He should have asked Helmi who else was with Emma. He can’t remember why he didn’t.
He begins to walk down the blue carpet, looking at benches, thinking about invisibility. Only when the living outnumber the dead across those benches does he pause. Everything about the Court is about gaining, or keeping, the Queen’s favor; the Queen’s favor is given, predominantly, to those who have power. The people in the back benches don’t.
They wear robes; they’re Necromancers. But they’re like Emma would have been; they’ve survived long enough to be ‘rescued’. They’ve been told they’re special. They’ve been told that if they learn enough and serve the Queen well, they’ll be safe; they will survive everything that might kill them—even time. They probably didn’t have Emma’s home life; they didn’t have her school life, either. School among the Necromancers is significantly more deadly. If the Queen wants to protect them from witch hunters, she doesn’t much care about what happens to them afterward.
They know it. They also know that there is no strength in numbers, here. They sit side-by-side; they might as well sit in different cells. They don’t speak. They look straight ahead, at empty thrones.
There is no room for Nathan among them, because there is no room for Nathan among the living. He almost retreats, but one of the dead—a boy his own age, dressed very much like Helmi was dressed—saves him.
“You are expected,” he says. “You will attend the Queen.”
• • •
Nathan does not fall through the floor—but if he could, he would. Through the floor, through what lays beneath the floor, through the skies; he’d be happy to fall through the earth as well. He’s never been wordy. In emergencies, words often desert him entirely.
He finally manages to say, “Attend the Queen?”
The young man purses his lips. “Yes. Please do not tell me you have no idea what this entails.”
“I was told to—to get dressed. That’s it. That’s the sum total of what I know about attending the Queen.”
“You are to help her with her train—the long back end of her skirts. You are to help her with her veil if there are difficulties.”
Veil.
“The train will need to be arranged—to her left—when she is seated. You will, if it is required, attend Lord Eric as well. The Queen will sit before Lord Eric takes his seat—if he chooses to do so. After the Queen is seated, you will take her scepter. You will then return to Lord Eric’s side, where you will stand behind him until he is summoned.
“You will not, of course, speak unless the Queen commands it. If she asks you a direct question, she will expect a polite and respectful answer. When she stands, you will return her scepter to her hands; you will take her train and you will carry it in such a way that she is allowed full mobility. You will then follow behind her.”
Nathan nods.
“Go and stand by the doors; remain there until the Queen walks past you. An attendant will be with her; walk beside the attendant. The girl will join the other apprentices; you will take over her duties at that time.”
Nathan wants a repeat, but it’s too late. He glances down a carpet that seems, suddenly, to go on for miles and sees the Queen of the Dead in the distance.
She renders him speechless. No matter how much he fears her—no matter how much any of the dead do—she is, at this moment, incandescent. He knows that if she were kind, if she were compassionate, he wouldn’t care about the closed door and the endless hell of unlife. She would be enough. He would be a moth, fluttering around her edges until she finally consumed him.
He wonders that he hasn’t known, until this moment, that she is coming. How he could be so ignorant, so blind? She is limned with light, golden light. There are walls between them, but they might as well be made of the clearest of glass. She is wearing a dress with long, trailing sleeves and lace everywhere; he can see that it is almost the same color as the light she sheds. Her hair is gold. Her lips are red. Her eyes are a blaze of light that defy simple color.
But she is color, in this place. Everything else in the world is gray. Everything but Emma, who is not here.
Even the dead that are bound into the cage that contains him fall silent for a moment at her approach. She is the Queen of the Dead. In the end, she is the only afterlife they will know. Or so he feels, and it is so visceral a feeling that he is almost incapable of movement or thought. Fear, however, returns; it gives his legs strength. He walks—quickly—to the wall, and from there he traces the boundary of the room, to stand to the left of the doors.
There should be music.
There should be a triumphant processional.
There is silence. Only the sound of her steps—hers and Eric’s—break it. But at the thought of Eric, Nathan closes his eyes. It doesn’t help—he can see the Queen, although in theory she is not in his line of sight.
The Queen is walking down the long hall at Eric’s side. Her people—the living and the dead—wait for her. It seems, for one long moment, that no one is breathing, and while the dead don’t need oxygen, the living do. But the living can’t see her.
The dead can’t unsee her. She is burned into their vision, like a permanent sun spot, a permanent blindness. Nathan would be no different—but Nathan has Emma. Had Emma. Emma and the Queen are like the Sun and the Moon.
It is to the moon that Nathan is drawn, always; the light it sheds doesn’t burn him, doesn’t burn his vision; it doesn’t create deserts. This castle, this citadel, this city of dreams and pain and love, is the only desert Nathan has ever seen.
Eric is part of it, owned by it; Nathan sees that now. Eric, like Nathan, is dead. Eric, like Nathan, is trapped in, built on, dead who are just as lost. There is no exit, no escape. Yes, they can get away from the Queen—but the world of the dead is not as large as the world of the living, and it contains vastly fewer possibilities.
The dead don’t cry. Nathan doesn’t. But if he could, he thinks he would. There is no joy in this reunion, and because there is no joy, there is no hope in it, either. No hope for the dead. No hope for the living trapped here.
“CAN WE REALLY TRUST HELMI?” Amy asked as they ate the world’s gloomiest dinner. Allison didn’t have much of an appetite, and neither did Emma or Michael. Ernest and Chase ate. No one cared to answer Amy’s question; they didn’t care for the answer. What choice did they have?
“You’re used to this, aren’t you?” Allison asked Chase, instead.
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“No?”
“I’m used to eating when I have time. The breakfast we cooked at Emma’s before we went to fetch Andrew Copis was so out of the ordinary it no longer feels real.” Before she could speak again, he added, “I spend most of my life on the run. Running to something, running away from something. I don’t expect to die peacefully of old age. I expect on some level that every meal I’m eating might be the last one.
“I don’t sleep well. I can sleep standing up.” He chewed what looked like canned pear, swallowed, and added, “I never want my companions to die. But all of my companions—until now—have been like me. Any of the ones who weren’t didn’t last very long. None of you are like me.”
Ernest coughed.
Chase ignored him. “It’s easy for me to contemplate my own death. It’s been kill or be killed for years now—it’s the only way of life I know.” He caught Allison’s hand in his, entwining their fingers. “So I’m eating what might be my last meal with people I actually care about. Love makes you weak.” As Michael opened his mouth, Chase grimaced and said, “Love makes me weak. When I care, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of losing the people who are important to me. Fear makes me stupid. When facing the enemies we’ve been facing, stupid gets us killed.
“But I want you to be what you are.”
“Please,” Amy said, waving a hand in front of Chase’s face. “The rest of us a
re eating.”
“Amy doesn’t like public displays of affection,” Michael added. “They make people uncomfortable.”
Chase laughed. Amy, notably, did not. Allison squeezed the hand that held hers but said nothing. She’d always found Amy intimidating. Nothing had changed that.
Allison wanted to know if her brother Toby was still alive. She didn’t want Emma’s father to come anywhere near the city of the dead. Caught between these, she retreated—but absent her shelf of comfort books, the retreat was doomed to be incomplete.
“Emma?”
“Margaret’s back.” There was a pause. “And Helmi’s with her.” Emma reached out with her left hand, and the younger girl appeared. Margaret, however, materialized on her own.
• • •
They didn’t have much in the way of paper. They didn’t have chalk. Michael had his computer, but there was no source of electricity; Emma wondered if the city of the dead possessed any.
Margaret outlined the city, sans actual map. “The Queen is in her audience chamber. She has summoned her entire court. Even the dead who would normally serve as her spies are in the chamber.”
“For how long?”
“Hours,” Helmi said. “Think of it as a kind of anti-wedding.” She glanced to her left, to a space that appeared to be empty.
“Shouldn’t you be there?”
“Yes. I can’t stay. But I wanted to tell you: Nathan is in the audience chamber as well. He’s been assigned to Eric. They’re both relatively safe. If you’re going to move, now is the time to start. If things go well, she’ll be parading in the streets—and you’ll be looking down at her if you stay here.”
Ernest opened his mouth.
Helmi glared and said, “It is not the time to ambush her. She’ll have the entire court walking behind her. You’ve managed to survive her knights so far, but you’ve never faced their full assembly. Move to a building that’s closer to the actual gates of the citadel. When she leaves the gates, I’ll come back.” She glanced at Emma. Or rather, at Emma’s hand. She didn’t want to let go.
“Helmi.”
But she did. “My sister has never been happy,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She appeared to be staring at her feet; she could have been staring at her almost ridiculous skirts. “You love your friends.” It wasn’t a question. But the nonquestion was offered to Emma.
Emma’s hand tightened, as if to offer brief, wordless comfort. “Yes.”
Silence. Extended. Helmi broke it. “The Necromancers believe,” she finally said, “that if the Queen dies, the city falls. Anyone living in it will fall as well. It’s a long way down,” she added, in case this wasn’t obvious. “The dead can’t die. We’ll be fine.” The twist of lips that accompanied the last word said many, many things; “fine” wasn’t one of them. She fell silent for another long beat, and then her gaze drifted to Michael, who was watching her with some concern.
It wasn’t the type of concern she was used to. In the ridiculous dress, she looked like an evil, spoiled princess, and her expression did nothing to dispel that impression. She looked at Michael as if he were a species of animal—or plant—that she couldn’t quite place.
“In the history of the citadel, only one man came close to unseating my sister.” She glanced at Emma before her gaze was once again dragged back to Michael.
“What happened to him?” Michael asked.
“He died.”
Chase grimaced. Since the Queen was obviously alive, there could only be one outcome. Emma lifted a hand before he could put the thought into words. She watched Helmi.
“I think you’re all stupid,” Helmi told Michael.
“Ignorant,” Michael corrected her.
Amy liked neither word and cleared her throat to indicate as much. She didn’t follow with words. Like everyone else in the room, she was afraid enough that she wanted to hear the rest of what Helmi had to say—if she said anything more at all.
“His name was Scoros.”
More silence.
“He was like a father to her. She trusted him.”
“She killed him.” Chase’s voice was flat, uninflected.
Helmi hesitated again, her gaze upon either her feet or something beneath them.
“Could he be part of the floor?” Emma whispered.
“You don’t understand my sister’s anger,” Helmi replied, her voice no louder. “The floors mean nothing to anyone.”
“They mean something,” Michael said, his voice much louder than hers.
She looked as if she would argue but not as if she wanted to. “They meant nothing to my sister by the time she built them. She doesn’t see the dead the way you do.” She looked for comprehension in Emma’s expression, but it was slow to come. “He wouldn’t be floor or wall or anything else that was supposed to look normal. It wouldn’t be enough for my sister. She trusted him. He betrayed her.”
“Would there be anything left of him at all?”
“I don’t know. But when he attempted to overthrow my sister, he had his supporters. I don’t think all of them would have been willing to throw their lives away, even to be rid of her. Scoros, by that point, would have. I don’t think he valued his own life much by the end.
“You won’t be the only person to look. You might be the only person to succeed.”
“Your sister knows what happened to him.”
“Yes. But she won’t share. Not even with me. If I knew where he was, I’d tell you.” Bitterly, she added, “If I knew where he was and someone was foolish enough to bind me, I’d tell them.”
“Which means she thought there’d be something to tell,” Amy said, voice rising slightly toward the end of the sentence.
Helmi’s glance lost hesitance as she met Amy’s eyes. Her lips turned up in a half smile. “I like you,” she said. “And yes, that would be my guess.” The smile dimmed. “If you have any hope of—of surviving what you came to do, he’s your best chance. He might be your only chance.” Her hair moved as if in a strong wind; her eyes were the clear, bright eyes of the dead. “You need to get out of the city before the parade starts.”
She hesitated, looking down at Emma’s hand; her lips thinned briefly, as if she were swallowing pain. Before Emma could speak, she faded from view, taking the cold with her.
• • •
Chase was rigid with silence. His arms shook; his knuckles were white. He exhaled only when Helmi disappeared. He then released Allison’s hand and began to repack their precious, scant supplies. While he worked, he asked, “Margaret, where does the food come from?” The question made almost no sense to Emma, given Helmi’s information.
Margaret, however, answered. “There’s a portal in what was once considered a fae cave. The portal is a fixed structure; the passage is two-way. It is small, and it is well hidden. In the history of the citadel people on the ground have stumbled across it—by accident—perhaps a dozen times. For that reason, the citadel side is well guarded. The cave itself, however, is only intermittently watched. If we could reach the door in the citadel, we could escape.” This made Chase’s question make sense.
Emma exhaled. “If the Queen dies, how much time will we have before everything disintegrates?” As she spoke, she glanced at the floor—at the small indent which was, to her eyes, a field of waving arms.
“According to the Queen? None. It was one of several threats held over the heads of her court. She was our savior, and if we did not wish to commit suicide, we could not unseat her. As attempts have been made regardless, I believe that some of the Necromancers thought she exaggerated for her own benefit; it would not be a first for her.”
“How much do you know about those attempts?”
“Very, very little. I’m sorry.”
• • •
Walking through the empty streets of a small, perfectly laid out cit
y was almost surreal. There were no people except Emma and her friends. There was no traffic. The streets that existed between uniform and well-repaired buildings were wide enough for a large car but not for two, and, honestly, the driver of the large car would have had to be competent.
There were no birds, no trees, no grass—and no dumpsters, no recycling bins, no bushy rodents or rodent cousins. It was like walking through a professional photograph: everything sharp and crisp, everything evocative. As an image, the city invoked the feel of history, of things ancient.
That feel suited none of the people trapped in it. Even Margaret seemed withdrawn and tense.
Helmi was right. No one lived here. No one stayed here. If someone happened to look out from the vast reaches of the citadel’s tower, they might see Emma and her friends—but only if they were looking. This didn’t make Ernest or Chase relax, and neither of the two seemed impressed when everyone else did.
“We know what’s at stake,” Amy snapped.
Emma wondered whether they did. If the city streets seemed surreal, so did their mission. Not a single Emery student had ever killed a person. Or an animal, if it came down to that. Death was something that happened by accident—tragic accident. It was part of life. Murder was different: human beings interfering in the natural order. It implied many, many things: deliberation, malice, choice.
Emma had never lived in a war zone. Chase’s entire life was one. But it didn’t take Necromancers to create a war zone. Just people. In the end, Necromancers were people. The Queen of the Dead was a person.
And maybe there was a reason, some part of the intricate, messy, chaotic design of the world, that people—individuals—did not possess the powers of gods. Thinking this, she looked up to the sky; the air was thin and cold, but the sky was a clear sheet of blue that seemed to extend as far as the eye could see.
Emma wondered, then, what the Queen of the Dead was doing now. Eric had never been willing to speak about her much—but it was clear to Emma that the Queen of the Dead had been waiting for, searching for, hunting for, Eric. He was here now. What was the Queen of the Dead feeling? Was she happy?