I can’t win, Javel thought, clutching his stomach. There was a dark, sneaking comfort in the knowledge. Because once you couldn’t win, it wasn’t your fault, no matter what course you chose.
The shipment was late.
The Queen of Mortmesne had not been able to forget this fact, not today, not yesterday, not the day before. She tried to concentrate as her Auctioneer gave her the figures from last month’s auction. February had been good; the crown had cleared well over fifty thousand marks. Typically, when the shipment came in, the Queen cherry-picked the best merchandise, either for her own use or to give as gifts. But most of the slaves went at auction, to Mort nobles or wealthy entrepreneurs who would resell the slaves for higher prices in the northern cities and outlying towns. The auction always produced a good profit, but February’s high sales were not enough to distract the Queen from the nagging sense of disruption, the feeling that a problem was developing just out of her reach. The girl had turned nineteen, she had not been found, and now the shipment was late. What did that mean?
Without a doubt, the Tear Regent had botched things. He had allowed Elyssa to smuggle the girl into exile in the first place (although even the Queen herself hadn’t foreseen that particular move . . . who would have thought Elyssa had even an ounce of guile?). But after eighteen years, the girl should have been found. At the Queen’s urging, the Regent had finally hired the Caden several months ago, but she’d known somehow that it was already too late.
“That’s all, Majesty.” Broussard, her Auctioneer, tucked his papers away into his case.
“Good.”
Broussard remained standing below, his case clutched in both hands.
“Yes?”
“Any word on the new shipment, Majesty?”
Even her own people wouldn’t allow her to forget.
“When I know, you’ll know, Broussard. Go prepare for your auction. And remember to weed out the vermin this time.”
Broussard colored, his jaw clenching beneath his beard. He was good at his job, with an instinctive ability to monetize flesh. Years ago, when the auction had still been a novelty, the Queen had enjoyed sitting on a low balcony on the tenth of every month, watching Broussard wring the last possible profit from each pound of humanity. It satisfied something deep inside her, to see the Tear go on the block. But there had been one month, some four or five years ago, when one of Broussard’s handlers had been lax in the delousing process, and soon the Palais and several noble homes were crawling with lice. The Queen had kept the whole mess from going public by offering a free slave to each offended party, taking the loss from Broussard’s pay. The lice had been bad, but in retrospect, she was glad the incident had happened. It was good to have a failure to dangle in front of Broussard at moments like this, moments when he forgot that he was only a flesh peddler, and that without the Queen there would be no auction at all.
Broussard left, holding his case as though it were his only child, and the Queen was pleased to see the stiff, offended set of his shoulders. But it didn’t still the whispering of her mind, the quiet question that had been nagging at her for days now: where was the shipment? Four days in good weather, five days in bad. It had never come any later than the fifth of the month. Now it was March 6. If there had been a problem, either the Regent or Thorne should have informed her by now. The Queen pressed one palm to her forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache developing behind her temples. Her physiology had progressed so far that she hardly ever got sick anymore. The only exception was the headaches, which came from nowhere, had no medical cause, and disappeared just as quickly.
What if the shipment doesn’t come at all?
She jumped in her seat, as though someone had pinched her through her dress. The flow of human traffic had become a crucial part of the Mort economy, as regular and expected as the tides. Callae and Cadare sent slaves as well, but even their combined tribute didn’t equal half of the Tear shipment. Affordable slaves kept her factories running, her nobles happy, her treasury full. Any snag in the process created a loss.
The Queen suddenly found herself missing Liriane. Like all of the Queen’s servants, Liriane had aged while the Queen remained young, and several years ago she’d been laid in her grave. Liriane’s had been the true sight, an ability to see not only the future but the present and past as well. She would have been able to see what had happened in the Tear. Try as the Queen might to convince herself otherwise, she couldn’t escape a nagging suspicion that whatever had gone wrong must have something to do with the girl. Unless they’d killed her en route, she would have reached the Keep by now. Had Thorne managed to take care of it yet? The Regent was incompetence personified, but Thorne was quite the opposite. If Thorne failed, what was the next step? To haul out the treaty and go to war? The Queen had never wanted to invade the Tearling in the first place. Holding a foreign territory took money, equipment, trouble. The shipment was cleaner, an elegant solution.
Still, she realized, it might not be the worst thing in the world to mobilize her army. Her soldiers hadn’t had to go to war since the last Tear invasion. There were no threats on the Mort border. There hadn’t even been any fighting since the Exiled had hatched their conspiracy. Even on its worst day, her army was still more than a match for the Tear’s, but it wasn’t beyond possibility that they had grown soft during the caesura. It might be good to get them into shape now. Just in case. But at the thought, her headache seemed to double in amplitude, a steady incoming tide against the walls of her skull.
Some sort of commotion had begun brewing outside her audience chamber. The Queen looked up and saw Beryll, her chamberlain, striding off toward the great doors. He would handle it. Now that Liriane was dead, Beryll was her oldest and most trusted servant, so attuned to her wishes that the Queen rarely even had to interest herself in the everyday doings of the castle anymore. She looked down at her watch and decided to retire to her room. An early dinner, and then she would have one of her slaves. The tall one she’d taken from the last Tear delivery, a muscular man with thick black hair and beard and the look of a blacksmith. Only in the Tearling did men grow so tall.
The Queen signaled Eve, one of her pages, and whispered for her to remove the man to her chamber after the performance. Eve listened with as bright an expression as she could muster, which the Queen appreciated. Her pages hated this duty; the men weren’t always cooperative. Eve would drug him and feed him a constrictive, and then the Queen could have him hard enough to escape the dream. The drug wasn’t necessary anymore, of course; by now the Queen’s transformation had progressed so far that she wasn’t even sure she could be hurt. But she had never told her pages, and today she was glad. With a headache coming on, she wanted the man pliant. She swept out of the audience chamber, through her private entrance behind the throne and down a long hallway to her apartments.
The hallway was lined with guards, all of whom kept their eyes prudently on the ground. At the sight of them, some of the Queen’s ebullience faded. The Regent’s last report had informed her that most of Elyssa’s guards had departed the castle to search for the girl. Carroll, the Mace, Elston . . . these were names the Queen knew, men she had learned to take into consideration. If she had found the Mace before Elyssa had, things might have been so different. The Tear sapphires had disappeared, seemingly into thin air, a development that reeked of the Mace’s guile. If only the Queen had been able to get hold of the jewels before Elyssa died! She probably wouldn’t even have headaches anymore, much less need medicine.
But now everything would be righted. She would have the sapphires, and when the shipment came, she could probably even charge the Regent a hefty late fee. He would whine and complain, but he would pay, and the thought of his white, upset face made the Queen smile as she took off her clothes, anticipating the slave’s arrival. Her pages were very quick; she had been in her apartments for no more than five minutes when the knock came on her door.
“Come!” she snapped, annoyed to find that her headach
e was worsening. The kitchen might create a powder for her to take, but the powder would delay sleep long after the slave had ceased to perform, and sleep was at a premium these days.
The door opened. She turned to see Beryll, and began to ask him for a headache powder. But the request caught in her throat. Beryll’s face was white, his eyes socketed with deep fear. He clutched a scroll of paper in one shaking hand.
“Lady,” he quavered.
Chapter 8
The Queen’s Wing
It’s easy to forget that a monarchy is more than just the monarch. The successful reign is a complex animal, with countless individual pieces working in concert. Looking closely at the Glynn Queen, we find many moving parts, but one cannot overestimate the importance of Lazarus of the Mace, the Queen’s Captain of Guard and Chief Assassin. Remove him, and the entire structure collapses.
—The Tearling as a Military Nation, CALLOW THE MARTYR
Upon waking, Kelsea was pleased to find that all of the decorative pillows had been removed from her mother’s bed. Her bed; it was all hers now, and that thought brought her less pleasure. Her back was a mess of bandaging. When she ran a hand through her hair, it came away slicked with oil. She’d been asleep for some time. Mace wasn’t in the corner armchair, and there was no one else in the room.
It took a few minutes for Kelsea to raise herself to a sitting position; she felt no bleeding on her shoulder, but the wound pulled with every movement of her torso. Someone, undoubtedly Andalie, had placed a pitcher of water on the small table beside her bed, along with an empty glass. Kelsea drank and splashed some on her face. Andalie must have washed the blood from Kelsea as well, for which she was grateful. She thought of the man she’d killed, and was relieved to feel nothing.
She hauled herself to her feet and walked around the room, testing the wound. In her circuit, she discovered that a long rope now hung on the far side of her bed; it stretched to the ceiling, where it threaded through several hooks and then disappeared through a small opening carved in the antechamber wall. Kelsea smiled, tugging gently on the rope, and heard the muted sounds of a bell.
Mace opened the door. Seeing her standing beside the bed, he nodded in approval. “Good. The doctor said you were to stay in bed for at least another day, but I knew he was coddling you.”
“What doctor?” She’d assumed that Mace had patched her wounds.
“The doctor I got for the sick baby. I dislike doctors, but he’s a competent man, and it’s likely due to him that you haven’t taken infection. He said your shoulder will heal slowly, but clean.”
“Another scar.” Kelsea rubbed her neck gingerly. “Soon I’ll be a bundle of them. How’s the baby?”
“She fares better. The doctor gave the mother some medicine that seems to have quieted the baby’s stomach, though it cost the damned moon and stars. She’ll likely need more later.”
“I hope you paid him well.”
“Very well, Lady. But we can’t use him forever, nor the other doctor I know. Neither is trustworthy.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I don’t know yet.” Mace rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “I’m thinking on it.”
“How are the guards who were injured?”
“They’re fine. A couple will need to limit their duties for a time.”
“I want to see them.”
“I wouldn’t, Lady.”
“Why not?”
“A Queen’s Guard is a very proud creature. The men who took wounds won’t want you to notice.”
“Me?” Kelsea asked, puzzled. “I don’t even know how to hold a sword.”
“That’s not how we think, Lady. We just want to do our jobs well.”
“Well, what am I to do? Pretend they weren’t even injured?”
“Yes.”
Kelsea shook her head. “Barty always used to say there were three things men were stupid about: their beer, their cocks, and their pride.”
“That sounds like Barty.”
“I thought pride was the one he might be wrong about.”
“It’s not.”
“Speaking of pride, who threw the knife?”
Mace’s jaw clenched. “I apologize, Lady. It was my failure of security, and I take full responsibility. I thought we had you sufficiently covered.”
Kelsea didn’t know what to say. Mace was looking very hard at the ground, his lined face twisted up as though he were waiting for a lash to fall on his shoulders. Being caught off guard was intolerable to him. He’d told her that he’d never been a child, but Kelsea had her doubts; this particular effect looked like the result of some fairly harsh parenting. Kelsea wondered if she looked just as pained when she didn’t know the answer. Mace’s voice echoed in her head again: she was his employer, not his confessor. “You’re working on finding out, I trust?”
“I am.”
“Then let’s move on.”
Mace looked up, visibly relieved. “Typically, the first thing a new ruler would do is hold an audience, but I’d like to put that off for a week or two, Lady. You’re in no shape, and there’s plenty to do here.”
Kelsea picked up her tiara from the gaudy vanity table and considered it thoughtfully. It was a beautiful piece of jewelry, but flimsy, too feminine for her taste. “We need to find the real crown.”
“That’ll be difficult. Your mother set Carroll the task of hiding it, and believe me, he was clever that way.”
“Well, let’s make sure to pay that hussy for this thing.”
Mace cleared his throat. “There’s much to do today. Let’s get Andalie in here to fix your appearance.”
“How rude.”
“Forgive me, Lady, but you’ve looked better.”
A thud came against the outer wall, the impact so hard that it rattled the hangings on Kelsea’s bed. “What’s going on out there?”
“Siege supplies.”
“Siege? Are we expecting one?”
“Today is March the sixth, Lady. There are only two days left until the treaty deadline.”
“I won’t change my mind, Lazarus. That deadline means nothing to me.”
“I’m not sure you fully understand the consequences of your own actions, Lady.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure you fully understand me, Lazarus. I know what I’ve loosed here. Who commands my army?”
“General Bermond, Lady.”
“Well, let’s bring him here.”
“I’ve already sent for him. It might take him another few days to return; he’s been on the southern border, inspecting garrisons, and he doesn’t ride that well.”
“The general of my army doesn’t ride well?”
“He’s lame, Lady: a wound he took defending the Keep from an attempted coup ten years ago.”
“Oh,” Kelsea murmured, embarrassed.
“I warn you, Lady: Bermond will be difficult. Your mother always left him to his own judgment, and the Regent hasn’t bothered him for years. He’s gotten used to having his own way. He’ll also loathe discussing military strategy with any woman, even a Queen.”
“Too bad. Where’s the Mort Treaty?”
“Outside, waiting for your inspection. But I think you will have to reconcile yourself.”
“To what?”
“War,” Mace replied flatly. “You’ve effectively declared war on Mortmesne, Lady, and believe me, the Red Queen will be coming.”
“It’s a gamble, Lazarus, I know.”
“Just remember, Lady: you’re not the only one gambling. You’re playing hazard with an entire kingdom. High dice, and you’d better be prepared to lose.”
He left to fetch Andalie, and Kelsea sat down on the bed, her stomach sinking. Mace was clearly beginning to understand her, for he’d thrust the sword right where it would have the most impact. She closed her eyes, and behind them she saw Mortmesne, a vast dark land in her imagination, awakened from long slumber, looming like a shadow over everything she wanted to build.
Carli
n, what can I do?
But Carlin’s voice had fallen silent in her mind, and there was no reply.
The Mort Treaty had been spread out on the large dining table that stood at one end of Kelsea’s audience chamber. It was short for such a document, only several sheets of thick vellum that had browned slightly with age. Kelsea touched the sheets gingerly, fascinated to see her mother’s initials, ER, scrawled messily in black at the bottom left of each page. On the right was a separate set of initials, scrawled in dark red ink: QM. The final page of the document contained two signatures: on one line, “Elyssa Raleigh,” the handwriting almost illegible, and on the other, “Queen of Mortmesne,” neatly written in the same bloodred ink.
She truly doesn’t want anyone to know her real name, Kelsea realized, her intuition flickering. It’s desperately important to her that no one finds out who she really is. But why?
Kelsea was disappointed to find the language of the treaty as straightforward as Mace had claimed. The Tearling was obligated to provide three thousand slaves per year, divided into twelve equal shipments. At least five hundred of them needed to be children, at least two hundred of each gender. Why so many children? Mortmesne took a quota of slave children from Callae and Cadare as well, but children weren’t much use for hard industrial labor or mining, and Mortmesne had few farms. Even if there were a disproportionately high number of pedophiles in the market, they couldn’t go through children so quickly. Why so many?
The terse, mechanical language of the treaty provided her with no answers. If any individual shipment failed to reach Demesne by the eighth day of the month, the treaty granted Mortmesne the right to immediately enter the Tearling and satisfy its quota by right of capture. But, Kelsea noticed, the document placed no limits on the length of that entry, nor did it include any requirement of withdrawal when conditions were met. Reluctantly, she was forced to admit that Mace was right: by stopping the shipment, Kelsea had given the Red Queen an umbrella grant to invade. What had possessed her mother to sign such a one-sided document?