A crackling fire casting merry shadows on the wall. A dog dozing in front of the hearth. A bellyful of shredded potato cakes and applesauce, and a mug of boozy hunter’s tea warming her hands. The piquant tickle of exotic pipe smoke, and the homey scent of braided cinnamon bread wafting from a nearby oven. In all her years as Crimson Queen, Indsorith had never known such a peaceful night, not in Serpentine Keep where she had spent most of her rule nor her shorter tenure here in Castle Diadem nor any of the other palaces and lodges she had brought her court.
“If I’d known how cozy my kitchens were I would have come down ages ago,” she told her nursemaid, huffing the hot herbal fumes of her tea and squirming around on the plush chairs they had dragged in from halfway across the castle.
“I don’t reckon it was very cozy when things were going all guns down here,” said Zosia, tapping the ash from her corncob pipe as her warm blue eyes glided over the deep shadows that surrounded their island of firelight in the vast and dark kitchen complex. Not for the first time Indsorith felt like a ghost haunting her old life. Not for the first time she found she enjoyed the sensation. And not for the first time she immediately felt guilty at taking relief in her relinquishment of duty, involuntarily or not.
“I should have made time to come here, to meet and thank the army of chefs and dogsbodies and turnip peelers who made sure I always ate so well …” Indsorith thought out loud. She must have fallen into the habit during the long agony of her solitary imprisonment, but instead of being embarrassed to have a witness to her doubts and regrets she found Zosia the ideal listener. Who else could have understood the petty pains of one so privileged but a fellow queen?
“It’s good to get down in the scrum with your people whenever you can,” agreed Zosia, which just proved that spending time with your big-booted predecessor could also be a touch annoying. Indsorith didn’t think Zosia intended to sound judgmental, and after all the years of near-universal toadying there was something refreshing about talking to someone who didn’t coach her every word to avoid giving offense, but all the same the older woman sometimes came off as condescending.
“I suppose her highness Queen Cobalt not only visited her kitchens on a daily basis but also took her turn stirring the stew?” said Indsorith.
“Even with a devil to mind her, Queen Cobalt was too paranoid of being poisoned to touch anything that came out of these kitchens, to say fuck-all of walking my butt down here.” Zosia smirked. As usual the expression seemed both genuine and pained, as if she were so long out of the habit that the muscles in her face cried out whenever she smiled. “I installed my old camp cook in that servant’s station just down the hall from the royal chambers and lived off his rations, same as I did before we captured the castle.”
“Ugh, always with the poisoning!” Indsorith took a gulp of tea, her every slow-healing wound flaring at the memory of the salted wine Y’Homa had drugged her with. “Even with all the precautions and preventatives and mystic alarms and miracle cures and potions and poison tasters I doubt I ever made it more than a year without something slipping through and making me sick as seven devils. That I lasted as long as I did without something taking me out for good just proves that I had a lot of people watching my back—for all their grief the nobles and colonels were sane enough to know I was the better alternative to a Chainite coup or Imperial infighting over the Crimson Throne.” Zosia was watching her over her mug, and rather than giving the older woman the pleasure of pointing out the obvious Indsorith added, “Or the Burnished Chain and their collaborators could have actually poisoned me any time they wished but chose to bide until now, as I unwittingly played into their hands for year after year.”
“Perhaps, but I rather doubt it,” said Zosia. “I’m sure someone would have assassinated you years ago, if you weren’t relentlessly hard to kill. Don’t forget you almost bested the greatest swordswoman the Star has ever known.”
“Almost,” said Indsorith, smiling as she admired the white slash she had etched into Zosia’s chin. The aging legend boasted quite a few scars, but that was the most pronounced. “Bad as you wanted to lose that duel, I should have given you a much bigger beauty mark.”
“Implying I went easy on you is an insult to both my honor and your skill,” said Zosia, jutting her chin at Indsorith. “Besides, I happened to like my face just fine the way it was.”
“Hmmm,” said Indsorith, giving the woman’s hard features a mock-serious inspection. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that she no longer looked upon Zosia with furious hatred, but she spoke truthfully when she said, “No, you look much better now, trust me.”
“That so? Maybe like a fine cheese, the spreading cracks in my rind hint at an inner improvement.” Perhaps second-guessing this tipsy pronouncement, Zosia pursed her lips as the shadow of a blush spread between the finer scars on her cheeks. “In all seriousness, it was one of the hardest fights of my life.”
“It should have been harder,” said Indsorith. “But I didn’t figure out why until your lover stormed the castle and tried to smear me all over the throne room.”
“Eh?” Zosia frowned. “My … oh hells no! Maroto told me he dueled you after he thought you killed me, but he is not now nor has he ever been more than a friend. And a fair-weather one at that.”
“But he did find out you’re still alive, then? You were reunited?” Indsorith remembered how heartbroken the man had seemed after she had bested him, as ruined as her father had been after her mother’s death in the work farm, and felt a pleasant hum in her chest. Here at long last was a story with a happy ending.
“That we were, that we were,” said Zosia, but from the way she stared down into her mug it didn’t look as though this story had such a cheerful conclusion after all. Maybe no tale truly does, if you keep following it past the point where a savvy storyteller knows to trail off … “So what did he say that’s stuck with you after all these years?”
“It wasn’t what he said, it was how he fought,” said Indsorith. “He was too angry, just like I was when I came for you. I thought my fury would make me unstoppable, but fighting him I realized anger just makes us sloppy. If I had learned to control my wrath before we fought I would have beaten you.”
“Hmmm,” said Zosia, nodding a little as she considered this. “First off, you need a little anger or your heart won’t be in the fight. That’s even worse than being too pissed at your opponent. Second, if you hadn’t been so furious you might have done better, sure, but no way in all the forgotten war gods of Emeritus would you have actually taken me out. Sorry, kid, you may be good but I’m the best.”
“Maybe once upon a time,” said Indsorith, unable to resist. “But that was a long, long, looong time ago.”
“Not so long as all that!”
“Then I challenge you to a rematch,” said Indsorith, leaning as far forward in her chair as her aching back would allow and extending a bandaged hand. “As soon as I’m fit enough to lift Moonspell we go again, you and I.”
“And for what stakes will we duel this time, Your Majesty?” To Zosia’s credit she didn’t wait for an answer before shaking her challenger’s hand.
“The only stakes that matter to women who have tasted every luxury life affords, and lost more than most people will ever win.”
“Look, you’re an attractive young lady,” said Zosia, raising a deferential palm, “but as a matter of principle I refuse to assign sexual favors as a prize in any contest. Much to Maroto’s chagrin, the old—”
“Bragging rights,” said Indsorith, rolling her eyes. It was lonely being queen, but not that lonely. “I’m talking about bragging rights.”
“Of course, of course …” Another of those pained smiles. “So if you think you stand a chance, that must mean you’re no longer mad at me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me it wasn’t your fault?” Indsorith said quietly, figuring she knew the answer but needing to hear it from Zosia all the same. “When I came for your head, and told you who I was and why I was there, why the fuck didn’t you tell me what happened to my people wasn’t your fault?”
“Because it was,” said Zosia, slumping back in her chair and draining her tea. “You were right to blame me for the fall of Junius, and everything that came after.”
“But those farms weren’t what you wanted,” Indsorith protested. “After I took the crown I found the reports about Karilemin, and the other work camps—I know that wasn’t what you wanted. I know you put a stop to them as soon as you found out.”
“Too late to save your family,” murmured Zosia, and though their voices were low and Choplicker looked asleep, his tail began softly drumming on the hearthstones. “Too late to save a lot of families.”
“You didn’t tell me because you thought as queen you should have somehow known what people halfway across the Empire were doing in your name,” said Indsorith, knowing that feeling herself.
“What sort of a queen would I have been if I answered your challenge by blaming somebody else?” asked Zosia.
“A good one,” snapped Indsorith. “The kind of queen I’ve tried to be. One who holds herself accountable to her subjects, but isn’t so crushed under the enormity of her responsibility that she accepts more than her fair share of blame. You don’t help yourself or your people by playing the martyr—letting the guilt of not doing more distract you from doing anything at all leaves the whole fucking Star worse off than it was before.”
“And would you have listened if I’d told you?” Zosia said wearily. “If I’d tried to explain what I actually wanted my soldiers to do in Junius, and how far from the mark those farms fell? That by the time you stormed this castle I’d already gone to Karilemin and tried to set things right? Would you have believed me, and kept your sword in your sheath?”
“Not in a thousand fucking years,” said Indsorith, raising her mug in salute. “But that’s missing the point entirely. It’s easy to do the right thing when you know it’ll help a situation. But even knowing it wouldn’t, you still should have done right by me. You owed me the truth, even if it was all you could offer. Especially then.”
“I gave you the Crimson Throne, and the Carnelian Crown to wear while you sat in it—how’s that doing right for you?” said Zosia, getting up with that sprightly ease Indsorith so envied. Even if she wasn’t recuperating from her many ordeals she doubted she was as fit as this woman some twenty years her senior. Then again, she didn’t have a devil keeping her strong like some fairybook witch.
“We’re alone at what feels remarkably like the end of civilization, so spare me the bullshit,” said Indsorith as she watched Zosia bend over to get the cinnamon bread out of the oven with an appreciative eye. There was certainly no harm in admiring the cut of another woman’s peasant dress … nor the cut of her figure, while your eye was in the neighborhood. “I learned soon enough why you were so quick to let me take your place—being the queen is the fucking pits. You weren’t doing me a good turn at all, you were doing yourself one.”
“I won your life when I won the duel,” said Zosia, batting the twisted loaf out of the oven with her bare hand and juggling it onto a cooling rack. “That I made you queen instead of a corpse I consider a very good turn, however selfish my motivations. Which … well, yeah, were entirely selfish, but then I’m a very selfish person in general so you shouldn’t take it personally.”
“And that’s why you’ve returned in the Empire’s darkest hour, ready to once more rally the people to the common good? Because you’re such a selfish jerk?” Indsorith wasn’t crazy about Zosia’s plan to turn over her castle to a confederation of rabble and their rousers whose only common ideology was their antipathy to the Crown, but her reservations came from simple self-preservation—Indsorith was more than happy to quit her former station, so long as she left it on her own two feet instead of with her head on a pike. Zosia put a lot more faith in Indsorith’s subjects than she did, but then Zosia hadn’t been the one trying to govern them for the past two decades.
“Yup. When they sing this song maybe they’ll keep me on as the hero, but it was naught but pure egotism that brought me back.” Zosia licked melted sugar off her fingers. “Vengeance put me on the path that led me here, same as it first carried you to this castle all those years ago. For as much as history repeats its sad dirge over and over down the years you’d think someone would bother learning the lyrics, keep us from falling into the same snares of fate and fortune.”
“Hunger for revenge may have set you on your way, but I don’t believe it’s still what drives you,” said Indsorith, clambering out of her chair to top off their mugs with the overproof Insomnium rhum that had elevated their tea from humble cuppa to pure ambrosia.
“Something else we have in common, huh?” said Zosia. “By the time you storm the castle you find you don’t want to burn it down anymore.”
“Only a fanatic would rather burn than build, when given the choice,” said Indsorith, her hand shaking as she poured despite how much they had lightened the jug. All this heavy talk with a veteran warrior queen brought her back to the ramparts of her childhood castle, the flickering fireplace standing in for the fields that Lady Shels had burned to prevent the Cobalts-cum-Imperials from reaping Junius’s fair harvest. What an impression that spectacle had made on her young, confused mind—which had been its whole purpose, of course, and which had succeeded in making Indsorith into a dogmatic doppelgänger of her mother right up until her investigation into the Imperial records proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lady Shels had been the instigator of the bloody showdown, that all the horrors that came after could have been prevented if only the Lady of Junius had been willing to compromise a fucking little with the new queen.
Not that change had occurred overnight. No, it had taken years for Indsorith to accept the full truth, slowly growing from the rich manure of her mother’s warped philosophy into something that might resemble a fair and gracious regent. That transition had been nurtured by her meticulous studying of Zosia’s failed policies, until it occurred to Indsorith one rainy midsummer eve that the woman she had once blamed for every evil in all the Star had become even more of an influence on her life than her own mother. She had never shared this epiphany with anyone, and watching Zosia break apart the steaming braids of cinnamon bread she stifled the impulse to blurt it out now. It had been a very, very long time since Indsorith had cared a jot about impressing anybody, but then it had been a very, very long time since she had been around anyone she genuinely respected.
“Speaking of burning things, I really did a number on this bread,” said Zosia as she brought the platter over. The sticky braids looked perfectly baked.
“I don’t know what’s more annoying, your ability to do absolutely everything or your false modesty,” said Indsorith as she sat back down and reached for the treat.
“I can’t do absolutely everything, only most everything,” said Zosia with a wink, then speared one of the braids with a fork and turned it over to display the blackened bottom. “See? This loaf is me all over—looks good enough at a glance, but is actually a total disaster.”
“I’m sure I’ve had worse things in my mouth,” said Indsorith, peeling a morsel of soft, steaming bread from the top of a braid. Before Zosia could seize the opportunity she added, “I wouldn’t trust myself to successfully make toast, let alone bake bread, or curries or soups or any of the other things you’ve made. Did you work in a kitchen before leading the revolution?”
“I wore many hats before I formed the Cobalt Company, but a toque wasn’t one of them,” said Zosia, and just for a moment her smile was sweeter than the buttery cinnamon bread melting in Indsorith’s mouth. “I learned to cook after I left you the Empire. My husband, Leib, was good at many things, but was even worse in the kitchen than I was. Our first year in the village we took turns suffering each other’s atrocities, and after that I was so desperate for a decent vindaloo or barbecue I begged a neighbor with a culinary reputation to take me under his wing. Just goes to show one day you can be queen, and the next you’re taking all kind of abuse apprenticing yourself to a cranky old bastard just to learn how to caramelize onions.”
“We find teachers in unexpected places,” Indsorith said through another mouthful of the wonderful spiced dessert.
“That we do,” agreed Zosia. Indsorith couldn’t tell if she was staring at her dozing devil or into the fire. “In time I was able to get a few cookbooks and the stale spices to go with them from a passing peddler, but nothing I taught myself was the equal of that old bastard’s recipes. Nothing sounds simpler than venison medallions and mushrooms or an apple scone, but the way he cooked them … gods, the way Leib’s face would light up when he came in from the cold hike up to our cabin and smelled those scones.”
Zosia was smiling wider than ever at the memory, yet at the same time Indsorith had never seen her closer to tears. She knew that pain, and felt it again now as she remembered the grubby, cherubic faces of her brothers just before they’d succumbed to their fate at the work farm. Nothing the Burnished Chain had done to Indsorith had hurt as much as those memories, and all through the many ordeals they had subjected her to she undercut their efforts by hiding in her past. It gave a justification to her tortures, her conscience almost welcoming this long-belated punishment for her failure to save her family … and to save her Empire.
“I know Sister Portolés must have told you or we wouldn’t be here, but I still need to tell you myself,” Indsorith said, recognizing the time had come at last. There wasn’t a whole lot to even say, but what little there was carried such weight she hadn’t felt strong enough to hoist it until now. “I’m sorry for what happened to your husband, to your village. I don’t know for sure who ordered Sir Hjortt to do what he did, but I’ve come to suspect it was his father, the former colonel of the same regiment. Of all the old guard Domingo Hjortt is the last officer I would have accused of being a double agent for the Chain, but while Y’Homa was gloating over me during one of her interrogations she claimed he defected to the church. That he helped make some sacrifice at the Lark’s Tongue that brought back Jex Toth. I know he was your nemesis from before you even took the throne, so who knows, maybe the Chain bought old man Hjortt’s loyalty in exchange for telling him where you were hiding out, so he could send his son after you. But the truth is I just don’t know how it happened, or why—on my life, Zosia, I didn’t even know if you were still alive after all this time, let alone where you were.”
The older woman sighed, pushing a loose braid of bread around the platter. “Yeah, I figured out it probably wasn’t you early on, but I appreciate hearing it said for certain. As for Portolés … well, she did her best to reach me, but you should know I didn’t listen to her, not until it was too late. And as for the culprit it wasn’t Domingo, either, I’m sure of that—he would have rubbed my nose in it when we met in the camp. Besides, it’s not his style to send his cub after me instead of doing it himself. Which leaves the Burnished Chain as the obvious suspect, drawing me out of retirement to pit me against the Empire … but it may just as well have been Hoartrap or one of my other best friends, knowing such a tragedy was the only way to coax me back into their schemes. Or maybe it was one of a hundred thousand other enemies I made over the course of a long and shitty life, or maybe it was nothing more than the devil of ambition whispering in a green colonel’s ear, telling him if he wanted to fill his daddy’s spurs he had to start his command with a big show of force. Maybe it was just a fucking accident that Leib and the rest of Kypck ended up dead … maybe … but not knowing, knowing I may never know … that’s the fucking ragged edge that keeps twisting and tearing at my fucking heart … it’s what I deserve, this doubt, this chaos, but he didn’t … he didn’t deserve it … none of them … all they did was love me, and I couldn’t save them. Me, Queen fucking Zosia, I couldn’t protect a fucking village—I got them all killed, and I’ll never even know who or why or … fuck.”
Zosia finally looked back at Indsorith, and in the fading firelight of the neglected hearth it seemed as though a mask she had worn every day of her many years had slipped out of place, the wry, ruthless warrior queen of song revealed to be a mere mortal. Shimmering creeks escaped the cool blue depths of her eyes, slipping down the channels of wrinkle and scar, and Indsorith felt her own throat constrict in sympathy with the woman’s grief. Choplicker’s tail thumped in time with Indsorith’s heart as she leaned forward, her scabs cracking and her stitches tugging as she stretched her arms across the laden table. There was a danger to it, like reaching out to pet a snarling feral dog, but also the exhilaration of knowing she was safe, that fierce as this creature seemed it would not harm her. Zosia balked, looking down at the proffered hands as though she didn’t know what they were, and then took them in her own. Her hands were shaking, and Indsorith squeezed them.
“The first time I fell truly in love I was seventeen,” Indsorith said softly. This must be how Chainites felt like when they gave confession, both scared and elated to finally be giving up their secrets. “He was a minor noble in my court, so strong and fair and kind. You were queen long enough to know how rare such traits are in those who rise to power, but Crepax … he was special. You’ll think me naïve but even after all this time I know that what brought us together was love, real love, not any ambition on his part …” Indsorith smiled as she remembered his smile. “We were together less than a year before his murder, and even after all these years and all my efforts I never discovered if the Chain was behind it, or one of my own ministers. I gave up on ever finding out … well, I tried to give up, knowing it was futile, but of course I can’t, not ever. You know that.”
Now it was Zosia’s turn to squeeze Indsorith’s hands, offering her a sympathetic grimace.
“The second time was even worse,” Indsorith confided, feeling weirdly powerful as she watched Zosia’s devil tent one ear in her direction. “I swore I’d never love again, of course, but then Simone of the Gale joined my Dread Guard—you have passed through over the Bridge of Grails, I assume, and know those great statues that form the eastern arch? She was as hard and as beautiful as one of those titans of the Age of Wonders, only more impressive. I never had a chance. Neither did she …”
Choplicker finally turned to look at Indsorith but she closed her eyes before she could spill a drop, the taste of her lover’s blood flooding her mouth.
“You never found her killer, either?” Zosia’s voice was still gruff with grief.
“I see her in every mirror,” said Indsorith, deciding not to tell Zosia how close she had come in that moment to letting Simone finish her, too heartbroken to fight back. Not yet, anyway. “I probably could have found out who she was working for, if I’d been willing to torture it out of her, but that was something I told myself I’d never do … Not to anyone, certainly not to her. She died quick. In my arms, but quick. And the worst, Zosia? The absolute worst? Even now … even now I must admit I loved her more than Crepax, more than any of those who came after, before I swore off taking lovers altogether, for my safety and theirs. I love her cruel shade, and believe the only reason I overcame her in the end is that she allowed it. I believe she fell for me, as I fell for her. How foolish is that?”
“To love is to give yourself over to folly,” said Zosia, “but there are worse reasons to act the fool.”
“Like whatever’s compelling me to let you open up my safe little castle to the angry mob that somehow survived my rule and the Chain’s coup?”
“Yes, like that,” said Zosia, and while Indsorith kept her eyes closed she could tell by the woman’s voice that her mask had fitted back into place. No, not a mask—a helm in the shape of a snarling devil dog. “Don’t worry, though—there will be more than one disgraced Crimson Queen to welcome them home.”
“Home,” repeated Indsorith, shivering even in the heat of the kitchen as she remembered what Y’Homa had shown her in Diadem Gate after their nightmarish parade through the burning capital. The Black Pope had repeatedly referred to Jex Toth as her home, and even with all the drugs and bugs Indsorith had been on there was precious little doubt that fabled land had returned … or that it was infested with grotesque demons that had haunted her dreams ever since.
This was the real reason why she couldn’t give a whole lot of fucks about Zosia’s decision to invite the remaining riffraff into the castle, or their squabbles over control of the ruins of Diadem: because none of it mattered anymore. It was pretty simple, really; any child with an affinity for ghost stories could tell you that up until five hundred years ago Jex Toth had sat right there in the Haunted Sea, in the exact spot where it reappeared. That was what made the Burnished Chain’s conviction that they were sailing to some promised land so absurd—the only ones who had come home were the devils banished to the First Dark, and now that they had returned it was only a matter of time before they reached the rest of the Star.
Looking at the friendly, prick-eared dog who had been her constant companion ever since Zosia had rescued her, Indsorith reckoned some of them were already here.