard his voice as clearly as if he was beside her, his fingers cleverly weaving wire through a series of holes punched in a piece of sanded wood. “Now, Kel, we make the wire tight enough that the rabbit can’t get away, but not so tight that the poor little bastard suffocates before we find him. People have to trap to survive, but a good trapper makes sure the animal suffers as little as possible.”
Kelsea’s eyes ran over the line of metal boxes again, assessing, and she felt everything inside her go cold, all at once.
Not boxes. Cages.
She gripped Mace’s arm, heedless of the wounds that she knew lay beneath his cloak. When she spoke, her voice didn’t entirely sound like her own. “Lazarus. You tell me what’s going on here. Now.”
This time he finally met her eye, and his bleak expression was all the confirmation that Kelsea needed. “It’s the shipment, Lady. Two hundred and fifty people, once a month, like clockwork.”
“Shipment to where?”
“To Mortmesne.”
Kelsea turned back to the lawn. Her mind seemed to have gone blank. The lines had begun moving now, slowly but surely, toward the tables down beside the moat. While Kelsea watched, one of the officials marched a woman away from the table, toward the cages. He stopped at the third cage and gestured to a man in a black uniform (the Tear army uniform, Kelsea realized faintly), who then pulled open a cleverly concealed door at the cage end. The woman marched meekly inside, and the soldier in black closed and locked the door.
“The Mort Treaty,” Kelsea murmured numbly. “This is how my mother made peace.”
“The Red Queen wanted tribute, Lady. The Tearling had nothing else to offer.”
A sharp pain arrowed through Kelsea’s chest, and she pressed a clenched fist between her breasts. Peeking beneath her shirt, she saw that her sapphire was glowing, a bright and angry blue. She gathered the jewel in a handful of the cloth and found that the thing was scalding, deep heat that burned her palm through the cloth. The sapphire continued to burn her hand, but the pain was nothing compared to the burn inside her chest, which continued, deepening with each passing second until it began to change, moving toward something different. Not pain . . . something else. She didn’t question the feeling, for she seemed to be beyond any capacity for wonder now, and could only stare mutely at the scene in front of her.
More officials were escorting people toward the cages. The crowd had backed up to allow them space, and Kelsea saw now that each cage had enormous wheels of wood. Tear soldiers had already begun to tether a team of mules to the cage at the far end of the Keep. Even from a distance, Kelsea could tell that the cages had seen hard use; several of the bars were visibly scarred, as if they’d been attacked.
Rescue attempts, her mind murmured. There must have been at least a few. She suddenly remembered standing in front of the big picture window at the cottage as a child, crying about something—a skinned knee, perhaps, or a chore she hadn’t wanted to do—staring at the forest, certain that this was the day when her mother would finally come. Kelsea couldn’t have been more than three or four, but she remembered her certainty very well: her mother would come, she would hold Kelsea in her arms, and she would be nothing but good.
I was a fool.
“Why these people?” she asked Mace. “How do they choose them?”
“By lottery, Lady.”
“Lottery,” she repeated faintly. “I see.”
Family members had begun to gather around the cages now, speaking to people inside, holding hands, or merely loitering. Several of the black-clad soldiers had been stationed next to each cage, and they watched the crowd stonily, clearly anticipating the moment when a family member presented a threat. But the onlookers were passive, and to Kelsea that seemed the worst thing of all. They were beaten, her people. It was clear in the long, straight lines that stretched from the official table, the way families merely stood beside the cages, waiting for their loved ones to depart.
Kelsea’s attention caught and held on the two cages nearest the table. These cages were shorter than the others, their steel bars set more tightly in their frames. Already, each cage held several small forms. Kelsea blinked and found that her eyes had filled with tears. They coursed slowly down her face until she tasted salt.
“Even children?” she asked Mace. “Why don’t the parents just flee?”
“When one of the allotted runs, his entire family is forfeit in the next lottery. Look around you, Lady. These are large families. Often they must sacrifice the welfare of one child, thinking of the other eight.”
“This is my mother’s system?”
“No. The architect of the lottery is down there.” Mace pointed toward the officials’ table. “Arlen Thorne.”
“But my mother approved it?”
“She did.”
“She did,” Kelsea repeated faintly. The world tipped crazily in front of her and she dug her fingernails into her arm, drawing blood, until the haze disappeared. In its wake came fury, a terrible, cheated anger that threatened to overwhelm her. Elyssa the Benevolent, Elyssa the Peacemaker. Kelsea’s mother, who had sold her people off wholesale.
“All’s not lost, Lady,” Mace said unexpectedly, putting a hand on her arm. “I swear to you, you’re nothing like her.”
Kelsea gritted her teeth. “You’re right. I won’t allow this to continue.”
“Lady, the Mort Treaty is specific. There is no appeals process, no outside arbiter. If a single shipment fails to arrive in Demesne on time, the Mort Queen has the right to invade this country and wreak terror. I lived through the last Mort invasion, Lady, and I assure you, Mhurn wasn’t exaggerating the carnage. Before you take action, consider the consequences.”
Somewhere a woman had begun wailing, a high, eldritch shrieking that reminded Kelsea of a story Barty used to tell her as a child: the banshee, a terrible creature that summoned one to her death. The screams echoed over the crowd, and Kelsea finally pinpointed the source: a woman who was trying desperately to reach the first cage. Her husband was trying just as hard to drag her away, but he was heavyset and she was too quick for him, wriggling out of his grasp and pushing her way toward the enclosure. The husband buried a hand in her hair and simply yanked, pulling her from her feet. The woman went down to the ground in a pile, but a moment later she was up again, straining toward the cage.
The four soldiers on guard around the cage were visibly on edge; they watched the mother uneasily, not certain whether to get involved. Her voice was giving way, her shrieks fading to a bruised cawing like a crow’s, and her strength also appeared to be giving out. While Kelsea watched, the husband finally won the battle and got a grip on her wool dress. He pulled her away to a safe distance from the cage, and the soldiers settled back into their formerly relaxed postures.
But the mother continued to croak brokenly, the sound audible even from Kelsea’s distance. Husband and wife stood watching the cage, surrounded by several children. Kelsea’s vision was blurred, and her hands were shaking on the reins. She sensed something terrible within her, not the girl hidden in the cottage: someone on fire, burning. The sapphire branded her chest. She wondered if it was possible for her own skin to break open, revealing another person entirely.
Mace touched her shoulder gently, and she spun around to him with wild eyes. He held out his sword. “Right or wrong, Lady, I see that you mean to take action. Hold this.”
Kelsea took the hilt in her hand, liking the heft of it, though the blade was too long for her build. “What about you?”
“I have many weapons, and we have friends here. The sword is for appearance only.”
“What friends?”
Slowly and casually, Mace raised an open palm into the air, clenched it into a fist, and dropped his arm again. Kelsea waited a moment, half expecting the sky to break open. She sensed some shifting in the crowd around her, but nothing distinct. Mace, however, seemed satisfied, and turned back to her. Kelsea looked at him for a moment, this man who’d guarded her life for days now, and said, “You were right, Lazarus. I see my own death, and exalt in it. But before I go, I’m going to cut a wide swath here, wide as God’s Ocean. If you don’t want to die with me, you should leave now.”
“Lady, your mother wasn’t a good queen, but she wasn’t evil. She was a weak queen. She would never have been able to walk straight into death. A fey streak carries enormous power, but be very certain that the havoc you wreak is for your people, not against your mother’s memory. This is the difference between a queen and an angry child.”
Kelsea tried to focus on his words, the way she would have considered any problem set before her, but what popped into her mind instead were illustrations from Carlin’s history books. People of deep brown skin, an old and infamous brutality that had darkened an age. Carlin had dwelled long on this period in history, and Kelsea had wondered more than once why it should be relevant. Behind her closed eyes, she saw stories and illustrations: people in chains. Men caught fleeing and roasted alive. Girls raped at so young an age that their wombs never recovered. Children stolen out of their mothers’ arms and sold at auction. State-sponsored slavery.
In my kingdom.
Carlin had known, but she hadn’t been allowed to tell. Yet she had done her job, almost too well, for now years of extraordinary cruelty flickered through Kelsea’s mind in less than a second. “I will end this.”
“You’re certain?” Mace asked.
“I’m certain.”
“Then I vow to guard you against death.”
Kelsea blinked. “You do?”
Mace nodded, resolve clear in his weathered face. “You have possibility in you, Lady. Carroll and I could both sense it. I have nothing to lose, and I would rather die attempting to eradicate a great evil, for I sense that’s Your Majesty’s purpose.”
Majesty. The word seemed to ripple through her. “I haven’t been crowned, Lazarus.”
“No matter, Lady. I see the queenship in you, and I never saw it in your mother, not one day of her life.”
Kelsea looked away, moved to fresh tears. She had won a guard. Only one, but he was the most important. She wiped her leaking eyes and tightened her grip on the sword. “If I shout, will they hear me?”
“Let me do the shouting, Lady, since you don’t have a proper herald yet. You’ll have their full attention in a moment. Keep your hand on that sword, and don’t move any closer to the Keep. I see no archers, but they may be there, all the same.”
Kelsea nodded firmly, though inwardly she groaned. She was a mess. The simple, clean gown that the Fetch had given her was now streaked with mud, the hem of her pants torn. Pen’s armor was twice as heavy as it had been that morning. Her long, unwashed hair fell from its pins to dangle in dark brown clumps around her face, and sweat poured down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She remembered her childhood dream of entering the city on a white pony with a crown on her head. Today she looked nothing like a queen.
The mother in front of the children’s cage had begun weeping again, oblivious to the small children who looked fearfully up at her. Kelsea cursed herself. Who cares about your hair, you fool? Look what’s been done here.
“What are those cages made of, Lazarus?”
“Mort iron.”
“But the wheels and undercarriage are wood.”
“Tearling oak, Lady. What are you getting at?”
Staring down at the table full of blue-clad officials in front of the Keep, Kelsea took a deep breath. This was her last moment to be anonymous. Everything was about to change. “The cages. After we empty them, we’re going to set them on fire.”
Javel was fighting sleep. Guarding the Keep Gate was not a challenging job. It had been at least eighteen months since anyone had tried to rush the gate, and that attempt had been halfhearted, a drunk who stumbled up at two in the morning with a grievance over his taxes. Nothing had happened, and nothing was going to happen. That was the life of a Gate Guard.
Besides being sleepy, Javel was miserable. He had never enjoyed his job, but he positively loathed it during the shipment. The crowd as a whole didn’t present a security problem; they stood around like cows waiting for the slaughter. But there was always some incident at the children’s cages, which were closest to the gate, and today was no exception. Javel had breathed a sigh of relief when they finally got the woman quieted down. There was always a parent like that, usually a mother, and only Keller, true dyed-in-the-wool sadist that he was, enjoyed hearing a woman scream. For the rest of the Gate Guard, the shipment was bad duty. Even if another guard was willing to trade, it took two regular shifts to balance it out.
The second problem was that the shipment brought two troops of the Tear army onto the Keep Lawn. The army thought Gate Guard was a soft option, a refuge for those who weren’t skilled enough or brave enough to be soldiers. It wasn’t always true; across the drawbridge, directly in front of Javel, stood Vil, who’d received two commendations from Queen Elyssa after the Mort invasion and been rewarded with command of the gate. But they weren’t all Vil, and the Tear army never let them forget it. Even now, when Javel cut his eyes to the left, he could see two of the soldiers snickering, and he was certain they were laughing at him.
The worst thing about the shipment was that it reminded him of Allie. Most of the time he didn’t think about Allie, and when he did start to think of her, he could find the nearest bottle of whiskey and put an end to that. But he couldn’t drink on duty; even if Vil wasn’t on watch, the other guards wouldn’t tolerate it. There wasn’t much loyalty in the Gate Guard, but there was plenty of solidarity, a solidarity based on the understanding that none of them was perfect. They all looked the other way for Ethan’s incessant gambling, Marco’s illiteracy, and even Keller’s habit of roughing up the whores down in the Gut. But none of those problems impaired their job performance. If Javel wanted to drink, he had to wait until he was off duty.
Fortunately, the sun was beginning to set and the cages were almost full. The priest from the Arvath had risen from his place at the table, and now he stood beside the first cage, his white robes rippling in the late-afternoon wind. Javel didn’t recognize this official, a great, thick fellow with jowls that hung down almost to his neck. Piety was good, so the saying went, but it was especially good with everything else. Javel loathed the sight of the priest, this man who never had to face the lottery. Perhaps he had even joined God’s Church for that reason; many men did. Javel remembered the day the Regent had granted the Church exemption; there had been an outcry. The lottery was an indiscriminate predator; it took everyone it could get its hands on. It was indiscriminate, but it was fair, and God’s Church only took men. Yes, there had been an outcry, but like all outcries, it soon quieted.
Javel fidgeted with his sleeves, wishing the time would pass faster. It couldn’t be long now. The priest would bless the shipment, Thorne would give the signal, and then the cages would begin to roll. It was technically the Gate Guard’s job to disperse the crowd, but Javel knew this routine as well: the crowd would disperse itself, following the shipment when it left the lawn. Most of the families would go at least as far as the New London Bridge, but eventually they would give up. Javel closed his eyes, feeling a sudden pain behind his ribs. When Allie’s name had been pulled from the lot, they had talked about fleeing, and at some point they’d almost done it. But Javel had been young and a Gate Guard, and in the end he had convinced Allie that it was their duty to stay. Javel believed in the lottery, in loyalty to the Raleigh house, in the sacrifices that needed to be made for a larger peace. If his name had been pulled from the lot instead, he would have gone without question. Everything had seemed so clear then, and it was only when he saw Allie in the cage that his certainty crumbled. He thought longingly of the burn in his throat, the way it would hit his stomach like an anchor, setting everything in its place. Whiskey always put Allie back in the past, where she belonged.
“People of the Tearling!”
The man’s voice, sonorous and powerful, rolled down the slope and across the lawn before reverberating against the walls of the Keep. The crowd hushed. Gate Guards weren’t supposed to have their eyes anywhere but the bridge, but all of them, Javel included, turned to peer toward the top of the lawn.
“The Mace is back,” Martin murmured.
He was right. The figure at the top of the slope was unmistakably Lazarus of the Mace: tall, broad, and terrifying. Whenever he passed by Javel on the gate, Javel did his best to be as invisible as possible. He was always afraid that those deep, calculating eyes might linger on him, and Javel didn’t want to be even a speck in the smallest corner of the Mace’s mind.
Beside the Mace was a smaller figure, cloaked and hooded in purple. Probably Pen Alcott. Queen’s Guards were usually tall and well built, but they’d taken Alcott despite his slim build; he was reputed to be very good with a sword. But then Alcott pushed back his hood, and Javel saw that it was a woman, a plain woman with long, tangled dark hair.
“I am Lazarus of the Queen’s Guard!” the Mace’s voice boomed again. “Welcome Queen Kelsea of the Tearling!”
Javel’s jaw dropped. He’d heard rumors that the Regent had intensified the search in recent months, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Songs about the girl’s return sometimes went around, but Javel dismissed these. After all, musicians had to write about something, and the Regent’s enemies liked to keep people’s hopes alive. But there wasn’t even any proof that the princess had ever escaped the city. Most of New London, including Javel, assumed that she was long dead.
“All of them,” Martin muttered. “Look!”
Craning his neck, Javel saw that a group of grey-cloaked figures had formed a ring around the woman, and as they pushed back their own hoods, Javel recognized Galen and Dyer, then Elston and Kibb, Mhurn and Coryn. It was the remainder of the old Queen’s Guard. Even Pen Alcott was there, just in front of the woman with his sword drawn, wearing a green cloak. According to rumor, the Regent had tried to kick them all out of the Keep several times by stopping their salaries or assigning them to other duties. But he never managed to get rid of them for more than a few months or so, and they always came back. Carroll and the Mace held plenty of clout with the Tear nobles, but the real problem was deeper: no one feared the Regent, at least not the way they feared the Mace.
The crowd began to murmur, a buzzing that grew louder with each passing second. Javel felt the mood shifting around him. The shipment ran like clockwork each month: the check-in, the loading, the departure, Arlen Thorne at the head of the Census table in his usual fashion as though he was the grand emperor of the New World. Even the inevitable screaming parent eventually quieted down and left the lawn, weeping, when the cages had vanished into the city. It was all part of an orchestrated piece.
But now Thorne leaned over and began speaking urgently to one of his deputies. The entire Census table was moving, like rodents who scented danger. Javel was pleased to see that the soldiers around the cages were eyeing the crowd uneasily, that most of them had their hands on their swords. The priest from the Arvath had leaned in as well, his jowls shaking with each word as he argued with Thorne. The priests of God’s Church preached obedience to the Census, and in return, the Arvath received a healthy tax exemption from the Regent. The Arvath’s head bursar, Cardinal Walker, did a lot of drinking down in the Gut, and he wasn’t particular about who he did it with; Javel had heard several reminiscences about the Holy Father’s dealings that chilled his blood.
But like most of the Holy Father’s moves, this had been a shrewd one. Church doctrine did seem to make the Census run more smoothly. Javel could almost pinpoint the devout families by the resignation on their faces; long before their loved ones ever went into the cage, they had accepted it as their duty to country and God. Javel himself had attended the Church, long ago, but he had only done it to keep Allie happy, and he hadn’t been back since the day she shipped. The priest’s face grew more choleric the longer he argued with Thorne. Javel imagined going over and giving the fat man a good kick in the gut.
Suddenly a man’s voice rose above the low hum of the crowd, pleading: “Give me back my sister, Majesty!”
Then they were all shouting at once.
“Please, Lady, pity!”
“Your Majesty can stop this!”
“Give me back my son!”
The Queen held up her hands for silence. At that moment, Javel knew for certain that she truly was the Queen, though he never knew why or how he knew. She stood up in her stirrups, not tall but imposing nonetheless, her head thrown back combatively and her hair streaming around her face. Even raised in a shout, her voice was dark and deliberate, like syrup. Or whiskey.
“I am the Queen of the Tearling! Open the cages!”
The crowd erupted in a roar that hit Javel with the impact of a physical blow. Several soldiers moved to obey, pulling keys from their belts, but Thorne barked sharply, “Hold your positions!”
Javel had always thought Arlen Thorne the scrawniest human being he’d ever seen. The man was a collection of long, sticklike limbs, and the deep navy of the Census uniform did nothing to augment his girth. Watching Thorne rise from the table was like watching a spider uncoil itself and prepare to hunt. Javel shook his head. Queen or no, the girl was never going to get those cages open. Thorne had grown up in the Gut, raised by whores and thieves, and he’d clambered his way to the top of that particular shitheap to become the most profitable slave trader in the Tear. He didn’t see the world in the same way that most people did. Two years ago, a family named Morrell had tried to flee the Tearling when their daughter’s name came up in the lot. Thorne had hired the Caden, who found the Morrells in a cave within a day’s ride of the Cadarese border. But it was Thorne himself who tortured the child to death before her parents’ eyes. Thorne made no secret of these dealings. He wanted the world to know.
Vil, braver than the rest of them, had asked Thorne what he hoped to accomplish, reporting back: “Thorne said it was an object lesson. He said you couldn’t underestimate the value of a good object lesson.”
The object lesson had worked; so far as Javel knew, no one had tried to smuggle out one of the allotted since. Both Morrells had gone to Mortmesne in the next shipment, and Javel remembered that departure well enough: the mother was one of the first to march into the cage, docile as a rabbit. Looking into her blank eyes, Javel had seen that she was dead already. Much later, he’d heard that she’d succumbed to pneumonia on the journey, that Thorne had left her body for the vultures on the side of the Mort Road.
“The Queen of the Tearling has been dead these many years,” Thorne announced. “If you claim to be the uncrowned princess, this kingdom will require better proof than your word.”
“Your name, sir!” the Queen demanded.
Thorne stood up straight and drew in a deep breath; even from twenty feet away, Javel could see his pigeon chest expand. “I’m Arlen Thorne, Overseer of the Census!”
While Thorne was speaking, the Queen had reached up behind her neck and begun fiddling there, in the way a woman did when there was something wrong with her hair. It was a gesture Allie used to make, when the day was hot or when she was exasperated about something, and it pained Javel to see it on another woman. Memory cut infinitely deeper than swords; that was God’s truth. Javel closed his eyes and saw Allie for the last time, six years ago, that final glimpse of her bright blonde hair before she vanished over the Pike Hill into Mortmesne. He’d never wanted a drink so badly in his life.
The Queen held something high in the air. Javel squinted and saw a flash of blue in the last of the dying sunlight, there and then gone. But the crowd erupted again in bedlam. So many hands went into the air that the Queen was momentarily blocked from view.
“Jeremy!” called Ethan from up the bridge. “Is it the Heir’s Jewel?”
Jeremy, who had better eyesight than any of them, shrugged and called back, “It’s a blue jewel! Never seen the real one!”
Several groups of people had begun to push forward toward the cage of children. The soldiers pulled swords and turned them back easily, but the area around the cage was in a tumult now, and none of the swords returned to their scabbards. Javel grinned; it was good to see the army forced to work for once, even if the small rebellion was doomed. The troops who guarded the shipment were entitled to a bonus from the Regent. They didn’t reap as much reward from the shipment as the nobles who took toll from the Mort Road, but it was a fair chunk of money, from what Javel had heard. Good money for bad work; it seemed fitting to Javel that they should meet with some difficulty along the way.
“Anyone can hang a necklace around a child’s neck,” Thorne replied, ignoring the crowd. “How do we know it’s the true jewel?”
Javel turned back to the Queen, but before she could react, the Mace was shouting at Thorne. “I am a Queen’s Guard, and my word has been bonded to this kingdom! That is the Heir’s Jewel, just as I last saw it eighteen years ago!” The Mace leaned forward against his horse’s neck, his voice carrying an undercurrent of ferocity that made Javel recoil. “I’ve bound myself to this Queen, Thorne, to guard her life! Do you question my loyalty to the Tear?”
The Queen sliced the air with her hand, and the gesture silenced the Mace immediately. The Queen leaned forward and shouted, “All of you down there! You’re part of my government, and my army! You will open the cages!”
The soldiers looked blankly at each other and then turned back to Thorne, who shook his head. And then Javel saw something extraordinary: the Queen’s jewel, almost invisible moments ago, now flared a bright aquamarine, so bright that Javel had to squint, even at this distance. The necklace swung, a glowing blue pendulum over the Queen’s head, and she seemed to grow taller, her skin lit from within. She was no longer a round-faced girl in a worn cloak; for a moment she seemed to fill the whole world, a tall, grave woman with a crown on her head.
Javel grabbed Martin’s shoulder. “Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“Nothing,” Javel muttered, not wanting Martin to think him drunk. The Queen had begun speaking again, her voice angry but controlled, reason on top and fury underneath.
“I may sit on the throne for only one day, but if you don’t open those cages right now, I swear before Great God that my sole act as Queen will be to watch every one of you die for treason! You will not live to see another sun set! Will you test my word?”
For a moment, the scene before the cages remained frozen. Javel held his breath, waiting for Thorne to do something, for an earthquake to break the Keep Lawn wide open. The sapphire above the Queen’s head was now glowing so brightly that he had to raise a hand to shield his eyes. For a moment, he had the irrational feeling that the jewel was looking at him, that it saw everything: Allie and the bottle, the years he’d spent with the two of them tangled inside his head.
Then the soldiers began to move. Only a few at first, then several more, and more after that. Despite Thorne, who had begun to hiss at them in a furious undertone, the two commanders took keys from their belts and began to unlock the cages.
Javel released his breath, staring at this phenomenon. He’d never seen the cages opened once they’d been locked; he supposed no one but the Mort had. He knew of several people, including himself, who had followed the shipment all the way to the Argive Pass. But few dared to cross the Mort border, and no one followed the shipment all the way to its final destination in Demesne. If the Mort army found any Tear hanging around the cages, they would kill him outright as a saboteur.
One by one, men and women began to clamber out of the cages. The crowd received them into what seemed to be an enormous embrace. An old woman ten feet from the Census table simply collapsed and began weeping on the ground.
Thorne braced both arms on the table, his voice acid. “And what of Mortmesne, then, Princess? Will you bring the Red Queen’s army down on us all?”
Javel turned back to the Queen and was relieved to find that she was simply a girl again, just a teenager with an unremarkable face and disheveled hair. His vision, if that’s what it had been, was gone. But her voice had not diminished; if anything, it was louder now, clear anger ringing across the Keep Lawn. “I haven’t named you a foreign policy adviser, Arlen Thorne. Nor have I ridden halfway across this kingdom to engage in pointless debate with a bureaucrat on my own front lawn. I consider the good of my people first and foremost in this, as in everything.”
The Mace leaned over to whisper in the Queen’s ear. She nodded and pointed at Thorne. “You! Overseer! I hold you responsible to see that each child is returned to his family. Should I hear complaint of a lost child, it will rest at your feet. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Lady,” Thorne intoned colorlessly, and Javel was suddenly very glad that he couldn’t see the man’s face. The Queen might think she’d leashed this particular dog, but Arlen Thorne had no leash, and she’d find that out soon enough.
“Praise for the Queen!” someone cried from the far side of the cages, and the crowd roared its approval. Families were reuniting in front of the cages, people calling joyfully to each other across the expanse of the lawn. But most of all, Javel heard weeping, a sound he hated. Their loved ones were being returned; what the hell did they have to cry about?
“There will be no more shipments to Mortmesne!” the Queen shouted, and the crowd answered in another incoherent roar. Javel blinked and saw Allie’s face floating just behind his closed eyes. Some days he feared he had forgotten her face; no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t come clear in his mind. He would fixate on one feature he thought he remembered, something easy like Allie’s chin, and then it would shimmer and blur like a mirage. But every so often would come a day like this, when he could recall every angle of Allie’s face, the curve of her cheekbone, the determined set of her jaw, and he would realize that the forgetting had actually been a kindness. He looked up at the sky and saw, relieved, that it was purpled with dusk. The sun had disappeared behind the Keep.
“Vil!” he called across the bridge. “Aren’t we off duty?”
Vil turned to him, his round face astonished. “You want to leave now?”
“No . . . no, I was just asking.”
“Well, hold it together,” Vil replied, his voice shaded with mockery. “You can drown your sorrows later.”
Javel’s face flamed, and he looked at the ground, clenching his hand into a fist. A hand clapped on his back; he looked up and saw Martin, his friendly face sympathetic. Javel nodded to show that he was all right, and Martin scuttled back to his position.
Two Queen’s Guards, one large and one small, both cloaked in grey, were moving around the cages with a bucket. Elston and Kibb, most likely; the two of them were inseparable. Javel couldn’t tell what they were doing, but it didn’t really matter. Most of the cages were empty now. Thorne had instituted some sort of careful procedure at the children’s cages, releasing the children one at a time and questioning parents who came forward before handing off a child. Probably a good idea; there was a loose confederacy of pimps and madams down in the Gut who catered to all tastes, and they weren’t above snatching a child from time to time. Javel, who spent plenty of time in the Gut, had thought more than once about trying to find the people who did these things, trying to bring them to some sort of justice. But his resolve always weakened as night fell, and besides, that was a charge for someone else. Someone brave.
Anyone but me.
Kelsea was exhausted. She clutched the hilt of Mace’s sword, trying to look regal and unconcerned, but her heart was hammering and her muscles felt drawn with fatigue. She reclasped the necklace around her throat and found that she hadn’t imagined it: the sapphire was burning, as though it had been heated in a forge. For a few moments there, arguing with Arlen Thorne, she had felt as though she could reach out and break the sky in half. But now all of that power had gone, drained away, leaving her muscles slack. If they didn’t get inside soon, she thought she might fall off her horse.
The sun had disappeared, and the entire lawn beneath the Keep was bathed in shadow, the temperature sinking rapidly. But they couldn’t go yet; Mace had sent several guards out into the crowd on various errands, and so far none of them had come back. Kelsea was relieved to see so many of her mother’s Guard alive, though she’d already done a quick count and realized, her heart sinking, that Carroll wasn’t there. But several new guards had shown up as well, men who hadn’t been with them on their journey. There might be as many as fifteen guards surrounding her now, but Kelsea couldn’t be sure without turning around. Somehow it seemed very important not to look back.
Perhaps a third of the people who’d originally been on the lawn had drifted away, likely fearing trouble, but most stayed. Some families were still tearfully reuniting with their loved ones, but others were merely spectators now, watching Kelsea curiously. The pressure of their eyes was a monstrous weight.
They expect me to do something extraordinary, she realized. Now, and every day for the rest of my life.
The idea was terrifying.
She turned to Mace. “We need to get inside.”
“Only a moment more, Lady.”
“What are we waiting for?”
“Your Majesty’s rescuer said a true thing, and one that’s stayed with me. Often the direct way is the right way, for reasons that can’t be foreseen.”
“Meaning what?”
Mace pointed to the edge of the circle of guards, and Kelsea saw four women and several children waiting there. One of them was the woman who had been screaming down in front of the cage. A small girl, perhaps three years old, was clutched in her arms, and four other children surrounded her. Her long hair fell over her face as she bent to her daughter.
“Your attention!” Mace called.
The woman looked up, and Kelsea’s breath caught. It was the madwoman from her dream, the one who had held the destroyed child in her arms. She had the same long, dark hair and pale complexion, the same high forehead. If the woman spoke, Kelsea thought she would even recognize the voice.
But I’ve never been able to see the future, Kelsea thought, bewildered. Not once in my life. As a child, she’d often wished for the sight; Carlin had told her several stories of the Red Queen’s seer, a truly gifted woman who had predicted many great happenings that eventually came to pass. But Kelsea had only the present.
“The Queen requires a service corps!” Mace announced, and Kelsea jumped, refocusing her attention on the scene in front of her. “She’ll require—”
“Hold.” Kelsea held up her hand, seeing the sudden fear in the eyes of the women. Mace’s idea was a good one, but if he mishandled that fear, all the bribes in the world would be of small use.
“I will command no one into my service,” she announced firmly, attempting to look each of the four women in the eye. “However, for those who join my household, I promise that you and your loved ones will receive every protection at my disposal. Not only protection, but all that my own children will one day receive. Education, the best of food and medical care, and the ability to learn any trade they choose. I also give you my word that anyone who wishes to leave my service will be allowed to do so at any time, without delay.”
She tried to think of something else to say, but she was so tired, and she’d already discovered that she loathed making speeches. A statement about loyalty seemed necessary here, but what was there to say? Surely they all knew that in service to her, they would be in a position to bring about her death, and more likely to see their own. She gave up, spread her hands wide, and announced, “Make your choice in the next minute. I can delay no longer.”
The women began to deliberate. For most of them, this seemed to consist of staring helplessly at their children. Kelsea noted the lack of men and guessed that Mace had specifically chosen women without husbands. But that wasn’t entirely true; her gaze went back to the madwoman from her dream, and then out into the crowd, searching for the husband. She found him standing some ten feet back, his feet spread and his muscled arms crossed.
She leaned over to Mace. “Why the dark-haired woman in blue?”
“If convinced, Lady, she’ll be the most loyal servant you have.”
“Who is she?”
“No idea. But I’ve a knack for these things, just take my word.”
“She may not be entirely sane.”
“Many women behave so when their young children ship. It’s those who let them go without a murmur that I distrust.”
“What of the husband?”
“Look closely, Lady.”
Kelsea stared at the woman’s husband, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He watched the proceedings balefully, a tall dark-haired man with an unkempt beard and broad arms that revealed him to be a laborer of some kind. His black eyes were narrowed in a pouty way that was easy to read: he didn’t like to be cut out of decisions. Kelsea returned her gaze to his wife, whose eyes darted between her husband and the group of children around her. She was very thin, with arms like twigs; blackened marks on her forearm revealed where her husband had hauled her away from the cage. Then Kelsea spotted more bruises: one high up on her cheek and a large dark smudge on her collarbone when her daughter pulled at the neck of her dress.
“Christ, Lazarus, your eyes are sharp. I have a mind to take her with us either way.”
“I think she’ll come on her own, Lady. Watch and wait.”
Pen and one of the new guards had already maneuvered themselves between the burly black-eyed man and his wife. They were very quick, very competent, and despite the danger all around her, Kelsea felt almost hopeful . . . perhaps she would survive. Then the hope collapsed, and she was merely exhausted again. She waited a few more moments before announcing, “We’ll enter the Keep now. Those who wish to accompany me are welcome.”
Kelsea watched the madwoman out of the corner of her eye as the company began to ride down the slope. The woman pulled her children close to her, gathering them until they surrounded her like a broad skirt. Then she nodded, murmuring some kind of encouragement, and the entire group began to move down the lawn. The husband leaped forward with an incoherent yell, but halted at the point of Pen’s sword. Kelsea jerked her horse to a stop.
“Keep riding, Lady. They’ll control him.”
“Can I take children from their father, Lazarus?”
“You can do whatever you like, Lady. You’re the Queen.”
“What will we do with all these children?”
“Children are good, Lady. They make women predictable. Now keep your head down.”
Kelsea turned to face the Keep. Although she found it difficult to let her guards handle everything behind her—she heard raised voices arguing and the muted sounds of a scuffle—she knew that Mace was right: interference would show a lack of faith in her Guard. She rode on, keeping her gaze resolutely forward, even when a woman’s voice rose in a shriek.
As they approached the cages, Kelsea saw that a crowd fanned in an outer ring beyond her guards. The people had pressed so close that some of them were lined up against the horses’ flanks. All of them seemed to be speaking to her, but she could understand none of their words.
“Archers!” Mace barked. “Eyes on the battlements!”
Two of her guard produced bows and nocked arrows. One of them was very young and fair; Kelsea thought he might be even younger than she. His face was white with anxiety, his jaw clenched in concentration as he stared up at the Keep. Kelsea wanted to say something reassuring, but then Mace repeated, “On the battlements, dammit!” and she clamped her mouth shut.
When they drew level with the cages, Mace grabbed hold of Rake’s bridle and brought the horse to a sudden stop. He signaled to Kibb, who presented a flaming torch. Mace offered it to Kelsea. “The first page in your history, Lady. Make it good.”
She hesitated, then took the torch and rode toward the nearest cage. The crowd and her guards shifted like a single great organism to allow her access. Mace had sent Elston and Kibb ahead to the cages with a bucket of oil; hopefully they’d done it properly, or she was about to look extremely stupid. She took a good grip on the torch, but before she could throw it, her eye happened on one of the two cages built for children. The fire inside her chest reignited, spreading heat across her skin.
Everything I’ve done so far can be undone. But if I do this, there’s no going back. If the shipment did not come, the Red Queen would invade. Kelsea thought of Mhurn, her handsome blond guard, of his tale about the last Mort invasion. Thousands had suffered and died. But here in front of her was a cage built especially for the young, the helpless, built to carry them hundreds of miles from home so that they could be worked, raped, starved. Kelsea closed her eyes and saw her mother, the woman she had pictured throughout her childhood, the white queen on the horse. But the vision had already darkened. The people who cheered the Queen were scarecrows, gaunt with long starvation. The wreath of flowers on her head had withered. Her horse’s mouth was rotting away with disease. And the woman herself . . . a crawling, servile thing, her skin white as a corpse and yet bathed in shadow. A collaborator. Kelsea blinked the image away, but it had already propelled her onward to the next step. Barty’s story of Death recurred in her head; it had never really left her since that night beside the campfire. Barty was right; it was better to die clean. She reared back and flung the torch at the children’s cage.
The movement pulled the wound in her neck wide open, but she stifled a cry as the crowd roared and the undercarriage ignited. Kelsea had never seen fire so hungry; flames spread over the floor of the cage and then began, improbably, to climb the iron bars. A burst of heat blew across the lawn, scattering the few people who had ventured too close to the cage. It was like being in front of a lit oven.
The crowd surged toward the fire, shrieking curses. Even the children were screaming, infected with their parents’ hysteria, their eyes lit red. Watching the flames, Kelsea felt the wild thing inside her chest fold its wings and disappear, and was both relieved and disappointed. The sensation had been like having a stranger inside, a stranger who somehow knew everything about her.
“Cae!” Mace called over his shoulder.
“Sir?”
“Make sure the rest burn.”
At Mace’s signal, they rode on, leaving the cages behind. When they reached the drawbridge, the stink of the moat hit Kelsea’s nostrils: a rank smell, like rotting vegetables. The water was a deep, dark green, and a layer of nearly opaque slime had gelled on the surface. The fetid smell grew stronger the farther they progressed across the bridge.
“Is the water not drained?”
“No questions now, Lady, forgive me.” Mace’s eyes were darting everywhere, over the Keep’s surface and into the darkness ahead, across the moat to the far side, lingering on the guards who lined either side of the bridge. These guards made no move to stop the procession, and several of them even bowed as Kelsea went by. But when the crowd tried to follow her into the Keep, the men grudgingly moved into action, blocking off the bridge and herding people back to the far bank.
Ahead, the Keep Gate was a dark hole with vague flickers of torchlight inside. Kelsea shut her eyes and opened them again, an action that seemed to take all of her strength. Her uncle was waiting inside, but she didn’t know how she could stand in front of him now. Her bloodline, once a secret source of pride, now seemed little more than a cesspool. Her uncle was filth, and her mother . . . it was like sliding down the face of a precipice from which all handholds had vanished.
“I can’t face my uncle tonight, Lazarus. I’m too tired. Can we delay?”
“If Her Majesty will only be quiet.”
Kelsea laughed, surprising herself, as they passed through the grim archway of the Keep Gate.
Two hundred feet away, the Fetch watched the girl and her entourage cross the bridge, a small smile playing on his lips. It had been a clever thing, taking the women from the crowd, and all but one of them had followed her into the Keep. Who was the father? The girl displayed a prickly intelligence that could never have come from Elyssa. Poor Elyssa, who had needed most of her brains to decide which dress to wear in the morning. The girl was worth ten of her.
Beside the moat, the children’s cage flamed, a towering pyre in the dusk. One of the Queen’s Guard had been left behind to fire the rest of the cages, but the people (and several soldiers) were far ahead of him. One by one, each cage went up in a gust of flame. People shouted for the Queen, and the air remained thick with the sound of weeping.
The Fetch shook his head in admiration. “Bravo, Tear Queen.”
The Census table looked like an anthill that some cruel child had stirred with a stick. Officials hurried back and forth, their movements frenzied by panic; they’d quickly grasped the consequences of this day. Arlen Thorne had disappeared. He would be out for the girl’s blood, and he was a much cannier adversary than her idiot uncle. The Fetch frowned, deliberating for a moment before speaking over his shoulder. “Alain.”
“Sir?”
“Something is already brewing in Thorne’s mind. Go find out what it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lear spurred his horse forward until he was abreast of the Fetch. Lear was in a bad mood, and no wonder. When they went about undisguised, it was Lear’s black skin that caught the world’s attention. He loved to have people stare at him, riveted, while he spun his tales, but he hated to be an object of curiosity.
“Thorne may not accept him,” Lear muttered. “And even if he does, Alain’s anonymity will be compromised forever. Is the girl really worth it?”
“Don’t underestimate her, Lear. I certainly don’t.”
“Can we dispatch the Regent?” Morgan asked.
“The Regent is mine, and unless I’ve misjudged the girl, I’ll have him shortly. Luck to you, Alain.”
Alain turned his horse without a word and rode back into the city. As he disappeared into the crowd, the Fetch closed his eyes and bowed his head.
So much now depends on one young girl, he thought grimly. God plays at hazard with us.