by Callie Bates
Alistar follows me. At the coach door, I turn to him. We have the barest modicum of privacy; the tents block us, thankfully, from the Butcher’s eyes, and no one else seems to be looking, though I suppose they always are.
“Keep an eye on her,” he says, jerking his chin at Rhia, who’s shouting from the infirmary, trying to convince the Butcher to send his coffeepot with us.
“I will.” I put my hand to his chest, and he immediately covers it with his own. “Be safe, Alistar. Don’t do anything too bold, or rash, or—or stupid—”
He laughs. “Don’t be myself, you mean?”
“You’re not stupid.” I lean closer. “You’re more than a warrior.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Tell that to my sister, Oonagh. Or the Butcher.”
“I don’t need to tell them—they know it. Oonagh might be the head of your family, but she needs you. She relies on you.” I grip the front of his coat, and he finally looks at me, his black brows a heavy line. I know every inch of his face, but still I drink the sight of him in, as if it can steady me. “I need you to come back from Tinan. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
His green-flecked eyes sharpen at that, but before he can ask, I lean into him and press the lightest kiss on his lips. He sighs, and so do I. I wish I could melt against him, but of course that would be unqueenly. Lifting my chin, I glance around. No one seems to have taken much notice. The mountain women are studiously looking the other way. I pull Alistar’s face down to mine and kiss him deeper. He puts his hand between my shoulder blades, pulls me close. His mouth is warm, tender, fierce. Even here, he somehow tastes of Caeris—the spice of whiskey, the tang of forested air.
“Be safe,” I tell him, a little breathless.
His gaze caresses my face. “You, too, Soph.”
I climb into the coach, and someone coughs. I startle violently, grabbing for a weapon—but as usual, I’m unarmed.
There’s a person sitting on the bench seat.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Philippe Manceau says with forced politeness. “Especially as you and Lord Alistar were…engaged.”
My cheeks heat. My dalliance with Alistar may be an open secret—or, let’s face it, a blatant source of gossip—but even so, I’m not keen on having one of my ministers watching us undetected, a few feet away. Thank all the gods I didn’t tell Alistar what I needed to talk to him about.
I drop onto the seat opposite him, pretending I don’t see Alistar walk away. Pretending his going to Tinan, into such danger, doesn’t hurt like a splinter lodged in my skin. “Coming back already? You’ve hardly seen anything of the border.”
“I’ve seen enough. After all, the Ard isn’t going anywhere.”
He sounds positively cross, and I hide a smile.
“Have you decided what you’ll tell the ministers?” he asks abruptly.
I feel my jaw clench. “There will be plenty of time for that en route to the capital.”
“Ah. I thought Lady Rhia might—what do you say?—shift us there.”
I shake my head, surprised by the vehemence of my own protectiveness toward Rhia. In Caeris, she knows the folds in the land, which bend space and dissolve the distance between two places, like the pattern of her own palms, but here in Eren it seems more of a struggle for her, even on a good day. “She’s too weak. She—”
Rhia herself interrupts me, clambering in awkwardly with her sling. She glowers at Philippe and settles beside me. She smells of coffee and medicinal herbs, and her eyes seem brighter than usual. She hates leaving her father, I know; they’re very close, and he’s in as much danger as Alistar.
“You shouldn’t be traveling anywhere,” Philippe notes. “You’re white as a sheet.”
Rhia turns her bandaged shoulder toward him and says to me, “The Butcher wouldn’t give me the coffeepot.”
“Well, I don’t know how you’d have kept it from spilling.”
“I suppose,” she says begrudgingly.
As the coach rocks into motion, she slides back, resting her head against the coach wall and closing her eyes. I find a lap blanket squashed behind my back and drape it over her knees. The doctor gave her a small tincture of laudanum for the pain, and she’s already asleep, her mouth open, a deep frown between her brows. She’s hurting more than she let on.
“We can stay tonight at my family’s estate,” Philippe says quietly. “It’s on the way to Laon.”
I nod, albeit reluctantly. Since Rhia’s in no shape to shift the land, I suppose it’s better to rely on Philippe’s hospitality than to take over an inn.
Our coach trundles slowly through the day. Philippe and I run out of topics of conversation quickly enough, and I’m left with the thoughts milling in my head. I can’t believe they took El. How on earth am I supposed to get her back? How am I supposed to rule without her?
If the world discovers the truth about what’s growing inside me, I won’t be allowed to rule anything. Not for the first time, I wish my father had answered even one of my letters—and more than that, that he’d come here to help us. I don’t know why he’s lingering at the imperial court in Paladis, or what he’s waiting for. Maybe he never truly intended to come. But I can’t shake the feeling that if he were here, all this might be easier.
Wouldn’t it? My dead half brother, Finn, never spoke highly of Euan Dromahair, and my mother never spoke of him at all. He’s still the king across the sea, though. People would rally to his name.
Only they’re stuck with me for now.
This is what my mother would have wanted—isn’t it? Mag Dunbarron wouldn’t have hesitated to place her daughter on the throne. Sometimes I think she gave her life for this: so that her daughter might someday be able to wear the crown. I just wish I felt more worthy of it.
I close my eyes, putting one hand protectively over my stomach. The slightest twinge meets my touch. I feel myself go very still. Did I imagine it, the way I imagined that flutter earlier? Perhaps it’s simply my guts roiling after everything that’s happened today. But other women say they feel their children move in their wombs. Once, one of the ladies visiting us at Cerid Aven was with child, and she let us put our hands on her swollen stomach to feel the baby kicking. I remember laughing as the sharp movement met my hand. Could it be, finally?
Yet fear comes chasing on the heels of my excitement. I’m going back to the city, where I will no longer be able to hide my growing belly beneath a man’s waistcoat and overcoat; where I won’t only be among the incurious eyes of my queen’s guards; where the maids will wonder why I’m complaining of my stays, and grow wise to the reason why my clothes no longer fit me. Maybe I should have done something about this weeks ago, when the nausea grew almost unbearable and tiredness dogged me everywhere, when I realized what had happened, when the creeping sense of the consequences started to shorten my breath. But I didn’t. I don’t know what I could have done, in truth.
Maybe I should have forced the issue with Alistar; I should have told him. The weight of this secret drags on me like shackles.
My eyes itch with tears. I let one or two leak out, when I’m certain Philippe can’t see them. They give me no more comfort than the child growing silently in my womb.
CHAPTER THREE
The clatter of wheels on cobblestones startles me awake. The day has worn past noon. On the other side of the coach, Philippe squints sleepily at me. Rhia’s snoring.
I push myself upright. We’re passing through a pretty little village of honey-colored stone, with early flowers in the window boxes despite the hard winter. I sigh. It reminds me of the town outside Cerid Aven. All villages, I suppose, look much the same from the outside. There’s comfort in a place so small—especially on the road back to Laon. I’ve never really liked cities, though I suppose I’ve never spent much time in them until the last few months, except for my early years in Barrody. But when you flee a p
lace in the dead of night because Ereni soldiers have come to arrest your mother—and you have to leave your failing grandmother in the care of a family friend, only to find out months later that she died without you—well, it doesn’t instill much fondness.
“You look pensive,” Philippe observes.
I shake my head. “Not at all. I could live my whole life in a place like this.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Could you really? When Ruadan Valtai raised you to be queen?”
He’s watching for my reply, his eyes attentive. I wish he’d stop noticing so much about me. “That’s not what he raised me for,” I say briskly.
“Really? What, then? He gave you a royal education.”
And a royal sense of responsibility, I reflect. Maybe Philippe’s right, curse him anyway. I’d never shirk my duties.
Yet this still looks like a place I could call home. Maybe I’d be a lace-maker, sitting up high in one of the houses overlooking the little rushing river and the little honey-colored town. Alistar could make furniture, or something. He could build us a wide bed to put in our honey-colored house, and we would eat brown bread and have babies and—
There’s a shout, somewhere ahead in the line of soldiers. The coach sways to a stop, throwing Rhia and me back against our seats. Philippe has to brace himself against my knee. He moves away with a quick apology. Grasping the latch, he pushes the door open and hops out.
I follow on his heels. The spring ground is soft underfoot, and I stagger a little after sitting for so long. Rhia leans out behind me, looking wan. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” I look around at the train of royal guards dismounting from their horses. We’ve stopped on the edge of the honey-colored town, where the buildings yield to rolling green hills stubbled with last year’s wheat. Sheep eye us skeptically from the other side of a mossy stone wall. It’s so bucolic it hardly seems real.
Philippe has already pushed toward the guards. “What happened?”
The note of alarm in his voice troubles me. I stride over to where he’s standing at the front of the coach, the men fanning out around him.
“There’s been an incident, my lord,” one of the men is saying. He glances at me but doesn’t acknowledge me. My gut clenches. He’s got an Ereni accent. “A man…a refugee, from what the farmer said. He’s in the left-hand field.”
“Tell us what happened,” I say, asserting myself as firmly as I can. But the guard only glances at me before addressing Philippe again, as if it were he who asked the question.
It’s maddening. I’m the queen. I want to tell the man I’m more like him than Philippe is. I’ve marched across this land—granted, running from people like him. But still, unlike Philippe, I know what it’s like to be poor. I know what it’s like for your stomach to be empty, and your clothes ragged, and for no one to know your name.
And I know what it’s like to be ignored by the people I’m most like. The awkwardness of the servants in Cerid Aven, the awestruck whispers that I was the daughter of Mag Dunbarron, the pitying glances, the tactful kindnesses, mixed with the rumors that my mother had lied about my parentage, the jealousy that someone as common as me was raised up to be Ruadan Valtai’s ward. How the Caerisian nobles who occasionally visited treated me, once they learned the secret of my father’s identity, both as something special and as something other. Only Alistar didn’t pay attention to all that. He wasn’t interested in how Ruadan was grooming me to be a backup heir; he was interested in me. For myself.
“The farmer doesn’t know where it came from,” the guard is saying. “It appeared overnight.”
“It?” I echo.
This time, the man does look at me. He swallows, glances at Philippe, then gestures behind him.
I stare across the backs of the horses, into the farm field. A tall, old oak rises there, gnarled from age.
And from its lower branches, a body swings.
Bile rises in my throat. I gag, clamping a hand over my mouth. In my womb, there’s a sharp, hard sensation. Like a jab. I startle, my hands falling instinctively to cover my stomach. This time, it must be the child. It’s as if it’s reacting to my own horror.
Because they didn’t only hang this man. They cut off his hands. His feet. Bloody stumps.
Without a word, Philippe marches toward the hanging corpse. I follow, swallowing down the sour taste of bile, and the jittery awareness of my child’s first likely movement. We cut in front of the horses, to where a cluster of guards stand on our side of the stone wall, staring at the tree. A farmer stands on the other side of the wall, shaking his head, gesturing.
I don’t hear what he’s saying. I can see the man better now. They didn’t only hang him, and they didn’t only mutilate his hands. The black heads of nails have been driven through his eyes and mouth.
I’m going to throw up.
I can’t throw up.
I’m going to scream.
I can’t scream.
I manage a gasping word: “Why?”
The crowd parts, giving me a sudden view of the farmer and an even better look at the corpse.
“The nails?” the farmer says in a country accent. “I reckon they did that so he couldn’t come back from the dead.”
“What?” I say shakily.
“It’s in all the old stories,” he says. “The only way to keep a sorcerer dead is to dismember him and drive nails through his eyes so he can’t see to work a spell, and through his mouth—”
“Enough,” I interrupt. I’m panting. Shaking. Covered in sweat. “Take that poor man down from there. Now. Go!”
The guards hesitate, staring from me to the farmers.
“You heard her,” Philippe says.
Now they scurry off, opening the gate and approaching the tree, while the farmers look on, somewhat bemused.
Philippe touches my arm. “Are you all right?” he whispers.
“I’m fine.” But he can feel me trembling, and we both know I’m not. I train my gaze on the farmer. “Who did this?”
The farmer shrugs. “We don’t know, lady. Got up this morning and found him swaying there. When I got a look at the body, I realized it had to be a sorcerer. One of them refugees. A few have passed through from Tinan. Nobody recognizes this fellow, though.”
“Why do you think he’s in your field, then?” Philippe says.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Pressure whines in my ears. I watch the guards cut the man down from the tree—the abrupt sagging of the body, the mutters and grimaces of the men handling the mutilated corpse.
A sorcerer nobody recognizes. A body that just happens to turn up on the road I’m taking to Laon.
Cold prickles all the way up my arms and dives down between my breasts. “Philippe.” I gesture him back toward the coach, with a quick apology to the farmer for interrupting him. I grab Philippe’s lapel and pull him toward me. “Who knew we were coming this way?”
He blinks. “This is the main route to Laon from Tavistock…” I watch the comprehension dawn on his face. His lips part. “You don’t think—”
“It’s a threat? Since I’ve welcomed the sorcerers to Laon? I don’t know; I’m not sure what to think.” Of course, it’s equally occurred to me that Philippe could be behind this—as much as he could, in theory, be behind the trap the Tinani sprang this morning. After all, he is a common factor. I watch him carefully. His shock seems genuine, but there could be other reasons for that. “Either way, we need to get to the bottom of what happened here.”
He scrubs at his jaw, and I realize he’s not only shocked, he’s shaken. “Maybe…” He clears his throat. “Maybe we interrogate the villagers.”
“No!” Now I’m the one who’s shocked. “The farmer stated their innocence. It’s a sure way to turn them against us.”
“But someone loc
al must have done it.”
I shake my head. “We don’t know that, especially when that man claims not. We can’t threaten our own people—or make them feel as if they’re being threatened.”
Philippe lets out a breath. He’s frowning down the road behind me, toward the village. He turns toward the farmer. “What’s the name of this place?”
“Ichou.”
“Whose lands are these?”
“They’ve belonged to the Rambauds these last five hundred years, though with the new queen, we’re looking to change that.” The farmer gazes keenly at me. No one’s told him who I am, but he must have guessed. He glances back at Philippe. “You’d be the Manceau heir, wouldn’t you, now? Your lands start just ten miles yonder. In case you haven’t walked them.”
Philippe freezes. I watch the muscles tighten in his jaw.
The guards have set the dead man down in the grass. Quietly, I say to Philippe, “I think our work here is done.” To the farmer, I add, “We’ll see about giving you the opportunity to own your own lands. I’m Sophy Dunbarron, and I intend to do right by the people of Eren.”
* * *
—
THE CORPSE HAS yellow hair and pale skin, though I have to resolutely look away from the ruin of his face. His clothes—tattered, rent—are serviceable wool and linen. Heavy. A guardsman fishes a handful of coins from the dead man’s trouser pocket. All small, foreign change.
Whoever killed him wasn’t interested in money, or they’d have stolen it. The thought frightens me. There’s a Tinani coin stamped with the likeness of King Alfred, and two small ones bearing the profile of a Czar of the Ismae. He must have come all the way from the Ismae to die like this. He must have thought, once he was well beyond the Ard, that he was home safe in Eren. He must have stopped being careful.
Who found him? Who did this?
“Your Majesty,” Philippe murmurs. His fingers tentatively brush my elbow.
I come back to myself with a start. Tears are rolling, cold, off my chin. The weight of grief has filled me up, so full I’m sinking beneath it.