It’s easy to forget that a monarchy is more than just the monarch. The successful reign is a complex animal, with countless individual pieces working in concert. Looking closely at the Glynn Queen, we find many moving parts, but one cannot overestimate the importance of Lazarus of the Mace, the Queen’s Captain of Guard and Chief Assassin. Remove him, and the entire structure collapses.
—The Tearling as a Military Nation, CALLOW THE MARTYR
Upon waking, Kelsea was pleased to find that all of the decorative pillows had been removed from her mother’s bed. Her bed; it was all hers now, and that thought brought her less pleasure. Her back was a mess of bandaging. When she ran a hand through her hair, it came away slicked with oil. She’d been asleep for some time. Mace wasn’t in the corner armchair, and there was no one else in the room.
It took a few minutes for Kelsea to raise herself to a sitting position; she felt no bleeding on her shoulder, but the wound pulled with every movement of her torso. Someone, undoubtedly Andalie, had placed a pitcher of water on the small table beside her bed, along with an empty glass. Kelsea drank and splashed some on her face. Andalie must have washed the blood from Kelsea as well, for which she was grateful. She thought of the man she’d killed, and was relieved to feel nothing.
She hauled herself to her feet and walked around the room, testing the wound. In her circuit, she discovered that a long rope now hung on the far side of her bed; it stretched to the ceiling, where it threaded through several hooks and then disappeared through a small opening carved in the antechamber wall. Kelsea smiled, tugging gently on the rope, and heard the muted sounds of a bell.
Mace opened the door. Seeing her standing beside the bed, he nodded in approval. “Good. The doctor said you were to stay in bed for at least another day, but I knew he was coddling you.”
“What doctor?” She’d assumed that Mace had patched her wounds.
“The doctor I got for the sick baby. I dislike doctors, but he’s a competent man, and it’s likely due to him that you haven’t taken infection. He said your shoulder will heal slowly, but clean.”
“Another scar.” Kelsea rubbed her neck gingerly. “Soon I’ll be a bundle of them. How’s the baby?”
“She fares better. The doctor gave the mother some medicine that seems to have quieted the baby’s stomach, though it cost the damned moon and stars. She’ll likely need more later.”
“I hope you paid him well.”
“Very well, Lady. But we can’t use him forever, nor the other doctor I know. Neither is trustworthy.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I don’t know yet.” Mace rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “I’m thinking on it.”
“How are the guards who were injured?”
“They’re fine. A couple will need to limit their duties for a time.”
“I want to see them.”
“I wouldn’t, Lady.”
“Why not?”
“A Queen’s Guard is a very proud creature. The men who took wounds won’t want you to notice.”
“Me?” Kelsea asked, puzzled. “I don’t even know how to hold a sword.”
“That’s not how we think, Lady. We just want to do our jobs well.”
“Well, what am I to do? Pretend they weren’t even injured?”
“Yes.”
Kelsea shook her head. “Barty always used to say there were three things men were stupid about: their beer, their cocks, and their pride.”
“That sounds like Barty.”
“I thought pride was the one he might be wrong about.”
“It’s not.”
“Speaking of pride, who threw the knife?”
Mace’s jaw clenched. “I apologize, Lady. It was my failure of security, and I take full responsibility. I thought we had you sufficiently covered.”
Kelsea didn’t know what to say. Mace was looking very hard at the ground, his lined face twisted up as though he were waiting for a lash to fall on his shoulders. Being caught off guard was intolerable to him. He’d told her that he’d never been a child, but Kelsea had her doubts; this particular effect looked like the result of some fairly harsh parenting. Kelsea wondered if she looked just as pained when she didn’t know the answer. Mace’s voice echoed in her head again: she was his employer, not his confessor. “You’re working on finding out, I trust?”
“I am.”
“Then let’s move on.”
Mace looked up, visibly relieved. “Typically, the first thing a new ruler would do is hold an audience, but I’d like to put that off for a week or two, Lady. You’re in no shape, and there’s plenty to do here.”
Kelsea picked up her tiara from the gaudy vanity table and considered it thoughtfully. It was a beautiful piece of jewelry, but flimsy, too feminine for her taste. “We need to find the real crown.”
“That’ll be difficult. Your mother set Carroll the task of hiding it, and believe me, he was clever that way.”
“Well, let’s make sure to pay that hussy for this thing.”
Mace cleared his throat. “There’s much to do today. Let’s get Andalie in here to fix your appearance.”
“How rude.”
“Forgive me, Lady, but you’ve looked better.”
A thud came against the outer wall, the impact so hard that it rattled the hangings on Kelsea’s bed. “What’s going on out there?”
“Siege supplies.”
“Siege? Are we expecting one?”
“Today is March the sixth, Lady. There are only two days left until the treaty deadline.”
“I won’t change my mind, Lazarus. That deadline means nothing to me.”
“I’m not sure you fully understand the consequences of your own actions, Lady.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure you fully understand me, Lazarus. I know what I’ve loosed here. Who commands my army?”
“General Bermond, Lady.”
“Well, let’s bring him here.”
“I’ve already sent for him. It might take him another few days to return; he’s been on the southern border, inspecting garrisons, and he doesn’t ride that well.”
“The general of my army doesn’t ride well?”
“He’s lame, Lady: a wound he took defending the Keep from an attempted coup ten years ago.”
“Oh,” Kelsea murmured, embarrassed.
“I warn you, Lady: Bermond will be difficult. Your mother always left him to his own judgment, and the Regent hasn’t bothered him for years. He’s gotten used to having his own way. He’ll also loathe discussing military strategy with any woman, even a Queen.”
“Too bad. Where’s the Mort Treaty?”
“Outside, waiting for your inspection. But I think you will have to reconcile yourself.”
“To what?”
“War,” Mace replied flatly. “You’ve effectively declared war on Mortmesne, Lady, and believe me, the Red Queen will be coming.”
“It’s a gamble, Lazarus, I know.”
“Just remember, Lady: you’re not the only one gambling. You’re playing hazard with an entire kingdom. High dice, and you’d better be prepared to lose.”
He left to fetch Andalie, and Kelsea sat down on the bed, her stomach sinking. Mace was clearly beginning to understand her, for he’d thrust the sword right where it would have the most impact. She closed her eyes, and behind them she saw Mortmesne, a vast dark land in her imagination, awakened from long slumber, looming like a shadow over everything she wanted to build.
Carlin, what can I do?
But Carlin’s voice had fallen silent in her mind, and there was no reply.
The Mort Treaty had been spread out on the large dining table that stood at one end of Kelsea’s audience chamber. It was short for such a document, only several sheets of thick vellum that had browned slightly with age. Kelsea touched the sheets gingerly, fascinated to see her mother’s initials, ER, scrawled messily in black at the bottom left of each page. On the right was a separate set of initials, scrawled in dark red ink: QM. The final page of the document contained two signatures: on one line, “Elyssa Raleigh,” the handwriting almost illegible, and on the other, “Queen of Mortmesne,” neatly written in the same bloodred ink.
She truly doesn’t want anyone to know her real name, Kelsea realized, her intuition flickering. It’s desperately important to her that no one finds out who she really is. But why?
Kelsea was disappointed to find the language of the treaty as straightforward as Mace had claimed. The Tearling was obligated to provide three thousand slaves per year, divided into twelve equal shipments. At least five hundred of them needed to be children, at least two hundred of each gender. Why so many children? Mortmesne took a quota of slave children from Callae and Cadare as well, but children weren’t much use for hard industrial labor or mining, and Mortmesne had few farms. Even if there were a disproportionately high number of pedophiles in the market, they couldn’t go through children so quickly. Why so many?
The terse, mechanical language of the treaty provided her with no answers. If any individual shipment failed to reach Demesne by the eighth day of the month, the treaty granted Mortmesne the right to immediately enter the Tearling and satisfy its quota by right of capture. But, Kelsea noticed, the document placed no limits on the length of that entry, nor did it include any requirement of withdrawal when conditions were met. Reluctantly, she was forced to admit that Mace was right: by stopping the shipment, Kelsea had given the Red Queen an umbrella grant to invade. What had possessed her mother to sign such a one-sided document?
Be fair, a new voice cautioned in her mind. The voice was neither Carlin’s nor Barty’s; Kelsea couldn’t identify it, and distrusted its pragmatism. What would you have done, with the enemy at the very gates?
Again, Kelsea had no answer. She gathered the pages of the treaty together into a neat sheaf and straightened them, feeling sick. A new idea occurred to her, one that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago, but Kelsea had already found her mind trying to insulate itself from further disaster by imagining the worst. She turned to Mace. “Was my mother assassinated?”
“There were several attempts,” Mace replied indifferently, though Kelsea thought his indifference feigned. “She nearly died of nightshade poisoning when someone got it into her food. That was when she decided to send you away for fostering.”
“So she did send me away to protect me?”
Mace’s brow furrowed. “Why else?”
“Never mind.” Kelsea looked back down at the table, the treaty in front of her. “There’s no mention of a lottery in here.”
“The lottery is an internal matter. At first, your mother simply sent convicts and the mentally ill. But such people make poor slaves, and the arrangement didn’t satisfy the Red Queen for long. The Census Bureau was your uncle’s answer.”
“Is no one exempt?”
“Churchmen. But otherwise, no. Even the babies are taken; their names go into the lot as soon as they’re weaned. They say the Red Queen uses them as gifts for barren families. For a while women got around it by nursing their children well beyond the weaning age, but Thorne’s on to that trick. His people are in every village in the kingdom, and there’s little they don’t know.”
“Is he loyal to my uncle?”
“Thorne’s a businessman, Lady. He’ll go whichever way the wind is blowing.”
“And which way is it blowing now?”
“Toward Mortmesne.”
“We should keep an eye on him then.”
“I always have at least one eye on Arlen Thorne, Lady.”
“How did my mother actually die? Carlin would never tell me.”
“They say it was the poison, Lady. That it gradually weakened her heart until she died a few years later.”
“They say that. What do you say, Lazarus?”
He stared at her without expression. “I say nothing, Lady. That’s why I’m a Queen’s Guard.”
Frustrated, Kelsea spent the rest of the day inspecting the Queen’s Wing and meeting various people. They began with her new cook: Milla, a blonde so petite that Kelsea didn’t even want to think about how she’d borne her four-year-old son. Kelsea gathered that Milla had been doing something unpleasant to make ends meet; when told that her only job would be cooking, even for the twenty-odd people who now crowded the Queen’s Wing, she became so violently happy that Kelsea had to tuck her own hands into the folds of her dress, terrified that the woman would try to kiss them.
The other woman who’d come in with them, Carlotta, was older and round-faced, with bright red cheeks. She seemed frightened, but after a few repeated questions admitted that she could sew passably well. Kelsea asked her for more black dresses, and Carlotta agreed that she could make them.
“Though I would do better if I took your measurements, Majesty,” she ventured, looking terrified at the very idea. Kelsea found the idea of being measured nearly as terrifying, but she nodded and smiled, trying to put the woman at ease.
She met several guards who hadn’t been with them on their journey: Caelan, a thuggish-looking man whom everyone simply called Cae; and Tom and Wellmer, both archers. Wellmer seemed too young to be a Queen’s Guard. He was doing his best to appear as stoic as the older men, but he was clearly fidgety; every few seconds he switched his weight between feet.
“How old is that boy?” Kelsea whispered to Mace.
“Wellmer? He’s twenty.”
“What did you do, pick him from a nursery?”
“Most of us were barely teenagers when we were recruited, Lady. Don’t worry about Wellmer. Give him a bow, and he could pick out your left eye from here, even in torchlight.”
Kelsea tried to reconcile this description with the nervous, white-faced boy in front of her, but gave up. After the guards went back to their posts, she followed Mace down the corridor to one of the first rooms, which had been hastily converted into a nursery. The room was a good choice; it was one of the few chambers with a window, so that light spilled in and made it seem brighter and cheerier than it really was. All of the furniture had been cleared to the walls, and the floor was littered with makeshift toys: dolls made of cloth and stuffed with straw that leaked from every patch, toy swords, and a wooden shopkeeper’s stall shrunken to child size.
Kelsea saw a number of children seated in a half-circle in the middle of the nursery, their focus entirely on a beautiful woman with auburn hair whom Kelsea hadn’t seen before. She was telling the children a story, something about a girl with extraordinarily long hair imprisoned in a tower, and Kelsea leaned against the doorway, unnoticed, to listen. The woman spoke with a pronounced Mort accent, but she had a good power of voice and she told her story well. When the prince was injured by the guile of a witch, the corners of the woman’s mouth went down, her face transformed into grief. And then Kelsea knew her, and turned to Mace, astonished.
He motioned Kelsea away from the door, speaking in a low voice. “She’s been a wonder with the children. The women are content to leave their little ones with her while they work, even Andalie. It’s an unexpected gift; otherwise we’d have children underfoot everywhere.”
“The women don’t mind that she’s Mort?”
“Apparently not.”
Kelsea peered around the doorway again. The redhead was pantomiming now, showing the healing of the prince’s eyes, and she was radiant in the candlelight, a world apart from the miserable creature Kelsea had seen huddled in front of the throne.
“What happened to her?”
“I didn’t question her about her life with the Regent, Lady, deeming that her affair. But if I had to hazard a guess . . .” He lowered his voice even further. “She was the Regent’s favorite plaything. He wouldn’t let her conceive, lest it ruin his sport.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Mace splayed his hands. “She made no secret of her wish for a child, Lady, even one by the Regent. The rest of your uncle’s women took contraceptives willingly, but not this one. They say he had to lace her food. But he also promised to kill any child she bore; I heard that threat myself.”
“I see.” Kelsea nodded calmly, though she was fuming inside. She took a last look at the woman, at the group of children. “What’s her name?”
“Marguerite.”
“How did my uncle get hold of a Mort slave?”
“Redheads are even more of a curiosity in Mortmesne than in the Tearling. Marguerite was a gift to your uncle from the Red Queen several years ago, a sign of great favor.”
Kelsea tipped her head back against the passageway wall. Her shoulder was beginning to throb. “This place is a festering sore, Lazarus.”
“Leadership was needed, Lady. There was none.”
“Not even you?”
“Certainly not.” Mace gestured toward the open doorway. “I would have let your uncle keep his toy. I would have come to an agreement with the Red Queen before stopping the shipment.”
“I heard what you said earlier.”
“I know you did. Don’t misunderstand me, Lady. I don’t say that your choices are right or wrong, only that you were needed to do the things you’ve done, and you were not here.”
There was no tone of reproach in his voice. Kelsea’s irritation quieted, but her shoulder gave another throb, stronger now, and she wondered how on earth simply standing there could have aggravated it. “I need to sit down.”
Within five minutes her guards had moved the large, comfortable armchair out of Kelsea’s bedchamber and into the audience chamber, where they settled the chair securely against a wall.
“My throne,” Kelsea murmured.
“We can’t secure the throne room at present, Lady,” Mace replied. “It has too many entrances, and that twice-damned gallery is simply impossible to cover without more guards. But we could have the throne itself moved in here for the time being.”
“That seems fairly pointless.”
“Maybe, maybe not. The crown on your head is a bit pointless as well, but I know you recognize its value. Perhaps a throne serves the same purpose.”
Kelsea tilted her head, considering. “I’ll need to hold audience, you said.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose I can’t do that in my armchair.”
“You could,” Mace replied, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “It would be an unusual development for the Raleigh monarchy. But whatever chair you sit in, this room is much easier to defend and control. There’s only one public entrance to the Queen’s Wing, a long passageway with no openings. You saw it when we came in.”
“I don’t remember that at all.”
“Understandable. You were half-conscious both times we dragged you through. There are many hidden ways in and out of this wing, but they’re well guarded, and only I know them all. The passage outside gives us good control of the regular traffic.”
“All right.” Kelsea lowered herself gingerly into the armchair. “Have I begun to bleed again?” She leaned forward and let Mace peek under the bandage that swaddled her shoulder blade.
“No blood.”
“I feel like I should sleep again soon.”
“Not yet, Lady. Meet everyone at the same time, so no one feels snubbed.” Mace crooked his finger at Mhurn, who was stationed at the opening to the hallway. “Get me Venner and Fell.”
Mhurn disappeared, and Kelsea relaxed into the armchair. Andalie took a place against the wall, apparently meaning to stay. Kelsea thought Mace might object, but he ignored Andalie entirely, and Kelsea understood that she was supposed to do the same. After years when there had only been Carlin and Barty in her life, she now had so many people around her that some of them were supposed to be invisible. “When can we bring Barty and Carlin here?”
Mace shrugged. “A few weeks, perhaps. It’ll take time to find them.”
“They’re in a village called Petaluma, near the Cadarese border.”
“Well, that simplifies things.”
“I want them,” Kelsea told him. And she did; she hadn’t realized how badly until this moment. She felt a sudden, fierce longing for Barty, for his clean, leathery smell and the crinkle of his eyebrows when he smiled. Carlin . . . well, she didn’t precisely long for Carlin. In fact, she dreaded the moment when she would need to stand before Carlin and account for her deeds. But Carlin and Barty were a package. “I want them as soon as possible.”
“Dyer’s the best man for such jobs, Lady. We’ll arrange it when he comes back.”
“Back from where?”
“I’ve already sent him on an errand.”
“What errand?”
Mace sighed and shut his eyes. “Do me a favor, Majesty: let me do my job in peace.”
Kelsea bit back another question, annoyed at being silenced, and peeked at the four guards who stood against the walls of the chamber. One of them was Galen, whom Kelsea had never seen before without a helmet. His hair was a shock of grey, and strangely, the lines in his face were even more prominent in torchlight than they’d been out in the forest. Five and forty, at least; he must have been with her mother’s Guard for many years. Kelsea turned this fact over in her mind for a moment before tucking it away.
The other three were Elston, Kibb, and Coryn, men she’d also met on the journey. These three weren’t quite as old as Galen, but they were still many years beyond Kelsea herself. Kelsea wished more of her guards were younger; her youth only served to increase her isolation here. All four guards kept their eyes resolutely away from Kelsea, a practice she assumed was standard but also found demeaning. After a minute, she grew so tired of not being looked at that she called across the room, “Kibb, how’s your hand?”
He turned to face her, eyes down, refusing to meet her gaze. “Fine, Lady.”
“Leave him alone,” Mace muttered.
Footsteps rapped up the corridor and two men emerged, both dressed in the grey of the Guard. One was tall and thin, the other short and husky, but both moved with the easy, silent grace that Kelsea associated with trained fighters, especially Mace himself. The way they walked together told Kelsea that they were accustomed to moving as a pair. When they bowed low before her, it seemed a choreographed gesture. Kelsea might have thought they were fraternal twins, except that the tall man was at least ten years older than the short one.
Mhurn followed the two men out of the hallway and stationed himself again at the entrance to the corridor. It had been more than a week since they’d arrived back at the Keep, but Kelsea noticed with some concern that Mhurn looked no more rested than he had out in the countryside. His face was still a pale oval in the torchlight, and she could see the dark sockets around his eyes from here. Why didn’t he sleep?
“Venner and Fell, Lady,” Mace announced, bringing her attention back to the two men in front of her. “Your arms masters.”
Once they straightened, Kelsea reached out to shake their hands. They reacted with some surprise, but shook. Fell, the shorter one, had a nasty scar down his cheekbone; the wound had been poorly stitched, or not at all. Kelsea thought of her own wound, Mace’s clumsy stitches in her neck, and shook her head to clear the unwanted thought. Her shoulder was throbbing steadily now, reminding her that it was time to go back to sleep.
Mace expects me to stay awake, she thought stubbornly. And I will.
“Well, arms masters, what exactly do you do?”
The two men looked at each other, but it was Fell who answered first. “I oversee weapons and garrison for Your Majesty’s guard.”
“I oversee training,” Venner added.
“Could you get me a sword?”
“We have several swords for you to choose from, Majesty,” replied Fell.
“No, not a ceremonial sword, though I know I must have one of those as well. A sword fitted to my build, to wield.”
Both men gaped at her, then looked instinctively to Mace, which irritated Kelsea so much that she dug her nails into the soft fabric of the armchair. But Mace merely shrugged.
“To wield, Majesty?”
Kelsea thought of Carlin, the hard disappointment in her face whenever Kelsea lost her temper. She bit down, hard, on the inside of her cheek. “I’ll need a sword and armor made to my build. And I want to be trained as well.”
“To swordfight, Majesty?” asked Venner, clearly horrified.
“Yes, Venner, to swordfight. I’ve learned to defend myself with a knife, but I know little of swords.”
She looked to Mace to see how he was taking the idea and found him nodding, a thin smile creasing his face. His approval soothed Kelsea’s anger, and she softened her tone. “I won’t ask men to die for me while I sit and do nothing. Why shouldn’t I learn to fight as well?”
Both men opened their mouths to reply and then stopped. Kelsea gestured for them to continue, and Fell finally spoke. “Only appearance, Lady, but appearance in a queen is important. For you to wield a sword, it’s . . . not queenly.”
“I can’t be queenly when I’m dead. And I’ve had to defend myself too often lately to be content with only my knife.”
“You’ll need to be measured, Lady,” Fell replied grudgingly. “And it might take a while to find a blacksmith who’ll make armor for a woman.”
“Search fast, then. You’re dismissed.”
Both men nodded, bowed, and headed down the hallway, Venner muttering something to Fell as they went. Mace snorted as they disappeared around the corner.
“What was that?”
“He said you couldn’t be less like your mother.”
Kelsea smiled, but it was a tired smile. “I suppose we’ll find out. Who’s left?”
“Arliss, your Treasurer. The Regent has also put in a standing order to speak with you. A nuisance, but it would be good to get him out of the way.”
Kelsea sighed, thinking of her soft bed, of a hot mug of tea with cream. She jerked awake and realized she had begun to nod off in her chair; Andalie was no longer beside her, and Mace was still waiting. Straightening up, she rubbed her eyes. “Let’s have the Regent first, then the Treasurer.”
Mace snapped his fingers at Coryn, who nodded and slipped into the kitchen.
“Speaking of your uncle, I should tell you that he finds himself in greatly reduced circumstances in the last few days.”
“My heart bleeds.”
Andalie silently reappeared and handed Kelsea a steaming mug of milky liquid. Taking a cautious sniff, Kelsea smelled black tea, laced with cream. She looked up in surprise at Andalie, who had stationed herself against the wall again, her serene gaze aimed far away.
“What I mean is,” Mace continued, “I believe the Regent feels ill treated by my decisions. I confiscated most of his property.”
“In my name?”
“You were asleep.”
“Still, it’s my name. Maybe you could wait for me to wake up next time.”
Mace looked at her, and Kelsea realized that he considered this a dolls-and-dresses moment. She sighed. “What property did you confiscate?”
“Jewelry, some liquor and tasteless statuary. Some spectacularly bad paintings, gold plate—”
“Fine, Lazarus, I’ll leave you to do your job in peace, just as you wanted.” She peeked up at him. “You should thank me for that.”
Mace bowed. “My most humble thanks, your most illustrious—”
“Stuff it.”
He grinned, then resumed waiting in silence until a hollow boom echoed through the audience chamber from the double doors on the west wall. These doors stretched nearly twenty feet high and were not only locked but bolted with heavy slabs of oak at the height of a man’s knees and head. Kibb opened a small peephole in the right-hand door while Elston rapped twice on the left. Three answering knocks came from outside, echoing off the east wall and back again, and Elston answered in kind.
Kelsea found this system fascinating. Elston murmured something, apparently satisfied, and he and Kibb laid hold of the bolts and pulled them back. It was a struggle; even from the other end of the room, Kelsea could see the veins standing out in Elston’s enormous forearms.
“A good system,” she told Mace. “Yours, I’m guessing?”
“The details are mine, but the original idea was Carroll’s. We change the knocks every day.”
“It seems a bit labor-intensive for just one visitor. Why don’t they bring him in the same way Coryn left?”
Mace gave her one of his speaking glances.
“Oh.”
“A few people know some of these passageways, Lady, but I’d be shocked if the Regent’s ever dragged himself out of bed long enough to discover even a quarter of what I know.”
“I see. Someone should shut the door to the nursery. I don’t want Marguerite to hear this.”
Mace snapped his fingers at Mhurn, who went. Kelsea would have found the constant snapping demeaning, but the guards clearly didn’t mind; they even seemed to take pride in the fact that Mace didn’t issue them specific orders. Elston and Kibb laid their shoulders into the doors now, pushing them outward, and Kelsea saw a broad tunnel, lit by many torches, which stretched downward on a gentle slope for several hundred feet before disappearing around a corner. She remembered this tunnel, but she hadn’t been walking, had she? No, that’s right; Mace had finally been forced to physically drag her up the slope. Why would anyone create an artificial hill inside a building?
For defense, of course, Carlin replied. Think, Kelsea. For the day when they come to the Keep with pitchforks to take your head.
“Cheery,” Kelsea murmured. “Thank you.”
“What, Lady?”
“Nothing.”
Through the doors came the Regent, escorted by Coryn. Kelsea read everything she needed to in the laxness of Coryn’s posture: he didn’t expect the Regent to give him any trouble. He hadn’t even put his hand to his sword.
The Regent’s face was drawn and pinched, and he wore a shirt and matching trousers of the same hideous purple as before. As he approached, Kelsea became more and more certain that she was looking at clothing that hadn’t been washed for some time; dried food was crusted on the shirt where her uncle’s puffy stomach began to slope downward, and several drops of what looked like wine were splattered across his chest. But he’d clearly taken considerable trouble with his beard, for it still bushed out in the same unnatural curls, an effect that could only have been achieved with a hot iron.
When they were fifteen feet from the armchair, Coryn reached out and grabbed the Regent’s upper arm. “Not one step closer, understand?”
The Regent nodded. Kelsea remembered suddenly that his given name was Thomas, but she couldn’t attach that name to the man who stood before her. Thomas was a name for choirs and angels, a biblical name. Not for her uncle, who had a ratty gleam in his eye. Clearly, he’d come here with a plan.
When Kelsea was fourteen, Carlin had ordered her, with no warning or explanation, to suspend her other homework and read the Bible. This surprised Kelsea; Carlin made no secret of her contempt for the Church, and there were no other religious symbols in their home. But it was a school assignment, and so Kelsea dutifully read through the thick, dusty King James volume that usually resided in the topmost corner of the last bookshelf. It took her five days to finish, and she assumed that she was done with the heavy book, but she was wrong. Carlin spent the rest of that week (forever known as Bible Week in Kelsea’s mind) quizzing her on the Bible, its characters and events and morals, and was forced to pull the thing back down from the bookshelf not just once but many times. Finally, after three or four days of solid Bible work, they were done, and Carlin told Kelsea that she could put the book away for good.
“Why do you have such a nice Bible?” Kelsea asked.
“The Bible is a book, Kelsea, a book that has influenced mankind for thousands of years. It deserves to be preserved in a good edition, just like any other important book.”
“Do you believe it’s true?”
“No.”
“Then why did I have to read it?” Kelsea demanded, feeling resentful. It hadn’t been a particularly good book, and it was heavy; she had hauled the damned thing from room to room for days. “What was the point?”
“To know your enemy, Kelsea. Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.”
Kelsea hadn’t understood what Carlin meant at the time, but after getting a look at the golden cross on top of the Arvath, she was starting to form a better picture. She doubted her uncle had ever read a Bible in his life, but as she stared at him now, she remembered something else from Bible Week: Thomas was not only Thomas the Apostle but also Thomas the Doubter. Perhaps Queen Arla had looked at him when they first put him into her hands and seen exactly what Kelsea saw now: weakness, all the more dangerous for being combined with a sense of entitlement.
He’s your last living relative, a voice protested inside. But the voice was swept aside by a sudden wave of fury that dwarfed family loyalty, dwarfed curiosity. Kelsea had done the math. Her mother had died sixteen years ago, and her uncle had been in charge ever since. Sixteen years times three thousand equaled forty-eight thousand Tear citizens that her uncle had shipped off to save his own hide. She saw no remorse in his face, no lingering regret of any kind, only the bewildered look of a man wronged. He was worth so little, but he was certain that the world owed it to him to make up the slack.
How can I see so much? Kelsea wondered. As if in response, her sapphire gave a tremor, a tiny throb of heat that seemed to ripple through her chest. Kelsea was startled, but much less jolted than she had been on the Keep Lawn the other day. Perhaps she was only deluding herself, but she felt that she was coming to understand the jewel, if only a little bit. Several times now, she had noticed it responding to her moods, but sometimes it also seemed to demand her attention as well. Now, she could have sworn the thing was telling her to keep her mind on business.
“What do you want, Uncle?”
“I come to petition Your Majesty to let me remain in the Keep,” the Regent replied, his nasal voice echoing around the chamber in what was clearly a prepared speech. The four guards, though they still held their positions against the wall, were no longer looking away; Mhurn in particular was watching the Regent with the narrow, waiting expression of a hungry dog. “I feel that my banishment was both unfair and ill advised. Furthermore, the confiscation of my belongings was carried out in a clandestine manner, so that I had no chance to present my case.”
Kelsea raised her eyebrows, surprised at his vocabulary, and leaned toward Mace. “How do I handle this?”
“However you like, Lady. God knows I need the entertainment.”
She turned back to her uncle. “What’s your case?”
“What?”
“You said you had no chance to present your case. What is your case?”
“Many of the items your guard removed from my quarters were gifts. Personal gifts.”
“So?”
“So they weren’t Crown property. The Crown had no right to them.”
Mace interrupted. “The Crown has a right to confiscate anything that comes into the Keep.”
Kelsea nodded in agreement, though this rule was news to her. “He’s right, Uncle. That includes your trinkets from Mortmesne.”
“They weren’t just trinkets, niece. You took my best woman as well.”
“Marguerite’s under my protection now.”
“She was a gift, and a valuable one.”
“I agree,” Kelsea replied, widening her smile. “She’s very valuable. I’m sure she’ll serve me fine.”
Red began to creep up the Regent’s neck now, working its way steadily toward his chin. Carlin always said that most men were dogs, and Kelsea had never taken her seriously; there were too many good books written by men. But now she saw that Carlin hadn’t been entirely wrong either. “Perhaps when I tire of Marguerite, I’ll set her free. But at the moment she’s happy here.”
The Regent looked up, his face incredulous. “Bullshit!”
“I assure you, she’s quite content,” Kelsea replied blithely. “Why, I don’t even need to keep her tied up!”
Elston and Kibb snickered on their adjacent walls.
“That bitch wouldn’t be happy anywhere!” the Regent snarled, tiny darts of spittle spraying from his lips.
“Watch your language in front of the Queen,” Mace growled. “Or I’ll tie a big red bow around you and throw you out of the Keep right now. The Fetch can use your bones for silverware.”
Kelsea cut him off. “I assume that Marguerite’s the only issue you came here to raise? Because no one would be willing to argue over that pile of spectacularly bad art.”
The Regent’s mouth dropped open. “My paintings are by Powell!”
“Who’s Powell?” Kelsea asked, throwing the question out to the room.
No one answered.
“He’s a well-known painter in Jenner,” the Regent insisted. “I had to collect those paintings.”
“Well, perhaps we’ll allow you to bid on the ones we can’t sell.”
“What about my statues?”
Coryn spoke up. “The statues will sell, Majesty. Most of them are pretty bad, but the materials are costly. I suspect someone could melt them down.”
The Regent looked injured. “I was assured that those statues would only appreciate in value.”
“Assured by whom?” Kelsea asked. “The seller?”
The Regent opened his mouth, and nothing came out. Kelsea shifted impatiently; there was no sport in this anymore, and she was getting tired again. Still, it had amused her guard for a while, and that was something. Elston and Kibb were grinning broadly, Coryn was trying to hide a smirk, and even Mhurn looked wide-awake for the first time.
“I’m keeping your pile of junk, Uncle. I can’t imagine what argument you’d raise on being banished, but if you have one, I’m listening.”
“I can be very useful to you, niece,” the Regent replied, shifting gears so quickly that Kelsea had to wonder if he’d only been dancing around the real matter all along.
“Useful how?”
“I know a lot of things you’d like to know.”
“This is getting tedious, Majesty,” Mace interrupted. “Just let me throw him out of the Keep.”
“Wait.” Kelsea held up a hand. “What do you know, Uncle?”
“I know who your father is.”
“He knows nothing, Lady,” Mace growled.
“Of course I know, niece. And I know plenty more about your mother that would interest you. This lot won’t tell you. They took vows. But I’m not a Queen’s Guard. I know everything about Queen Elyssa that you’d ever want to know, and I can tell it all to you.”
Had her guards’ eyes been swords, her uncle would have been run through. Kelsea turned to Mace and found his face stricken, a terrible sight.
I do want to know. She desperately wanted to know which of her mother’s apparently infinite men had actually fathered her; she wanted to know what her mother had really been like. Perhaps everything was not as it appeared. She grasped at the idea, wondering if there were redeeming qualities in her mother, things that no one else knew. But there were hidden dangers as well. Kelsea gave her uncle a cold stare. “What exactly are you asking for, Scheherazade? Asylum in the Keep?”
“No, I want to be involved. I want to contribute and govern. I also have considerable information on the Red Queen.”
“Are we really going to play this game? You tried to have me killed, Uncle. It didn’t work, so I forgive you, but it doesn’t incline me toward you either.”
“Where’s the proof?”
Mace stepped forward. “Two of your own guard already confessed and implicated you, jackass.”
The Regent’s eyes widened, but Mace wasn’t done. “That doesn’t even include the Caden you engaged to hunt the Queen down three months ago.”
“The Caden never reveal their employers.”
“Of course they do, you miserable whelp. You just have to catch the right one in the right mood and feed him enough ale. I have all the proof I need. Consider yourself fortunate that you’re still standing here.”
“Why am I standing here, then?”
Mace began to answer, but Kelsea waved him to silence, her heart sinking. No matter how badly she wanted her uncle’s knowledge, she couldn’t take his offer. He would never stop trying to take back what he’d lost; it was clear in the way he darted glances around the room. She didn’t know the man at all, but she recognized his character well. He would never stop plotting. He could never be trusted.
“The truth is, Uncle, I don’t consider you important enough to imprison.” Kelsea pointed at Coryn. “Take Coryn here.”
The Regent turned to Coryn in surprise, as though he’d forgotten that Coryn was standing beside him. Coryn himself looked taken aback.
“I could take away everything Coryn owns, clothing and money and weapons and any women he might have stashed somewhere—”
“Plenty,” Coryn remarked cheerfully.
Kelsea smiled indulgently before continuing. “And he would still be Coryn, an extremely honorable and useful man.” She paused. “But look at you, Uncle. Divested of your clothing and women and guard, you’re just a traitor with his crimes laid bare for the world to see. Putting you in my dungeons would be a waste of a cell. You’re nothing.”
The Regent whirled away, a movement so sudden that Mace sprang in front of Kelsea, his hand going to his sword. But the Regent only stood there for a moment with his back to them, his shoulders heaving.
“My judgment stands, Uncle. You now have twenty-five days to clear the Keep. Coryn, escort him back.”
“I don’t need your escort!” the Regent snarled, turning around to face her. His eyes were wide with fury, but there was pain there too, deeper pain than Kelsea had intended. She felt a sudden, absurd urge to apologize, but it faded quickly as he continued. “You’re adrift in deep waters, girl. I don’t think even your Mace understands how deep they are. The Red Queen knows what you’ve done; I sent the messenger myself. You’ve interfered with the Mort slave trade, and believe me, she’s going to come and gut this country like a hog at slaughter.”
He glanced behind Kelsea and fell suddenly silent, eyes wide and terrified.
Kelsea turned and saw Marguerite standing behind her. Her neck hadn’t healed; the welts had faded to a deep purple, visible even in torchlight. She wore a shapeless brown dress, but here was indisputable proof that clothes didn’t make the woman: Marguerite was Helen of Troy, tall and imposing, her hair deep flame in the torchlight, staring at the Regent in a way that made Kelsea’s skin prickle in gooseflesh.
“Marguerite?” the Regent asked. All of his previous bluster was gone; he gazed at Marguerite with a stark longing that made him look like a calf. “I’ve missed you.”
“I don’t know how you have the balls to speak to her,” Kelsea snapped, “but you certainly won’t do it again without my permission.”
The Regent’s face darkened, but he held silent, his eyes pinned on Marguerite. She stared back at him for a moment longer, then darted forward, prompting both Mace and Coryn to put hands on their swords. But Marguerite ignored them entirely, walked right up to Kelsea’s armchair, and sat down at Kelsea’s feet.
The Regent stared at this development for a moment, his face frozen in shock. Then it contorted with hatred. “What did you give her?”
“Nothing.”
“How did you buy her?”
“For starters, I don’t keep a rope around her neck.”
“Well, enjoy it. That bitch would as soon cut your throat as smile at you.” He glared at Marguerite. “Damn you, you Mort whore.”
“No one fears your curses, Tearling pig,” Marguerite replied in Mort. “You have damned yourself.”
The Regent stared at Marguerite with a bewildered expression, and Kelsea shook her head, disgusted; he didn’t even speak Mort. “We have nothing further to say, Uncle. Get out, and best of luck in your trek across the countryside.”
The Regent gave Marguerite one final, agonized look, then turned and stormed away, Coryn right behind him. Elston and Kibb opened the doors just wide enough for the Regent to pass through, and Marguerite waited until they closed before she scrambled up, speaking in rapid Mort. “I must get back to the children, Majesty.”
Kelsea nodded. She had questions for Marguerite, but this wasn’t the time; she watched the woman retreat down the hallway before relaxing into her armchair. “Tell me that’s everything.”
“Your Treasurer, Lady.” Mace reminded her. “You promised to meet him.”
“You’re quite the taskmaster, Lazarus.”
“Fetch Arliss!” Mace called. “Just for a few minutes, Majesty. It’s important. Personal connections create loyalty, you know.”
“How can we trust my uncle’s Treasurer?”
“Please, Lady. Your uncle never had a Treasurer, just a bunch of vault-keepers who were usually drunk on their own watch.”
“So who’s this Arliss?”
“I picked him for the job.”
“Who is he?”
Mace’s eyes shifted away from her. “A local businessman, very good with money.”
“What kind of businessman?”
Mace crossed his arms, a fairly prissy gesture for him. “If you must know, Lady, he’s a bookmaker.”
“A bookmaker?” Kelsea was momentarily bewildered, but her confusion quickly gave way to excitement. “But you said there was no printing press. How does he make books? By hand?”
Mace stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. Kelsea knew now why he didn’t laugh often: it was a hyena sound, the screech of an animal. Mace clapped a hand over his mouth, but the damage was done, and Kelsea felt a hot blush spreading over her cheeks.
I’m not used to being laughed at, she realized, and rearranged her mouth into something that felt almost like a smile. “What did I say?”
“Not a book publisher, Lady. A bookmaker. A bookie.”
“A bookie?” Kelsea asked, forgetting her embarrassment. “You want me to hand the treasury keys to a professional gambler?”
“You have a better idea?”
“There must be someone else.”
“No one else as good with money, I can tell you that. In fact, I had to give Arliss the hard sell to get him in here, so you should be nice to him. He has a pre-Crossing calculator in his head, and he positively loathes your uncle. I thought that was a good place to start.”
“How can you be sure he’ll be honest?”
“I won’t,” croaked a hoarse voice, and around the corner came a wizened old man, his frame shrunken and hunched. His left leg must have been lame, for he moved his right side first and then dragged the left to match. But even so, he moved so fast that Kibb, behind him, had to hurry to keep up. Arliss’s left arm appeared to be lame as well; despite the fact that a sheaf of papers was clamped in his armpit, he held the forearm cupped in against his rib cage like a child. What was left of his white hair sprouted up in tufted patches over his ears (and, Kelsea noticed as he got closer, from inside his ears as well). His old eyes were yellowed, the lower lids drooping to show flesh that wasn’t even red anymore; age seemed to have leached it of all but the barest pink. He was the ugliest creature Kelsea had ever seen in her life.
Finally, she thought, regretting her own unkindness even as it crossed her mind, someone who makes me look beautiful.
The old man held out his good hand for her to shake, and Kelsea did so gently. His hand felt like paper: smooth, cool, and lifeless. He smelled terrible, a thick, acrid smell that Kelsea took for the scent of old age.
“I’m not honest,” the old man wheezed. Kelsea didn’t recognize his accent, which wasn’t pure Tear; it managed to be both broad and nasal at the same time. “But I can be trusted.”
“Contradictory statements,” Kelsea replied.
Arliss’s eyes gleamed at her. “Still and all, here I am.”
“Arliss can be trusted, Lady,” Mace told her. “And I think—”
“First things first,” Arliss interrupted. “Who’s your father, Queenie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Crap. The Mace here won’t tell me, and I’m going to clean up when that comes out.” Arliss leaned forward, staring at her chest. “Marvelous.”
Kelsea reared back indignantly, but then she realized that he was inspecting her sapphire, eyeing it with a greedy collector’s eye. “I take it it’s real?”
“Real enough, Majesty. Pure emerald-cut sapphire, no flaws, absolutely beautiful. The setting’s not bad, either, but the jewel . . . I could fetch you a hell of a price.”
Kelsea leaned forward, her exhaustion suddenly forgotten. “Do you know anything about where it came from?”
“Just rumors, Queenie. No way to know what’s true. They say William Tear made the king’s necklace just after the Crossing. But Jonathan Tear wasn’t content with that, and he had his people create the Heir’s Jewel as well. Much good it did him; poor bastard was assassinated only a couple years later.”
“Where did they get the jewels from?”
“Cadare, most likely. No jewels that fine in the Tear or Mortmesne. Maybe that’s why she wants ’em so badly.”
“Who?”
“The Red Queen, Lady. My sources say she wants your jewels just as badly as she wants you.”
“Surely she can get all the jewels she wants in tribute from Cadare.”
“Maybe.” Arliss gave her a sideways glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “These sapphires were rumored to be magic, a long time ago.”
“Unlikely,” Mace rumbled. “They never did anything for Queen Elyssa.”
“Where’s the other one at?”
“Weren’t we talking about the treasury, Arliss?”
“Ah, yes.” Arliss changed gears immediately, pulling the sheaf of papers from his left armpit. He performed a neat trick, holding the papers with his teeth, riffling through them until he found the page he wanted and jerked it from the pile. “I’ve inventoried your uncle’s possessions, Queenie. I know good places to sell the expensive, and good fools to pawn the worthless. You can clean up at least fifty thousand on all the shit your uncle thought was art, and the whores’ jewelry is worth twice that on the open market—”
“Watch your language, Arliss.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Arliss waved away the reprimand as though it didn’t matter, and Kelsea found that it didn’t. She liked his profanity; it suited him. “I ain’t been through the vault yet; believe it or not, I’m still trying to find someone who actually has a key. But I’ve a pretty good idea of what I’ll find there. By the way, you’ll need new vault-keepers.”
“Apparently,” Kelsea replied. Her shoulder was screeching now, but she ignored it, slightly overwhelmed by the old man’s enormous energy.
“After the Census chews off its piece of graft, the Tear takes in about fifty thousand in taxes. Your uncle’s spent well over a million pounds since your mother died. I’m going to guess, and I ain’t usually wrong about these things, that there’s a hundred thousand sitting in the treasury, no more. In other words, you’re broke.”
“Wonderful.”
“Now,” Arliss continued with a gleam in his eye, “I’ve some good ideas on how to increase revenue.”
“What ideas?”
“Depends, Majesty. Am I hired? I don’t do nothing for free.”
Kelsea looked a mute appeal at Mace, but he merely raised his eyebrows in an expressive gesture that dared her to say no. “You’re not honest, but you can be trusted?”
“That’s right.”
“I think you’re more than a bookmaker.”
Arliss grinned, his pointy hair sticking straight up over his head as though he’d taken a bolt of lightning. “I might be.”
“Why do you want to work for me? I assume that whatever we might pay you, it’s not what you make at night.”
Arliss chuckled, a tiny wheeze like a deflated accordion. “Matter of fact, Queenie, I’m probably richer than you are.”
“So why do you want this job?”
The little man’s face sobered, and he gave Kelsea an evaluating look. “They’re singing about you in the streets, you know that? Absolutely petrified of invasion, the entire city, but still they’re making songs about you. Calling you the True Queen.”
Kelsea gave Mace a questioning glance, and he nodded.
“I don’t know whether it’s true, but I hedge my bets,” Arliss continued. “Always good to be on the winning side.”
“What if I’m not what they say?”
“Then I’ve got enough money to buy myself out of trouble.”
“What do you want to be paid?”
“The Mace and I already dealt with the details. You can afford me, Queenie. You just have to say yes.”
“Would you expect me to turn a blind eye to your other dealings?”
“We can deal with that as it comes up.”
Slippery, Kelsea thought. She appealed to Mace again. “Lazarus?”
“You won’t find a better money man in the Tear, Lady, and that’s not the least of his skills. It’s going to take a lot of work to repair your uncle’s damage. This is the man I’d choose for the job. Although,” he growled, bending a hard gaze toward Arliss, “he’ll have to learn to speak to you with some respect.”
Arliss grinned, showing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.
Kelsea sighed, feeling a mantle of inevitability settle over her, understanding that this would be the first of many compromises. It was an uneasy feeling, like getting into a boat on a wild river with no possibility of portage. “Fine, you’re hired. Prepare me some sort of accounting, if you would.
The old man bowed and began to walk-drag himself backward from the armchair. “We’ll talk again, Queenie, at your leisure. Meanwhile, do I have your permission to inspect the vault?”
Kelsea smiled, feeling a sickly film of sweat on her forehead. “I doubt you need my permission, Arliss. But yes, you have it.”
She leaned back against the armchair, but her shoulder rebelled, making her jerk forward again. “Lazarus, I need to rest now.”
Mace nodded and gestured for Arliss to go. The Treasurer did his odd crab-walk back toward the hallway, and Mace and Andalie each got an arm beneath Kelsea and physically hauled her from the armchair, then lifted and dragged her back into her chamber.
“Will Arliss live here with us?” Kelsea asked.
“I don’t know,” Mace replied. “He’s been in the Keep for a couple of days now, but that’s only to inspect all of your uncle’s things. He has bolt-holes all over the city. I’m guessing he’ll come and go as he pleases.”
“What exactly is his business?”
“Black marketeering.”
“Be more specific, Lazarus.”
“Let’s just say procurement of exotic items, Lady, and leave it at that.”
“People?”
“Absolutely not, Lady. I knew you wouldn’t accept that.” Mace turned away so that Andalie could help Kelsea undress, and walked around the room extinguishing torches. “What did you think of Venner and Fell?”
Who? Kelsea thought, and then she remembered the two arms masters. “They’ll train me to fight, or I’ll make them regret it.”
“They’re good men. Be patient with them. Your mother didn’t even like the sight of weapons.”
Kelsea grimaced, thinking again of Carlin, of that day with the dresses. “My mother was a vain fool.”
“And yet her legacy lies all around you here,” Andalie murmured unexpectedly, pulling pins from Kelsea’s hair. Once Andalie had finally completed the messy business of getting the dress off without aggravating Kelsea’s wound, Kelsea climbed into bed, so tired that she barely registered the cool softness of clean sheets.
How did they change my sheets so fast? she wondered sleepily. Somehow, this seemed more magical than anything else so far. She turned her head to say good night to Mace and Andalie and found that they’d already disappeared and shut the door.
Kelsea couldn’t lie on her back; she shifted slowly in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position. Finally she relaxed on her side, facing the empty bookshelves, exhausted. There was so much to be done.
You’ve done plenty already, Barty’s voice whispered in her mind.
A panoply of images poured from Kelsea’s memory. The cages burning. Marguerite, tied before her uncle’s throne. The old woman in the crowd who’d wept on the ground. Andalie, shrieking in front of the cage. The row of children seated in the nursery. Kelsea shifted beneath the sheets, trying to feel comforted, but she couldn’t. She sensed her kingdom around her, beneath her, stretching for miles in all directions, its people in extraordinary danger from the Mort cloud on the horizon, and she knew that her first feeling was true.
It’s not enough, she thought bleakly. Not nearly enough.