The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  The birds kept singing. The squirrels kept scurrying.

  But the spirits were listening.

  And so were her people.

  “Feel the pain. Feel the anger. Feel the sorrow. Feel the loss. And then when you have felt all of it, forgive them for leaving you. Forgive yourself for still being here.” Forgive me, she wanted to say. “Forgive life for being fragile and brief. Forgive time for passing. Forgive . . .” She faltered as her eyes locked onto a child’s eyes. He was tiny, maybe four or five years old, and enveloped in too-big clothes that must have been borrowed for the funeral. He was clutching the right hand of a man in caretaker garb. His hand was swallowed in the man’s hand, and he was staring at Queen Daleina with red, puffy, angry eyes.

  Abruptly, Daleina said, “You deserve to know why.”

  She heard the champions shift and murmur. One of them said, “Your Majesty . . .”

  She quelled them with a look. Raising her voice so that she could be heard beyond the grove, she said, “I am sick. As a result of my illness, I was unable to contain the spirits for a period of time—during that period, your loved ones died. It may happen again, and I may or may not recover. During this time of uncertainty, I ask you all to make every effort to protect yourselves. Prepare charms. Do not travel alone. Keep away from spirits as best you can.”

  The crowd began to murmur. Some were crying. A few were shouting.

  The queen held up both hands. “I have asked my champions to prepare their candidates. Trials for heirs will be held in ten days.”

  Now the champions were talking, protesting—it was too soon! They couldn’t! She was asking the impossible!

  “Ten days until the trials!” she said.

  And the spirits, without her command, all cried together, “Ten days!”

  At the sound of their voices, the people huddled together, looking up at the sky and the trees. Into the silence, Queen Daleina said, “In ten days, you will have an heir. If I am cured by then, the heir will ensure a safe future. If I am not cured by then, I will step down, and your new queen will protect you. Until then, be safe.”

  Chapter 23

  Arin lingered by the window. She heard the bells, muffled, in the distance, hundreds of piercingly sweet bells, and she knew she should be at the funerals. “My sister needs me.” She’d seen Daleina only once since the tragedy, for a few minutes to reassure each other that they were alive and unharmed, and then the champions and counsellors and courtiers had needed their queen.

  Hamon’s mother clucked her tongue. “I need you more, precious.”

  She felt a sudden warm wave of happiness crash into her—the kind of whiskey warmth that burns down your throat and shoots down your arms and legs. It hit so fast that it made her dizzy, and she turned from the window to smile at her mentor.

  Lounging on a chair by the fireplace, Mistress Garnah popped a sugar-coated ball of chocolate into her mouth and chewed. She’d already eaten dozens. The lace clustered at her throat was streaked with chocolate stains. Arin had liberated the chocolates from the kitchen late last night, squirreling them away under her skirts—she’d never stolen anything before, but Mistress Garnah had wanted them and the head cook hadn’t been there to ask. “What do you need?” Arin asked.

  “I need your steady hands to measure six drops of tin-ease, three of goat’s milk, and one tablespoon of sugar. It’s the sugar that stabilizes the potion. Amateurs think it’s to sweeten the taste, but that’s not true, or not entirely true. The sugar is a vital ingredient. You can’t skimp on it.”

  Leaving the window, Arin crossed to the long dining table that she’d convinced the guards to let her drag into the room. It was covered in test tubes, bowls, and beakers. At one end was Mistress Garnah’s precious microscope, carved of heartswood and fitted with priceless glass lenses. Along the back of the table, containers of spices and powders were lined up in alphabetical order. She selected the ingredients and carefully measured them into a small bowl that used to be for appetizers—at Mistress Garnah’s request, she’d relieved the kitchen of a portion of their equipment for mixing and measuring. “What does this potion do?”

  “What do you think it does?”

  Arin considered it. Last time she’d given a wrong answer, she’d been crushed by the disappointment in Mistress Garnah’s voice. She’d spent the better part of an hour huddled under the table crying. Thoroughly mortifying, she thought. She couldn’t believe she’d overreacted like that. It wasn’t like her. She did not want a repeat performance. “Goat’s milk soothes, but combined with tin-ease and inine pods . . . It’s a sleeping potion?”

  “Conks you out faster than a hit on the head,” she said cheerfully. “Only flaw is that it has to be dried into a powder, which requires careful baking. That’s why most people use the less-toxic-smoke-inducing tamar leaves instead, thus making their potion far less effective. But you, my dear baker, should have no problem with it.”

  Arin frowned at the potion. Another mixture that wouldn’t help Daleina. “We’re supposed to be helping my sister. How does this help?” She then felt a stab of guilt—she shouldn’t be questioning Mistress Garnah! Mistress Garnah was wise and kind! Tears pricked her eyes. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean—”

  Garnah waved her hand. “Curiosity is good! It’s a sign of an active mind. Now, tell me, if you were to put this potion into food, what would you cook to hide the taste of the potion? Remember it will be in powder form.”

  “Almond cake. I’d limit the sugar and let the potion supply that. The taste of the almond should hide the bitterness of the tin-ease.” Dimly, Arin noticed that Mistress Garnah hadn’t answered her question. But then that thought was replaced by another: she knew tin-ease tasted bitter. How had she known that? Lifting the powder up to her nose, she sniffed. “I’ve tasted this before.”

  “Pour the potion into a vial, and we’ll start on the next.”

  As her hands followed Mistress Garnah’s instructions, she tried to puzzle out the familiarity of the taste. She’d never cooked with it, certainly. She hadn’t seen it in the palace kitchens either. She’d always been excellent at identifying flavors . . . It felt as elusive as a fish, the memory slipping away from her as she tried to grab it. “Exactly what does the tin-ease do?”

  “Ah, an excellent question.”

  She felt a rush of pleasure.

  “It activates the full power of an ingredient’s essence. Alone, it has little effect. But in a potion . . . Boom! You see, that’s the beauty of what we do. Single ingredients alone are nothing. It is only when they are combined that they have power. It’s the interactions that produce effects. In this case, a few drops of tin-ease transform the soothing strength of goat’s milk into transportation to full-out la-la-land.” She fluttered her fingers in the air. “It enhances what is normally merely metaphorical.”

  Arin jotted a note in her notebook about the effects of tin-ease, as well as a list of ingredients for the sleeping potion. “Wouldn’t the act of putting a potion in a cake change the interactions? We’d be adding more ingredients.”

  “Smart girl. But you always know exactly what you put in a cake, don’t you?”

  She did. She . . . “There was tin-ease in my cake.”

  Garnah popped another chocolate in her mouth. “Of course there was.”

  She felt a flush of warmth at Mistress Garnah’s approving tone, and then she shook her head, trying to think clearly. This was not a good thing. She should not be happy. “You put a potion in my cake? Why? What potion? What did you . . .” She swallowed the words. Mistress Garnah must have had a good reason. She must have seen something in Arin that needed to be fixed or healed or . . .

  “You tell me.”

  Closing her eyes, Arin tried to re-create the taste in her memory. Vanilla, sugar, flour, egg . . . all the usual ingredients. Had there been extra sweetness? Saltiness? She only remembered the tangy edge.

  The half-eaten cake had been wheeled to a corner of the room. It was as stale a
s dried firewood, and the icing had hardened. Opening her eyes, Arin crossed to it. Her plate had been shoved underneath the table—Mistress Garnah had refused to allow any servants into the room, even to clean. Arin took the mostly eaten slice plus a new slice and carried both back to the table. She studied them. She smelled them. She plunged her fingers into the cake, feeling it crumble between her fingers. The icing of the cake she’d eaten felt more slippery.

  She glanced back at Mistress Garnah, who was smiling placidly at her. “Did you poison me?” Arin asked, and then she felt a whoosh of shame for even considering . . . It couldn’t be poison. She didn’t feel sick. She felt much too . . . much. “My emotions. You affected them?”

  Wiping the chocolate from her cheeks with a wad of lace, Mistress Garnah stretched herself out on the chair. She propped her feet up on a pillow. “If you can’t figure out how, you aren’t worthy of being my assistant.”

  Fear.

  Excitement.

  Pride.

  Each emotion swept through Arin, and for the first time, she questioned if they were really hers. There were potions to make you feel strong emotions, she knew. Red pepper, mixed with sin-san root, fueled anger. Marrow from mouse bone, combined with salt and eker leaf, made fear. She flipped through her notes—she’d learned about potions to thicken the blood, to calm the heart, to ease the muscles, to soothe anger, to cause fear or despair or ecstasy . . .

  She’d always felt things deeply. Pride in her sister—she’d always thought Daleina was the best and deserved the best. Passion for her work—when she chose to be a baker, she threw herself into it, worked nonstop, planned to open her own bakery. Love for Josei—when she’d fallen in love, it was no-question head-over-heels, with full-blown plans for the future. And then the despair and anger when he’d died. She thought she’d be subsumed by the pain.

  She pursed her lips and examined the ingredients that were on the table. Tin-ease enhances an ingredient’s essence . . . Glancing at Mistress Garnah, she lifted a cake-coated finger to her lips. First, she tasted the undoctored slice. She let it melt on her tongue, absorbing the ingredients. She knew them all—it was her cake. Eyes still on Mistress Garnah, she then tasted the tainted slice.

  She let it linger in her mouth.

  Extra salt. A hint of sugar. Nutmeg? No, it was sweeter than that, nearly hidden by the flavor of vanilla and sugar. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been focusing.

  On instinct, she reached for ingredients. She sniffed them, and then added bits to the undoctored cake, matching it in taste. She lost track of time as she mixed, added, and sniffed. She then tossed the piece of cake and fetched another one.

  She tried again.

  And again.

  The texture . . . The smell . . . And last, the taste.

  “It’s foolish to experiment on yourself,” Mistress Garnah said. “Hamon once acted as you did. I cannot tell you how many times I came home to that foolish boy unconscious on the workroom floor. Eventually I brought him home a cat. He was upset when it died, but better that than him, I told him. See, I did love him. I do. He’s my boy. He’ll always be my boy. I don’t know what I did to deserve such disdain from him.”

  She felt a surge inside her—an urge to comfort. Tears pricked her eyes. Arin shook her head as if that would clear away the cloud of feelings. “It’s not a single emotion. It’s all of them, targeted toward you.” She looked down at her notes. None of the potions she’d learned matched, but combined? “You fed me a love potion.”

  Mistress Garnah made a kissy face toward her. “Aww, how sweet. And no, try again.”

  Scooping up a bit of tainted icing, Arin rubbed it between her fingers again. “Extra egg?”

  “Yes, a special egg. A fertilized egg, the very first laid by that bird. Dehydrate it and crush it into powder, and it can have a powerful effect.”

  An unhatched egg. The first egg. The first child. Tin-ease enhances what is normally merely metaphorical. “You made me imprint on you. Like a baby duck. You made me want to follow you, please you, nearly worship you.” As she said it, she felt a swirling sickness in the base of her stomach. Mistress Garnah couldn’t . . . She wouldn’t . . .

  “Correct. I suppose in a way, it is a variant on a love potion.” Mistress Garnah smiled, as if delighted with Arin’s performance.

  “I’m your cat. You experimented on me.”

  “I had to be certain it would work on a person before I tried it on my Hamon. Emotions are fine, but I needed to be sure they wouldn’t dim a person’s intelligence. Frankly, I didn’t expect it to work so well.”

  Now she felt a rush of anger. There it is, she thought. Her own emotion, untouched by the tin-ease. “It worked because I wanted to believe in you. I wanted to trust you.” The potion enhanced her feelings, especially the positive ones. But it didn’t dictate them. It didn’t force them to all be positive. This anger—it came from inside her, focused but hers. She gripped that anger as if she were in a storm and it was the strongest tree. Slowly, as she nurtured her anger, she felt the clouds lift in her mind. “It won’t work on him.”

  Mistress Garnah’s smile vanished. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he doesn’t want to love you.”

  “And you did? You barely knew me, and surely what you knew was bad. I saw Hamon, whispering his warnings to you. Don’t trust me. Don’t believe me. Don’t even look at me, hideous monster that I am.”

  “He brought you here to cure my sister,” Arin said. “So yes, I wanted to believe in you. Very badly. You didn’t need to use any potion on me for that.” She felt clear now, at last. Her thoughts were her own again. Her emotions, her own. The anger had burned away whatever Mistress Garnah had done to her.

  Mistress Garnah studied her. “Humph. I’d say the potion wasn’t strong enough. You’ve shaken it off, haven’t you? It’s the anger. Self-righteous anger is a difficult emotion to smother.” She sighed. “I knew you were a smart girl. That’s why I wanted you for my assistant. But now I suppose you’ll flee from me, like everyone does.”

  She should. After all, Mistress Garnah had used a potion against her. But Arin hesitated. She looked at the worktable, at the microscope, at the test tubes, at the herbs and powders.

  The potion hadn’t made Arin good at this. That was Arin herself. Arin had absorbed the lessons, prepared the ingredients, performed the experiments, and found the cause of her sister’s illness.

  If she learned more . . . perhaps she could find the cure.

  “Teach me everything,” Arin bargained, “and I will stay. I will be more than your assistant; I will be your apprentice.”

  Mistress Garnah’s eyes brightened. “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, Master Garnah.”

  Across the burial grove, Naelin watched Queen Daleina. The young queen held herself perfectly still, as if she were posed while an artist painted a portrait. Her shoulders were back, her chin was high, and her hands were clasped lightly together. She was the picture of regal poise. Poor girl must be terrified, Naelin thought.

  “She doesn’t look sick,” Erian whispered.

  “Her skin isn’t sick,” Llor whispered back. “It’s all the stuff inside. Right, Mama?”

  Leaning over, Naelin pressed her lips onto the top of Llor’s head. “That’s right, sweetie. Sometimes people get sick deep inside, and sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do to fix it.”

  Around them, people were crying. Some wailed loudly. Others were silent, their shoulders shaking and their face in their hands. A few were motionless, staring at the queen as if they could unhear the words or as if they were awaiting a punch line to a morbid joke.

  “Are we all going to die, Mama?” Llor asked. “I don’t want to die. Ever. It makes everyone cry. And I hate itchy clothes. Why do I have to wear itchy clothes?”

  “I won’t let you die,” Naelin told him. “And it’s polite to dress nicely for a funeral.”

  “But you told me it’s not polite to itch in public, an
d I’m itchy.”

  She wanted to laugh, but this was not the time or place. Glancing again at the queen, she saw the first hint of emotion on her lovely face: the briefest moment of panic. Around her, the champions were arguing. Some were shouting. And the crowd was growing louder . . . “There’s a time and a place for things,” Naelin told Llor. “This is a funeral, and we must all be respectful.” Guiding her children, she tried to melt backward into the crowd. She suddenly didn’t want to be here, with all these people and all their emotions. It could be dangerous. This much emotion, this many people . . . It didn’t feel like a solemn occasion anymore; it felt like embers inside of dried tinder.