The Queen Will Betray You

by Sarah Henning

  He stepped aside. “No. I will not hide. I didn’t come on this journey to hide.”

  As they argued, Mannah broke away, all snarl and spit. She advanced on the riders, poker out and pointed straight at the middle one, who had a mean gleam in his eyes and a bandana of Warlord blue. “What is your business here?”

  “Everything you fear and everything you expect, old woman,” he snarled. There was something familiar about him to Luca. Hard. Wiry. Pitiless. But perhaps all men scoured by the harsh Torrent winds and sand turned out this way—like the men whom Renard and Taillefer had hired to hunt down Amarande.

  “I do not fear you!” Mannah shouted back, poker jutted forward like a spear. “Raiders! Scum! You’ve burned everything of value. What are you going to bring to the Warlord from this? A pile of ash?”

  The leader began to laugh, as did his seconds—one scrawny, one stout, both as thorny and stubborn as shoots off a blackberry bramble. Like their leader, there was something familiar about them. “We all know what here is of value, old woman, and it is not you. That boy comes with us.”

  Mannah shook her poker at him. “Over my dead body he does.”

  The leader caught eyes with his seconds.

  “If that’s how you want it to be, then.”

  No.

  Quick as a flash, Luca broke into a run, shaking off Ula’s grip as she lunged for his arm. The leader leaned down from his horse and swung his torch hard—the thick wood connecting with the tip of Mannah’s poker. The thin metal instrument went flying out of her grasp, leaving her defiant and defenseless. The man raised his torch once again, stabbing it toward Mannah’s face.

  Then Luca was there.

  He thrust Mannah behind him, and met the torch with a sweeping slice from his sword. The severed head of the torch went flying. It landed beyond them, still flaming.

  Luca held the sword in a high block, and pressed his dagger into Mannah’s shaking hand. Together, they stared down the men. He couldn’t hear Ula, and had no idea where Urtzi and Osana were—everything he had was poured into confronting these men and protecting Mannah.

  The leader squinted down from his horse, and laughed at their show of defiance, his teeth flashing in the twin lights of his seconds’ torches. “There’s no point in putting up a fight, wolf cub. You’re ours, your friends are as good as dead, and this place is ash. Boys, take him.”

  A flash of movement from Luca’s right, and a dagger hurtled toward his exposed side. Instinct and muscle memory honed during his days in the meadow with Amarande kicked in, and Luca twisted away.

  But not fast enough.

  The dagger caught the edge of Luca’s tunic and slashed a shallow gash across his side. Luca stumbled, unable to catch his balance on his snakebit leg. His sword skitterered away as he hit the ground. Luca rolled and tried to lunge for it, but the stout boy had already dismounted, kicking it away.

  The leader slid from his horse, drawing his own sword as his boots hit the ground. Mannah screamed and ran at him, dagger out, and he swatted her away as easily as a fly. She landed in a heap.

  Luca willed his legs to move. Battle-hardened hands grabbed him, a man on each side of him, yanking him up, their torches still held in their opposite hands to give their leader light for whatever cruel intention he had before hauling him away.

  “Oh no you don’t!”

  Ula.

  A fist-sized fireball shot over Luca’s shoulder, plowing straight into the leader’s gut. Using her sword to scoop up the severed head of the leader’s torch and hurtling it back, Ula had echoed Amarande’s trick from their fight against the Harea Asps.

  Even though she was not there, Luca’s princess had once again played a part in saving him.

  The leader fell back, tunic and skin suddenly aflame. His bandana slid down as he hit the dry ground behind him, his face distorted with panic as he screamed horrifically.

  The men holding Luca hesitated in shock—an opportunity he used to wrench away from the scrawny one, planting a boot in his lean gut. Ula’s blade cut the stout one down with a blow to his wide upper back, and his grip upon Luca immediately died as he fell away.

  More hoofbeats sounded behind them.

  The death knell of raider reinforcements—or the sound of rescue?

  Luca turned to see two riders approaching full-speed, bareback, headed straight toward the remaining bandits, stumbling away with their torches still in hand.

  Urtzi and Osana.

  As they got closer, Luca was able to make out Urtzi, juggling both a bucket and a thick unstoppered jug, while struggling to maintain hold of the horse’s reins. Osana was similarly encumbered, clutching a bucket in both arms while steering her horse with her knees.

  At the sight, Luca realized exactly what they were going to do.

  “Back, back, back!” he yelled, getting fully to his feet, helped along by Ula and Mannah. Stumbling, he urgently pulled them away from the bandits as fast as they could move, toward the burning cabin.

  Urtzi rode to one side, Osana the other.

  “Now!” Osana screamed.

  She threw her bucket at the smoldering body of the leader, writhing on the ground. The contents doused him completely and suddenly he wasn’t a man, but a fireball.

  WHOOSH.

  Urtzi hit the other two with his own bucket and the glass jug. The instant the caustic antiseptic made contact, the torches shuddered and exploded.

  WHOOSH. WHOOSH.

  All three men suddenly were ablaze.

  As the Warlord knew well, there was no way to survive flames like that.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE Dowager Queen ruminated over the last dregs of her breakfast.

  She was anxious to hear Captain Nikola’s plan for locating Taillefer, especially after successfully setting into motion his disownment. Upon further interrogation, the imprisoned pirate had produced a contract for hire, signed by her second son. It was proof enough of his treachery for her councilors to do their part, but she needed him to stand trial for treason so that there would be no question in anyone’s mind that he should not and could not have claim to the crown of Pyrenee.

  But the captain was late, annoying her greatly because it was necessary she depart as soon as possible for Basilica. Still, his delay allowed her time to receive one more of her daily treatments from Medikua Aritza, something she wanted to avoid doing on the ship, as it required swallowing a large amount of red raspberry leaf tincture—difficult enough to keep down on solid land, much less a seafaring vessel. The royal ship was already brimming with cargo and passengers—all it needed was her.

  After the treatment, as the medikua packed up her many tinctures, Inés brought her to a momentary halt. “Medikua Aritza? Do you have anything within your collection that might provide a … boost for my betrothed? Some sort of male equivalent to the service you are providing me?”

  Domingu was more than double the Dowager Queen’s age and had sired no children with his recently departed wife—a woman more than a decade Inés’s junior.

  A wry smile crossed the medikua’s thin lips. “Nothing I haven’t provided him before, Your Highness, if he’ll take it.”

  “I will see to it that he does.” There was a knock on the door—ah, finally. “Ensure that your items are prepared for travel at ten strikes of the bell, medikua. You shall ride to the port in my carriage.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  As the medikua scuttled away, the Dowager Queen turned her attention to her next visitor. “Come in, Captain. Tell me, I hope you have a clever plan for a clever mark?”

  Nikola entered, looking ghostly pale underneath the not-yet-faded sunburn from his excursion into the Torrent with Renard’s search party to “rescue” Princess Amarande. His voice was raspy and dry with lack of sleep. “We have more pressing concerns, Your Highness.”

  He offered a scroll. The Dowager Queen’s attention snagged on the broken seal. “Captain, you know all official correspondence addressed to the Crown is to be
opened by my hand only.”

  The boy blanched further at her tone. “It was addressed to ‘The People of Pyrenee,’” he stammered. “Not to the Crown. Delivered not by rider but by bird. Please, read it, Your Highness.”

  Most unusual, indeed. Purse-lipped, Inés stood and plucked the parchment from him. She did not break eye contact with Nikola, whose desperation did not excuse his insolence. “Of course I will read it, though I am angry you took it upon yourself to do so first.”

  “Punish me later, Your Highness. Read it now. Immediately. Please.”

  In spite of his youth, Nikola did not often appear rattled—as he did now. That, in itself, was cause for concern.

  Inés unfurled the parchment, revealing the painstaking penmanship of a court scribe. The Dowager Queen read the lines in silence. Her face flushed, fingers shaking as she swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat by the conclusion.

  The parchment fluttered to her breakfast table, coming to rest atop her butter dish. The Dowager Queen stared at the letter as if it couldn’t be real. But there it was, the parchment immediately stained translucent with butterfat.

  Ardenia had struck first. Despite all her scheming and preparation, they had made the first cut. A deep one. Nothing superficial about it. Slashing through the fraying fabric holding together the continent.

  According to this document, Pyrenee now stood accused of murdering Princess Amarande in retaliation for Prince Renard’s death, which occurred during an illegal wedding.

  Right there on the page was the accusation that the Warrior King’s daughter was kidnapped by Renard and forced into vows without the consent or knowledge of the Royal Council of Ardenia, or the kingdom’s regent ruler, General Koldo. No mention was made of the signed contract the Pyrenee party witnessed Renard deliver in the council room of the Itspi.

  Even more shocking, it seemed Ardenia had done its own scheming and preparation: The kingdom had crowned a new and surprising king—Ferdinand, Princess Amarande’s brother, younger by a scant year.

  Inés reread the letter. She did not care how long the captain waited in silence.

  At the bottom of the parchment—beneath the stacked signatures of the new king, his suddenly reappearing mother, and each of Ardenia’s Royal Council members—was a footnote specifying that copies of the letter were sent to the other standing kingdoms of the union of the Sand and Sky.

  Domingu had promised to send word of the wedding on the heels of the finished contract. A short delay meant to give Inés time to inform her council and prepare to travel for the nuptials.

  Those announcements would arrive tomorrow to Ardenia, Myrcell, and the nobility worth filling a court. Which meant this letter was sent without knowledge of the impending wedding.

  A gutsy first strike, indeed.

  A statement made because Ardenia had expected her to retaliate for Renard’s murder right away. It also allowed for the convenient coronation of this so-called son of Sendoa. No one had heard from Geneva in fifteen years—therefore, it was tough to fathom, let alone believe, that a new, unknown male heir could just appear at the Itspi.

  But of course Geneva would do something like this.

  Of course.

  The woman always found a way around an inconvenience. And this baby king was her pawn and ticket in one.

  And yet Inés found small comfort in this knowledge. If it was true that Sendoa had a son, that would explain why the king had continuously rebuffed her. And, perhaps, why he had never rewritten the laws in Amarande’s favor. Something that clearly frustrated both the princess and the councilors who worked so hard to marry her off.

  It also meant that Amarande or one of her surrogates—the stableboy, the hired pirates, or the single hired hand in Renard’s party who was unaccounted for—had delivered the story of the disastrous wedding within the Bellringe’s walls straight to Ardenia itself.

  The Dowager Queen’s quarantine of guests meant it could be no one else … well, except the one other person who was missing.

  Taillefer.

  Inés closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Yes, disownment would not be enough. That boy would most certainly be the death of her if she didn’t kill him first.

  She should have sent Taillefer away as Louis-David’s illness progressed and the boy took an interest in the natural arts. She much preferred her second son torturing cadavers somewhere across the sea than in the Sand and Sky where he could wreak havoc aimed at her ambition.

  Again, she went over the information about the wedding.

  Yes, reading between the lines made it all so clear.

  Ardenia did not have possession of the princess. “Murdered” was not a term or accusation used lightly. And they had turned the full scope of the word’s power on Pyrenee as leverage to draw the other kingdoms in their favor.

  The figures on the board had been set up—Tiger, Mountain Lion, Shark, Bear. And now Inés had to see to it that they all fell her way. The best way to do that besides completing the marriage as planned was to expose their lie.

  “Your Highness?” The captain finally found his voice as he watched the Dowager Queen’s eyes fly open and her posture reset—shoulders set back at a regal pitch, elbows planted on the table, fingers tented together. Morning light crept up her back from her open balcony, and she knew from his vantage it might appear that she was aflame along with the blazing sky.

  “As you are aware, Ardenia has a new king, a reappearing queen, and what they say is a dead princess. This turn of events is too tidy, and for the good of our reputation we must prove them wrong. Captain, it is imperative that you leave immediately to find the princess.”

  “Is she my priority over Taillefer?”

  It was an astute clarification on Nikola’s part—essentially, Ardenia first or Pyrenee?

  With no right of blood, the Dowager Queen’s own claim to Pyrenee was weak. Inés knew it and the rest of the Sand and Sky would, too. The best move she had was to project, deflect, and bury any accusation or person in her way.

  She had wanted to bury Ardenia with the threat of war, but if this was her choice she would take a strong claim and an army as her first priority. If Ardenia had used Pyrenee to sell a pack of lies fashioned to install a king with a shaky claim, the combined armies of Pyrenee and Basilica could propel Ardenia into chaos just as easily as a living, breathing princess.

  “Taillefer first, Amarande second. Both if the stars align.” Orders accepted, Nikola pivoted toward the door, but she held up a hand. “Captain, you do not want to return to me empty-handed. And should you run, your punishment will be even worse than death. Succeed or you will suffer.”

  CHAPTER 12

  STINKING of smoke and urgency, Luca and his crew pushed into the rising sun of the Torrent. It was almost as if there were a second dawn here, in the flat-bowl bottoms astride the mountains. They’d already spent hours and yet gained back time.

  And they would need it.

  They’d left immediately, following the path into the Torrent that Mannah knew Erfu rode most often. The hope was that they would intercept him on the way back to the farm, and make the journey to the resistance’s location that way. A little tardy, but under the cover of dark, and ahead of the Warlord’s men who would surely be after them when the bandits did not appear with the Otsakumea in hand.

  But with dawn that hope died away—along with the chances Erfu was still alive.

  They were a target, plain and simple. One in search of a needle in a massive, hostile haystack. No guide, no direction, no way to locate a group that had spent seventeen years working very hard not to be found.

  In moments after the narrow mountain passes opened into the cracked bottoms of the Torrent, Luca was protected on all sides, cushioned from the elements, as they rode in formation as fast as their horses would carry them. Ula out front, Urtzi behind, Osana on Luca’s weak side. Ula had grumbled about leaving his dagger side open, but the numbers wouldn’t allow for it. They hadn’t had enou
gh horses or people—Mannah was insistent that she should stay at the farm to redirect Erfu to them when he made it. If he made it.

  And so the four of them went onward. Into the Torrent. To the resistance. Then, with any luck, to a destiny with Amarande at Luca’s side.

  Yet as the russet dust of the Otxoa homeland swirled about their small procession, Luca’s stomach wouldn’t settle. All his senses were on alert for a new threat.

  The conspicuous: a band of warriors; the Warlord’s caravan crushing down. The furtive: sleeping darts like the one that caught Amarande in the neck and landed her in the Warlord’s captivity; a sudden dagger piercing the most vulnerable target.

  The dangers were real and directed at Luca. The ink above his heart all the proof anyone needed—severed heads in bags were for kings; flayed tattoos were for long-lost heirs.

  Luca’s horse shifted its gait—Ula’s arm thrown up in a signal. Hold.

  Ahead there was a gap in the long line of plateaus—marked on the map as the River of Stone—the sheer faces of the rock formations shifting into nothing but swirling, open wasteland, cinnamon red, and pulsing with waves of heat lifting from the ground up into the cloudless blue of the sky. Luca combed the vertical crags for a sign, fingers already at the lip of his boot, dagger a breath away.

  Ula’s arm swung down and across her body, her index and middle fingers out and pointing about a third of the way up the far rock wall astride the gap.

  Luca followed the slicing angle of her fingers.

  There: A body strung up like a scarecrow, his limbs jammed into crevices in the rock face to keep him in place. A man—with the exact hat and bandana Erfu had donned just before leaving the outpost. They couldn’t see his face. Not from here. But it had to be him.

  Luca’s heart lurched with the certainty that he’d sent this man to his death.

  “Urtzi,” Luca called, “see if it’s Erfu.”

  Urtzi slid from his horse and plucked a dagger from his belt, eyes scanning the rock formations for any movement. Luca drew the ancient Basilican sword at his back—a parting gift from Mannah—as Ula and Osana drew theirs.