The Invasion of the Tearling

by Erika Johansen

  Glee stood, staring blankly, for a few more moments. Then she blinked, staring up at her mother with wide eyes.

  “Maman?”

  “And here you are, poppet. Welcome back.”

  Glee climbed into Andalie’s arms. Andalie sat down on one of the sofas and began to rock the girl, who appeared to already be falling asleep.

  “Pen. Leave us alone, and make sure we’re not disturbed.”

  Pen left, shutting the door behind him.

  “I apologize, Majesty,” Andalie murmured quietly. “My Glee is not like my others. I can have both eyes on her, and a moment later she’s gone.”

  Kelsea paused for a moment. “Does she have your sight, Andalie?”

  “Yes. She is too young to control it. I have been trying to train her, but it is difficult to find time alone, so that my other children will not be jealous. Glee still doesn’t know how to differentiate between what should be said and what should be kept to herself.”

  “I’m sure she’ll learn.”

  “She will, but the sooner the better. A child like Glee makes a valuable prize.”

  “She’s safe from me, Andalie.”

  “I am not thinking of you, Majesty.” Andalie continued to rock her daughter, her gaze thoughtful. “Even before my Glee was to go in the shipment, her father had already begun planning a way to use her. His spoken thoughts went no further than dragging her to the dogfights for his own benefit, but I saw the possibility of sale in his mind. He may have told others about Glee.”

  “I see.” As always, Kelsea had to fight a morbid curiosity about Andalie’s marriage. “Was it equally hard for you, as a child?”

  “Even worse, Lady, for I had no one to guide me through it. My mother sent me away for fostering when I was newly born.”

  Like me, Kelsea thought, surprised. Andalie and her children were so tightly knit that Kelsea had never imagined Andalie raised in anything but a close family.

  “For a long time, my foster parents thought I was merely mad. They treat these things with great suspicion in Mortmesne.”

  “Despite the Red Queen?”

  “Perhaps because of her, Lady. The Mort are a science-minded people. They hate what the Red Queen can do, yes, but she is too powerful for them to hate the woman herself. Ordinary Mort quickly learn to hide such gifts.”

  “Lazarus tells me—though it’s only a rumor in the Palais—that the Red Queen’s laboratories have been working on the sight. They wish to find out if it’s genetic.”

  Andalie smiled, her expression brittle. “Trust me, Lady, it is. My mother was one of the most powerful seers of our age. My gifts are only a shadow of hers. And I am terribly afraid, Majesty, that Glee is more my mother than me. It will make the world very dangerous for her.”

  “In what way?”

  Andalie considered her thoughtfully for a moment. “We have trust, Lady, you and I?”

  “I trust you with my life, Andalie.”

  “Then I will tell you a story. I cannot speak to the truth of the entire story, you understand, for some of it is Mort legend, but instructive nonetheless. There is a woman, a plain wife, who lives on the edge of the Foret Evanoui. Her life is uneventful. She has grown bored with her husband, a miner. She does not like keeping house. She has nothing to occupy her mind, until one day a fortune-teller comes to the village. He is handsome, this fortune-teller, and he does parlor tricks: reads palms, offers charms, even carries an ancient crystal ball. But his tricks are very good, and he is no stranger to bored wives in small towns. The woman is enchanted, and enchantment makes her foolish. Nine months later, the fortune-teller is long gone, but a child is born, a child as different from the woman’s other children as can be. This child can predict the weather, knows when visitors approach the village. Useful information for a community, certainly, but the child’s gifts reach even further. She can see not only the future but the past and present, the truth of things. She knows when people are lying. She is a boon to her tiny mining village, and the village prospers, far out of proportion to others in the surrounding countryside.

  “And yet the villagers are extremely foolish. They talk freely about the child. They praise her to the skies. They brag about her in Cite Marche, not thinking of the fact that their country has a new queen now, a queen who believes that she has a right to anything she can grab. And one day, inevitably, soldiers come to the village and take the girl away. She is a commodity, you see, just as valuable as a good assassin or spymaster. More valuable, even, for her gifts only sharpen as she reaches adolescence. She lives a gilded life in Demesne, but still she is a prisoner, destined to sit at the right hand of the Queen until she dies.”

  The Red Queen’s old seer, Kelsea realized. Dead now. Carlin had spoken of her several times. What was her name?

  “And yet, for all that, the woman is not entirely subservient. She has a secret life, you comprehend, and she is so clever, so gifted, that she is able to hide that life, even from the Queen of Mortmesne, who has the most feared surveillance apparatus since the old Etats-Unis. The seer has a man, she conceives a child. Yet she knows the child will never be safe. Her mistress, the Queen, is interested in heredity. Even if the child shows no gifts at all, it will spend its life in a laboratory, subject to horrors. So the seer smuggles her newborn girl from the Palais. She gives the baby to good people, so she thinks, kind people. They live in the Jardins, one of the poorest sections of Demesne. They have always wanted a child. The baby will be safe there.

  “And yet here the mother’s sight has failed her. The child does have her mother’s gifts, sporadic and inconsistent, yes, but there. She too can predict the future, see the present. Sometimes she can even see other people’s thoughts as clearly as if they were her own. Such a child will always hold a dangerous value. When her adoptive parents fall into debt and need quick money to keep from losing all they own, they sell her to a man in the neighborhood, a man who has always coveted the child. Not for the usual reasons, you understand. He is a businessman, and he wants her sight for the market. She is a tool to him, and when she cannot perform, she is beaten.”

  Kelsea swallowed. “How did you get out?”

  “I made my own great mistake, Lady. There was a boy, a Tear slave whose masters lived next door to mine. He was a stupid boy, but persistent. He began coming around when I was ten years old, and he would not take no for an answer. He told me of the Tear, told me that we could escape and live a free life here. I had no interest in the boy, but when I was fifteen, my owner fell on hard times, and he had no leisure to market my particular gifts. He planned to sell me to a knockhouse.”

  “Is that—”

  Andalie nodded. “In your Tear, Majesty, a whorehouse. Faced with that, I turned to the Tear boy. I thought him harmless.”

  Andalie looked down at her daughter, who was fast asleep now, breathing easy. “Always, my sight seems to fail when it is most crucial that it should function. Borwen raped me the first night out of Demesne, and every night after that. We were on foot, and I could not outrun him. By the time we reached the Tearling, I already knew that I was carrying. I did not speak the language, but even if I had, Borwen had misled me about the nature of opportunity in the Tearling. For all of its terrors, Mortmesne at least allows a competent woman to earn her living without being on her back; many Mort women are miners or artisans. But I saw very quickly that there were no such options in the Tearling. Borwen is strong; he quickly found work. But I could find none, Majesty.”

  Andalie’s voice was rising, and Kelsea realized, horrified, that Andalie seemed to be trying to justify herself, to ward off some inevitable condemnation.

  “No fifteen-year-old can make good decisions, Andalie. I can barely make easy decisions for my own life now.”

  “Perhaps, Majesty, but had I known that my children would also pay for my mistakes, I would gladly have taken the knockhouse. I knew that Borwen was a brute, but I didn’t realize precisely what he was until Aisa was five years old. I tried to send b
oth Aisa and Wen away, but we had no friends who would take them to safety. Heaven help me, I even tried our local priest, to see if he would take them for fostering in lieu of tithe. But the priest told Borwen what I had done. Finally I tried to run away, but it is difficult to disappear with children, and it seemed that I was always pregnant. Each time, Borwen found me, and if I refused to come home, he would snatch one of the children. In the end, it seemed better to keep them with me; at least I could help them, shield them somewhat.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Kelsea ventured, not knowing whether it was true. What she was hearing now was so far beyond her own experience that she couldn’t begin to imagine what she would have done. Her mind skipped back to the pre-Crossing woman, Lily Mayhew. Lily had wanted to run, but as a lone woman, there was no safety for her to run to. The Crossing was more than three centuries past, but that world suddenly seemed very close, separated by only a thin veil of time.

  Great god, Kelsea thought bleakly, are we really no better?

  “Perhaps it was reasonable, Lady,” Andalie mused. “And yet my children suffered, and badly. The boys took beatings, the girls took worse. My husband is not a clever man, but his very stupidity makes him dangerous. He has never asked himself whether he has the right to do the things he has done. He is not intelligent enough to consider such questions. This, I think, is the crux of evil in this world, Majesty: those who feel entitled to whatever they want, whatever they can grab. Such people never ask themselves if they have the right. They consider no cost to anyone but themselves.”

  “Surely part of that is upbringing,” Kelsea objected. “It can be eradicated.”

  “Perhaps, Lady. But I believe Borwen was born as he is.” Andalie looked down at Glee, who was fast asleep now, her mouth rounded into an O. “I know what my girl has received from me. But I fear constantly what the rest may have taken from their father. I am not sure whether Aisa’s temperament comes from Borwen’s blood or his mistreatment. The boys have their own problems.”

  Kelsea bit her lip, then ventured, “Lazarus tells me that Aisa has real skill, particularly with a knife. Venner enjoys teaching her, certainly more than he ever did me.”

  Andalie made a face. “It’s not what I would have wished for her, Majesty, the fighting. But I see now that her problems are beyond my ability to repair. I appreciate that you have given her this outlet; perhaps it will ease some of her anger.”

  “Don’t thank me; the idea came from Lazarus.”

  “Ah.” Andalie shut her mouth, an entire conversation there. Andalie and Mace were unlikely allies, thoroughly disapproving of nearly everything about each other. Kelsea considered saying something else, but Andalie’s next remark seemed deliberately abrupt, designed to close the previous topic as though she were slamming shut a book.

  “My Glee’s visions may be unfocused yet, Lady, but I would advise you to take heed of them.”

  “In what way?”

  “The Mort problem torments you, Lady. You are not sleeping. You have lost an alarming amount of weight.”

  So Andalie sees it too. Kelsea didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

  “I have considered the problem as well. I see no solutions; the Mort army is too strong. But Glee and I see the same common elements in your future. A hand holds your two jewels, but the hand is somehow empty at the same time. A beguiling man whose face conceals a monstrosity. A playing card: the queen of spades. A chasm beneath your feet.”

  “And what does all of that mean?”

  “I can’t say, Lady.”

  “Then I’m not sure what good it does me.”

  “Often no good at all, Majesty. It’s a mistake made by many, to place too much faith in visions. But I would urge you to remember these elements, for they may prove useful when you least expect it. That has been my experience.”

  Kelsea considered these things, one by one. The queen of spades. Once a week, Kelsea played poker with five of her Guard, and she knew the spade queen well: a tall, proud woman with a weapon in each hand. But what of that? Only one of Andalie’s omens really seemed to mean anything: the beguiling man. That could easily be the Fetch, but despite all that she knew of him, Kelsea did not believe him to be monstrous. Her instincts had failed her several times since she had taken the throne, but she refused to believe that they could fail so badly as that. The Fetch had his own agenda, certainly, but he made no effort to beguile. Kelsea had done that to herself.

  “Be careful, Majesty,” Andalie cautioned. “I know your dark-haired rogue. I speak of another. Handsome as sin, this one, but beneath the facade is a horror, and suffering comes with him. Be on your guard.”

  Not sure how much of this she really believed, Kelsea nodded. She looked down at the sleeping child in Andalie’s arms and felt anew the massive weight of responsibility on her shoulders. So many individual lives to look out for each day, and arching above all, the great Mort nightmare on the horizon. It was a heavy responsibility, but it was Kelsea’s, and even in her most self-pitying moments, she recognized that she had bargained for it. If she had known everything on that late afternoon when the guards rode up to the cottage, she would still have come, and now it was her burden to bear, all the way to the end.

  What end?

  Kelsea didn’t know, but one of Andalie’s images stayed with her, ruining her concentration for the rest of the afternoon: the queen of spades.

  Sir!”

  Hall looked up, startled. The razor slipped in his hand, scraping jaggedly along his jaw, and he hissed in annoyance.

  “What is it, Blaser?”

  “Scouts are back, sir. There’s a problem.”

  Hall sighed and wiped the lather from his face, smiling wryly. It seemed that every time he tried to get in a shave lately, there was a problem. Throwing the towel into the corner of his tent, he grabbed his spyglass from the table beside his cot and ducked outside.

  “What is it?”

  “Five men rode out of the western Verinne around dawn, sir. We thought they were messengers, but we’ve been tracking them all the same.”

  “And?”

  “Llew’s pretty sure now, sir. It’s Ducarte.”

  Hall’s stomach sank. The news was not wholly unexpected, but it was bad all the same: Benin the Butcher. Hall would much rather have dealt with Genot, but Genot hadn’t been seen in camp since the attack. He was dead, or fled, and there would be no more easy victories. Blaser looked uneasy as well, so Hall forced a smile and clapped him on the shoulder. “How far away?”

  “A few hours. At most.”

  Hall trained his spyglass on the sprawling mess of tents below. He and his men had gotten plenty of entertainment watching the Mort clear the camp; the rattlers were crafty bastards, their sense of self-preservation not at all impacted by the sudden removal from their hillside rookeries, and having fed well, they’d gone to ground, finding the best hiding places in the camp and sleeping during the day. At night, the screams continued, a steady diet. For the first two weeks, Hall had been pleased to see the Mort camp lit up like a Christmas tree at night. They must have used up the lion’s share of their ready oil.

  But more food and oil always came, an unrelenting stream of supply from the southeast, and snakes or no, the cannons remained heavily guarded in the middle of the campsite. Dozens of plans for dealing with them had been heard and discarded, and Blaser and Major Caffrey often ended up shouting at each other until Hall ordered them to shut up. These were signs he could read: despite the victory they had scored, morale was beginning to fail.

  Hall refocused his spyglass on the foot of the hill, where the Mort had piled their dead in an enormous pyre. This pyre had burned for the past week; even now, wisps of smoke still drifted into the air from the charred remains. The smell had been bad, and Hall had been forced to change shifts at double time. But now the camp was entirely cleared of the dead, and Mort soldiers leaned against tents, chatting, their shirts off to absorb the June sunlight. Three separate groups of soldiers wer
e hunched over tables, downing pint after pint of ale while they played cards. Hall even saw one soldier sunbathing atop a supply wagon. Still excursionists on vacation. The Mort had tried several assaults on the foot of the hill, but found themselves repelled by Hall’s archers each time. In the absence of Genot or another general, these attacks were poorly planned, disorganized in execution. Hall could see them coming a mile away, but that would not last. He turned his spyglass east and found the party easily: a clutch of dark-clad figures moving slowly and steadily across the flats. He couldn’t make out their features, but there was no reason to doubt Llew, who’d been born with a built-in spyglass of his own. Hall had never fought Ducarte himself, but he’d heard plenty from Bermond, whose reminiscences about the Mort general could chill the blood.

  “Ducarte will be more inventive,” Hall remarked. “And much more trouble.”

  “If they try to flank us to the north, we can’t hold them,” Blaser cautioned. “It’s too much ground to cover.”

  “They won’t flank.”

  “How do you know, sir?”

  “The Mace has a source in the Palais. The Mort have orders to avoid the Fairwitch, even the foothills. It’s this stretch or nothing.” Hall set down his spyglass. His palms were sweating, but he hoped that Blaser hadn’t noticed. “Put fresh men in the trees and tell them not to let their eyes wander. Any changes in the Mort sentry line come directly to me.”

  Blaser left, humming to himself, and Hall began to shave again, though his hand wasn’t quite as steady this time; he drew the razor down his bare jaw and felt the blade slice through his skin. Hall had no people; his parents had died several years ago, victims of a winter fever that had swept through all of the villages on the hillside. But what faced the Tear now was infinitely worse, and Ducarte’s arrival only darkened the outlook further. In the last invasion, according to Bermond, Ducarte had liked to throw his Tear prisoners into pens with starving bears. There would be no mercy for the taken, not even the wounded, and part of Hall could not help wondering whether the Queen had considered these eventualities before she had violated the treaty and opened the door wide. The Queen had brought this upon them, and for a rogue moment Hall cursed her, sitting safely on her throne back in New London. There was some Bible story Hall remembered vaguely from his childhood, something of a little man who took on a giant and emerged victorious . . . yet the Mort were ten giants. Even after Hall’s victory two weeks ago, the Mort army still had more than four times the men, enough to divide and crush the Tear army from multiple angles. The Queen had not thought of her soldiers, only of principle, and principle was cold comfort to men who were going to die. Hall wondered if she truly had magic, as the rumors said, or whether that was simply a fairy tale that the Mace had allowed to spread. The rumors were difficult to reconcile with the woman who sat on the throne, the child-adult with the gaze of an owl. Hall had already made his military assessment—all was lost—but intuition was not logical, and his gut would not allow him to give up.