The Orphan Queen

by Jodi Meadows

“Not long ago you claimed you knew which end of your sword to stick where.”

  Ugh. Using my own words against me wasn’t fair. “Taking me out to robberies, bar fights, and wraith houses isn’t enough for you anymore? I thought we were happy.”

  “Only the best for you, my lady.” He tugged my arm. “Let’s go.”

  We split up. I headed for the scorpion’s back end, looking for a way to climb onto the dancing beast. There were men all around, hacking at its legs and underside, but the stinger came down again and again, the chain striking men aside.

  I sheathed my weapons and waited as close as I dared. When the stinger hit the ground, I darted in and grabbed the chain with both hands.

  The tail whipped up, nearly catapulting me into the forest, but I clung to the chain so hard my knuckles ached. I screamed as I whirled over the tail, swinging within a gasp of the stinger. All my breath whooshed out of me when I dropped onto the scorpion’s back.

  I groaned and forced myself to sit up. The scorpion probably wouldn’t sting itself—if it even knew I was up here—but its exoskeleton was slick and difficult to grip. I braced myself with one boot tread against the shell, getting my bearings. The glowman at the scorpion’s rear prodded it toward the wagons again, but the torches made it duck backward—not too close to the fire growing in the forest. The scorpion struck with its tail, driving back the guardsmen.

  I couldn’t see Black Knife in all the chaos, but he was somewhere in front, trying to get beneath the wraith beast to spear it. But the scorpion was too big—much bigger than the cat—and it had enormous pincers just waiting to snap that reckless vigilante in half.

  There was no other way.

  I stood, clutching the upright tail for balance, and stretched my hand to touch the chain. “Wake up. Be heavy.”

  The tail went crashing down and I scrambled out of its way, farther up the body of the beast. When I reached the chain wrapped between its head and abdomen sections, I said, “Wake up. Squeeze.”

  Dizziness spun through me, and I slipped as the beast shuddered against the living chains. Pincers snapped out at nothing, and its legs scrambled across the blood-slicked ground. Men screamed and backed out of the scorpion’s way as it began turning in a circle.

  Fire in the trees roared, stirring the beast into a frenzy. It banged against wagons and trees, shrieking, and I kept myself low and steady on its head. Where was Black Knife?

  There. He’d either killed or disabled the giant glowman with the prod and seized it for himself. “Will!”

  “Ready!” The shout tore from my throat as I drew my sword and drove it deep into one of the top eyes. A moment later, Black Knife thrust the prod into the creature’s scissor-like mouth parts.

  The beast spasmed. Its back half pulled against the immense weight of the chains. It twitched, and everyone cheered as the giant body hit the earth with a thud. Black Knife disappeared into the crowd, somehow avoiding everyone’s notice.

  Quickly, I drew my sword from the eye and tapped the chains on my way off the beast. “Go to sleep.”

  Men clapped my back and congratulated me, but my whole body shook with adrenaline, and the exhaustion of animating those enormous chains. I managed to pull myself away—I didn’t want to get caught in the wraithy mist like I had in Skyvale—and for the first time I got a look at the rest of the caravan.

  Guards and glowmen lay motionless on the road, their bodies illuminated by the blaze growing in the forest. There were so many people on the ground.

  The scorpion’s body hissed, and a miasma of wraith poured into the air above it. Then, the white mist split and snaked around a few men, hitting three or four men in the chest. They all dropped to their knees and coughed, but a moment later, they were fine. Back on their feet, as though nothing had happened.

  The mist was wraith, that much I knew, but why touch some people and not others?

  My head spun with confusion and weariness, but there was still a fire to put out, so I wiped my sword clean and sheathed it, and accepted a section of the heavy, rigid hose that syphoned water from the nearby river.

  Water sprayed onto the forest fire, and heat and steam rolled off in waves. Within minutes, the flames were out.

  The fight and fire had left me nauseous. I staggered down the road a ways and heaved, doubting I’d ever be able to sleep again after that nightmare.

  When I straightened, a black silhouette stood down the road, motionless as our eyes met. He sheathed his sword and lifted a hand in good-bye.

  I stayed planted as he stepped backward. I should have said something. Done something. But while I stood there with all these strange emotions boiling inside me, Black Knife vanished into the smoke and steam and darkness.

  “See you when I come back,” I whispered. But he was already gone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE CARAVAN WAS determined to arrive in West Pass Watch on schedule, in spite of the attack, and so it resumed the long journey over and around the mountains.

  As we trudged up the winding roads, some of the guards worked on the lyrics to their new song, “Will Makes the Kill,” and I ducked my head in embarrassment. Maybe that was another reason Black Knife wore a mask: so he could escape the people’s adulations by simply removing that slip of silk.

  Anyway, it seemed wrong to take credit for killing the scorpion when Black Knife had done half the work. And I’d cheated by using magic. The very thing that had made that creature.

  “You ever been to West Pass Watch, Will?” asked Josh Blue. The guard had been one of the men I’d saved during the scorpion attack, and he’d made it his priority to look out for me—since he still believed I was a young, inexperienced boy trying to pay for my education.

  “Never been out of Skyvale,” I said, squinting against the early afternoon glare.

  “You’re in for a sight, then.” He pointed up at the weathered, gray bricks peeking out from the autumn foliage. “The castle was built long before Skyvale Palace. That one is only two hundred years old, a baby palace. But this one is from centuries before Skyvale ever was. It was built with magic, by some of the original settlers from the old land across the sea. West Pass Watch and its twin castle, East Pass Watch, were the first kings’ homes, back when the Indigo Kingdom was much smaller.”

  “How small?”

  “The whole thing was inside this valley, everything the House of the Dragon claims. The rest came during a series of wars with ancient kingdoms you’ve probably never heard of. They were incorporated as territories for a while, given overlords who were all related to the king of the time, then made official parts of the Indigo Kingdom.”

  “Like what’s happening with Aecor now?” The words caught in my throat. “The king’s younger brother is Overlord of Aecor.”

  Josh shrugged. “Hard to say with times like this, with the wraith just beyond the mountains. Before, I’d have said yes. But now, it’ll be a miracle if we’re around long enough to see any changes in our world.”

  I checked the woods, but this area was heavily patrolled; it seemed unlikely we’d run into any difficulty just outside West Pass Watch. The only trouble was the ever-present stink of wraith, which grew stronger every day, though it seemed my nose was becoming accustomed to it.

  “So this castle.” I motioned upward. “This one and the other guarded the western and eastern borders of the Indigo Kingdom?”

  Josh nodded. “King of the time lived at whichever end he was fighting a war on. It was usually the east, as their attentions began focusing on what is now the eastern areas of the kingdom—from those mountains to Aecor. West Pass Watch was pretty neglected until the year eight thirty-five, when the Pierces seized power from the Gearys. Terrell the First gave the keep to one of his top supporters, but it went back into Pierce hands when the wraith problem was discovered.”

  “You know a lot of history.”

  He grinned and waved away my comment. “We all have our passions. I do my reading on these trips, once we get to West Pass Watch.
There’s a lot of off-duty time coming up. The merchants need fewer guards in the Watch, so most of us spend time training with any in the Indigo Army that won’t look down on us for being hired. I split my time between training and looking through old journals and history books.”

  “Old journals and history books are only as good as the people who wrote them.”

  Josh laughed and patted my cap. “You’ve got a wise young mind. How old did you say you were? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  Nearly eighteen. “Old enough to work.” I added a defensive note to my words, but I didn’t mean it.

  He grunted, but talked my ears off the rest of the way up to the Watch, pointing out specific bits of architecture he liked, or where a king once drunkenly lost a fistfight with one of his daughter’s suitors.

  The caravan leaders guided the wagons off the tracks and—once the bigger wheels were on—directed them around the lower bailey. Soldiers on the ramparts cheered and trumpets blared. A caravan of merchandise was as good a reason as any to celebrate out here.

  “When will we have time off?” I asked Josh. “I’d like to see off the western wall.”

  “They don’t like us wandering around too much.” He pressed his mouth into a line. “But I know a few people who won’t care about my showing you around, if you don’t mind the company.”

  “I’d appreciate it, in fact.”

  The castle itself was deceptively familiar. Now that I knew it was twin to the old palace—East Pass Watch—I could see the similarities of the core structures, though centuries of upgrading had marked the ancient keeps in different ways. While the old palace was regal like an aged queen who tried to disguise unfortunate sagging by dressing in ever-more elaborate gowns, West Pass Watch had aged gracefully, with additions that complemented the original design.

  After an hour, we finally made it to the west-facing ramparts, and I had my first glimpse of the wraithland.

  “There it is,” said Josh. “That glow just beyond the mountains.”

  “There are so many mountains.” I hadn’t expected that, though I should have. I’d seen the maps.

  “The mountains are what protect the Indigo Kingdom from the worst of the wraith storms and beasts,” Josh said.

  Probably so, but if the mountains we’d already crossed had seemed endless, these looked even more formidable. Though they were all dressed in their autumn best, what had been beautiful and rolling before became unbearably severe. Some of those peaks were higher than the one West Pass Watch stood upon. To get to the wraithland, I’d have to go through all of that.

  “I guess the stories about glowmen—soldiers here watching them fight one another when they’re dumped in the wraithland—that’s just fiction, then?”

  He nodded. “Lots of stories about the wraithland are just stories. But there are even more things out there than are conceivable—things too awful to be stories.”

  “Have you ever been?”

  “Once,” he said softly. “To the very edge of it. I was hired to map its progress just a few months ago. At first I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to know when I’d reached it. But I did. I knew the moment I stepped into the wraithland, and I don’t mind saying that I stepped right back out. Just placed my marker and left.”

  “How long did it take to get there?”

  The older guard just studied me for a moment, like he could see through to all of my plans. “About three days, walking. I suppose it’d have been much faster on horseback, but I couldn’t imagine doing that to an animal. I wished for one, though, on my way back. I don’t care how well it pays. I’ll never take that job again.”

  I lowered my eyes, as though ashamed for making him talk about it. “I see.”

  He patted my shoulder. “I’ll let you be for a while. Go on to the southern apartments when you’re ready. We’ll get dinner there in”—he checked a pocket watch—“two hours.”

  I thanked him again, and when he and the others were gone, I slumped against the wall, already regretting my decision.

  I could almost hear Melanie and Black Knife now: I didn’t have to go. I could wait the two weeks here in relative comfort, read some of Josh’s books, and head back to Skyvale.

  But how could I come all this way only to turn back?

  What had I told Melanie? A queen who wouldn’t take risks for her people wasn’t worthy of being a queen at all.

  I would take this risk.

  Before I headed down to dinner, I found the map room—just a brief wave on our earlier tour—and went to studying. There were several roads into the wraithland, many well maintained—and well guarded—which meant I had to find a less desirable route if I didn’t want to get caught.

  It took an hour and a half of searching and comparing routes with maintenance and surveillance documentation, but at last I found something I could live with—hopefully—and carefully wrote out detailed directions, copying maps and lifting any papers that looked useful.

  Armed with a plan, I went to dinner late and took my bunk in the spare barracks meant for visiting caravan guards. When snores resounded through the building, I gathered my backpack and map, stole as many rations from the kitchen as I could carry, and hurried through the keep to take a few other supplies I might need.

  In the stables, I liberated a gelding horse from his stall, along with a sack of oats. There was still enough grass on the ground to supplement his feed.

  I adjusted my cap and put on the small Indigo Army jacket I’d just stolen, and on my way out of the keep, I told the gate guard that I was a new messenger; I showed him a sealed paper I’d nicked from the map room. Without comment, the guard waved me on.

  Dawn was still hours away, but the wraithland’s glow shed plenty of light to see by. The chestnut horse picked his way down the road, keeping close to the old railroad tracks that wound through the mountains.

  The first day was much like my journey to West Pass Watch, but much faster. I managed to spear a rabbit for dinner, but when I began skinning it, I realized how big and heavy it was—much larger than normal rabbits. Swirls of dark, dark blue crawled up from its hindquarters; I’d thought they were shadows before.

  With an acid tingle in the back of my throat, I heaved the wraith rabbit back into the woods and ate some of my rations instead.

  The second day, I entered the wraithland.

  Josh’s warning had been good; I knew the moment I stepped across the border.

  Cold prickled over my face, like I’d stepped into a fog bank. The air was wetter, heavier, and the sun dimmed as though it had receded a great distance. Gray tinged the sky.

  “It’s as though half the color has seeped out of the world,” I muttered to my horse. His ears flickered back, but the muscles in his neck remained taut as he stared into shadows so deep they looked like night.

  I petted him and murmured reassurances, but he didn’t acknowledge me.

  Fingers of white mist reached through the waist-high grass, rustling the browning blades until they sounded like voices. “Who’s watching?” it sounded like. “Someone’s watching.”

  I twisted around, horse tack squeaking as I scanned the forest around me and the base of the mountains behind me. There was nothing unusual, though; just that vague, growing tension and sensation of being followed.

  As the sun arced across the sky, West Pass Watch became invisible among the russet heights of the mountains. I was truly alone now.

  My heart felt like it fluttered in my chest. “Do you have a name, horse?” I reached forward and scratched his ears. “Not that you can tell me, I suppose. What about Ferguson?”

  He shook his head and grunted.

  Good enough. “Ferguson it is.”

  It was stupid, but having a name for the horse made me feel a little better. A little.

  Hyperaware of every gust and gasp of wind, I pushed deeper into the wraithland until nightfall. With Ferguson tied to a wilting tree, enough slack on his lead so he could chew on the yellowing grass, I climbed into the cr
adle of an oak tree’s branches.

  Deep slashes marred the trunk and branches, evidence of huge predators nearby. The wooden ridges pressed against my spine as I settled in, then forced down a small meal of deer jerky and water. I didn’t feel safe exactly, but with a hundred golden leaves veiling me, I hoped I’d get a little rest.

  Acrid-stinking wind cut through the forest. Something—a leaf?—caressed my cheek with a dry scrape. I jumped and scrubbed my palms over my face, but whatever had touched me was gone, and the area was too dark to see anything.

  I bit back a panicked meep and dug through my bag for Black Knife’s spare mask. When the cool silk covered my head and the eye slit was faced forward, I tried to breathe more deeply to slow my racing heart.

  “There’s nothing out there,” I whispered.

  The only sound was the wind in my ears and the soft thumps of my horse moving below.

  I lit a candle stub and pulled out my notebook, pen, and a flat bottle of ink that I’d found would sit in my packs without getting in the way. By the flickering candlelight, I wrote about my first day in the wraithland, recording detailed notes about the smell and wind and ailing vegetation.

  It’s watching me, I wrote, and closed my notebook.

  Trees groaned all night in the wind. Every time I closed my eyes, something crashed in the woods. Part of me wanted to find it and face it.

  Instead, I pulled my blanket higher and my mask lower, trying to ignore Ferguson’s grunts and sighs. In the fits of sleep, my body grew stiff and tense, overwhelmed with this unfamiliar place and unfamiliar sounds. The night had never seemed so long.

  Sometime before dawn, a shout tore from the north. A human shout.

  I jerked awake and peered through the darkness.

  “The trees told me there’s someone here.” Brush crackled and the man stomped through the forest.

  A jumble of other voices replied, too many to distinguish their words or number. If they spotted me—or my horse—I was in trouble.

  Torchlight broke through the trees. The light floated higher than any normal person would hold it. When shapes began to appear between the trunks, it was clear: