Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  They mostly looked awkward, shifting uncomfortably in their seats, coughing discreetly into napkins. Tanya wanted to look at the Queen, but found that she couldn’t quite sneak a look at her; it was too disrespectful, somehow.

  Apparently satisfied with the reception, however impenetrable Tanya found it, the councilman continued.

  “Imagine the situation this poor, pitiable young woman found herself in,” he said, crossing in front of her. “How could a commander of the Queen’s Corps raid an institution sponsored by the Queen herself? But what could she do; she, an uneducated naïf from the Port Cities, friendless and in his power? The answer, Your Majesty, gentlemen, is nothing. But though uneducated, this young woman is no fool. She watched, Your Majesty. She listened. And when the corps was set upon by thieves in the woods, she had the presence of mind—no, the courage”—he turned and looked at Tanya with such a well-pantomimed reverence that she found it downright alarming—“the courage and the loyalty to her Queen to make her escape with the item stolen by her untrustworthy employer.

  “She wandered in the woods for days, hiding, foraging, not knowing to whom she could turn for help, but determined to return the scholars’ artifact to you, Your Majesty. Nobody, she knew, would know better how to advise her, alone and betrayed as she was, than her Queen.”

  There was a dramatic pause, but the effect was somewhat dampened by a stomach-wrenching creak as an icy side door, apparently less used than the grand one through which Tanya and Councilman Hewitt had entered, opened and Sir Lurch attempted to surreptitiously tiptoe his way to the empty chair all the way at the far end of the horseshoe.

  Tanya tried to catch Sir Lurch’s eyes, but the captain of the guard was either too preoccupied to look at her or was deliberately avoiding her gaze. Or . . . he didn’t recognize her. Which was a shame, because as far as Tanya was concerned, this was rather going off the rails—how was her ring of fire and the gold rain going to feature into this story, with her participation characterized as it was? Did they think they could keep such events from the Queen and Council?

  Could they?

  One of the younger councilmen leaned forward.

  “I wonder, Hewitt,” he said eagerly, “if the stolen artifact is the very same one the dean described in his letter asking for additional funding. If I recall, a delegation from the college was set to demonstrate its powers in front of this Council in a fortnight.”

  “It would certainly stand to reason,” answered Councilman Hewitt smoothly. “This corps commander must have had a spy within the college itself.”

  One of the crotchety-looking council members, a white-haired man with a pointy nose and a stinking cigar, waved away the smoke in front of his face and snapped his fingers; a crystal ashtray appeared.

  “Obviously it is the same artifact,” he growled, with a sideways look at his younger colleague. “What else could be worth stealing from that damp old fortress? The pertinent question regards the theft itself. You, girl!”

  Tanya’s head snapped up. “Yes, sir!”

  He resumed possession of his cigar. “Councilman Hewitt claims you are observant. Let us see. First, your commander’s name—which, quite honestly, Hewitt, should have been included in your initial recital. We don’t require a three-act play. The name, girl.”

  “Commander Kiernan Rees.” She couldn’t have resisted the command in the old councilman’s voice even if she wanted to.

  There was a ripple of noise along the horseshoe, but the old councilman simply smiled.

  “Rees,” he said, disdain dripping from his voice like butter off toast. “Yes. It would be Rees. Now, how long were you in Commander Rees’s employ?”

  Tanya squirmed. The true answer was about three days. But somehow that didn’t seem quite long enough to match the picture Hewitt had painted . . . ?

  Finally, she said, “I came into Commander Rees’s employment two weeks ago,” she said. This was true.

  The councilman accepted the answer at face value. “And, during the tenure of your employment, did any courier deliver a communication to the corps?”

  She hesitated. “Not that I saw, sir.”

  “Did he meet with any of the scholars prior to the theft?”

  “I am . . . not aware of any meetings prior to the theft.”

  “Well, did he have any communications with anyone other than corpsmen prior to the theft?”

  “Sir?”

  The councilman banged his fist against the table. “Think, girl! You may be a simple maid as Hewitt asserts, but even you must realize that one does not carry out a heist of this level of sensitivity without knowing what one is stealing! The letter from the college was sent to us, the Council. I know I didn’t tell Rees, so who did?”

  “Gentlemen.” Councilman Hewitt stepped in front of Tanya. “I posit that this girl, brave and loyal as she is, cannot have specific knowledge as to the theft. She is a domestic. She is not trained in the art of spycraft. What tavern maid would be?”

  The old councilman snorted. “All of them, in my experience.”

  “The fact is, gentlemen,” said Hewitt, ignoring the man, and directing his attentions to the younger, more excited-looking members of the Council, “I brought Tanya before you not merely to inform you of the theft, but to present an artifact of great importance to the whole of Lode to her Queen and Council. Tanya.” He turned to her. “You may cease the burden of concealing this great artifact. Present the quill to your Queen and Council.”

  Suddenly feeling a little foolish to be playacting in this little pantomime, Tanya awkwardly removed the quill from her hair.

  “Now come forward,” he ordered silkily. “And present it to the Queen.”

  Tanya obeyed, walking with her eyes down toward the center of the horseshoe, until she could just see the Queen’s glimmer from under her eyelids. She knelt and held the quill out, nestled in her bare palms.

  Chapter

  16

  Tanya had never known a louder silence. She remembered the first time she had seen the quill, huddled around a box with Jana, how they had gasped, dazzled at the glitter. But these were members of the Council. Surely, they had seen sights far more bewildering than a feather, even this feather?

  Tanya was still looking down when a cool, firm fingertip found her palm. As the Queen’s bare skin traced all the way around the feather, probing the lines in her hand, calluses and all, Tanya became aware that she was shaking.

  Still, she didn’t dare look up.

  The Queen’s fingertip disappeared from her palm, an absence Tanya felt as immediately as a torn bandage off a scabbed knee. When it came back down, it hit the feather, pressing down on the spine.

  A tremor shivered through Tanya’s whole body. The Queen pressed harder and Tanya gasped.

  The magic feather erupted, shooting black and white sparks that hit the ceiling, then rained back onto the icy floor in a shower of gold flakes.

  The Queen herself gasped and Tanya finally looked up.

  The Queen was clasping Tanya’s hand in her own, her eyes wide and wondering as gold floated all around them as leisurely and naturally as cherry blossoms falling off a tree in spring.

  The Queen wasn’t a living flower. She wasn’t a snow sculpture, remote and too distant to be anything but beautiful.

  She was ageless and nameless, but this was also a flesh-and-blood woman with sharp fingernails and a dimple in her chin.

  The last of the gold shattered to the floor and the Queen’s gaze fell with it, her eyes meeting Tanya’s.

  The Queen blinked, but she didn’t remove her hand or look away. She stroked the quill all the way down its spine. The quill shivered and turned over, like a dog wanting its belly rubbed.

  The crotchety councilman cleared his throat and broke the silence. “Your Majesty? Might I examine that quill?”

  It was still gently glittering, emitting a blueish light. The Queen gave it one more stroke and lifted her finger. It flickered quickly through black, purple, and red be
fore settling into its customary shining white and nestling back into Tanya’s palm—instead of a dog, now a kitten in need of a nap.

  “Of course, my dear duke.” Tanya’s whole body stiffened at the sound of the Queen’s voice. It didn’t sound like it came out of a human being. The Queen of Lode had a voice like a harp.

  “You may stand, Tanya,” said the Queen. Tanya obeyed, stumbling on her ridiculous hem as she did so. The Queen didn’t seem to notice. The bland smile on her face didn’t move.

  The Queen’s eyes really were something. They were a swirl of color and ever changing, one minute, black and gray; another, blue and green; the next, gold.

  It made them extremely hard to read.

  “Would you please bring the quill to the Duke of Xane?”

  Tanya had never even heard of the Duke of Xane, but she brought the quill over to the man with the cigar. She knelt in front of him, careful to not bend as low as she had to the Queen.

  He plucked the quill out of Tanya’s open hands and suddenly the council room dimmed. The quill twisting through the duke’s gnarled fingers was just a simple feather quill—soft, clean, and sharpened, but just a feather.

  The quill had gone dormant.

  The duke frowned, not in displeasure, but confusion. “What happened to it?” he asked. When no one answered, he rapped Tanya on the forehead with it. “Well, girl?”

  Tanya looked up. “You’re asking me, my lord?”

  He sighed. “I’m too tired for deference. Yes, I’m speaking to you. You are the foremost expert in this quill in this room. Why’s it gone dark?”

  Tanya took a moment to consider her answer. There was much she didn’t understand about the quill or how it worked. But there was also a part of her that knew the answer to the duke’s question—specifically, the part of her burning blood-red with hidden tattoos.

  Are you ready to be important? Councilman Hewitt had asked.

  She took a breath and stood up straight, or as close as she could get with the gleaming beehive weighing down her scalp. Her bones creaked out of the curtsy, sighing as her left hip instinctively slid out to meet her hand.

  It didn’t matter if she was ready to be important—she was important now.

  The duke raised his eyebrows slightly as Tanya shed the simpering, simple peasant and the tavern wench peeked out to take a breath of fresh air.

  “I’m not a scholar, my lord,” she began.

  “Actually, it’s ‘Your Grace.’”

  “Right,” she said, frowning at her mistake. “Apologies, Your Grace. Clearly, I’m no scholar, and I’m no wizard either. I don’t know why the quill does what it does, but I think I know why the quill’s dark.”

  “And?”

  She paused. “You’re not going to like it, Your Grace.”

  “I don’t like most things. Tell me anyway.”

  “It’s dark because you’re the one holding it, Your Grace.”

  Muttering erupted around the horseshoe. She ignored it and went on being important. “Give it back and you’ll see,” she said.

  To her slight surprise, the duke passively complied and, sure enough, the good little quill exploded in a shower of silver sparks, like firecrackers on a holiday.

  “Right,” said Tanya, growing warm with all the eyes on her. “See, when I hold it, it wakes up. I think it’s because I’m the one who’s used it the most, so now it’s used to me. It . . . likes me.” And its fed on my blood, she didn’t add—that would have been too important, too fast. No need to be impractical.

  “Used it?” The Queen’s voice thrummed through the ice chamber. “Show us how you use it, Tanya.”

  Feeling naked without her curtsy, Tanya nodded and looked away from her sovereign as quickly as she could. “May I have a piece of paper, Your Grace?”

  Paper was supplied, as well as a chair, and Tanya pulled up to the horseshoe, tucking her feet into the leg joints, as if it were any other chair at any other table. It was the count’s sister’s bedroom all over again. A chair is just a chair, even in an ice chamber owned by the Queen, she told herself, and, licking the tip of the quill, began to write.

  She started to request a map of the Capital, but then remembered what she was there for, crossed it out, and instead wrote, Show me a map of Griffin’s Port.

  Her home bloomed over the paper, shining and plain and beautiful. Salt, stone, coral, and in the harbor—everything. Just everything in Lode.

  She ran her fingers over the harbor for a moment and then, almost afraid to look, turned her attention to the Smiling Snake.

  She put her thumb and forefinger on the spot. The parchment thrummed under her skin. In a very real way, this was the Snake. She drew her fingers out and together; out and together. The image sharpened until she could see the herb garden, gone to hell since Froud’s death, the empty stables, the crack in the foundation on the eastern wall, and—there it is.

  The quill flew over the parchment. The cavern shuddered like it was in a thundercloud and something crashed onto the ice with a splintering crack.

  Sir Lurch got up out of his seat and retrieved the item, setting it on the horseshoe in front of the Queen.

  It was a heavy slab of broken wood, dirty and weathered, stripped of its lacquer—but the carved serpent was still grinning.

  “This is the sign for my tavern in Griffin’s Port, Your Majesty,” said Tanya, addressing the Queen. “I brought it here, using the quill.”

  “I don’t understand,” said the Duke of Xane after a pause. “The quill can move objects great distances?”

  “Not quite,” said Tanya. “It works like aetherical manipulation. It can move single-source matter. I just moved that piece of oak here—that’s why the paint isn’t on it anymore. It’s probably sitting in little green shavings on the ground. But that’s not actually what’s so useful about the quill.”

  “What’s that?”

  Tanya scanned the parchment and then flipped it around so the councilmen could see. “Look here,” she said, pointing out a blue line. “Because I moved the sign, this river has started to overflow.”

  “Junkoff.”

  “Right. But if I do this”—Tanya began scrawling with the quill along the edge of the river—“I can redirect the excess water over the falls in Polnya’s Port. Problem solved.”

  “Impressive. But can you move anything more interesting than a meaningless scrap of driftwood?”

  Tanya’s eyes narrowed. “As I said, Your Grace, the sign for the Smiling Snake is made of oak. But yes, I can move anything, divert anything, increase anything, decrease anything that you name. I’m confident of that.”

  “You can? Don’t you mean the quill can?”

  She held it out to him. “You’re welcome to try again, Your Grace. I can try to show you how. Anyone with a high capacity for organization should be able to manage it.”

  “The duke has a very high capacity for organization.” Tanya stiffened as the Queen’s voice unexpectedly filled the room, effortlessly, gently. “So, why does it only work for you, Tanya?”

  “I . . . don’t know that it does, Your Majesty.”

  The Queen nodded. “Gentlemen, will you pass the quill around and see what you can make of it on your own parchment? Let’s settle this.”

  The quill traveled around the horseshoe. With each man, the quill sputtered against the parchment and, finally, went dark.

  Eventually it made its way back to the Queen. It twitched against her palm and was eventually persuaded to emit a faint blue light.

  “Well, Tanya,” said the Queen. “It does appear to have a marked preference for you. Perhaps you could show me how to use it.”

  “It would . . . it would be my honor, Queen, I mean, Your Grace, or rather, Majesty.” Tanya took a breath and willed herself to stop babbling. “It would be my honor and privilege, Your Majesty.”

  “Excellent. You will join me in my private study for dinner. Sir Lurch, will you please escort Tanya back to her quarters? My dear Hewitt, she h
as, I assume, been given a suitable set of rooms?”

  The Count stepped forward swiftly. “I have installed her in my own sister’s chamber, Your Majesty, and sent Violet to attend on her.”

  “Very well done. Tanya is our guest and is to be honored as one who has performed a great service to the Council and the kingdom. And to me. Sir Lurch?”

  Sir Lurch appeared at Tanya’s elbow and began to move her toward the exit as steadily as a tide.

  “We will be dining just the two of us, Tanya,” said the Queen, suddenly putting on a set of rimless spectacles and shuffling a previously unseen stack of papers. “You may tell Violet that there is no need to be dressed for a court dinner. You are to be comfortable.”

  Tanya stared as the immaculate, impenetrable Queen was transformed by a simple pair of spectacles into an attractive, even beautiful, but thoroughly human and businesslike woman, perhaps not much older than Tanya herself. Tanya didn’t even realize that she had been removed from the chamber until a smooth wall of ice slammed shut behind her.

  “The Queen always means exactly what she says,” Violet said as she pulled dresses out of the armoire by the armload. “And if she wants you to be comfortable, you’ll pick the dress that makes you comfortable. I’ll not do anything to disobey the Queen’s command.”

  Tanya thought this was a bit much. “It wasn’t a command,” she told Violet. “Really, she was just being polite.”

  Violet pursed her lips.

  Tanya, who could purse her lips with the best of them, matched her glare. “Well, I’ll tell you this much, I won’t be squeezed into another ridiculous atrocity that you decide to call a gown.”

  A small, scurrying sound drew Tanya’s eye as Jasmine entered with an armful of fresh linen.

  “That,” said Tanya, surveying the maid, “looks like quite a comfortable dress.”

  Jasmine and Tanya were built along entirely different lines, Jasmine lithe and narrow, where Tanya was round and bouncing. But luckily—for Tanya anyway—the junior cleaning staff at the Glacier weren’t allotted figure-specific tailoring in their uniforms. So, Jasmine’s dress—a boxy, brown shift of soft cotton—actually fit Tanya rather well, the fabric straining around her hips, the square neckline falling in a fetching but respectable line.