Fortune favors the bold, history tells us. Therefore, it behooves us to be as bold as possible.
—The Glynn Queen’s Words, AS COMPILED BY FATHER TYLER
Ever since they had left the Keep, Kelsea had been fighting Lily off with a stick. She would begin going over her lines, what she would say to the Mort at the far end of the bridge . . . and then Lily would intrude, her grasping fingers of memory weaving through Kelsea’s thoughts until the two seemed indistinguishable. Distant pops of gunfire. Visions of a burning skyline and the screams of the dying. But despite these things, Kelsea wished she could simply sink back into Lily’s life. It was a troubled time that Lily lived in, troubled and terrible, but her choices were not Kelsea’s. Lily’s life demanded nothing but endurance. Kelsea looked up and saw white sails, riggings . . . a ship, people standing at the helm. She shook her head, but the vision remained in front of her, blurred slightly, as though overlaid with a veil of the thinnest material. For a moment, Kelsea felt as though she could reach out and tear that veil away, step through the centuries to stand beside Lily. To become Lily.
Could I do that? she wondered, blinking up at the ship, its billowing sails, white shadows in the night. Could I simply cross, and not come back?
For a moment, this idea was so seductive that Kelsea had to battle it, the way she would have battled an opponent with a knife. She looked down at her sapphires, feeling as though she were really seeing them for the first time. For months she had operated under the assumption that her sapphires were dead, but why? The dreams, the steady transformation of her own appearance, the cuts on her body, Lily’s pain, Lily’s life . . . these things had not come out of a vacuum. Kelsea took her jewels, one in each hand, and held them up to the light. Physically, they were identical, but she sensed great difference between them. If she only had time to sort it out! The sun was rising, but still she hesitated.
“You’re not dead,” she marveled, staring at the jewels in her hands. Lily’s world pulled at her again, demanding that she return, that she watch the end of the story, but Kelsea dropped her jewels and began walking. The vision of the sails finally dimmed as she reached the toll gate at the eastern end of the bridge. The toll tables were all empty now; no one had entered or left New London via the bridge since the army took it over. Kelsea should have been exhausted, but she felt wide awake.
The knoll beyond the toll gate was covered with Mort soldiers, all of them armed for battle, with swords and several knives at the belt. Even now, the sight of all of that good steel hurt Kelsea deep inside. Her army—what remained of it, anyway—had so few good weapons. At the head of the Mort column stood a man in full armor, partially balding, with sleepy eyes that threw Kelsea off for a moment. But the eyes behind the drooping lids were shrewd and pitiless, just as she remembered them through her spyglass. She greeted him in Mort.
“General Ducarte.”
“The Queen of the Tearling, I presume.” His eyes darted over her shoulder, toward the bridge. “Have you come to beg my mistress for leniency? You will not get it.”
“I’ve come to speak to . . . your mistress.” It was a strange term to use, and Kelsea realized that Carlin’s Mort lessons, good as they had been, might have skipped something in the way of idiom.
Ducarte’s heavy-lidded eyes blinked toward the fallen bridge again and then blinked away. “She will not see you.”
“I think she will.” Kelsea stepped closer, and was astonished when he took a half step back, several of the soldiers behind him doing the same. Could it be possible that they were afraid of her? It seemed ludicrous, with the might of the Mort army lying just over the hill.
Ducarte shouted in rapid-fire Mort. “Andrew! Run and tell the Queen what goes on here!”
One of the men in the line turned and sprinted away, over the crest of the hill, where the sky was rapidly turning from pink to orange. Dawn was here, and Kelsea suddenly found this delay intolerable, worse than the idea of her own death. Ducarte did not want negotiation, she saw now, not even if it would benefit Mortmesne or his mistress. Ducarte wanted to march into New London, wanted to lay waste to all he found there. He was looking forward to the sack, looking forward to—
Carnival.
That was the right word. The man in front of her might as well have been Parker, anticipating the fall of the world. William Tear had said something about men like Parker—that they were built for this, built to spoil things. And Kelsea suddenly saw that, at all costs, she must keep this man out of her city. She had broken the bridge, but that was not enough. On the other side of the hill were siege towers, rams. New London was not built to withstand assault, and the Mort army was hungry for plunder. Once they started, they would not stop.
“You want to let me pass, General.”
“That’s for my mistress to decide.”
But Kelsea could not wait. She had already begun to probe at Ducarte, browsing through him, in the same way she would have looked through Carlin’s library. Here was a man who was not afraid to die, like Mace, but nothing else was similar. This man was cold, not one to be swayed by pleas or pity. Only pain and self-preservation would buy him, Kelsea decided, so she found the soft meat of his groin and dug in, hard.
Ducarte cried out. Several of the men behind him stepped forward, but Kelsea shook her head. “Don’t even think about it. Not unless you want a piece of the same.”
They backed away, and Kelsea saw that they were indeed afraid. She turned back to Ducarte, loosening her hold for a moment. “The longer you make me wait here, General, the more I feel a need for such diversions.”
Ducarte stared at her, wide-eyed. Kelsea suspected that he had never been held powerless before. A famous interrogator, Ducarte . . . and that made her think of Langer, the accountant. Such people did not do well on the other side of the table.
“I have business with your mistress. Let me pass.”
“She will not negotiate,” he gasped. “Even I won’t defy her. She is terrible.”
“Let me tell you a secret, General. I am worse.”
She gave his testes another hard squeeze, and Ducarte screamed, a high, womanish sound. Kelsea was almost enjoying herself now, a low, dirty sort of pleasure, just as she had felt during Thorne’s execution. How easy and pleasant it was, to punish those who deserved punishment. She could reduce this man to meat, and her own death would almost be worth it.
Kelsea, Carlin whispered behind her. The voice was so close that Kelsea turned her head, half expecting to see Carlin standing just over her shoulder. But nothing was there . . . only her city, standing behind her, wide open, in the blue light of early dawn. The sight shook Kelsea, reminded her that she did not belong to herself. Even the magic she used now, magic that she had essentially taught herself, was not hers. It belonged to William Tear, and Tear would never have allowed anything to divert his attention from the main prize . . . the better world.
“Take me to her, General, and I will stop.”
All of the blood had drained from Ducarte’s face now. He looked up and over the hillside behind him, his gaze frustrated, at the battering rams that stood ready. Kelsea saw the tenor of Ducarte’s thoughts now, his ambitions, and she had to stomp down her anger, to leash it as one would a dog.
“Take me to her now, General, or I swear to you, you will not be able to enjoy your siege. You will no longer be equipped to do so.”
Ducarte swore, then turned and began tromping back up the hill. Kelsea followed, surrounded by six of Ducarte’s men, a group that had the feeling of a guard. This gave Kelsea pause: did Ducarte really need a guard in his own encampment? He was not a man who inspired loyalty, but it seemed extraordinary that he could be that hated. Even this picked guard, Kelsea noticed, made sure to steer well clear of her, traveling perhaps twenty feet out to the side.
They topped the hill, and Kelsea halted briefly, stunned by what she saw. Looking down at the Mort camp from the walls of New London was a very different proposition from seeing it up close. Black tents seemed to stretch for miles into the distance, and Kelsea’s first thought was to wonder how they kept from overheating when the sun was up. Then she noticed the sheer, almost reflective nature of the fabric, and her earlier anger recurred. Always, Mortmesne had something new.
As they entered the camp, the six men tightened up around her, and Kelsea saw the reason soon enough. The path they were traversing passed between many tents, and the men lining either side looked at her like hungry dogs. Kelsea tried to prepare for violence, but didn’t know what good it would do. The invisible wall she had sensed the other day was still there, protecting the camp; did the woman never sleep? As they moved farther toward the center, whispering became hissing, and the hissing gradually resolved itself into discrete comments that Kelsea wished she could unhear.
“Tear bitch!”
“When our lady is done with you, I’ll use you until you break!”
Ducarte made no sign that he had heard them. Kelsea straightened her shoulders and stared straight ahead, trying to remind herself that she had been threatened before, that people had been trying to kill her all of her life. But this, the hostility and bile raining down from all sides, some in Mort and some in broken Tear, this was very different, and Kelsea was afraid.
“She’ll make you beg for death!”
So much hate . . . where does it come from? Kelsea wanted to weep, not for herself but for the waste, the thought of how many extraordinary things could have been accomplished in the new world. She could not close her ears to them, so she searched for Lily and found her, just beneath the surface, staring up at the night sky, the white sails in the moonlight. But the sails were billowing now, as though stirred by a strong wind.
I missed it, Kelsea realized sadly. She had missed the launch. But Lily had made it. Lily was on board one of the ships. Grief threatened to overwhelm Kelsea, but she battled it, thinking of William Tear, of the main prize.
They turned another corner, and now Kelsea glimpsed a hint of scarlet through the mass of black. The Red Queen . . . soon Kelsea would stand in front her, face-to-face. In all the long, blurred night past, this was the one thing she had avoided thinking about. A piece of discarded metal caught her left foot, and Kelsea nearly fell in the mud, landing heavily on her ankle. The jeering of the men seemed to double in volume. Her body was exhausted from more than a day without sleep, and it was beginning to show. But her mind . . . her mind felt bright and sharp, sure of its course, if she could only hold herself together a bit longer. The crimson tent loomed ahead, and Kelsea was frightened, but there was relief as well, a sense that her approaching fate was now so final that it could not be averted.
She was nearly done.
The Queen was nervous. She didn’t know why; all things were proceeding better than she could have devised. The girl was coming—actually delivering herself!—when the Queen had thought that they would have to fight tooth and nail to get into the Keep. She was wearing both jewels; Ducarte’s runner had been very definite on that point. This development simplified matters enormously, but the Queen didn’t trust it, for it seemed too easy. She had not seen the Tear sapphires in more than a century, and even as a child, she had never been able to study them as she would have liked. Elaine never took the Heir’s Necklace off, and the Queen’s mother had never let her close enough. The sapphires would be the last piece of the puzzle, the Queen was sure of it, but all the same her heartbeat was up and her left leg twitched madly, tapping and tapping beneath her skirts.
How to get hold of them?
From the dark thing, she knew that she could not simply snatch the things off the girl’s neck, not without suffering a terrible consequence. The dark thing had been working on the girl, that much was obvious, but the Queen had no idea how far that work had progressed, what the girl could do. Did she present an actual threat? It seemed unlikely, not with her crown city under the knife. But the dark thing was an extraordinary liar, one of the best the Queen had ever encountered. Who knew what the girl might have learned, what she believed? The Queen couldn’t know, and not knowing tormented her. She had few vulnerabilities left, but in this moment, she was excruciatingly aware of those which remained, and it seemed unfair that they should come to the forefront now, when she was so close to holding the solution in her hand.
Now she heard a new sound: the gathering roar of her soldiers. What could the girl hope to accomplish by coming here? Did she seek martyrdom? The girl had already demonstrated a marked weakness for the grand gesture, although such demonstrations were so revealing that the Queen felt they constituted weakness in themselves. The din outside grew louder, and the Queen drew herself up straight, casting around the tent to make sure that everything was ready. Ducarte had procured a low table for her to eat meals on, an extravagance that would now come in handy. She would kill the girl, certainly, but first they would have a conversation. There were so many things the Queen was curious about. For a moment, she considered drawing the flaps of her tent, so that she could watch as the girl approached. But no: the girl was coming as a supplicant, and the Queen would treat her as one. She remained standing, hands at her sides, though her heartbeat kept climbing and her leg went like mad beneath her dress.
“Majesty!” Ducarte called.
“Come!”
Ducarte pulled back the flap of the tent, creating a doorway, and the girl ducked through. The anxiety that had been growing on the Queen in the past ten minutes suddenly crystallized, and when the girl straightened, revealing her face to the light, it took all of the Queen’s years of control to keep from taking a step backward.
Before her stood the woman from the portrait. Everything was the same: hair, nose, mouth, even the lines of deep sorrow around her eyes.
Is it a trick? the Queen wondered. But how could that be? She had smuggled the portrait from the Keep more than one hundred years ago. Her eyes dropped to the girl’s stomach and she was relieved to notice at least one difference: this girl was not pregnant. But otherwise, the detail was exact, and the Queen felt suddenly as though something had been stolen. The portrait, the woman, these things were hers alone; the girl had no right to stand here wearing the woman’s face. She stood straight, her posture defiant, with no hint of begging about her, and this deepened the Queen’s unease, her sense that something had been tilted askew.
“The Queen of the Tearling,” Ducarte announced, rather unnecessarily, and the Queen flicked her hand toward the door.
“Perhaps I should stay, Majesty.”
“Perhaps not,” the Queen replied. She had spotted another difference now, and this one steadied her, lessened her sense of disorientation: unlike the woman in the portrait, the girl had deep green eyes, the same Raleigh eyes that the Queen had once wished for with all her heart. Both sapphires lay on the girl’s chest, just as Andrew had reported, and once the Queen had noticed them, she could not tear her gaze away.
“Majesty, the New London Bridge—”
“I know all of this, Benin. Go.”
Ducarte left, dropping the flap of the tent behind him.
“Please, sit.” The Queen offered the far chair, and after a moment’s hesitation, the girl stalked forward to take it. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the Queen wondered at this. What did the girl cry for? Not herself, surely; she had already proven that she had no interest in her own safety. Perhaps she was merely tired, but the Queen thought not. Grief sat on her plainly, like a raven perched on her shoulder.
The girl was studying the Queen now, staring at each of her features in turn, as though trying to dissect her face and put it back together. She recognizes me, the Queen thought for a fearful moment. But how could she? How could anyone? This wasn’t the woman from the portrait. This girl was only nineteen years old.
“How old are you, really?” the girl asked abruptly, in Mort. Good Mort, hers, with only the barest hint of an accent.
“Far older than you,” the Queen replied steadily, pleased to hear that her voice betrayed none of the upheaval in her thoughts. “Old enough to know when I have won.”
“You have won,” the girl replied slowly. But her eyes continued to dart across the Queen’s face, as though seeking clues.
“Well?”
“I’ve seen you before,” the girl mused.
“We all have visions.”
“No,” the girl replied. “I’ve seen you. But where?”
Something tightened in the Queen’s chest. Only nineteen, she reminded herself. “What can it possibly matter?”
“You want these.” The girl held the sapphires up on her palm. Even in the diffuse light that filtered through the fabric of the tent, the jewels sparkled, and the Queen thought she could see something, far in their depths . . . but then the girl shook them, and whatever she believed she had seen was gone.
“They are pretty jewels, certainly.”
“They come with a price.”
“Price?” The Queen laughed, although even she could hear the slight edge in her laughter. “You’re in no position to bargain.”
“Of course I am,” the girl replied. Her green gaze speared the Queen with bright intelligence. Sometimes one could look in the eyes and simply see it, in the focus of the pupil, the sharpness of the gaze. “You can kill me, Lady Crimson. You can invade my city and lay it waste. But neither of those things will get the sapphires from around my neck. I’m sure you know what happens if you try to take them by force.”
The Queen sat back, discomfited. The girl did have a bargaining chip, after all . . . and the Queen wondered who had talked. Thomas Raleigh? Thorne?
“I can simply order some other poor soul to kill you and take them off,” the Queen replied after a long moment. “What do I care?”
“And that will work, will it?” the girl asked. The arrogance in her voice staggered the Queen. Most information concerning the Tear sapphires was myth and legend; no one had tried to take them by force since the death of Jonathan Tear. But the dark thing had said it could be done. And now the Queen had a truly terrible thought, one that hit her right in her solar plexus: what if the dark thing had lied to her, so long ago? What if it had only needed her to procure the sapphires, do its dirty work and take the punishment?
“Good.” The girl nodded. “Think on these things. Because I tell you, anyone who tries to take them against my wishes will suffer agony. And if your hand merely guides them, my vengeance will find you as well.”
“I have been cursed before. You don’t frighten me.” But the Queen was unsettled, all the same. She had overcome the awful idea that the woman from the portrait had come to life before her, but still the girl’s face mocked her, raising the ghost of the past. She could not be sure that the girl was bluffing . . . and the stakes if she guessed wrong! “Those jewels have had no proper owner since William Tear.”
“Wrong.” The girl bared her teeth again, her eyes burning with a fierce emotion, something like jealousy. “They’re mine.”
The Queen was appalled to find herself believing this nonsense. So little was known about the magic of jewels . . . several special pieces had come out of the Cadarese mines over the years, but nothing with power even remotely comparable to that of the Tear sapphires. The Queen had never heard of a jewel bonding with a specific owner; so far as she knew, possession was everything in this game. But she also didn’t think the girl was lying; her gaze was too clear for that, and she didn’t strike the Queen as much of a liar to begin with.
I don’t know, the Queen admitted to herself, and that was the crux of the problem. Uncertainties abounded here. She wanted to ask the girl about the dark thing, try to glean some further information about her abilities. But she was afraid to raise either issue, afraid to give the girl any more leverage. She was no fool, this one. She had come here with a plan.
“I do know you.”
The Queen looked up, found the girl’s eyes bright with revelation.
“In the portrait.” The girl tipped her head to one side, fixing the Queen with a critical stare. “The disfavored child. The bastard. She was you.”
The Queen slapped the girl across the face. But she had only a moment to admire the welt she had made before she was seized, as though with invisible hands, and thrown across the room to land on the thick, sumptuous pallet she used as a bed. She had not been pushed so much as flung, and if she had landed with equal force against something of iron or steel, she would probably be dead. She sprang up, ready to fight, but the girl had remained at the table, motionless, the Queen’s handprint ugly and stark on her cheek.
I am in danger, the Queen realized suddenly. The thought was so novel that it took a moment to become frightening. Somehow the girl had reached right inside her, right through the defenses that the Queen kept around her person at all times. How had she done that? The Queen rallied herself; she should return to the table, but something had shifted now, and even with her defenses up, the Queen found that she did not want to cross the room.
“You don’t like being recognized,” the girl mused. “Was life with the Beautiful Queen really so bad?”
The Queen snarled, an animal sound that lashed through her teeth before she could hold it back. She had forgotten about the damned portrait. It must still be lying around the Keep somewhere, their last family moment before all hell had broken loose. But the Queen had shed that sad child as though she were emerging from a chrysalis. The girl should never have been able to connect the two. The Queen thought about calling for Ducarte, but she couldn’t seem to open her mouth.
“I have poor vision,” the girl remarked. “But my jewels are useful. Sometimes I see. I simply see, where other people might notice nothing.” She stood up from the table and approached the Queen slowly, her gaze appraising and, worse, pitying. “You’re a Raleigh, aren’t you? A bastard Raleigh, unloved and unwanted and always forgotten.”
The Queen felt her guts twist. “I am not a Raleigh. I am the Queen of Mortmesne.”
But the words sounded feeble, even to her own ears.
“Why do you hate us so much?” the girl asked. “What did they do to you?”
Evie! Come here! I need you!
The Queen shuddered. The woman’s face, her mother’s voice . . . one was bad, but both were too much to bear. She tried to gather herself, to find some of the control she’d had when the girl first entered the tent, but whatever she took hold of seemed to melt in her hands.
Evie!
More impatient now, her mother’s voice, a bit of steel showing through. The Queen clapped her hands to her ears, but that did no good, for the girl was already inside her head. The Queen could feel her there, reading the Queen’s memories as though they were a novel, running through them, flipping the pages, pausing on the worst moments. The Queen stumbled away, but the girl followed her across the tent, across her mind, leafing through the past and discarding it behind her. Elaine, her mother, the Keep, the portrait, the dark thing . . . they were all there, called up suddenly, as though they had been waiting all along.
“I see,” the girl murmured, her voice laced with sympathy. “She traded you away. They all did. Queen Elaine got everything.”
The Queen shrieked, wrapping her arms around herself and clawing at her own skin.
“Don’t do that.” The girl pulled up the sleeve of her dress, and the Queen saw that her left arm was a mess of welts, some new, some healing. The sight was so shocking, so contrary to what the Queen thought she knew about the girl, that her hands dropped away from her own arms.
“I do it too, you know,” the girl continued, “to control my anger. But it does no good in the long run. I see that now.”
Ducarte burst through the doorway of the tent, his sword drawn, but the girl whirled toward him and suddenly Ducarte was doubled over, choking, his hands clasped around his throat.
“Don’t interfere, Monsieur General. Stay over there, and I will allow you to breathe.”
Ducarte backed toward the far wall of the tent.
The girl turned back to the Queen, her green eyes contemplative. The Queen’s mind ached, a feeling of terrible violation, as though everything she kept locked away had been laid out in the open under a corrosive sunlight. She could still feel the girl in there, somehow, looking her over, picking through the debris. The Queen tried to summon anything, any of the thousand small tricks she had wielded over the course of her life. She had not felt so powerless since she was a small girl, trapped in a room. The past was supposed to be past. It should not be able to reach up and drag her down.
“What is your name?” the girl asked.
“The Queen of Mortmesne.”
“No.” The girl walked up and stood right in front of her, only a few inches away. Close enough for the Queen to wound, but the Queen couldn’t so much as raise a hand. She felt the girl’s mind again, prying at hers, running fingers over everything, and now she understood that the girl might be able to kill her. No weapon would have done the job, but the girl had found her own knives in the Queen’s mind. Each little piece of history that she touched was sharpened to a fine point, and the Queen felt her entire psyche shudder at the violation of that, of having another person handle her identity so easily. The girl had found her answer now, and the pressure in the Queen’s mind finally eased.
“Evelyn,” the girl murmured. “You’re Evelyn Raleigh. And I am sorry.”
The Queen of Mortmesne closed her eyes.
When Aisa and the other guards entered the Queen’s Wing, they found the rest of the Guard standing at attention. Even the night shift, who were now well past their bedtimes, had not retired. Bradshaw, the magician, was leaning against the wall, idly making a scarf vanish and then reappear. Maman was there too; Aisa spotted her standing at attention at the mouth of the hallway, as she always did while waiting for the Queen to come home. The sight of her made Aisa want to cry.
The Mace stomped over to the dais, the grim cast of his face forestalling all questions. Aisa followed him, as quickly as she dared, keeping her hand on her knife. It was ridiculous, a twelve-year-old girl guarding the Mace, but the Queen had charged her to do so, and Aisa would never forget that moment, not if she lived a hundred years. Elston had taken the Queen’s charge seriously as well; he followed the Mace closely, alert for threats, and when he spotted Aisa doing the same, he gave her a jagged, approving grin. Pen was no help; he wandered behind the Mace as though lost. He had not wept, as Aisa would have expected a lovesick man to do. But he was not with them either.
It was Wellmer who finally dared to ask, “Where’s the Queen?”
“Gone.”
“Dead?”
The Mace searched the room until he found Maman at the entrance to the hallway. She shook her head.
“Not dead,” the Mace replied. “Just gone.”
Arliss was waiting at the foot of the dais. As the Mace approached, Arliss handed him a sheet of paper, and waited while the Mace read. Even when the Mace looked up at him with murderous eyes, Arliss did not flinch.
“You knew.”
Arliss nodded.
“Why the hell—”
“I don’t work for you, Mr. Mace. I serve the Queen. On her orders, nearly a hundred copies have already gone out. The thing’s done; you’re the Regent.”
“Ah, God.” The Mace dropped the piece of paper and sat down on the third step of the dais, burying his head in his hands.
“What will they do to her?” Wellmer asked.
“They’ll take her to Demesne.”
The voice was unfamiliar; Aisa whipped around, drawing her knife. Five hooded men stood in a group, just inside the closed doors of the Queen’s Wing.
The Mace pulled his head from his hands, his keen eyes fixing on the leader. “Kibb! How did these men get into the wing?”
Kibb splayed his hands. “I swear, sir, we shut the doors behind you.”
The Mace nodded, returning his attention to the speaker. “I know your voice, rascal. So you do walk through walls, as the stories tell.”
“We both do.” The leader shook back his hood, revealing a pleasing, dark-haired face and a tan that spoke of the south. “She’s valuable. The Red Queen won’t kill her.”
Aisa wondered how the stranger could be so certain. What value could Queen Kelsea have to the Mort? They could ask for ransom, certainly, but what ransom? Maman said the Tear was poor in everything but people and lumber, but the Mort had their own forests, and the Queen would never agree to a trade for people.
“It would be a smart move to kill the Queen,” the Mace replied. “Leave the Tear without an heir and throw us into chaos.”
“All the same, she will not.”
The Mace stared at the speaker for a long moment, his eyes measuring. Then he popped to his feet. “Then we need to start today.”
The stranger smiled, and it transformed his face from merely pleasant to handsome. “You need people in the capital. I have many. You will have all the help I can give you.”
Aisa peeked at the rest of the Guard and was shocked to see Pen smiling, though his eyes were filled with tears.
“We need to get a message to Galen and Dyer in Demesne. And Kibb!” Mace shouted across the room. “You get down into the Wells and find that baker’s boy. Nick. Time to call in that favor.”
Kibb nodded, a small smile creasing his face. “Going to be an undertaking, sir. You’re the Regent now.”
“I can do both.”
“Sir?” Ewen had stepped forward, his friendly face bewildered and his cheeks wet with tears. Aisa’s heart seemed to contract for him. Everyone knew that Ewen worshipped the Queen, and it seemed likely that he did not understand what had happened.
“What is it, Ewen?” the Mace asked, his voice betraying only the slightest touch of impatience.
“What are we going to do, sir?” Ewen asked, and Aisa saw that she had been wrong: he did understand.
The Mace descended the dais, clapping Ewen gently on the back. “We’re going to do the only thing we can do. We’re going to get her back.”
I’m sorry,” Kelsea repeated. She could feel that terrible side of herself, hovering, gleeful, waiting to be unleashed on the woman who stood before her. A different Kelsea, that one, a Kelsea who saw death as the most complete and effective solution to all problems.
She expected the Red Queen to fall to her knees, but she did not, and a moment later Kelsea realized that this was a woman who would never beg. It was easy to see, to browse through the woman’s life in much the same way she browsed through Lily’s, to see patterns forming. Evelyn Raleigh, the child, had begged, and it had gained her nothing. The woman would never beg again. Many memories sailed through Kelsea’s mind: playing with a set of toy soldiers on the ruined flagstones of a floor; staring with longing at the blue pendulum of a jewel as it rested on a woman’s chest; watching from behind a curtain as well-dressed men and women danced in a room that Kelsea recognized easily as her own audience chamber. Evelyn Raleigh had been desperate to be noticed, to matter to others . . . but in all of those childhood memories, she was alone.
It was the adult memories that Kelsea shrank from. In fragments and pieces, she saw a terrible story: how the disfavored child had risen from obscurity into her own conception of greatness, channeling all of that hurt and disappointment into authoritarianism. Row Finn had helped her, taught her to do her own form of magic, but Kelsea also sensed an innate emptiness in the grown woman before her, a certainty that an accident of birth had deprived her of greater opportunities, and the loss of the sapphires was a particular sore spot. There was a portrait there, too, in the jumble, and though Kelsea glimpsed it for only a moment, she recognized Lily with no difficulty at all. The Red Queen didn’t know Lily from Adam, but she felt a deep connection to her, all the same, and now Kelsea saw that Thorne and Row Finn had only been partly correct. The Red Queen did wish for immortality, but she did not need to live forever. She did not fear death. She only wanted to be invulnerable, to decide her own destiny without being subject to the whims of others. The child, Evelyn, had enjoyed no control over her own life. The Red Queen was determined to control it all.
Kelsea took a step back, trying to disengage from this. A greater understanding of others was always valuable, so Carlin said, but understanding the Red Queen would not make the task at hand any easier. For the first time in several weeks Kelsea thought of Mhurn, whom she had effectively anesthetized before his execution. She had no drugs for the Red Queen, but she could at least make it a quick death, not the protracted nightmare she had inflicted on Thorne.
But even as Kelsea tried to pull away, she caught and held on a memory: the young Evelyn, perhaps only eleven or twelve, standing in front of a mirror. This memory was closely guarded, so closely that when Kelsea began to examine it, the Red Queen’s entire body jerked in refusal, and she leapt at Kelsea, her hands hooked into claws. She went right for the sapphires, but Kelsea ducked and shoved her away. The Red Queen flew across the room, bouncing with a hiss off the wall of the tent. Kelsea followed her, still digging, for she sensed the pain that surrounded the memory, exacerbating it, like a wound that had never been cleaned. Evelyn stood in front of a mirror, staring at herself, in the throes of a terrible revelation:
I will never be beautiful.
Kelsea recoiled, feeling as though she’d been bitten, slapping the memory away from her as though it were a pernicious insect. But Evelyn’s pain did not go easily; Kelsea felt as though it had embedded hooks in her mind. The woman in front of her was beautiful, as beautiful as Kelsea was now . . . but she had created that beauty, cobbled it together somehow, just as Kelsea had. Deep down, the plain girl still reigned supreme; the Red Queen had never been able to outdistance her, to leave her behind, and in this, Kelsea saw a terrible phantom outline of her own future.
The Red Queen was leaning against the wall of the tent now, her breathing labored. But she looked up at Kelsea with furious eyes. “Get out. You have no right.”
Kelsea withdrew, disengaging from the woman’s mind. The Red Queen sagged to the ground, huddling there, her arms wrapped around her knees. Kelsea wanted to apologize, for she saw, now, the great ugliness of what she had done. But the Red Queen had closed her eyes, dismissing Kelsea somehow; the clear certainty that she would die had permeated the woman’s thoughts, calming the tides that lapped there. The Red Queen had lived a long and terrible life, defined by her own casual brutality, and it would be easy, so easy, to dismiss the child who wandered inside her. The dark side of Kelsea wanted to ignore that child; murder hovered in her mind, ravenous, like a dog straining to be let from the leash. But Kelsea paused, suddenly confronted by a nuance she had never considered. The woman in front of her deserved heavy punishment for the acts she had committed, the terror she had inflicted on the world. But the child Evelyn was not responsible for what had been done to her, and the experiences of the child had forever shaped the woman. Kelsea’s mind clamored, hectoring, demanding that she do something, that she act. But still she hesitated, staring at the crouching woman before her.
The problems of the past. Her own voice echoed in her mind, and Kelsea wished Mace were there, for she felt that she could finally explain this particular conundrum, present him with a concrete example of how the problems of the past, uncorrected, inevitably became the problems of the future.
I can’t kill her, Kelsea realized. An army surrounded them, an army that would enter New London and lay it waste. This was Kelsea’s only option, her only chance . . . but she could not bring herself to do the act. Compassion had ruined everything.
“Open your eyes,” Kelsea commanded, and as she spoke the words, she felt the dark shadow inside her crumple and limp away, its wings tattered. It might circle her mind forever, seeking advantage, but at that moment, Kelsea knew that it would never control her again.
The Red Queen opened her eyes, and the rage Kelsea saw there made her flinch. She had intruded where she had no right to be, and this woman would always hate her for what she had discovered there. Again Kelsea considered apologizing, but the memory of William Tear intruded.
The main prize!
“I propose a trade. I will give you my sapphires.”
“In exchange for what?” After a moment of initial surprise, the Red Queen’s face smoothed over, and Kelsea felt unwilling admiration. So she, too, had the power to wipe away the past when it served no purpose, when it would only be a distraction. Kelsea would earn no points for sparing the Red Queen’s life, that expression said; this woman would drive a hard bargain.
“Autonomy for the Tear.”
The Queen chuckled, but sobered quickly when she saw Kelsea’s expression. “You are serious?”
“Yes. I will give you the necklaces, take them off willingly, and you will withdraw your army and not return for five years. During this time, you will not place one toe in my kingdom. You will demand nothing. You will leave my people alone.”
“Five years’ worth of lost profits from the shipment? You must be out of your mind.”
But beneath the smooth face of the hard bargainer, Kelsea read a different story. Here, at least, Thorne and Finn had been right: the Red Queen wanted the jewels very badly.
“I promise you, if you refuse to trade with me, you will never have my sapphires. I may rot and wither to nothing, and you will still never be able to take them off me without facing the consequences. They belong to me.”
“Five years is too long.”
“Majesty!” Ducarte blurted out. Kelsea had forgotten he was there, crouched in the far corner of the tent. “You cannot!”
“Shut up, Benin.”
“Majesty, I will not.” Ducarte stood up, and Kelsea saw that he too was furious . . . but not with her. “The army has been incredibly patient with the lack of plunder, but it cannot last forever. New London is their reward, poorly defended, full of women and children. They have earned that.”
“You’ll get your ten percent, Benin. I’ll pay you out of my own pocket.”
Ducarte shook his head. “You will, Majesty, but that will not solve the issue. The army is already angry. To be withdrawn at the moment of victory—”
Kelsea was on the point of silencing him; she did not need his interference, not when she sensed her opponent weakening. But there was no need. The Red Queen turned to him and Ducarte blanched, falling silent.
“You think my army would defy me, Benin?”
“No, Majesty, no,” Ducarte backpedaled. “But they are already discontented. Poor morale makes poor soldiers, this is established.”
“They will tamp down their discontent, if they know what’s good for them.” The Red Queen turned back to Kelsea, her eyes gleaming, dark pupils flicking between Kelsea’s face and the sapphires. “Two years.”
“You must not want them very badly.”
“Five years is too long,” the Red Queen repeated, a hint of sullenness in her voice. “Three years.”
“Done.” Kelsea held the jewels out, but kept the chains around her neck. “Take hold of them.”
The Red Queen eyed her warily. “Why?”
“It’s a trick I learned from our mutual friend.” Kelsea smiled at her. “I need to make sure you won’t back out of the deal.”
The Red Queen’s eyes widened, suddenly fearful, and Kelsea saw that she had meant to do exactly that. Ah, she was smart, this woman, clever enough to drive a hard bargain on a promise she meant to break.
“I know you now, Evelyn. Three years, that’s the honest bargain.” Kelsea lifted the sapphires, offering them. “Promise to leave my kingdom alone.”
The Red Queen took the sapphires on her palm, and Kelsea was relieved to see a myriad of conflicting emotions cross her face: lust, anger, anxiety, regret. She knew about Row Finn, then. Perhaps she had even seen his real face.
“Majesty!” Ducarte hissed. “Do not!”
The Red Queen’s face twisted, and a moment later Ducarte was curled in a fetal position, moaning, on the floor. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the sapphires now, and when Kelsea hunted for her pulse, she found it ratcheted sky-high. Lust had overtaken judgment. The Red Queen paused, clearly framing her words before she spoke.
“If you give me both Tear sapphires, freely, of your own will, I swear to remove my army from the Tearling, and to refrain from interfering with the Tearling for the next three years.”
Kelsea smiled, feeling tears spill down her cheeks.
“You leak like a faucet,” the Red Queen snapped. “Give me the jewels.”
Three years, Kelsea thought. They were safe now, all of them, from the farmers in the Almont to Andalie’s children in the Keep, safe in Mace’s good hands, and that knowledge allowed Kelsea to reach up and pull the chains over her head. She expected the necklaces to fight her hand, or inflict some terrible physical punishment when she tried to remove them, but they came off easily, and when the Red Queen snatched them away, Kelsea felt almost nothing . . . only a small pang for Lily, for the end of Lily’s story that she would never see. But even that loss was drowned under the great gain of this moment. Three years was a lifetime.
The Red Queen put on both necklaces and then turned away, huddling over the sapphires like a miser with his gold. It occurred to Kelsea in that moment that she might escape; Ducarte was still incapacitated, and she could duck out of the tent, perhaps take them all by surprise. But no, the jewels were lost to her now, and without them she was just an ordinary prisoner. She would make it no more than five feet before getting killed, or worse, and anyway, the bridge was broken. Kelsea had done it as a defensive measure, but now she wondered if she hadn’t really been trying to ensure that there was no going back.
The Red Queen turned, and Kelsea braced herself for the triumph on the woman’s face, the vengeance that would surely follow. The Tearling was safe, and she meant to die a queen.
But the Red Queen’s eyes were wide with outrage, her nostrils flaring. Her outstretched fist had closed around the jewels, squeezing so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. Her mouth worked, opening and closing. Her other hand had clenched into a claw, and it reached for Kelsea, clutching madly.
And then, somehow, Kelsea knew.
She began to laugh, wild, hysterical laughter that bounced off the gleaming red walls of the tent. She barely felt the bruising grip of the woman’s hand on her shoulder.
Of course it didn’t hurt when I took them off. Of course not, because—
“They’re mine.”
The Red Queen screamed with fury, a wordless howl that seemed as though it should shred the walls of the tent. Her hand ground into Kelsea’s shoulder so hard that Kelsea thought it might break, but she couldn’t stop laughing.
“They don’t work for you, do they?” She leaned toward the Red Queen until their faces were only inches apart. “You can’t use them. They’re mine.”
The Queen hauled back and slapped Kelsea again, knocking her to the ground. But even this couldn’t stop Kelsea’s laughter; indeed, it seemed to feed it. She thought of the long night past . . . Lily, William Tear, Pen, Jonathan, Mace . . . and it suddenly seemed that they were there with her, all of them, even the dead. Kelsea had hoped to emerge victorious, but here was an outcome she had never imagined. The jewels were lost to her; she would never find out how Lily’s story had ended. But neither would anyone else.
Rough hands were on her shoulders, pulling her from the ground. Men dressed in black, like the soldiers outside, but by now Kelsea recognized close guards when she saw them, and she shut her eyes, preparing for death.
“Get her out of here!” the Red Queen shrieked. “Get her out!”
One of them, clearly the captain, pinned Kelsea’s wrists behind her back, and she felt irons cuffing them into place. The irons were too tight; they pinched her skin as he snapped the clasps. But Kelsea still couldn’t stop laughing.
“You lost,” she told the Red Queen, and knew that she would never forget the woman’s face in that moment: the face of an enraged child denied dessert. Kelsea barely felt the guards’ hands tighten on her arms, yanking her out of the tent. The Tearling was safe, her people were safe. The sapphires belonged to her, no one else, and Kelsea roared with laughter, even as they hauled her away.