When I was five years old, my grandmother took me for an outing. As her namesake, I was Gran’s favorite, very proud to be in my new dress and holding her hand out on the city streets while my siblings were left behind.
We had a picnic in the great park in the center of the city. Gran bought me a book at Varling’s Bookshop, which carried the first books with colored pictures. We saw a puppet show in the theatre district, and in a shodder on the Lady’s Approach, Gran also purchased me my first grown-up pair of shoes with laces that tied. It was a fine day.
Near the hour to go home for supper, Gran took me to the Glynn Queen’s memorial, a statue of a faceless woman on a granite throne, situated at the entrance to the Keep Lawn. We looked at the statue for a very long time, and I was silent because of the silence of my grandmother. She chattered incessantly, Gran did, so that sometimes we had to shush her when company came. But now she stood in the front of the Glynn Queen’s memorial for a solid ten minutes, her head bent, saying nothing. Eventually I became bored and began to squirm, and finally asked, “Gran, what are we waiting for?”
She tugged gently at my braid, signaling me to be silent, then gestured toward the memorial and said, “But for this woman, you would never have been born.”
—The Legacy of the Glynn Queen, GLEE DELAMERE
Kelsea woke in a deep, soft bed hung with a light blue canopy. Her first thought was a trivial one: the bed had too many pillows. Her bed in Barty and Carlin’s cottage had been small, but clean and comfortable, with a single serviceable pillow. This bed was comfortable as well, but it was an ostentatious sort of comfort. The bed could easily have held four people, its sheets were pear-colored silk, and an endless vista of small, frilly white pillows stretched across the blue damask coverlet.
My mother’s bed, and just what I should have expected.
She rolled over and saw Mace in the corner, curled up in an armchair, asleep.
Sitting up as quietly as she could, Kelsea examined the room: satisfactory at first glance but filled with disturbing touches upon a closer look. It was a high-ceilinged affair with light blue hangings to match the bed. One wall was lined with bookcases, empty save for a few trinkets scattered among several shelves, covered in dust. Someone had made sure that her mother’s chamber remained untouched. Mace? Probably not. It seemed more like Carroll’s doing. Mace had betrayed fleeting touches of disloyalty to her mother. Carroll had shown none.
To Kelsea’s left was a doorway that led to a bathroom; she could see half of an enormous marble bathtub. Beside the doorway was a dressing table with a large, jewel-encrusted mirror. She caught a glimpse of her reflection and winced; she looked like a goblin, her hair wild, her face streaked with dirt. She lay back down and stared at the canopy over her head, her mind wandering. How could so much have changed in a single day?
She suddenly recalled being nine and taking one of Carlin’s fancy dresses out of Barty and Carlin’s closet. Carlin had never expressly forbidden the dresses, but that was only a loophole to be exploited if Kelsea was caught; she knew that she was doing wrong. After donning the dress, she also put on a homemade crown of flowers. The dress was too long and the crown kept falling off, but still Kelsea felt very grown-up, very queenly. She was in the middle of parading up and down the room when Carlin walked in.
“What are you doing?” Carlin asked. Her voice had sunk to its lowest note, the one that meant trouble. Kelsea trembled as she tried to explain. “I was practicing being a queen. Like my mother.”
Carlin moved forward so quickly that Kelsea didn’t even have time to step backward. There were only Carlin’s burning eyes and then the crack of a slap across Kelsea’s face. It barely hurt, but Kelsea burst into tears all the same; Carlin had never hit her before. Carlin grabbed the dress by the back and yanked sharply, ripping it down the front and sending small buttons scattering across the room.
Kelsea fell to the floor, crying harder now, but her tears didn’t move Carlin; they never did. She left the room and didn’t speak to Kelsea for days, even after Kelsea had washed and ironed the dress herself and put it back in Carlin’s closet. Barty crept around the cottage that week with reddened eyes, miserable, sneaking Kelsea extra sweets when Carlin couldn’t see. After several days, Carlin finally returned to normal, but when Kelsea looked in Carlin’s closet the next week, all of the fancy gowns were gone.
Kelsea had always thought that Carlin had been angry at her for borrowing the dress without asking. But now, looking around the room, she saw a different story. Empty bookshelves. An enormous oak wardrobe that took up nearly the entire wall opposite. A mirror big enough to fit several reflections. Golden fixtures. This bed, draped in yards and yards of costly materials. In her mind, Kelsea could see the people out on the Keep Lawn, their underfed frames and gaunt faces. Carlin had known plenty. Kelsea wanted to scream her rage into the silence of the chamber. And what if there were more happy revelations still to come? She had always assumed that her mother had sent her away for her own protection. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe Kelsea had simply been sent away. She kicked her feet angrily, digging her heels into the soft feather mattress. Childish, but effective; after two minutes of furious kicking, she knew that the time for sleep was done.
The queenship she’d inherited, problematic enough in the abstract, now appeared insurmountable. But of course, she had already known the road would be difficult. Carlin had told her so obliquely, through years spent studying the troubled nations and kingdoms of the past. Carlin’s library, filled with books . . . Kelsea suddenly felt the last of her anger at Carlin slide away. She missed them both, Barty and Carlin. Everything around her was so strange, and she missed the easy familiarity of the two people she knew well. Would Carlin approve of what she’d done yesterday?
Kelsea sat up, pulled back the covers and dangled her feet from the edge of the bed. The necklace had become stuck in her hair while she slept, and she spent a minute untangling it. She should have braided her hair and taken a bath last night, but it had all been a blur; she’d been hurried through torch-lit corridors, with nothing but Mace’s hissed commands in her ear. Someone had carried her up a seemingly endless staircase, and Kelsea had been so tired that she fell asleep in the clothes from the Fetch. The garments were so filthy now that she could actually smell their sweaty, salted odor. She should throw them away, but she knew she wouldn’t. The Fetch’s face had been the last thing in her mind before she dropped off into unconsciousness, and she was sure that she’d dreamed about him as well, though she couldn’t remember the dream. He had given her a test, all right, and he would kill her if she failed, Kelsea had no doubt. But his threats occupied only a very small corner of her thoughts. She allowed herself the luxury of daydreaming about him for a few more minutes before turning her mind back to the real world.
She needed to see a copy of the Mort Treaty as soon as possible. The thought galvanized Kelsea, and she hopped out of the bed and tiptoed over to Mace in his chair. He’d grown a few days’ worth of beard stubble, brown salted with grey. The lines seemed to have etched themselves even more deeply into his face. His head was tipped back in the chair, and every few seconds he emitted a very light snore.
“So you do sleep.”
“I do not,” Mace retorted. “I doze.”
He stretched until his spine cracked, and then pushed himself up from the armchair. “Had there been a single wrong breath of air in this room, I would have known.”
“Is this place safe?”
“Yes, Lady. We’re in the Queen’s Wing, which is never left unguarded. Carroll went over every detail of this room before we left, and six days isn’t enough time for your uncle to accomplish anything elaborate. Today someone will inspect it more thoroughly while you’re gone, just in case.”
“While I’m gone?”
“I informed your uncle that you’d be crowned today, at your leisure. He didn’t take it well.”
Kelsea opened a drawer and saw a comb and brush set that looked like pure gold. She slammed the drawer shut. “My mother was a vain woman.”
“Yes. Will the room suit?”
“Let’s get rid of these stupid pillows,” Kelsea reached out and swept several of them from the bed. “What in God’s name is the point of—”
“Much to do today, Majesty.”
Kelsea sighed. “First I need breakfast and a hot bath. Something to wear to my crowning.”
“You know you’ll need to be crowned by a priest of God’s Church.”
Kelsea looked up. “I didn’t know that.”
“Even if I could dragoon your uncle’s house priest into the task, he’s not the man we want. I’ll have to fetch another priest from the Arvath, and I may be gone for an hour or so.”
“No chance of legitimacy without a priest?”
“None, Lady.”
Kelsea drew an exasperated breath. She’d never discussed her actual coronation with Carlin, since it seemed so abstract. But the language of the ceremony would undoubtedly be infused with religious vows. That was how the Church kept the wallet open. “Fine, go. But if possible, get a timid priest.”
“Done, Lady. Keep your knife about you while I’m gone.”
“How did you know about my knife?”
Mace gave her a speaking glance. “Wait a moment, and I’ll bring your dame of chamber.” He opened the door, letting in a brief babble of voices, and then closed it behind him. Kelsea stood in the center of the empty chamber, feeling a subtle sense of relief steal over her. She had missed being alone. But now there was no time to enjoy it.
“So much to do,” she whispered, rubbing lightly at the stitches on her neck. Her gaze roved over the tall ceilings, the blue hangings, the bed with its endless, infuriating rows of pillows, and worst of all, the long wall of empty bookshelves. Something seemed to boil over inside her, angry tears coming to her eyes.
“Look at you,” she hissed at the empty room. “Look what you’ve left here for me.”
“Lady?” Mace knocked briefly at the door and entered. A tall, slim woman trailed silently behind him, nearly hidden by his bulk, but Kelsea already knew who it was. The woman had none of her children with her now, and without them she seemed younger, only a few years older than Kelsea herself. She wore a simple, cream-colored wool dress, and her long, dark hair had been combed and pulled into a tight knot on her head. The bruise on her cheek was the only blemish. She stood in front of Kelsea with a quality of waiting, but there was nothing subservient in her manner; indeed, after a few seconds Kelsea felt so intimidated that she was compelled to speak.
“You’re welcome to have your little one in here, if she’s too young to be left alone.”
“She’s in good hands, Lady.”
“Leave us alone, please, Lazarus.”
To her surprise, Mace immediately turned and left, closing the door behind him.
“Sit, please.” Kelsea indicated the chair that sat in front of the vanity table. The woman placed the stool in front of Kelsea and sat down in a single graceful movement.
“What’s your name?”
“Andalie.”
Kelsea blinked. “Of Mort origin?”
“My mother was Mort, my father Tear.”
Kelsea wondered if Mace had elicited that information. Of course he had. “And which are you?”
Andalie stared at her until Kelsea wished that she could take the question back. The woman’s eyes were a cold, piercing grey. “I’m Tear, Majesty. My children are Tear, through their worthless father, and I can’t discard the children along with the man, can I?”
“No . . . no, I suppose not.”
“If you question my motives, I came to serve Your Majesty mostly for my children’s sake. Yours was a powerful offer for a woman with as many children as I have, and the opportunity to remove them from their father’s reach was a godsend.”
“Mostly for your children’s sake?”
“Mostly, yes.”
Kelsea was unnerved. The Tearling took in Mort emigrants out of necessity for the skills the Tear lacked, particularly ironwork, medicine, and masonry. The Mort commanded a high price for their services, and there were a fair number of Mort salted around Tear villages, particularly in the more tolerant south. But even Carlin, who prided herself on her open mind, didn’t really trust the Mort. According to Carlin, even the lowest Mort carried the strain of arrogance, a conqueror’s mentality that had been drilled into them over time.
But Andalie’s background was only part of the problem. The woman was too educated for her station in life: married to a laborer, with too many children. She carried herself with an air of inscrutability, and Kelsea would wager that this had driven Andalie’s husband as red to a bull. She was entirely detached. Only when she spoke of her children did she display warmth. Kelsea had to trust Mace’s judgment; without him, she would already be dead. But what had made him choose this woman?
“Lazarus elects you to be my dame of chamber. Is this agreeable to you?”
“If special provision can be made when my youngest is ill or difficult with others.”
“Of course.”
Andalie gestured toward the dreadful vanity table. “My qualifications, Lady—”
Kelsea waved her off. “Anything you claim, I’m sure you can do. May I call you Andalie?”
“What else would you call me, Lady?”
“I’m told that many women at court like to have titles and such. Lady of the Chamber, that sort of thing.”
“I’m no court woman. My own name will do.”
“Of course.” Kelsea smiled regretfully. “If only I could shed my own court titles so easily.”
“Simple people need their symbols, Lady.”
Kelsea stared at her. Carlin had said the same thing many times, and the echo was unwelcome now, when Kelsea thought she had escaped the schoolroom forever. “May I ask you an unpleasant question?”
“By all means.”
“The night before your daughter was to go to Mortmesne, what did you do?”
Andalie pursed her lips, and again Kelsea felt a fierceness that was entirely lacking on other topics. “I’m not a religious woman, Lady. I’m sorry if it pains you, but I believe in no god, and even less do I believe in any church. But two nights ago, I came as close to prayer as I’ve ever come. I had the worst of all visions: my child lying dead, and I powerless to prevent it.” Andalie took a deep breath before continuing. “She would have died before long, you know. The girls die much more rapidly than the boys. Used for menial labor until she was old enough to be sold for pleasure. That is, if she was fortunate enough not to be bought by a child rapist upon arrival.” Andalie bared her teeth in a grim, pained smile. “Mortmesne condones many things.”
Kelsea tried to reply, but failed, unable to speak or even move in the face of Andalie’s sudden anger.
“Borwen, my husband, said that we would have to let her go. He was quite . . . forceful about it. I planned to run, but I underestimated him. He knows me, you see. He took Glee while I slept and gave her to his friends for safekeeping. I woke to find her gone, and no matter where I looked I could only see her body . . . red, all red.”
Kelsea jumped in her seat, then flexed her leg, as though it had cramped. Andalie didn’t seem to notice. Her hands had hooked into claws now, and Kelsea saw that three of her fingernails were ripped down to the quick.
“After despairing for some hours, Lady, I had no choice but to beg for help from every god I could think of. I don’t know that you could truly call it praying, since I believed in none of those gods at that moment and believe in none of them now. But I begged help from every source I know, even a few I shouldn’t mention in the light of day.
“When I came to the Keep Lawn, my Glee was already in the cage and lost to me. My next thought was to send my other children away and go after the shipment, but only after I’d killed my husband. I was considering all the ways I might watch him die, Lady, when I heard your voice.”
Andalie stood without warning. “Your Majesty needs a bath, I believe, and clothing and food?”
Kelsea nodded mutely.
“I’ll see to it.”
When the door closed, Kelsea drew a shaking breath, rubbing gooseflesh from her arms. It had been like being in the room with a vengeful ghost, and Kelsea still felt Andalie’s eyes on her, long after the woman herself had gone.
Did she tell you she was part Mort?”
“She did.”
“And it bothered you not at all?”
“It might have been cause for concern in someone else.”
“What does that mean?”
Mace fiddled with the short knife strapped to his forearm. “I have only a few gifts, Lady, but they’re a strange, powerful few. Had there been danger to Your Majesty in the deepest part of any of these people, I’d have ferreted it out and they wouldn’t be here.”
“She’s not a danger to me, I agree, not now. But she could be, Lazarus. To anyone who threatened her children, she could be.”
“Ah, but Lady, you saved her youngest child. I think you’ll find that anyone who threatens you faces grave danger from her.”
“She’s cold, Lazarus. She’ll serve me only so long as it serves her children.”
Mace considered for a moment, and then shrugged. “I’m sorry, Lady. I think you’re simply wrong. And even if you’re right, you’re currently serving her children infinitely better than she could with that jackal of a husband, or even on her own. Why be gloomy?”
“If Andalie should become a danger to me, would you know it?”
Mace nodded, a gesture with so many years of certainty behind it that Kelsea let the matter drop. “Is my crowning arranged?”
“The Regent knows you’re coming during his audience. I didn’t specify a time; may as well not make things too easy for him.”
“Will he try to kill me?”
“Likely, Lady. The Regent doesn’t have a subtle bone in his body, and he’ll do anything to keep the crown off your head.”
Kelsea inspected her neck in the mirror. Mace had restitched the wound, but his work wasn’t as neat as that of the Fetch. The gash would leave a noticeable scar.
Andalie had found a plain black velvet dress that hung straight to the floor. Kelsea guessed that sleeveless dresses were the fashion; many of the women she’d seen in the city had displayed their bare arms. But Kelsea was self-conscious about her arms, something Andalie seemed to understand without being told. The dress’s loose sleeves concealed Kelsea’s arms, while the neckline was just low enough to allow the sapphire to hang against her bare skin. Andalie had done an excellent job with Kelsea’s thick, heavy hair as well, wrestling it into a braid and then pinning it high on her head. The woman was a monument to competence, but still, black couldn’t conceal all flaws. Kelsea looked at herself in the mirror for a moment, trying to project more confidence than she felt. Some ancestor of hers, her mother’s grandmother or great-grandmother, had been known as the Beautiful Queen, the first in a line of several Raleigh women renowned for fairness. The Fetch’s face surfaced in her mind, and Kelsea smiled sadly at her reflection, then turned away and shrugged.
I’ll be more than that.
“I need to see a copy of the Mort Treaty as soon as possible.”
“We have one here somewhere.”
Kelsea thought she heard disapproval in his tone. “Did I do the wrong thing yesterday?”
“Right versus wrong is a moot point, Lady. It’s done, and now we’ll all face the consequences. The shipment is due in seven days. You’ll need to make some fast decisions.”
“I want to read the treaty first. There must be some loophole.”
Mace shook his head. “If so, Lady, others would have found it.”
“Didn’t you think I would need to know, Lazarus? Why keep it from me?”
“Please, Lady. How could any of us tell you something like that, when your own foster parents had kept it secret from you all your life? You might not even have believed me. It seemed better to let you see for yourself.”
“I need to understand this system, this lottery. Who was that man in charge on the lawn yesterday?”
“Arlen Thorne,” Mace said, his face furrowing. “The Overseer of the Census.”
“A census only counts the population.”
“Not in this kingdom, Lady. The Census is a powerful arm of your government. It controls all aspects of the shipment, from lottery to transport.”
“How did this Arlen Thorne merit his position?”
“By being extremely clever, Lady. Once he nearly outsmarted me.”
“Surely not you.”
Mace opened his mouth to argue, but then he saw Kelsea’s face in the mirror. “Hilarious, Majesty.”
“Don’t you ever make mistakes?”
“People who make mistakes rarely live through them, Lady.”
She turned from the mirror. “How on earth did you become what you are, Lazarus?”
“Don’t mistake our relationship, Lady. You’re my employer. I don’t confess to you.”
Kelsea looked down, feeling thoroughly rebuffed. She had forgotten who he was for a moment; it had been like talking to Barty. Mace held up the breastplate from Pen’s armor, and she shook her head. “No.”
“Lady, you need it.”
“Not today, Lazarus. It sends a poor signal.”
“So will your dead body.”
“Doesn’t Pen need his armor back?”
“He has more than one set.”
“I won’t wear it.”
Mace stared at her stonily. “You’re not a child. Stop behaving like one.”
“Or what?”
“Or I bring several more guards in here and they hold you down while I strap this armor on you forcibly. Is that really what you want?”
Kelsea knew he was right. She didn’t know why she kept arguing. She was acting like a child; she remembered similar fights with Carlin over cleaning her room in the cottage. “I don’t do well being ordered around, Lazarus. I never have.”
“You don’t say.” Mace shook the armor again, his expression implacable. “Hold out your arms.”
Kelsea did, grimacing. “I need my own armor, and soon. A silly queen I’ll look when I’ve been slowly flattened into a man.”
Mace grinned. “You wouldn’t be the first queen of this kingdom to be mistaken for a king.”
“God granted me a small enough helping of femininity. I’d like to keep what I have.”
“Later, Lady, I’ll introduce you to Venner and Fell, your arms masters. Women’s armor is an odd order, but I’m sure they can fill it. They’re good at their jobs. Until then, any time we leave the Queen’s Wing, you wear Pen’s armor.”
“Wonderful.” Kelsea sucked in a breath as he tightened a strap around her arm. “It doesn’t even cover my back.”
“I cover your back.”
“How many people are in the Queen’s Wing?”
“Twenty-four all told, Lady: thirteen Queen’s Guards, three women, and their seven children. And of course, your own helpful self.”
“Piss off,” Kelsea muttered. She’d heard the phrase during the Fetch’s poker game, and it seemed to fit her mood perfectly, though she wasn’t sure she’d used it right. “How big can we grow in here?”
“Considerably bigger, and we will,” Mace replied. “Three of the guards have families in a safe house. As soon as we’re settled, I’ll send them one at a time to bring back their kin.”
Kelsea turned away and found herself staring at her mother’s bookshelves again. They bothered her more every moment. Bookshelves weren’t meant to be empty. “Is there a library in the city?”
“A what?”
“A library. A public library.”
Mace looked up at her, incredulous. “Books?”
“Books.”
“Lady,” Mace said, in the slow, patient tones one would use with a young child, “there hasn’t been a working printing press in this kingdom since the Landing era.”
“I know,” Kelsea snapped. “That’s not what I asked. I asked if there was a library.”
“Books are hard to come by, Lady. A curiosity at best. Who would have enough books for a library?”
“Nobles. Surely some of them still have some hoarded books.”
Mace shrugged. “Never heard of such a thing. But even if they did, they wouldn’t open them to the public.”
“Why not?”
“Lady, try to take away even the most resilient weed in a nobleman’s garden, and watch him scream trespass. I’m sure most of them don’t read any books they might have, but all the same, they would never give them away.”
“Can we buy books on the black market?”
“We could, Lady, if anyone valued them enough. But books aren’t contraband. The black market deals in vice for value. The Tear market has high-value weapons from Mortmesne, some sex traffic, rare animals, drugs . . .”
Kelsea wasn’t interested in the workings of the black market; in every society, they were always the same. She let Mace keep going while she stared despondently at the empty bookshelves, thinking of Carlin’s library: three long walls full of leather-bound volumes, nonfiction on the left and fiction on the right. There was a certain patch of sunlight that came through the front window and remained until early afternoon, and Kelsea had liked to curl up in this patch every Sunday morning to read. One Christmas, when she was eight or nine, she had come downstairs and found Barty’s present: a large built-in chair constructed squarely in the patch of sunlight, a chair with deep pillows and “Kelsea’s Patch” carved into the left arm. The happy memory of collapsing into that chair was so strong that Kelsea could actually smell cinnamon bread baking in the kitchen and hear the grackles around the cottage working their way into their usual morning frenzy.
Barty, she thought, and felt tears well in her eyes. It seemed very important that Mace not see; she widened her eyes to keep the tears from falling and stared resolutely at the empty bookshelves, thinking hard. How had Carlin acquired all of her books? Paper books had been at a premium long before the Crossing; the transition to electronic books had decimated the publishing industry, and in the last two decades before the Crossing, many printed books had been destroyed altogether. According to Carlin, William Tear had only allowed his utopians to bring ten books apiece. Two thousand people with ten books each made twenty thousand books, and at least two thousand now stood on Carlin’s shelves. Kelsea had spent her entire life with Carlin’s library at her fingertips, taking it for granted, never understanding that it was invaluable in a world without books. Vandals might find the cottage, or even children searching for firewood. That was what had happened to most of the books that originally came over in the British-American Crossing: the desperate had burned them for fuel or warmth. Kelsea had always thought of Carlin’s library as a set piece, unified and immovable, but it wasn’t. Books could be moved.
“I want all of the books from Barty and Carlin’s cottage brought here.”
Mace rolled his eyes. “No.”
“It might take a week, perhaps two if it rains.”
He finished buckling the heavy piece of steel to her forearm. “The Caden likely burned that cottage down days ago. You have a limited number of loyal people, Lady; do you really want to throw them away on a fool’s errand like this?”
“Books may have been a fool’s errand in my mother’s kingdom, Lazarus, but they won’t be in mine. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you’re young and likely to overreach, Lady. You can’t do all things at once. Power dispersed has a way of scattering altogether in the wind.”
Unable to debate that point, Kelsea turned back to the mirror. Thinking of the cottage had reminded her of something Barty had said, one week and a lifetime ago. “Where does my food come from?”
“The food’s secure, Lady. Carroll didn’t trust the Keep kitchens, and he had a kitchen specially constructed out there.” Mace gestured toward the door. “One of the women we brought in is a tiny thing named Milla. She made breakfast for everyone this morning.”
“It was good,” Kelsea remarked. It had been good . . . griddle cakes and mixed fruit in some sort of cream, and Kelsea had eaten for at least two.
“Milla’s already staked out the kitchen as her province, and she means business; I hardly dare go in there without her permission.”
“Where do we get the actual food from?”
“Don’t worry. It’s secure.”
“Do the women seem scared?”
Mace shook his head. “Mildly concerned about their children, perhaps. One of the babies has some sort of retching sickness; I already sent for a doctor.”
“A doctor?” Kelsea asked, surprised.
“I know of two Mort doctors operating in the city. One we’ve used before; he’s greedy but not dishonest.”
“Why only two?”
“The city won’t support more. It’s rare that a Mort doctor emigrates, and the rates they charge are so exorbitant that few can afford them.”
“What about in Bolton? Or Lewiston?”
“Bolton has one doctor that I know of. I don’t think Lewiston has any at all.”
“Is there a way to tempt more doctors from Mortmesne?”
“Doubtful, Lady. The Red Queen discourages defection, but some still make the attempt. But professionals have a comfortable life in Mortmesne. Only the very greedy come to the Tear.”
“Only two doctors,” Kelsea repeated, shaking her head. “There’s a lot to do, isn’t there? I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start by getting the crown on your head.” Mace tightened a final strap on her arm and stepped back. “We’re done. Let’s go.”
Kelsea took a deep breath and followed him out the door. They emerged into a large room, perhaps two hundred feet from end to end, with a high ceiling like her mother’s chamber. The floor and walls were blocks of the same grey stone as the exterior of the Keep. There were no windows; the only light came from torches mounted in brackets on the walls. The left wall of the chamber was interrupted by a door-filled hallway that stretched for perhaps fifty yards and ended in another door.
“Quarters, Lady,” Mace murmured beside her.
On her right, the wall opened into what was clearly a kitchen; Kelsea could hear the clang of pans being washed. Carroll’s idea, Mace had said, and it was a good one; according to Barty, the Keep kitchens, some ten floors below, had over thirty staff and multiple entrances and exits. There was no way to secure them.
“Do you think Carroll is dead?”
“Yes,” Mace replied, his face crossed by a momentary shadow. “He always said that he’d die bringing you back, and I never believed him.”
“His wife and children. I made a promise in that clearing.”
“Worry later, Lady.” Mace turned and began to bark orders at the guards stationed on the walls. More guards emerged from the quarters at the end of the hall. Men surrounded Kelsea until she could see nothing but armor and shoulders. Most of her guards seemed to have bathed recently, but there was still an overwhelming man-smell, horses and musk and sweat, which made Kelsea feel as though she was in the wrong place. Barty and Carlin’s cottage had always smelled like lavender, Carlin’s favorite scent, and although Kelsea had hated the cloying smell, at least she had always known where she was.
Mhurn crowded behind her, boxing her in. Kelsea thought about greeting him and decided not to; Mhurn looked as though he hadn’t slept in days, his face far too white and his eyes rimmed in red. To her right was Dyer, his expression hard and truculent behind his red beard. Pen was on her left, and Kelsea smiled, relieved to see him unharmed. “Hello, Pen.”
“Lady.”
“Thanks for the loan of your horse; I’ll return your armor as soon as may be.”
“Keep it, Lady. It was a good thing you did yesterday.”
“It probably won’t make any difference. I’ve doomed myself.”
“You’ve doomed us all with you, Lady,” Dyer remarked.
“Stuff that, Dyer!” Pen snapped.
“You stuff it, runt. The very moment that shipment doesn’t arrive, the Mort army begins to mobilize. You’re fucked as well.”
“We’re all fucked,” Elston rumbled behind her. His voice came thickly through his broken teeth, but he didn’t seem so hard to understand now. “Don’t listen to Dyer, Lady. We’ve watched this kingdom sink into the mud for years. You might’ve come too late to save it, but it’s a good thing, all the same, to try to stop the slide.”
“Aye,” someone joined in behind her. Kelsea blushed, but was spared from replying by Mace, who shoved his way through the group of guards to station himself on her right.
“Tighten it up, men,” he growled. “If I could get through, so could anyone else.”
The journey to the Great Hall was an ordeal of low grey hallways cut by torchlight. Kelsea suspected that Mace was taking a roundabout route, but still she was daunted by the endless corridors and staircases and tunnels. She hoped there was a map of the Keep somewhere, or she would never dare to venture outside her own wing.
They passed many men and women dressed in white, with hoods drawn low over their foreheads. From Carlin’s descriptions, Kelsea knew that these must be Keep servants. The Keep had its housekeepers and plumbers, but it was also stuffed to bursting with unnecessary services: bartenders, hairdressers, masseuses, all of them on the Crown’s payroll. Keep servants were supposed to remain inconspicuous when they weren’t needed, and they drew out of Kelsea’s way to hug the wall as she passed. After passing perhaps the twentieth servant, Kelsea felt her temper beginning to unravel, and no amount of gnawing on the inside of her cheek could bring it back into line. This was where her treasury had been going for the past two decades: into luxury and cages.
At last they crossed a small antechamber toward massive double doors made of some sort of oak. It didn’t look like Tearling oak, though. The grain was too even, and the doors were covered in elaborate carvings of what appeared to be zodiacal signs. Tearling oak didn’t carve well; Kelsea had tried to whittle it with her knife as a child, only to find the wood chipping away in chunks and splinters. She tried to get a better look at the doors, but had no time; at her approach, they opened as if by magic, and the tide of guards pushed her through.
To her left, a herald shouted, “The Princess Apparent!” Kelsea grimaced, but quickly found other things to focus on. She was in a room of greater size than she had ever imagined, with ceilings at least a good two hundred feet high and the far wall so distant that she couldn’t clearly see the faces of those who stood there. The floor had been assembled from enormous tiles of dark red stone, each some thirty feet square, and the room was interspersed with massive white pillars that could only be Cadarese marble. Several skylights had been carved into the ceiling, allowing random shafts of bright sunlight to arrow down to the floor. It was eerie, the enormous torch-lit room broken by those random scatterings of white-hot light. As Kelsea and her guards passed through one beam, she felt momentary heat on her arm, then it was gone.
But for the shuffling and clinking as they moved forward down the aisle, the great room was silent. Kelsea’s guard had loosened up a bit, allowing her to peek at the crowd, ranks of men and women whom Kelsea thought must be nobles. Velvet garb predominated, rich velvet in scarlet and black and royal blue. Velvet was a Callaen specialty, and there was no way to get it without going through Mort trading controls. Were all of these people doing business with Mortmesne?
Everywhere Kelsea looked were faces, both male and female, enhanced with cosmetics: dark-smudged eyes, lined and rouged lips, even one lord who appeared to have powdered his skin. Many of them displayed elaborate hairstyles that must have taken hours to create. One woman had bound her hair into a large spiral, something like the arc of a leaping fish, which ascended from one side of her head and landed on the other. Around the entire construction rested a silver tiara interspersed with amethysts, a really beautiful piece of metalwork even to Kelsea’s untrained eye. Yet the woman’s face had a pinched look that suggested she was prepared to be displeased with anything and everything that might occur, including her own hairstyle.
Laughter threatened to bubble up in Kelsea’s throat, laughter that came from a dark well of anger. The noblewoman’s hairstyle wasn’t even the most ridiculous thing in the crowd. Hats seemed to be everywhere: huge and ostentatious hats with wide brims and pointed crowns in every color of the rainbow. Most were decorated with jewels or gold and elaborated with feathers. On a few hats, Kelsea even saw peacock feathers from Cadare, another luxury surely confined to the black market. Some of the hats were so wide that they took up more space than their occupants; Kelsea spotted a husband and wife with matching designs on their blue cloaks whose hats forced them to stand more than two feet apart. Noticing her stare, the couple gave a shallow curtsy, both smiling. Kelsea ignored them and turned away.
Mace’s eyes were fixed on the narrow gallery that ran the length of the left wall above their heads. Following his gaze, Kelsea saw that this gallery was also crammed with people, but they weren’t nobles; their clothing was plain and dark, with only a random glitter of gold here and there. Merchants, Kelsea guessed, important enough to gain entrance to the Keep but not wealthy enough to be allowed down on the floor. There were no poor in this throng, none of the gaunt people she’d seen in the fields of the Almont or out on the Keep Lawn.
Hundreds of eyes were upon her. Kelsea could feel their weight, but thousands of miles seemed to exist between her and the crowd. Had Queen Elyssa felt equally alone in this enormous room? But Kelsea turned away from that idea, furious that any part of her mind would try to relate to her mother.
At the end of the hall was a great raised dais, in the very center of which sat a throne, brilliant even in torchlight. It had been forged from pure silver, formed and shaped into a great flowing seat whose various parts simply melted one into the next, arms to back to base. The high, arched back of the throne was at least ten feet tall and carved in an aquatic relief depicting various scenes from the Crossing. It was an extraordinary piece of art, but as with so many relics of the Tear dynasty, no one knew who’d done the work, and now the throne was only a mute reminder of a time long gone.
By all rights, no one should have sat on this throne since the day her mother had died, but Kelsea wasn’t surprised to see a man seated there. Her uncle was a short man with dark hair and a curling beard, a fashion that Kelsea had observed many times on her journey through the city and one to which she’d taken an instant dislike. The Regent fidgeted with the beard as Kelsea approached, wrapping it in tight coils around his index finger. He wore a tight-fitting purple jumpsuit that hid nothing. His face was pale and bloated, with deep-set eyes, and Kelsea read signs of dissipation in the broken veins of his large nose and sagging cheeks. Alcoholism, if not something more exotic; Kelsea suddenly knew, the knowledge coming from nowhere, that if there was an expensive vice out there, her uncle had tried it. He watched her with an indifferent stare, one hand hooked into his beard, the fingers of the other tapping idly on the arm of the throne. He was cunning, Kelsea could see, but not brave. Here was a man who’d been trying to kill her for years, yet she didn’t fear him.
At the Regent’s feet sat a red-haired woman, perched motionless on the top step of the dais, staring at nothing, extraordinarily beautiful despite her vacant stare. Her face was a perfect oval, utterly symmetrical, with a fine upturned nose and wide, sensual mouth. She was dressed in soft blue gauze, a garment of so few layers that it was nearly transparent, revealing a figure that was both willowy and voluptuous. The gauze did nothing to hide her nipples, deep pink points that poked out against the fabric. Kelsea wondered what sort of man paid for his women to dress like whores, but then the redhead looked up and Kelsea’s breath hissed through her teeth. A yoke had been tied around the woman’s throat, and not loosely either; puffy, welted flesh showed where the rope had abraded her skin. The other end of the rope snaked upward, over the steps of the dais, to rest in the Regent’s hand.
At Mace’s word, Kelsea’s guard halted in front of the dais. Her uncle was surrounded by his own guard, but one glance could chart the difference between a true guard and a bunch of mercenaries. Her uncle’s men wore voluminous, impractical uniforms of midnight blue, and their posture was as insolent and lazy as his. When her uncle met her gaze, Kelsea saw with some surprise that he had the same deep green, almond-shaped eyes as her own. A true blood relation, and the only one she had left . . . the thought made Kelsea pause. It seemed like blood should matter. But then her eyes returned to the roped woman huddled on the floor, and an insistent beat began in Kelsea’s temples. This man wasn’t a relation, her mind insisted, not if she didn’t want him to be. She unclenched her fists and gentled her voice to disciplined reason. “Greetings, Uncle. I come to be crowned today.”
“Welcome to the Princess Apparent,” her uncle replied in a pinched, nasal voice. “We require the proof, of course.”
Kelsea reached up to take off the necklace. On the Keep Lawn the day before, she had noticed that it came off rather unhappily, with a prickly feeling that seemed to tug at her skin. Today was worse; she seemed to feel the silver chain pulling at her flesh, a sensation like ants crawling beneath the surface. She held the necklace high for her uncle’s inspection, and once he nodded, she turned and displayed it to the enormous company gathered in the hall.
“Where’s the companion jewel?” her uncle asked.
“That’s not your concern, Uncle. I have the jewel I was sent away with, and that’s the proof required.”
He waved a hand. “Of course, of course. The brand?”
Kelsea smiled, baring her teeth, as she pulled up the sleeve of her dress and turned her forearm to the light. The burn scar didn’t look as ugly in torchlight, but it was clear all the same: someone had laid a white-hot knife against her forearm. For a moment, Kelsea could almost picture the scene: the dark room, the fire, the outraged screams of a baby who had just felt real pain for the first time in her life.
Who did this to me? she wondered. Who would have been able to do it?
At the sight of the scar, the Regent seemed to relax, relief settling over his shoulders. Kelsea was amazed at how easily she could read him. Was it because they were related? More likely it was merely that her uncle was fairly simple, greed and gluttony rolled together. He didn’t like uncertainty, even when it worked to his advantage.
“My identity is true,” Kelsea announced. “I will be crowned now. Where’s the priest?”
“Here, Lady,” a thin voice quavered behind her. Kelsea turned to see a tall, gaunt man of perhaps sixty approaching from the nearest pillar. He wore a loose white robe with no decoration, the uniform clothing of an ordained priest who hadn’t advanced in the hierarchy. His face was that of an ascetic, drawn and pale, and his hair and eyebrows were likewise a faded, colorless blond, as though life had leached the very pigment from him. He shuffled forward with nervous, uncertain steps.
“Well done, Lazarus,” Kelsea murmured.
The priest halted some ten feet from Kelsea’s guard and bowed. “Lady, I’m Father Tyler. It will be my honor to administer your coronation. Where is the crown, please?”
“Ah,” the Regent replied, “that has been a difficulty. Before her death, my sister hid the crown for safekeeping. We haven’t been able to locate it.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Kelsea replied, fuming inside. She should have expected some cheap nonsense like this. The crown was a symbolic instrument, but it was an important one all the same, so important that Kelsea had never heard of anyone becoming a monarch without some overdone piece of jewelry placed on his head. Her uncle probably had made an extraordinary effort to find the crown, so that he could wear it himself. If he hadn’t found the thing, it was unlikely to be found.
The priest appeared to be near tears. He looked back and forth between Kelsea and the Regent, wringing his hands. “Well, it’s difficult, Your Highness. I . . . I don’t see how I can perform the ceremony without a crown.”
The crowd was beginning to shift restlessly. Kelsea heard the strange susurration of innumerable voices murmuring in an enormous room. On impulse, she craned her neck over the priest and scanned the throng. The woman she was seeking wasn’t difficult to find; her spiraled hair towered at least a foot over those around her. “Lazarus. The woman with the hideous hair. I want her tiara.”
Mace peered into the crowd, his face bewildered. “What’s a tiara?”
“The silver thing in her hair. Didn’t you ever read fairy tales?”
Mace snapped his fingers. “Coryn. Tell Lady Andrews the Crown will reimburse her.”
Coryn went swiftly down the steps, and Kelsea turned back to the priest. “Will that do, Father, until the true crown can be found?”
Father Tyler nodded, his Adam’s apple working nervously. It occurred to Kelsea that for all the priests knew, she could have been raised to the Church’s teachings, could even be truly devout. As the priest took another cautious step forward, Kelsea broadened her smile in slow degrees until it felt genuine. “We’re honored by your presence, Father.”
“The honor is mine, Lady,” the priest replied, but Kelsea sensed a broad vein of anxiety beneath his placid expression. Did he fear the wrath of his superiors? Carlin’s warnings about the power of the Arvath resurfaced in Kelsea’s mind, and she watched the pale man with distrust.
“How dare you!” a woman shouted, the words followed by the clear crack of a slap. Kelsea peered between Elston and Dyer and saw that there was quite a tussle going on; as the crowd shifted, she caught a quick glimpse of Coryn, his hands buried in a nest of thick, dark hair. Then he disappeared again.
Elston was shaking, and when Kelsea looked up, she found him red with bottled-up laughter. He wasn’t the only one; all around her, Kelsea heard quiet snickers. Mhurn, standing just behind her on the left, was openly giggling, and it had brought some color to his pallid face. Even Mace had clamped his jaw shut tight, though his lips continued to twitch. Kelsea had never seen Mace laugh, but after a moment, his mouth relaxed and he resumed scanning the gallery.
Coryn finally emerged from the crowd, tiara in hand. He looked like he’d been through a raspberry thicket; one side of his face bore a long, ugly scratch, the other was bright red, and his shirtsleeve was torn. Behind him, Kelsea could see the noblewoman progressing with sorry dignity toward the door, her elaborate hairstyle in tatters.
“Well, you’ve lost Lady Andrews,” Pen murmured.
“I didn’t need her,” Kelsea replied, her temples throbbing with sudden anger. “I don’t need anyone with hair like that.”
Coryn handed the tiara to the priest and took his place at the front of Kelsea’s guard.
“Let’s do this as fast as possible, Father,” Kelsea announced. “I’d hate to endanger your life any further.”
The words had the desired effect; Father Tyler paled and darted a wary glance over his shoulder. Kelsea felt a moment’s pity, wondering how often he was allowed to leave the Arvath. Carlin had told her that some priests, particularly those who joined young, lived their entire lives in the white tower, only leaving in a box.
The company of guards shifted now, allowing Kelsea to kneel at the foot of the dais, facing the throne. The stone floor was cold and jagged, digging into her kneecaps, and she wondered how long she would have to kneel. Her guard closed in around her, half of them facing the Regent and his guards, half directing their attention into the crowd. Father Tyler moved as close as Coryn would allow him, some five feet away.
Mhurn stood just behind her right shoulder, Mace beside him. When Kelsea twisted around to peer up at Mace, she saw that he had his sword raised in one hand, his mace in the other. The ball of the mace was still crusted with dried blood. Mace’s expression was one of dangerous serenity: a man so casual and comfortable with death that he begged it to come forward and make its presence known. But the rest of the guards were so on edge that half of them drew their swords when a woman in the crowd sneezed.
Kelsea’s sapphire began to burn against her skin, and she fought the urge to look down at her chest. The jewel had flared into an inferno on the Keep Lawn, but when Kelsea inspected her skin this morning, there hadn’t even been the faintest hint of a mark. She had many questions about the sapphire, but the strength it provided seemed more important than her questions, more important than wonder. If she looked down, she knew she would see the jewel gleaming against her chest, a bright, healthy blue of warning. Something was going to happen here.
Father Tyler began to mutter in tones so low that Kelsea didn’t think the audience could hear him. He appeared to be settling in for some kind of soliloquy on the grace of God and His relationship to the monarchy. Kelsea ceased to pay attention. She peeked over her shoulder, but no one was moving in the crowd. Near the back, almost hidden beside one of the pillars, she glimpsed Arlen Thorne’s unmistakably skeletal body in its tight blue uniform. He looked like a praying mantis leaning against the wall. A businessman, by Mace’s account, but that made him even more dangerous. When Thorne noticed Kelsea watching him, he turned away.
The priest produced an aged Bible from the folds of his robe and began to read something about the ascendancy of King David. Kelsea clamped her jaws shut over a yawn. She had read the Bible from cover to cover; it had some good stories, and King David was one of the most compelling. But stories were only stories. Still, Kelsea couldn’t help but admire the ancient Bible in the priest’s hands, its pages as delicate as the priest himself.
Father Tyler came within two feet of Kelsea, one hand clutching the crown. She felt her guard edge up on their toes, heard the dry rasp of a sword being drawn to her right. The priest looked over her shoulder and flinched—the expression on Mace’s face must be dreadful—then lost his place in his book and looked down for a moment, fumbling.
Several things happened all at once. A man shouted behind her, and Kelsea felt a knifing pain in her left shoulder. Mace shoved her flat to the floor and crouched above her, shielding her with his body. A woman screamed in the audience, an entire world away.
Swords clashed all around them. Kelsea scrabbled beneath the cover of Mace’s frame, trying to get her knife from her boot. Exploring with her free hand, she found a knife handle protruding just above her shoulder blade. When her fingers brushed it, a bolt of pain arrowed all the way down to her toes.
Stabbed, she thought, dazed. Mace didn’t cover my back after all.
“Galen! The gallery! The gallery!” Mace roared. “Get up there and clear it out!” Then he was jerked away from Kelsea. She scrambled to her feet, knife in hand. All around her, men were fighting, three of them attempting to skewer Mace with long swords. Her uncle’s men, the deep blue uniforms swirling around them as they fought.
A breath of air came from behind her and Kelsea whirled to find a sword coming for her neck. She ducked, slid under her attacker’s arm, and shoved her knife upward between his ribs. Warm wetness splattered her face, and she closed her eyes, blinded by red. The dead man fell on top of her, crushing her to the ground with a pure, bright explosion of pain as the knife in her shoulder hit the floor. Kelsea’s teeth clenched on a scream, but she shoved the man off, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. She ignored the blood trickling down her face, pulled her knife from her attacker’s rib cage, and hauled herself to her feet. Her vision was clouded by red gauze that seemed to cover everything. Someone grabbed her uninjured shoulder and she sliced savagely at the hand.
“Me, Lady, me!”
“Lazarus,” she panted.
“Back to back.” Mace pushed her behind him, and Kelsea planted herself against his back, hunching forward to protect her shoulder as she faced the audience. To her surprise, none of the nobles appeared to have fled; they remained in orderly rows behind the pillars at the foot of the steps, and Kelsea wanted to shout at them. Why didn’t they help? But many, the men in particular, weren’t watching Kelsea. They were watching the fighting behind her, their eyes darting avidly between combatants.
Sport, Kelsea realized, sickened. She held her knife up toward the crowd in as threatening a gesture as she could muster, longing for a sword, though she had no idea how to use one. The blade dripped crimson, slippery in her blood-coated hand. She remembered when Barty had given her that knife, on her tenth birthday, in a gold-painted box with a small silver key. The box must still be in her saddlebags, somewhere upstairs. She had finally used her knife on a man, and she wished she could tell Barty. A wave of darkness crashed across her vision.
Pen had stationed himself in front of her now, a sword in each hand. When one of the Regent’s guards broke forward, trying to push through, Pen sidestepped him neatly and chopped off his arm at the biceps, burying a sword in his rib cage. The man screamed, a high, thin shrieking that seemed to go on and on as his severed arm landed several feet away on the flagstones. He dropped to the ground and Pen resumed his waiting posture, unfazed by the blood dripping down his sword arm. Mhurn joined him a moment later, his blond hair streaked with crimson and his face whiter than ever now, as if he were on the edge of fainting.
Two men appeared on her periphery and Kelsea swung that way, trying to tighten her grip on the slippery knife. But it was only Elston and Kibb, planting themselves on either side of her, their swords dripping blood. Kibb had taken a wound to the hand, a deep gash that looked like an animal bite, but otherwise they appeared unharmed. The clang of swords came more slowly now, the fighting dying down. When Kelsea looked out into the crowd, she saw that Arlen Thorne had disappeared. The priest, Father Tyler, was crouched against the nearest of the massive pillars, hugging his Bible to his chest, staring at a blue-clad corpse that lay bleeding at the foot of the dais. The priest looked as though he might faint, and in spite of her distrust, Kelsea felt a brief flash of pity for him. He didn’t seem the sort who’d ever been strong, even as a young man, and he wasn’t young.
He needs to recover, another, colder voice snapped in her mind. Quickly. Kelsea, brought back to herself by the steel in that voice, nodded in agreement. It was extraordinary, how a coronation could mean so little and yet so much. Her legs gave way and she stumbled against Mace, hissing as pain dug into her back like a burrowing insect.
Women scream when they’re hurt, Barty’s voice echoed in her head. Men scream when they’re dying.
I’m not going to scream, either way.
“Lazarus, you have to hold me up.”
Mace got an arm beneath hers and firmed it up, giving her something to lean on. “We need to get that knife out, Lady.”
“Not yet.”
“You’re losing blood.”
“I’ll lose more when the knife is pulled. First this.”
Mace inspected the wound in a cursory way. The color drained from his face.
“What?”
“Nothing, Lady.”
“What?”
“It’s a grave wound. Sooner or later you’re going to pass out.”
“Then hit me and wake me up.”
“I was set to guard your life, Lady.”
“My life and that throne are one,” Kelsea replied hoarsely. It was true, though she hadn’t fully realized until she said it. She reached up to clutch Mace’s shoulder, pointing to the sapphire on her chest. “I’m nothing now but this. You see?”
Mace turned and shouted to Galen in the gallery. Two bodies clad in blue tumbled over the wall and landed with a wet thud on the flagstones. The foremost members of the audience cried out and drew back several feet.
“Wary now!” Mace barked. “Eyes on the crowd! Kibb, you need a doctor?”
“Fuck you,” Kibb replied in a good-natured tone, though his face was white and he was clutching his hand in a death grip. “I’m a medic.”
Many of her uncle’s guard were dead on the dais. Several of her own guards were sporting wounds, but she could see no grey-clad bodies on the floor. Who had thrown the knife?
The Regent remained seated, his manner still unconcerned despite the blood that spattered his face and the four Queen’s Guards who had him at sword point. But a thin layer of sweat gleamed on his upper lip now, and his eyes twitched continuously toward the crowd. Considering the lax skills of his guard, it had been a fool’s attempt on Kelsea’s life. A delaying tactic; her uncle knew the importance of this crowning as well as Kelsea did. An entirely new landscape of pain had begun to radiate outward from her shoulder, and blood was pooling in the small of her back. She sensed that she had very little time. She reached out and grabbed one of her guards, a young one whose name she didn’t know. “Get the priest.”
With a doubtful glance, the guard went and hauled Father Tyler back up to the dais, where he blanched at the pile of dead bodies strewn across the floor. Kelsea opened her mouth and that cold voice emerged, a tone of command that didn’t seem entirely her own. “We’ll continue now, Father. Stick to the essential language.”
He nodded, producing the tiara in one shaking hand. With Mace’s help, Kelsea knelt back down on the floor. Father Tyler opened his Bible again and began to read in a quavering voice, the words running together in Kelsea’s ears. Beyond the priest, she saw the beautiful redhead, still as stone on the top step of the dais, her body streaked and smeared with blood. It had painted her face and soaked through the blue gauze of her clothing. She hadn’t moved an inch, but she was alive; her grey eyes stared at the same fixed point on the floor. Kelsea closed her eyes for a moment, and then she was looking up at the ceiling, an enormous vaulted expanse, revolving above her.
Mace’s boot landed in the small of her back, and Kelsea bit her tongue against a scream. Her vision cleared slightly, and she saw the priest advancing upon her, Bible closed, tiara in hand. Her guard tensed up around her. Father Tyler leaned down, his eyes wide, his face drained of all blood, and Kelsea felt her earlier suspicions inexplicably vanish. She wished that she could comfort him, tell him that his part in this business was almost done.
But it isn’t, another voice whispered, quiet but sure in her mind. Not even close.
“Your Highness,” he asked, his tone almost apologetic, “do you swear to act for this kingdom, for this people, under the laws of God’s Church?”
Kelsea drew a hoarse breath, feeling something rattle in her chest, and whispered, “I swear to act for this kingdom and for this people, under the law.”
Father Tyler paused. Kelsea tried to draw another breath and felt herself fading, drifting to the left. Mace kicked her again, and this time she couldn’t stop the small screech that escaped her lips. Even Barty would have understood. “You’ll watch out for your church, Father, and I’ll watch out for this kingdom and its people. My vow.”
Father Tyler hesitated a moment longer, then tucked his Bible into the fold of his robes. His face was a mask of resignation and regret, as though he could see into the future, the many possible consequences of this moment. Perhaps he could. He reached out and set the tiara on Kelsea’s head with both hands. “I crown you Queen Kelsea Raleigh of the Tearling. Long be your reign, Majesty.”
Kelsea shut her eyes, her throat choked with a relief so great that it bordered on ecstasy. “Lazarus, help me up.”
Mace hauled her to her feet, and her legs promptly gave way. His arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her up like a rag doll, pitching her torso forward to avoid the knife hilt buried in her shoulder.
“The Regent.”
Mace swung her carefully around and Kelsea faced her uncle, finding his eyes bright with stupid desperation. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned back against Mace until the hilt of the knife bumped his chest. The pain jolted her awake, but not much; darkness was closing in now, a blackening border around the edge of her vision.
“Get off my throne.”
Her uncle didn’t move. Kelsea leaned forward, summoning all of her strength, her breath rasping loudly in the vast, echoing chamber. “You have one month to be gone from this Keep, Uncle. After that . . . ten thousand pounds on your head.”
A woman behind Kelsea gasped, and muttering began to spread throughout the crowd. Her uncle’s panicked eyes darted behind her.
“You can’t place a bounty on a member of the royal family.”
The voice behind her was an oily baritone that Kelsea already recognized: Thorne. She ignored him, forcing words out in thin wheezes of breath. “I’ve given you . . . a running start, Uncle. Get off my throne right now, or Lazarus will throw you out of the Keep. How long . . . do you think you’ll last?”
Her uncle blinked slowly. After several seconds he rose from the throne, his stomach ballooning as he stood upright. Too much ale, Kelsea thought vaguely, followed by: My god, he’s shorter than I am! Her vision doubled, then tripled. She nudged Mace with one elbow, and he understood, for he hauled her forward and eased her onto the throne. It was like sitting on a freezing cold rock. Kelsea swayed against the icy metal, shut her eyes, and opened them again. There was something else she had to do, but what?
In front of her, Kelsea spotted the redhead, still covered in blood. Her uncle stumbled down the steps of the dais, the slack in the rope pulling tighter as he went.
“Drop the rope,” Kelsea whispered.
“Drop the rope,” Mace repeated.
Her uncle whirled around, and for the first time, Kelsea saw naked fury in his eyes. “The woman’s mine! She was a gift.”
“Too bad.”
Her uncle looked around for reinforcements, but most of his guards were dead. Only three of them followed at his heels, and even these remaining men seemed reluctant to meet his eye. Her uncle’s face was white with anger, but Kelsea saw something worse written in his expression: aggrieved bewilderment, the look of a man who didn’t know why so many terrible things should happen to him when he had meant so well. After another moment’s deliberation, he dropped the rope and scuttled backward.
“She’s mine,” he repeated plaintively.
“She goes with us. Elston—see to it.”
“Majesty.”
“Take me out, Lazarus, please,” Kelsea rasped. Drawing breath was an exercise in agony. Mace and Pen debated for a moment, and then each of them stooped down and got an arm beneath her, forming a chair. Kelsea was dimly grateful; it was a more dignified way to leave the room than being slung around like a sack. Her guard quickly re-formed around her, then made their way off the dais and down the center aisle. The crowd blurred past. Kelsea wished they hadn’t first seen her this way, bloody and weakened. At some point they passed a noblewoman in a red velvet dress, the color brilliant in the darkness. Carlin had always liked to wear that same deep, rich red at home, and Kelsea reached out a hand to the woman, whispering, “It will be a hard road.” But she was too far away to touch. Many faces streaked by; for a moment, Kelsea thought she saw the Fetch, but that was madness. Still she reached out again, grasping helplessly.
“Sir, we need to hurry,” Pen muttered. Mace grunted assent, and their progress quickened, through the enormous double doors and out into the broad entry passage. Kelsea could smell her own blood now, impossibly vivid. All of her senses were in riot. Each torch was as bright as the sun, but when she squinted at Mace, she found his face shrouded in darkness. The guards muttered to each other, their whispers deafening, but Kelsea couldn’t understand a single word. The tiara was slipping from her head.
“My crown is falling off.”
Mace tightened the arm that supported her back. Reaching for a wall, he touched something invisible to Kelsea’s eyes, and to her astonishment, a hidden door swung open into darkness. “Not if I can help it, Lady.”
“Nor I,” echoed Pen. As they went through the darkened doorway, Kelsea felt a careful hand secure the crown on her head.