The Cerulean Queen

by Sarah Kozloff

  A recently hired shield, Gatana (one of Yanath’s recruits), offered Cerúlia a drink from her waterskin. After several long swallows the queen doused a kerchief and wet her hot and dusty neck. Excess drops trickled down the military-style riding habit Editha had designed for her, with a split skirt and a formal doublet. Cerúlia wished she had insisted on a more utilitarian hat; the stylish little thing she’d worn today had not shaded her eyes well enough.

  Swishing his tail, Smoke tried to discourage the flies that wanted to settle as soon as they stopped moving.

  The party waited under the hot sky without chatter until Captain Yanath reappeared after a short time. “Your Majesty, on first glance, the place appears deserted.” His men pushed the front doors open wide for the queen and her followers.

  “Very well,” said Cerúlia. “Walk on, Smoke.”

  The horses scattered a flock of loose chickens and geese. The stone manor house sat lifeless. However, after a moment of vigorously sniffing the air, Cerúlia’s hounds raced across the expansive courtyard, heading straight to the right rear of the manor house, where a well-kept whitewashed barn stood closed up, keeping its secrets. Whaki and Vaki scratched at the door and started howling.

  Humankine! Humankine, stink of fear.

  Alarmed, the shields drew their arrows or pulled their swords.

  “Please, Your Majesty, stay back,” Yanath called. “You there, in the barn. We know you hide within. Throw down any arms you have and come out.”

  A pause ensued, broken only by the dogs’ racket.

  That’s enough noise, now, Cerúlia ordered her dogs.

  In the abrupt silence the door creaked open. Slowly, more than a dozen people emerged, single file, their arms above their heads, their hands visibly trembling. Men, women, and children, all roughly dressed, with their garments and hair speckled with hay.

  Cerúlia clucked Smoke forward. “Where is your master? Where are his soldiers? Where is his family?” she asked.

  “Mercy! We yield! Mercy, please! Why, it’s the queen herself. Your Majesty!” came cries from various throats as the servants threw themselves on their knees.

  The Shield patted these captives down for weapons, confiscating a few work knives. The dogs watched, slant-eyed, but neither growled nor attacked.

  No danger from this herd, sent Cici.

  “Calm down and answer my questions,” Cerúlia ordered. “Where is your master; where are his soldiers; where is the family?”

  “Gone,” said an old woman in a white cap. “They hitched up the wagons, took all the horses, and hightailed away. You kin see the wagon tracks if you don’t believe me.”

  “When was this?”

  “Before dawn, a few hours after the general died.”

  “Did everybody flee?”

  “Well, not exactly,” a whiskered man piped in. “The lady of the house, that is Yurgn’s daughter Yurgenia, she and her boys, they didn’t want to go.”

  “And where are they?”

  The servants looked at one another. Finally, a lad spoke up. “They’re hiding in the millhouse.”

  “Point out the millhouse to me!” Duke Naven ordered. This smaller structure stood down a path a long walk away. Naven rode over, flanked by a couple of soldiers, to roust the hideaways.

  Cerúlia dismounted, stretching after a long day in the saddle, and spoke to her dogs.

  Are there any other people hiding in any of these buildings or the grounds? I want you all to spread out and search every corner.

  Soon enough, Duke Naven escorted out—not over-gently—a strained-looking middle-aged woman in a mussed silk dress with a white collar and two young boys. He pushed them in front of the queen.

  “You will bow,” Seamaster Wilamara hissed. The mother and children instantly made obeisance.

  “Mistress Yurgenia, I believe,” said Cerúlia.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” She was afraid to look up from her deep curtsey. The smaller child started crying, the tears tracing tracks through a light flour dusting on his face. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  “You are General Yurgn’s daughter?”

  “I am, Your Majesty.”

  “Who fled?”

  “My brother, my cousin, and his family. Lurgn’s widow, Clovadorska, and their children. My husband, Karlot. Our chamberlain. All of our guards. Our chief cook and our head stableman.”

  “But not these here, the lower servants.”

  “No, they didn’t have room for them.”

  “Is this everybody who didn’t join the escape? Are any soldiers hiding away to ambush us?”

  The woman glanced at the nearby people on their knees, taking a rough count. “I don’t see all of the field hands, or the apprentices, or the under-cooks here. I would guess that several servants ran away to hide with relatives in the village.”

  “The soldiers?”

  “They took all our guards for protection.”

  “Why did you stay behind? Did they refuse to take you?”

  “No, Clovadorska entreated me to join them.” Although her legs faltered in her deep curtsey, she maintained the pose. “I didn’t want to flee. I don’t fancy being hunted. And I thought that, mayhap if I stayed, mayhap I could plead for my sons.”

  She sank on her knees on the ground, looking up with her palms pressed together. “Please, Your Majesty. I beg you, please do not harm my boys.”

  “Do you really think that I would harm your children?” Cerúlia wondered whether, by killing the general, she had already turned herself into a monster in her people’s eyes.

  Yurgenia replied, “If half the things I read in the broadsheets are true, I can imagine wanting revenge. But, Your Majesty”—now she looked up—“these little boys are completely innocent of my father’s deeds, however awful those may be.”

  “Set your mind at rest about your sons, mistress. Though I will have you questioned by the judiciaries, your children will not be arrested or mistreated in any way. I suggest you select one of these family servants to look after them during your stay in Cascada.”

  Cerúlia turned to the people who had hidden in the horse barn. “This is a large estate, and it would go to ruin if deserted or untended, and that would be a waste. If you wish, you might remain here, water the stock, and watch over the children while we debate what to do with General Yurgn’s holdings.”

  “As it please Your Majesty,” said the white-capped woman. “That is, most of us, we have no other homes to go to and—”

  Cici interrupted the conversation by rushing down a flight of stairs that led out from the main house, yipping an alert. Cerúlia turned back to Yurgenia with narrowed eyes.

  “Who is still in the house, mistress?”

  Yurgenia mumbled something with her head down.

  “Speak up,” Yanath barked.

  “I wasn’t lying! I hoped they took him with them. I didn’t want to harbor him, but my father insisted! I haven’t talked to him, nor seen him, not once! Believe me, it wasn’t my choice nor my doing!”

  “Aha! Matwyck still lives,” Cerúlia said. “Ciellō, I brought a healer and Chronicler Sewel with us just for this possibility. Fetch them.”

  Despite the day’s heat, her body broke out in a cold sweat.

  “This is a meeting I have long anticipated.” She turned to the rest of her entourage, ordering, “The rest of you, wait here.”

  * * *

  Cici led Cerúlia into the manor through a side door into an old wing, though Ciellō, drawing his sword, rushed to precede her.

  From a staircase, Ciellō called out, “Here is the man you seek. He is unconscious.”

  The healer and Ciellō picked up Matwyck between them. Sewel ran ahead, opening doors, looking for a place to set him down. They carried him into the first room that boasted a made-up bed, which appeared to be the room in which he had been hiding away these moons. This small chamber had a bed, a bedside table, a chair, and pegs on the wall that held a few bits of clothing and some cloths. It had but
one window, and the air was very close.

  The healer listened to Matwyck’s heart, pulled back his eyes, and chafed his hands, while Ciellō fetched a pitcher of water from the kitchen pump downstairs and then stationed himself on the opposite side of the bed. Sewel readied his portable writing desk.

  Cerúlia stood by the narrow bedside while these ministrations were underway, studying the patient’s face. She had known him as a child; she had seen him at the wedding; and his likeness had loomed at her from everywhere in Cascada until she had had the portraits and statues removed. Lying here unconscious, he was just another man, past his mid-years, but still trim and rather good-looking. Except his face showed recent scraping and bruising; his complexion had a grayish tinge, and his nightshift was badly stained. All in all he looked like a marionette whose animating strings had been cut. She wondered at her years of fear of him.

  The healer spoke to everyone in an undertone, “He rages with fever. Some infection—probably of the kidneys. See how yellow his eyes are and this blood?” Again he passed the smelling salts under the patient’s nose and gently swatted at his cheeks and the backs of his hands.

  Matwyck opened his eyes. With effort, Cerúlia mastered her instinctive jolt of fear, though Cici began to growl. At first his eyes refused to focus; then clearly he recognized her.

  “Water,” he said through chapped lips, looking away from her face. The healer sat in the chair beside him and held the heavy pitcher to his mouth. After he drank several swallows Matwyck remarked over the rim, “Dressed up, you look like your mother. I should have seen the resemblance instantly.” He choked a bit. “More!”

  After he’d drunk more swallows, Matwyck continued, “Your disguise as a rural wench didn’t fool me. I was just hours away from arresting you.”

  “I look like my mother, the queen you betrayed.”

  Matwyck cleared his throat. “Cressa was pretty, not actually dumb, and, I suppose, well-meaning. But naive. Frightened. Weak.” He grabbed at the healer’s hand holding the pitcher and drank more, dribbling a stream down his chin and neck. The healer yanked the pitcher away to keep him from drinking too much at once.

  “I doubt you describe her fairly,” said Cerúlia. “But if this were true, your duty was to teach and support her, not supplant her.”

  “I’m so hot,” said Matwyck to the healer, closing his eyes. “Bathe my brow.”

  The man moistened a cloth and swabbed Matwyck’s face and neck; then he put the wet cloth behind the back of his neck. This seemed to provide the patient partial relief. The healer opened the window wider. Matwyck lifted his lids again and noticed Chronicler Sewel.

  “Oh, you’re here too, imp? Scratching away with that damn quill again?”

  Cerúlia asked the healer, “Can he be moved? Brought back to Cascada for trial?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” he answered. “He would not survive the trip. His pulse is very rapid; he fevers; he’s dehydrated; I don’t know exactly—”

  She waved her hand to forestall any further medical details, then folded her fingers and brought her thumbs to her chest in a formal gesture.

  “Well then, Lord Matwyck, now is the time to face your reckoning.

  “I, Queen Cerúlia the Gryphling, do charge you with plotting treason and assassination against your liege, my mother, Queen Cressa the Enchanter. I charge you with the death of Lady Tenny. I charge you with attempting to kill my sister, Lady Percia, in her Wyndton home. I charge you with misuse of the public treasury. I charge you with innumerable illegal arrests, persecutions, and deaths of citizens.”

  Sewel’s quill scratched against the paper, writing down her words. Matwyck waved his hand in front of his face as if these accusations were but midges; his dismissive attitude made her nostrils flare.

  “What say you to these charges?”

  His lips twisted into what might have been a mocking smile. “You don’t know the half. You don’t know about Retzel, I’m sure.”

  Cerúlia looked at Sewel for clarification. He responded, “Lord Retzel died on his Lakevale estate many years ago. We heard—we thought—of natural causes.”

  “Retzel was always a fool, and as he got older he couldn’t keep his fat lips shut,” said Matwyck.

  “So you killed him?” Sewel guessed.

  “No.” Ciellō broke in, shaking his head. “This man, his own hands, never killed a chicken.”

  “Ah,” Sewel replied. “You had Retzel killed. But it was never a scandal. How did you do it—poison?”

  Matwyck grabbed his bolster with his hand and winked, indicating that he had ordered Retzel smothered. Sewel started and moved farther away from the bedside.

  Seeing him sidle away, Matwyck hissed, “You’ve been a thorn in my side from the beginning, Sewel. Should have dealt with you much earlier.”

  “Lord Matwyck,” said Cerúlia, “you will attend me, not the chronicler. I am waiting for your answer to the charges and for you to confess to any and all further crimes you have committed.” She nodded toward Sewel’s writing desk. “Be sure to add the murder of Lord Retzel.”

  “I want my sister, Eyevie,” Matwyck said fretfully, avoiding her face. “She lives on a farm not far from the city. Heathclaw knows where. I want her; fetch her to me; let her nurse me in a bigger, cooler room.” He coughed. The healer offered him more water, which he gulped eagerly. “If you bring her I will answer your questions.

  “However, I will want your word of honor that I will be buried next to my wife at her manor house. My goods, my fortune, will underwrite the local under school she favored. The children will look upon me as their patron, their benefactor. They will offer songs of praise to my generosity at the beginning of each term. Write all this down, Sewel, every detail.”

  Cerúlia had a hard time mastering her rage to keep her voice level. “You mistake the situation, Matwyck. Heathclaw is dead, and Sewel is not your secretary. You are not in any position to bargain here, nor would the throne permit such an outrage. As for your fortune, it was stolen from the people of Weirandale, and it will be forfeited with your death. Tirinella’s personal wealth will pass on to Marcot. No one will say prayers for you; no one will honor your name unless Marcot finds a smidge of charity in his heart. But since he freed the prisoners in your secret jails and was horrified by what had been done to them, that is unlikely.”

  “Marcot,” Matwyck echoed, turning his head restlessly from side to side.

  Cerúlia thought of her brother-in-marriage and mastered her fury. “As you lie dying, is there a message you’d like us to pass on to your son?”

  Matwyck’s fingers now clawed at the bedclothes. “Serves him right—marrying against my wishes. He did it on purpose. Let him be widowed; see how he likes it.”

  Ciellō curled his lip and explained to the queen. “He still has plans to kill Lady Percia.”

  A jolt of fury seized Cerúlia. She wanted to dispatch Matwyck this instant, with her own hands, which she had instinctively balled into fists. She drew a deep breath and looked around the room.

  “Leave us,” she ordered the healer. “Out! Go! He gets no poppy oil, no bathing, no fanning, no hand-holding, no comfort, nothing whatsoever!”

  The healer made a slight noise of protest, then placed the water pitcher on the table and packed up his satchel. Ciellō took the man’s elbow and hustled him out of the room, firmly closing the door behind him. Sewel backed a little farther into the corner, as if to hide from being dismissed too.

  Cerúlia’s hand clutched her dagger handle tightly. The patient had frozen in position, with his eyes closed.

  “Matwyck of Cascada, I know you can hear me. Here is the throne’s judgment. We do not need your testimony or confession. By the preponderance of evidence, you are found guilty on all counts listed.” She turned to Sewel to make sure he had written this down. “The sentence for such crimes is death. Actually, it could be death many times over. It could be a particularly gruesome and painful death.”

  Keeping his eyes cl
osed, Matwyck replied, “Bravo. A very adequate performance, if somewhat overwrought. You’ll forgive me if I do not clap.”

  Cici growled low in her throat and the three people standing in the room gasped at his audacity, but Matwyck wasn’t finished.

  “I wonder, will you get your own hands bloody for me, little wren?” Matwyck kept his eyes closed and succeeded in making his tone lazy. “Will you stab me, as you stabbed poor, defenseless Lolethia? Or will you play the highborn royal and assign this job to your foreign henchman?”

  Defeat filled Cerúlia’s mouth with a taste like ash. She finally faced her foe, but she could wring no contrition from him. In fact, he insisted on goading her. Why would he do that, when clearly she held all the power?

  She paced by the bedside down to his feet and then back to his head until insight struck her. Pulling out her golden-headed dagger, she slid its point across his neck lightly; Matwyck opened his eyes at its touch; he strained his neck toward it, but the blade merely creased the skin without drawing a drop of blood. The queen flipped the dagger and caught it out of the air just for show, then resheathed the weapon in the scabbard that hung around her waist.

  “Now, why would you rush toward death…” she mused, “unless you dread to linger?”

  Refolding her hands in front of her chest in a formal gesture, she spoke in ringing tones. “Here is your punishment, Matwyck of Cascada: you will die here, alone, and—I devoutly pray—in agony. By your actions, you have forfeited any right to comfort or companionship, whether of sister or healer. When you are dead, your corpse will be dragged into the woods like the rubbish you are, for carrion eaters to feast upon.”

  Matwyck lay still and closed his eyes, still depriving her of any reaction or satisfaction.

  Her eyes fell on the pitcher of water on the bedside table. The water he had gulped so eagerly.

  Cerúlia picked up the heavy, nearly full pitcher and began, drop by drop, to pour the liquid out onto the floor.

  At the sound of the splash, Matwyck’s eyes flew open and his hands stretched out as if to stop her. “No!” he cried. “No! Leave me the water!”

  She poured more. Terror now distorted his features. Matwyck’s mouth became a snarl, his peeling lips flecked with foam, his cheek muscles taut; his gray pupils glinted, while the whites of his eyes looked yellow. Cords stood out in his neck. He attempted to rise, but Ciellō pushed his shoulders back into the bedclothes.