Lady Andrews snatched the dress back and stomped away with her neck hunched into her shoulders, her gait showing her age. As she went up the aisle, many in the crowd gave her disgusted glances, but Kelsea was unimpressed; they’d likely behaved no better during the last invasion. As on the day of her crowning, there were no poor here. She would have to change that. Next week when she held audience, she would tell Mace to throw the doors open to the first few hundred who came.
“Are there any more?” she asked Mace.
“Don’t think so, Lady.” Mace raised his eyebrows toward the herald, who shook his head. Mace made a cutting motion, and the herald announced, “This audience is concluded! Please proceed in an orderly fashion through the doors!”
“He’s good, that herald,” Kelsea remarked. “Hard to believe that much sound could come from such a slight boy.”
“Thin men always make the best heralds, Lady, don’t ask me why. I’ll let him know you were pleased.”
Kelsea sank back against the throne, wishing again that it were her armchair. Leaning back in this thing was like reclining against a rock. She decided to pile it with cushions when there was no one around.
Orderly fashion was a bit much to hope for; the crowd had bottlenecked at the door, each of them apparently feeling that he deserved to go through first.
“God, what a scrum,” Pen remarked, chuckling. Kelsea took the opportunity to scratch her nose, which had been itching madly for some time, then beckoned Andalie. “I’m fine for the night, Andalie. You’re off duty.”
“Thank you, Lady,” Andalie replied, and left the dais.
When the crowd had finally disappeared and her guard had begun to bolt the doors, Kelsea asked, “So what do you think Lady Andrews was trying to do?”
“Ah, she was set up to it,” Mace replied. “Just making trouble.”
Arliss, who’d been listening from his place at the foot of the dais, nodded. “Scene had Thorne all over it, but he wasn’t stupid enough to show up today.”
Kelsea frowned. Thanks to Mace and Arliss, she now understood much more about Thorne’s Census Bureau. Although it had originally been created as a tool of the Crown, it had taken on a terrible life of its own, becoming such a power in the Tearling that it rivaled God’s Church. The Census was too big to be shut down wholesale; it would need to be dismantled piece by piece, and the biggest piece was Thorne himself. “I won’t have Thorne sabotage what we build. He needs to go, with a decent pension.”
“The Census Bureau has most of the educated men in the kingdom, Lady,” Mace cautioned. “If you try to break it up, you’ll have to find them all gainful employment.”
“Perhaps they could become teachers. Or tax collectors, I don’t know.”
She would have to wait to see what they thought of this idea, for Wellmer’s stomach suddenly gurgled quite loudly in the silence, prompting muted laughter from the group of guards. Milla was cooking dinner now, and the scent of garlic permeated the hall. Wellmer turned tomato-red, but Kelsea smiled and said, “We’re done. I’ll eat in my chamber tonight; you’re welcome to the table. Someone bring Mhurn some food and force him to eat.”
They bowed in unison, and several guards headed off to the kitchen while the rest disappeared down the corridor to their families and the guard quarters. Milla had put her foot down and declared that she wouldn’t have twenty guards invade her kitchen every mealtime, so now several of the guards worked as servers for the rest of the families at each meal. They’d created some sort of system very diplomatically among themselves, and Mace hadn’t needed to intervene. A minor detail, but Kelsea felt that it was a positive note, a sign of community.
“Lazarus, wait a moment.”
Mace leaned down to her. “Lady?”
“Any progress on locating Barty and Carlin?”
Mace straightened. “Not yet, Lady.”
Kelsea gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to hassle him, but she wanted Barty, wanted to see his crinkle-eyed smile more than ever. The urge to see Carlin was even more urgent somehow. “Did you search the village?”
“There has been a lot to do, Majesty. I will move on it shortly.”
Kelsea narrowed her eyes. “Lazarus, you’re lying to me.”
Mace stared at her without expression.
“Why are you lying?”
“Lady!” Venner called to her from the hallway. “Your armor is ready!”
Kelsea turned, irritated. “Why are you telling me this, Venner?”
“Fell’s been down sick.”
Another lie. She imagined that Venner had finally been forced to procure the armor himself. But her appetite for conflict was dwindling apace with her growing desire for whatever Milla was preparing in the kitchen. “We’ll take a look at it during tomorrow’s shaming exercise.”
Venner’s mouth twitched, and he went on to the kitchen. Kelsea turned back to continue with Mace and found him gone, vanished from the audience chamber like smoke.
“Sneaky bastard,” she muttered. What had happened to Barty and Carlin? Had they fallen ill? It was a long journey south for two old people during the winter. Had the Caden found them? No, Barty knew how to cover his tracks. But something was wrong. She could see it on Mace’s face.
She descended the dais, Pen in tow. The smell of garlic made her stomach rumble, and Kelsea fought back a giggle of bitter amusement; even anxiety couldn’t dull her appetite. She looked for Mace in the hallway, but he’d hidden himself somewhere. Kelsea thought about demanding his whereabouts from Coryn, who was on duty at the balcony room, but that seemed childish, so she went on down the hallway with a heavy tread.
At the door of her chamber, Kelsea heard Andalie speak her name in the next room over and halted automatically, Pen following suit behind.
“I assure you, the Queen is afraid.”
“She doesn’t look afraid.” That was Andalie’s oldest girl, Aisa, her voice easily recognizable, right on the cusp of deepening and full of discontent.
“But she is, love,” Andalie replied. “She hides her fear in order to lessen ours.”
Kelsea leaned against the wall, knowing that eavesdropping was rude but unable to walk away. Andalie remained a mystery. Even Mace could find nothing of her ancestry or history beyond the fact that she was half Mort, and Andalie had disclosed that fact herself. It was as if she’d dropped from the sky at the age of fifteen and married her worthless husband; all before that was dark.
“This kingdom hasn’t seen anything extraordinary, or even particularly good, in a long time,” Andalie continued. “The Tearling needs a queen. A True Queen. And if she lives, Queen Kelsea will be exactly that. Maybe even a queen of legend.”
Kelsea’s eyes widened and she turned to Pen, who placed a finger to his lips.
“I’d like to be part of a legend, Maman.”
“That’s why we stay.” Andalie’s voice shifted, moving closer now. Kelsea crooked a finger at Pen and they slipped into Kelsea’s chamber. Pen closed the door behind them, muttering, “I told you she had the sight.”
“And I agreed with you. Still, it’s a mistake to put too much stock in visions.”
Here in the antechamber, Pen had set up his own bed, a messy affair of thrown-together sheets and blankets that didn’t match. Dirty clothes were strewn across the floor, and Pen did his best to kick them under the bed. A knock came at the door, and he opened it to admit Milla, carrying two trays of what looked like beef stew. Milla had already staked out her right to bring Kelsea’s food personally; according to Mace, she also tasted every dish of Kelsea’s food before it left the kitchen. This was something of an empty gesture, since so many poisons came with a time delay, but Kelsea had been moved nonetheless.
“Want to eat with me?” she asked Pen.
“All right.” He followed her through the archway into her chamber, where Mace had set up a small table for the nights when Kelsea wanted to eat alone. Milla set the two trays on the table, bowed to Kelsea, and vanished.
&n
bsp; Kelsea dug into the stew. It was as good as everything Milla cooked, but tonight Kelsea ate automatically, her mind on Andalie’s oldest girl. If she understood right, some or all of Andalie’s children had been subjected to abuse, and such treatment always left scars. The girl was also entering adolescence, and Kelsea remembered that transition well enough: the feeling of helplessness, and most of all the quick anger at adults’ failure to understand what was important. One day, when Kelsea was perhaps twelve or thirteen, she had found herself screaming at Barty for moving something on her desk.
She looked up and found Pen watching her, his gaze speculative. “What?”
“I enjoy watching you think. It’s like watching two dogs fight in a pen.”
“You watch dogfighting?”
“Not by choice. It’s a vile sport. But my father ran dogpen fights when I was growing up. That’s how I got my name.”
“Where was this?”
Pen shook his head. “When we join the Queen’s Guard, we earn the right to leave our past behind. Besides, you’re just crusader enough to imprison my father.”
“Maybe I should. He sounds like a butcher.”
Kelsea regretted the statement as soon as it came out of her mouth. But Pen only considered her words for a moment before replying mildly, “Perhaps he was once. But now he’s only a blind old man, unable to harm anyone. There’s danger in a system of justice that makes no allowance for circumstance.”
“I agree.”
Pen went back to his stew, and Kelsea to hers. But after another moment, she put down her spoon. “I’m worried about that girl.”
“Andalie’s oldest?”
“Yes.”
“She’s troubled, Lady. We found no information on Andalie before her marriage, and believe me, Mace and I looked hard. But their family life was a different matter.”
“Different how?”
Pen paused for a moment, and Kelsea could see him framing his answer. “Lady, it was common knowledge in their neighborhood that Andalie’s husband had a taste for young girls. His daughters were the worst case, but not the only ones.”
Kelsea swallowed her revulsion, striving for a businesslike tone. “Carlin told me that with no real courts, communities typically take care of these problems themselves. Why didn’t they deal with him?”
“Because Andalie forbade it.”
“That makes no sense. I would expect Andalie to kill her husband herself, before anyone else had a chance.”
“Me as well, Lady, but for that riddle I could find no answer. The neighbors were happy enough to talk about Borwen, but not about Andalie. They thought her a witch.”
“Why?”
“No one would say. Perhaps it’s just her way of looking through you. I fear Andalie, Lady, for all that I fear no man with a sword.”
“I do too.”
Pen took another spoonful of his stew, and his lack of curiosity allowed Kelsea to bring out the heart of her fear. “Andalie should have been the Queen, Pen. Not me. She looks like a queen and talks like a queen, and she inspires dread.”
Pen thought for a minute before answering. This quality of pensiveness was something Kelsea liked about him, that he didn’t seek to fill empty silence with meaningless words. He swallowed two more mouthfuls of stew before replying. “What you’ve just given, Lady, is a perfect description of the Queen of Mortmesne. Andalie may be part Tear, but the essential core of her is Mort. She’d make an ideal queen in that kingdom. But you seek to create another type of queenship entirely, one not built on fear.”
“What’s mine built on?”
“Justice, Lady. Listening. Whether it’ll succeed, none of us know; it’s certainly easier to hold power through fear. But there’s something hard in Andalie, something without mercy, and while it might create a certain advantage, I don’t know that I’d call it strength.”
Kelsea smiled as she turned back to her stew. Justice and listening. Even Carlin would have to be pleased with that.
Kelsea sat up in the dark. She’d heard a child scream in pain, somewhere beyond her own walls. She looked automatically to the left, searching for her fire, but there was nothing, not even the glowing hint of ashes. It must be almost dawn.
She reached to her bedside table for the candle that always stood there, but her fingers closed on nothing. Fear broke over her in a wave, sharp fear with no clear source. She groped, frantically now, and found that even the bedside table was gone.
A woman shrieked outside, her voice escalating until it cut off in a short, choked grunt.
Kelsea threw off her covers and jumped to the ground. Her feet landed not on the cold stone floor of her room but on what felt like hard-packed dirt. She rushed toward the door, not left across her own chamber, but ten feet to the right, through the kitchen area, steps she knew as well as her own name.
Throwing open the door, she cringed at the bitter cold of the night air. The village was still bathed in darkness, only a trace of dawn visible on the horizon. But she could hear pounding feet, the sound of many people running.
“Raiders! Raiders!” a woman shouted from one of the houses behind her. “They’re—”
Her voice cut off without a trace.
Terrified, Kelsea shut the door and threw the bolt down. She groped on the kitchen table until she found a candle and matches, then lit a single weak flame, cupping it with her fingers to hide the light. Jonarl had made their house well, out of hard-baked mud leavened with small stones. He’d even given her a couple of windows, made of broken glass that he’d salvaged on several trips into the city. The house had been a lovely wedding present, but the windows made it difficult to shield light from the outside.
When she went back into the bedroom, she found William sitting up in bed, blinking sleepily, looking so much like Jonarl that her heart nearly broke at the sight. Jeffrey was still mercifully asleep in his crib, and she scooped him into her arms, keeping him wrapped in his blanket, and held out a hand to William. “It’s all right, love. Up now; I need you to walk. Can you walk for Mummy?”
William climbed out of bed, his toddler’s legs dangling for a moment before he dropped to the ground. He reached up and took her hand.
Booted feet pounded through the street outside. Male feet, she thought automatically. But all of the men were off in the city, trading wheat. Panic was trying to dig into her mind like a fever; where could they go? The house didn’t even have a basement to hide in. She shifted Jeffrey to her other arm and dug in the corner for her cloak and shoes.
“Can you find your jacket and shoes, William? Let’s see who can find their jacket first.”
William stared up at her, bewildered. After a moment he began digging through the pile of outer clothes and blankets. Kelsea moved a stack of quilts and found Jonarl’s winter cloak, still sitting there neatly folded. That was the closest she came to crying, right then, with her dead husband’s cloak staring up at her from the ground. Nausea rose in her throat, good old morning sickness, which always picked the worst possible time to show up.
The front door burst open, the flimsy wood bar shattering into two pieces, which landed on either side of the kitchen. Kelsea cupped one protective hand around Jeffrey’s downy head, then grabbed William and shoved him behind her with the other.
Standing in the doorway were two men, their faces blackened with soot. One of them had a bright red cloak, and even Kelsea knew what that meant. Caden? Here? she thought wildly, before he moved forward and laid hold of Jeffrey where he slept in her arms. The baby woke up and immediately began to scream.
“No!” she cried. He shoved her backward and tore Jeffrey free. Kelsea collapsed into the corner, grabbing the table leg to keep from falling directly on William. Her hip hit the wall with bruising force, and she groaned.
“Get the boy,” the Caden told the other man, then disappeared out the door with Jeffrey. Kelsea shrieked, feeling something pull loose inside her. This was a nightmare, it had to be, but when she looked down she saw that her left
foot had landed in her own right shoe as she fell, and now the shoe stuck up at a crazy angle. This detail alone precluded the comfort of nightmare. She grabbed William and shoved him behind her again, holding up her hands to ward off the man standing over her.
“Please,” he said, leaning down to extend a hand. “Please come with me. I don’t want to hurt you or the boy.”
Even beneath the soot, Kelsea could see that his face was pale and drawn. He looked about Jonarl’s age, maybe a bit older . . . the greying hair made it difficult to tell. He had a knife in the hand at his side, but she didn’t think he meant to use it; he looked as though he’d forgotten about it himself.
“Where is he taking my son?”
“Please,” he repeated. “Come quietly.”
“What the fuck is taking so long, Gate Guard?” a hoarse voice barked outside.
“I’m coming!”
He turned back to Kelsea, his face twisting. “Please, for the last time. There’s no other option.”
“William needs his cloak.”
“Quickly, then.”
She looked down at William and saw that he had slipped on his own shoes, and held his cloak in one hand. She knelt in front of him and helped him put it on, doing the buttons with shaking fingers. “Weren’t you smart, William? You beat Mummy.”
But William was staring up at the man with the knife.
“Come now, please.”
She took William’s hand and followed the man out the front door. Briefly she cursed Jonarl for dying, for leaving them alone this way. But of course, it wouldn’t have made any difference. It was the middle of March, and all of the men in Haven had gone to trade wheat in New London, as they did every year at this time, leaving the village defenseless. Kelsea had never thought about it before. The village had never faced this sort of trouble, not since the invasion; they were too far from the Mort border to worry about raiders.
Outside, she was relieved to see the big Caden with Jeffrey carefully balanced on one hip. Jeffrey had quieted a bit, but that wouldn’t last long; he was emitting little snuffles, rooting around on the front of the man’s cloak for a breast. When he didn’t find it, the screaming would begin.