It was funny; the Dowager had never taken him for one interested in her well-being. He had always been quick to vote against any proposal she put forward.
She decided that it was time to speak, while she still could. She stood, and the room fell silent. Even though the nobles had fought for their Assembly, they still listened to her within it.
“To order an evacuation would start a panic,” she said. “There would be looting in the streets, and strong men who might defend their homes otherwise will flee. I will stand here too. This is my home, and I will not be seen to run from it in the face of a rabble of foes.”
“Far from a rabble, Your Majesty,” Lord Neresford pointed out, as if the Dowager’s advisors hadn’t told her the precise extent of the invading force. Perhaps he just assumed that, as a woman, she wouldn’t have enough knowledge of war to understand it. “Although I am sure that all the Assembly is eager to hear your plans to defeat it.”
The Dowager stared him down, although that was hard to do when her lungs felt as though she might burst into a coughing fit at any moment.
“As the honorable lords know,” she said, “I have deliberately eschewed too close a role in the kingdom’s armies. I wouldn’t want to make you all uncomfortable by claiming to command you now.”
“I’m sure we can forgive it this once,” the lord said, as if he had the power to forgive or condemn her. “What is your solution, Your Majesty?”
The Dowager shrugged. “I thought that we would start with a wedding.”
She stood there, waiting for the furor to die down, the various factions within the Assembly shouting at one another. The royalists were cheering their support, the anti-monarchists griping about the waste of money. The military members were assuming that she was ignoring them, while those from the further reaches of the kingdom wanted to know what any of it meant for their people. The Dowager didn’t say anything until she was sure that she had their attention.
“Listen to yourselves, babbling like frightened children,” she said. “Did your tutors and your governesses not teach you the history of our nation? How many times have foreign foes sought to claim our lands, jealous of their beauty and their wealth? Shall I list them for you? Shall I tell you about the failures of the Havvers Warfleet, the Invasion of the Seven Princes? Even in our civil wars, the foes that came from without were always pushed back. It has been a thousand years since anyone has conquered this land, and yet you panic now because a few foes have evaded our first line of defenses.”
She looked around the room, shaming them like children.
“I cannot give our people much. I cannot command without your support, and rightly so.” She didn’t want them arguing about her power here and now. “I can give them hope, though, which is why today, in this Assembly, I wish to announce an event that offers hope for the future. I wish to announce the impending marriage of my son Sebastian to Lady d’Angelica, Marchioness of Sowerd. Will any of you seek to force a vote on the matter?”
They didn’t, although she suspected that it was as much because they were stunned by the announcement as anything. The Dowager didn’t care. She set off from the chamber, deciding that her own preparations were more important than whatever business it would conclude in her absence.
There was still so much to do. She needed to make sure that the Danses’ daughters had been contained, she needed to make wedding preparations—
The coughing fit took her suddenly, even though she had been expecting it through most of her speech. When her handkerchief came away stained with blood, the Dowager knew that she’d pushed too hard today. That, and things were progressing faster than she would have liked.
She would finish things here. She would secure the kingdom for her sons, against all the threats, inside and out. She would see her line continue. She would see the dangers eliminated.
Before all of that, though, there was someone she needed to see.
***
“Sebastian, I’m so sorry,” Angelica said, and then stopped herself with a frown. That wasn’t right. Too eager, too bright. She needed to try again. “Sebastian, I’m so sorry.”
Better, but still not quite right. She kept practicing as she made her way along the corridors of the palace, knowing that when the time came to actually say it in earnest, it would have to be perfect. She needed to make Sebastian understand that she felt his pain, because that kind of sympathy was the first step when it came to owning his heart.
It would have been easier if she’d felt anything but joy at the thought of Sophia being gone. Just the memory of the knife sliding into her brought a smile that she wouldn’t be able to show in front of Sebastian when he got back.
That wouldn’t be long. Angelica had beaten him home by riding hard, but she had no doubt that Rupert, Sebastian, and all the rest would return soon. She needed to be ready once they did, because there was no point in removing Sophia if she couldn’t take advantage of the gap that left.
For now, though, Sebastian wasn’t the member of their family she needed to worry about. She stood outside the Dowager’s quarters, taking a breath while the guards watched her. When they swung the doors back in silence, Angelica set her brightest smile on her features and ventured forward.
“Remember that you’ve done what she wants,” Angelica told herself.
The Dowager was waiting for her, seated on a comfortable chair and drinking some kind of herbal tea. Angelica remembered her deep curtsey this time, and it seemed that Sebastian’s mother wasn’t in a mood to play games.
“Please rise, Angelica,” she said in a tone that was surprisingly mild.
Still, it made sense that she would be pleased. Angelica had done everything that was required.
“Sit there,” the older woman said, gesturing to a spot beside her. It was better than having to kneel before her, although being commanded like that was still a small piece of grit rubbing against Angelica’s soul. “Now, tell me about your journey to Monthys.”
“It’s done,” Angelica said. “Sophia is dead.”
“Are you sure of that?” the Dowager asked. “You checked her body?”
Angelica frowned at the questioning note there. Was nothing good enough for this old woman?
“I had to escape before that, but I stabbed her with a stiletto laced with the most vicious poison I had,” she said. “No one could have survived.”
“Well,” the Dowager said, “I hope you’re correct. My spies say that her sister showed up?”
Angelica felt her eyes widening slightly at that. She knew that Rupert wasn’t back yet, so how could the Dowager have heard so much, so quickly? Maybe he’d sent a bird ahead.
“She did,” she said. “She sailed off with her sister’s corpse, on a boat heading for Ishjemme.”
“Heading for Lars Skyddar, no doubt,” the Dowager muttered. It was another small shock for Angelica. How could peasants like Sophia and her sister possibly know someone like Ishjemme’s ruler?
“I’ve done what you wanted,” Angelica said. Even to her, it sounded defensive.
“Are you expecting praise?” the Dowager asked. “Maybe a reward? Some petty title to add to your collection, maybe?”
Angelica didn’t like being talked down to like that. She’d done everything the Dowager had required. Sophia was dead, and Sebastian would be home soon, ready to accept her.
“I have just announced your nuptials to the Assembly of Nobles,” the Dowager said. “I would think that marrying my son would be reward enough.”
“More than enough,” Angelica said. “Will Sebastian accept this time, though?”
The Dowager reached out, and Angelica had to force herself not to flinch as the old woman patted her cheek.
“I’m sure I said that was part of your job. Distract him. Seduce him. Get down on your knees in front of him and beg, if you have to. My reports say that he’s cloaked in grief as he comes home. Your job will be to make him forget all of that. Not mine, yours. Do a good job, Angelica.” The Dow
ager shrugged. “Now get out. I have things to do. I have to make sure that you actually finished Sophia, for one thing.”
The dismissal was abrupt enough to be rude. With anyone else, it would have been enough to warrant retribution. With the Dowager, there was nothing that Angelica could do, and that only made it worse.
Still, she would do what the old woman required. She would make Sebastian hers once he got home. She would be royalty by marriage soon, and that elevation would be more than reward enough.
In the meantime, the Dowager’s uncertainty about Sophia gnawed at her. Angelica had killed her; she was sure of it, but…
But it wouldn’t hurt to see what she could learn about events in Ishjemme, just to be certain. She had at least one friend there, after all.
CHAPTER SIX
Sophia could feel the rhythmic flow of the ship somewhere beneath her, but it was a distant thing, on the edge of her awareness. Unless she concentrated, it was hard to remember that she had ever been on a ship. She certainly couldn’t find it, even though it was the last place that she could remember being.
Instead, she seemed to be in a shadowy place, filled with mist that shifted and billowed, fractured light filtering through it so that it seemed more like the ghost of a sun than its reality. In the mist, Sophia had no idea which way was forward, or which way she was supposed to go.
Then she heard the cry of a child, cutting through the fog more clearly than the sunlight. Somehow, some instinct told her that the child was hers, and that she needed to go to it. Without hesitating, Sophia set off through the mist, running toward it.
“I’m coming,” she assured her child. “I’ll find you.”
It continued to cry, but now the mist twisted the sound, making it seem to come from every direction at once. Sophia picked a direction, plunging forward again, but it seemed that every direction she picked was the wrong one, and she got no closer.
The mist shimmered, and scenes seemed to form around her, set out as perfectly as performances on a stage. Sophia saw herself screaming in childbirth, her sister holding her hand as she brought a life into the world. She saw herself holding that child in her arms. She saw herself dead, with a physiker standing beside her.
“She wasn’t strong enough, after the attack,” he said to Kate.
That couldn’t be right though. It couldn’t be true if the other scenes were true. It could happen.
“Maybe none of it is true. Maybe it’s just imagination. Or maybe they’re possibilities, and nothing is decided.”
Sophia recognized Angelica’s voice instantly. She spun, seeing the other woman standing there, a bloody knife in her hand.
“You’re not here,” she said. “You can’t be.”
“But your child can?” she countered.
She stepped forward and stabbed Sophia then, the agony of it lancing through her like fire. Sophia screamed… and she was alone, standing in the mist.
She heard a child crying somewhere in the distance, setting off toward it because she knew instinctively that it was her child, her daughter. She ran, trying to catch up, even as she had the sense that she’d done this before…
She found scenes from a girl’s life around her. A toddler playing, happy and safe, Kate laughing along with her because they’d both found a good hiding place under the stairs and Sophia couldn’t find them. A toddler pulled from a castle just in time, Kate fighting against a dozen men, ignoring the spear in her side so that Sophia could run with her. The same child alone in an empty room, no parent there.
“What is this?” Sophia demanded.
“Only you would demand meaning from something like this,” Angelica said, stepping from the mist again. “You can’t just have a dream, it has to be filled with portents and signs.”
She stepped forward, and Sophia raised a hand to try to stop her, but that just meant that the knife thrust into her under the armpit, rather than cleanly up through the chest.
She was standing in the mist, a child’s cries sounding around her…
“No,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “I won’t keep going around and around this. It’s not real.”
“It’s real enough for you to be here,” Angelica said, her voice echoing from the mist. “What does it feel like, being a dead thing?”
“I’m not dead,” Sophia insisted. “I can’t be.”
Angelica’s laugh echoed the way her child’s cries had before. “You can’t be dead? Because you’re that special, Sophia? Because the world needs you so much? Let me remind you.”
She stepped from the mist, and now they weren’t standing in mist, but in the cabin of the boat. Angelica stepped forward, the hatred on her face obvious as she thrust the blade into Sophia once more. Sophia gasped with it, then fell, collapsing into darkness as she heard Sienne attack Angelica.
She was back in the mist then, standing there while it shimmered around her.
“Is this death then?” she demanded, knowing that Angelica would be listening. “If so, what are you doing here?”
“Maybe I died too,” Angelica said. She stepped back into view. “Maybe I hate you so much that I followed you. Or maybe I’m just everything you hate in the world.”
“I don’t hate you,” Sophia insisted.
She heard Angelica laugh then. “Don’t you? You don’t hate that I got to grow up in safety while you were in the House of the Unclaimed? That everyone accepts me at court while you had to run? That I could have married Sebastian without any problems, while you had to run away?”
She stepped forward again, but this time she didn’t stab Sophia. She stepped past her, walking off into the mist. The mist seemed to reshape itself as Angelica passed, and Sophia knew that this couldn’t be the real her now, because the real Angelica wouldn’t have tired of murdering her quite so quickly.
Sophia followed in her wake, trying to make sense of it all.
“Let’s show you a few more possibilities,” Angelica said. “I think you’ll like these.”
Just the way Angelica said it told Sophia how little she would like it. Even so, she followed her into the mist, not knowing what else to do. Angelica quickly disappeared out of sight, but Sophia kept walking.
Now she was standing in the middle of a room where Sebastian sat, obviously trying to hold back the tears that fell from his eyes. Angelica was there with him, reaching out for him.
“You don’t have to hold your emotions back,” Angelica said in a tone of perfect sympathy. She put her arms around Sebastian, holding him. “It’s all right to grieve for the dead, but just remember that the living are here for you.”
She looked straight at Sophia while she held Sebastian, and Sophia could see the look of triumph there. Sophia started forward in anger, wanting to pull Angelica away from him, but her hand couldn’t even touch them. It passed through without making contact, leaving her staring at them, no more than a ghost.
“No,” Sophia said. “No, this isn’t real.”
They didn’t react. She might as well not have been there. The image shifted, and now Sophia was standing in the middle of the kind of wedding that she could never have dared to imagine for herself. It was in a hall whose roof seemed to reach to the sky, nobles gathered in such numbers that they made even that seem small.
Sebastian was waiting by an altar along with a priestess of the Masked Goddess whose robes proclaimed her rank above the others of her order. The Dowager was there, seated on a throne of gold as she watched her son. The bride came forward, veiled and dressed in pure white. When the priestess threw back the veil to reveal Angelica’s face, Sophia screamed…
She found herself in chambers she knew from memory, the layout of Sebastian’s things unchanged from the nights she’d spent there with him, the fall of moonlight on the sheets straight from her memories of their time together. There were bodies tangled in those sheets, and in one another. Sophia could hear their laughter and their joy.
She saw moonlight fall on Sebastian’s face, caught in an express
ion of pure need, and Angelica’s, which held nothing but triumph.
Sophia turned and ran. She ran through the mist blindly, not wanting to see any more. She didn’t want to stay in this place. She had to escape it, but she couldn’t find a way out. Worse, it seemed that every direction she turned led back in the direction of more images, and even the images of her daughter hurt, because Sophia had no way of knowing which ones might be real and which were just there to hurt her.
She had to find a way out, but couldn’t see well enough to find one. Sophia stood there, feeling the panic building in her. Somehow, she knew that Angelica would be following her again, stalking her through the mist, ready to thrust her blade home in her once more.
Then Sophia saw the light, glowing through the fog.
It built slowly, starting as a thing that barely pushed its way through the murk, then slowly becoming something bigger, something that burned the fog away the same way the morning sun might burn off morning dew. The light brought warmth with it, feeding life into limbs that had felt leaden before.
It flowed over Sophia, and she let the power of it pour into her, carrying with it images of fields and rivers, mountains and forests, a whole kingdom contained in that touch of light. Even the remembered pain of the wound in her side seemed to fade before that power. On instinct, Sophia put her hand to her side, feeling it come away wet with blood. She could see the wound there now, but it was closing, the flesh knitting together under the touch of the energy.
As the mist lifted, Sophia could see something in the distance. It took a few more seconds before enough burned away to reveal a spiral staircase leading up toward a patch of light, so far above that it seemed impossible to reach. Somehow, Sophia knew that the only way to leave this seemingly never-ending nightmare was to reach that light. She set off in the direction of the staircase.
“You think you get to leave?” Angelica demanded from behind Sophia. She spun, and barely managed to get her hands down in time as Angelica struck at her with the knife. Sophia pushed her back on instinct, then turned and ran for the stairs.