The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  She could feel their size and their mood, the same way she could feel an itch on her arm. It was shockingly easy, a parlor trick, a matter of concentrating on the “crinkling” in the air and bringing it into focus. She wondered, traitorously, why she’d been resisting so hard. If she’d known this . . . If her mother had known, when the spirits came for her . . .

  “You’ll practice this every day, until it becomes second nature.”

  Naelin nodded. She disliked the way they seemed to crawl on her skin, even though they weren’t nearby, but that was a slight sacrifice for the boon of knowing where they were. She rubbed her arms, feeling the gooseflesh, and pulled her awareness back to their camp.

  “With practice, you’ll be able to expand your range,” he said. “A queen is aware of every spirit in her country. She’s granted that awareness in the coronation ceremony. In the ceremony, she links herself to all the spirits in Aratay and can awaken that link whenever she chooses. It helps if you have practice beforehand, so the sensation doesn’t overwhelm you.” Shaking her head, she opened her mouth to say that she was never going to be queen so this was a moot point, but then he said, “Daleina was always skilled at sensing spirits, even before Coronation Day.”

  He’d been there, at the massacre, she remembered. She could see the memory of it in the way he looked out at the forest, as if he were seeing that moment and looking at another set of trees. She had the urge to reach out to touch his arm, to comfort him, but she didn’t.

  She didn’t argue when he told her to practice more. She kept at it for nearly an hour, until Llor began to clamor that he was hungry and she realized so was she. After breakfast, they continued to travel, and she continued to practice.

  Naelin caught the champion shooting her glances every few minutes, as if she were a puzzle that he wanted to solve. If she hadn’t been so busy helping Erian and Llor keep up and “feeling” out the spirits around them, she would have asked him what he found so fascinating. She didn’t consider herself fascinating at all. Don’t read too much into it, she cautioned herself. At some point, he’d realize she was too difficult a student and came with too much baggage, and he’d go find himself a child to train, one who wanted this. Until then, though, she’d absorb any trick that would keep them safe.

  And she’d find a way to safely leave.

  The next morning, Naelin declared the children had to be washed. She found a stream near their camp, with a willow tree that draped over the water. Every time the wind blew, tendrils of leaves stroked the water, creating ripples that spread toward the pebbled shore. Naelin kept an eye on the ripples, her senses open, watching and listening for spirits. Two were perched in the branches of a tree to the north, and a water spirit lurked around the next bend, catching fish as they swam between the rocks and then bashing them against the closest rock.

  Close by her, Llor splashed in the shallows while Erian scrubbed her face. When she finished, she handed the cloth to Llor, who promptly tossed it onto the shore. “Not dirty,” he proclaimed.

  “Very dirty,” Naelin informed him. She dunked the cloth into the water, caught his arm, and began to scrub his neck. He twisted and squirmed, kicking at the water until it splashed his sister, who screeched. “No screaming, Erian. You know better than to make loud noises in the forest. And Llor, don’t splash your sister, and don’t fidget. Hold still, and it will be over faster.”

  With zero warning, Erian burst into tears. “It’s not my fault! He splashed me.”

  “And that’s why I told him no splashing. Erian, we don’t cry about nothing.”

  Erian sucked back a sob. Her lower lip quivered. “Father would understand.”

  The words felt like a stab. Naelin wanted to say she was sorry, but she wasn’t the one who’d forced her to use her power. She wasn’t the one who’d brought a champion into their home. She wasn’t the one who’d changed their lives. She was trying to do her best . . . She sucked in air and tried to stay calm. It would only escalate things if she showed she was upset too. “Cry if you need to then. I know this is difficult, and I can’t promise it will get easier. I can promise I’ll keep you safe as best as I can.”

  “Safe isn’t enough,” Erian sobbed. “I want to go home.”

  “I want to go home too,” Llor said, and then he started to cry as well.

  Wishing Renet were here to scream at, Naelin opened her arms, and both of them piled onto her, their wet clothes soaking hers as they sobbed onto her shoulders. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She stroked their hair as they cried and felt like crying as well, but she didn’t let herself. She couldn’t afford to break down, not when there was no one here to help put her back together.

  She heard a soft clink and looked up. Captain Alet was crouched on one of the rocks. She had her knife drawn and was focused on a shape in the water.

  The water spirit.

  It was sliding toward them, like a serpent through the ripples.

  Leaping from the rock, Alet landed in the water and stabbed her knife down. The spirit squealed, dove under, and sped rapidly away. “You can’t lose focus,” she said, “no matter what else occurs.”

  “I never wanted this,” Naelin said. “I wanted an ordinary life: house, husband, children, an honest living. A few herb plants. Neighbors I didn’t hate. A quiet life.”

  “We rarely get what we want.”

  “What did you want?” Still cradling her children, Naelin watched the guardswoman clean her blade and then splash water on her face and neck. Patches of dirt turned into mud that dripped over her shoulders.

  She shrugged. “Not that life. Far too boring.”

  “Peaceful isn’t boring.”

  “I wanted to matter. For my life to matter. So many people die and no one knows they ever existed. They’re ripples in a stream, disappearing when the wind blows.”

  Erian was beginning to quiet. Llor was still sniffling. He’d most likely forgotten why he was crying. He just knew he was supposed to be crying. Naelin let them rest against her. “You’ve lost people?”

  “Plenty.” Her voice was distant, and her eyes fixed downstream. All trace of the water spirit had disappeared. Casting her mind out, Naelin felt it, hunkered down in the rapids, a ways downstream. It seemed to have forgotten them. “All, in fact. Except my sister. I’d do anything for her, anything to make her proud of me.”

  Naelin cast around for something else to say. “Sounds like you found important work, being the queen’s guard, working with Ven. I’m sure she’s proud of you.”

  Still looking downstream, Alet nodded.

  “What’s the queen like?” Naelin asked. She wanted to ask more: Will she listen? Will she understand? Will she help? Will she keep my children safe?

  “Noble,” Alet said. “Serious. Driven.”

  “Have you known her for long?”

  “Long enough to know she’s a good queen,” Alet said, and there was a look on her face that Naelin couldn’t quite name—it was a little like longing. “She wants to protect her people, and she’s willing to give her life for that. She understands duty and sacrifice.”

  Holding Erian and Llor close, Naelin wondered if she was being insulted. “Are you suggesting I don’t? I’d give my life for my children.” She felt her children shift in her arms, squeezing her tighter. “But I’d far rather give them a mother than a martyr.”

  A brief smile crossed the captain’s face. “Before you, I thought all women of power wanted to be queen. Refusing seemed inconceivable. Your lack of ambition is . . . strangely admirable. You are deeply committed to living a forgettable life.”

  “Forgettable is fine. I don’t want fame; I want happy.” She pressed her lips to Erian’s hair. “But I’ll settle for content. I don’t think that’s so strange.”

  Alet studied her, as if weighing the truth of her words, and finally said, “I’ll help you, as much as I can.”

  Naelin’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected to find an ally in the stern guardswoman. If her arms hadn’t been
full of children, she would have hugged her. As it was, she could only nod her thanks. “I appreciate that. We all do.”

  “You must be able to say no to the queen,” Alet said. “It won’t be easy. She’s intense, and she is the queen. In the glory of the palace, you’ll want to say anything to please her. You’ll want her to look on you with approval. It can be hard to remember who you are and what you must do.” She had a look in her eye—that odd kind of sad longing again, regret maybe—as if she’d tried to refuse the queen and failed.

  “I have two reminders,” Naelin said. “The palace won’t intimidate me.”

  “I hope not. For their sake.” Alet held out her hand toward Erian and Llor. “Come, children, and I’ll show you the proper way to stab a water spirit.”

  Tears dry, they went with her willingly.

  Chapter 12

  Arin had decided at age four that her sister, Daleina, would be queen, but oddly at no point during her calculations had she imagined herself visiting the palace. She’d also never thought she’d need to have her eyebrows plucked to see her sister, but the caretaker who had hustled her away after her arrival had gasped in shock at what apparently looked like two woolly caterpillars who had laid down for naps about Arin’s eyes. Arin thought her eyebrows were fine, and furthermore that Daleina wouldn’t care, unless being queen had changed her that dramatically. Usually Daleina only cared that Arin had all her limbs still attached and functional. But the caretaker looked as if she were having heart palpitations at the very thought of Arin and her woolly eyebrows intruding on the sanctity of the palace, and so Arin submitted to the ministrations without protest.

  Besides, it was nice being taken care of.

  One caretaker, dressed in an embroidered gold robe and boasting a painted image of a bird on his neck, was scrubbing at the calluses on Arin’s hands, while another, who had leaves painted on her arms, knelt in front of a velvet cushioned stool and was trimming Arin’s toenails. A third was whirling around the room, selecting far more clothing than Arin thought could be worn by a single person without falling over. She pictured her sister weighed down by twenty elaborate robes and suppressed a giggle.

  The room she was in looked as elaborate as the people with their painted skin. It was decorated with peacocks and songbirds and streaks of sunset colors. The walls were inlaid with mosaics of different-colored wood, honey and mahogany and cherry, in patterns that made her head feel like she was hanging upside down if she looked at them for too long. The ceiling was laced with strands of firemoss that looked like lit cotton candy, and the floors were blanketed in carpets on top of carpets that looked so plush that Arin hoped they let her stay barefoot after they were done decorating her toes—she had no idea why Daleina would even notice what her sister’s toes looked like, much less care.

  At last, they finished, pronounced her acceptable, and stripped off the linen robe they’d given her and dressed her in a soft, satiny blue dress that pooled around her ankles. Her feet were encased in the softest leather she’d ever felt. She wiggled her toes inside it and thought they were absurd for any real work. She’d have them scuffed in less than an hour. Just one climb onto the roof to fix a tile would destroy them, and never mind a trip into town. The forest floor would shred them. She’d heard that the palace courtiers seldom went outside, but she hadn’t believed it.

  “May I see my sister now, please?” Arin asked, in as polite and meek a voice as she could, the voice that usually got her what she wanted. Arin liked to be nice to people. It usually resulted in side benefits. Unfortunately, these people seemed to not be interested in hearing a word she said. They chattered to one another, debating the merits of one rouge over another, as if it were of utmost importance. All right, maybe I should just find her myself. Getting out of her chair, Arin began to walk toward a door. “This way?”

  One of the courtiers scurried in front of her and bowed. “Only when you’re called for, esteemed mistress. Many apologies for the inconvenience, but perhaps you would like a walk through the rose gardens? Or a tour of the palace treasures? We have many delightful sights and pleasantly appointed rooms.”

  “My sister asked me to come.” More like commanded, really, though Mother and Daddy had said, somewhat doubtfully, that she might not have had a hand in the wording. Arin planned to talk to Daleina about that, nicely of course. Just because she’s queen does not mean I’m at her beck and call. Family should be exempt from royal bossiness. “Does she know that I’m here?”

  The courtier dodged the question. “She has many demands on her time—”

  A soft, firm voice interrupted, “I will take her from here.”

  Arin recognized the man who’d entered the room—he’d visited with Daleina before the trials and had examined her broken leg. She smiled at him with relief. “Healer Hamon! Very good to see you.”

  He wrinkled his nose for a brief second—he must have gotten a whiff of all the dueling scents—and then smoothed his face into a pleasant smile. “I see the courtiers have welcomed you.”

  Laughing, she held out her arms, the sleeves draping in voluminous waves, and turned in a circle. “They’ve made me presentable.”

  He kept his smile on. “Well then. We shouldn’t let their hard work go to waste. Let’s present you.” With a bow to the caretakers, he guided Arin out of the room and into a hallway with polished black walls that wound to the left and then rose up in a series of white steps. Hamon’s hand was on the small of her back, and at first Arin thought he was guiding her, as if she weren’t capable of responding to simple left-right commands, but then she realized he was, in a way, claiming her as his approved guest. The courtiers and guards they passed looked at her, looked at Hamon, and moved to the side, allowing them to pass without challenge.

  “All of these people—they’re to protect Daleina?”

  “She’s the most important person in Aratay,” Hamon said, his voice low but calm and pleasant as always, “especially while we have no heirs. No one wants to take a chance with her, when it comes to her protection.”

  She couldn’t imagine living surrounded by this many guards, to have this many people aware of your every movement, to be essentially imprisoned inside this palace. She wondered if Daleina saw it this way, as a pretty cage. Maybe she does. Daleina had never viewed being queen as a pleasure, merely as her duty. Arin felt a tiny stab of guilt and quickly buried it. The pleadings of a little girl could not be blamed for a lifetime of choices. Daleina had chosen to stay at the academy, to train with her champion, to take the trials, to claim the crown. Thinking of the Coronation Massacre, Arin felt her throat dry. “It is safe here, isn’t it?”

  Hamon swung open a door without answering, and Arin blinked as sunlight flooded into her. She raised one fabric-draped arm to block the bright light and peered into the room.

  The Queen’s Chamber was the most beautiful room she’d seen so far. Everything was ivory and gold and gleamed in the sunlight that poured in from the balcony. Stepping forward, she saw that the trees outside had been grown bowed to leave a gap for the light. She also saw a silhouette of a woman—the queen, her sister—standing on the balcony.

  Behind her, Hamon said, “I will be available to you when you have questions.”

  She turned to ask what he meant—when she had questions? What kind of questions did he expect her to have?—but he was already closing the solid, carved doors.

  “Daleina?”

  She expected Daleina to smother her in a hug like she usually did, as if she were still a little kid whom she could pick up and swing around, but her sister stayed on the balcony, motionless, looking out over the trees. She could have been a statue. Arin approached her slowly, aware of the carpet compressing beneath the thin soles of her fancy shoes and of the swoosh of her satiny dress behind her. She felt like a cat who had been dressed up and wanted to claw at the fabric until she felt like herself again. Stepping onto the balcony, Arin stood beside her sister. “So . . . what are we looking at?”


  “Anything but you,” Daleina said. “If I look at you, I’ll cry.”

  “My eyebrows aren’t that bad.”

  Her sister’s lips quirked and then wobbled. Arin watched her take a deep breath in and realized that Daleina wasn’t joking—something was very, very wrong. “It was Hamon’s idea to bring you, though he claims I was the one who named you,” Daleina said. “I don’t remember. I was half asleep at the time. Maybe I did, but I shouldn’t have. You should be home.”

  “Not exactly the welcome I expected. You sure know how to make me feel wanted.” She tried to keep her voice light.

  “I should have told them to send you home. Made up an excuse that wouldn’t hurt your feelings, but once Hamon said you were here . . . Forgive my selfishness.”

  “Of course. And I also forgive your crypticness.” Arin laid a hand on Daleina’s arm. Come on, talk to me. Look at me! “Do you want to talk about what’s going on, or would you rather skirt around it until you feel ready? I could tell you about Daddy’s ridiculous new project. He wants to build a birdhouse that’s a replica of the library in the Southern Citadel, complete with bird-size fake books on the shelves. He’d been trying to convince Mother to whittle the books for him for the past two weeks. He thinks there might be a market with extremely wealthy collectors.”

  “People collect birdhouses?”

  “Oh yes, Daddy has been gossiping with some of the other woodsmen—he wouldn’t call it gossiping, of course. ‘Sharing trade information.’ Gossiping, I say. Anyway, apparently there’s a man on the forest floor who carves life-size statues of bears and raccoons with hollowed-out stomachs to use as cupboards, bookshelves, or baby cribs. Daddy has decided his niche will be bird—”

  “I’m dying, Arin.”

  Arin quit talking. Daleina’s words fell into her like stones into a pond, and Arin felt them ripple out from her gut, sweeping through her veins, making her feel as if she’d been submerged. “What do you mean?” she asked carefully.