Seeker of the Crown

by Ruth Lauren

  And then a hand grabs my boot and yanks my body down.

  CHAPTER 20

  I shout, my fingers scrabbling for purchase on the rocks as I’m dragged down. My name is called in chorus, but I can’t look anywhere but below me. The spy I followed, now cloakless and clad in black, grips my ankle. Her jaw is clenched tight.

  I brace myself and kick, but she hangs on, pulling me until I feel like my fingers will break. I can’t hold on any more, and a noise comes out of me that I’ve never made before—a scared whimper. The rocks below are so far away, so sharp and solid that I can almost feel them. I’m falling.

  Someone grabs my wrist and heaves upward. Sasha. Her face is above mine, brow furrowed with effort, teeth clenched.

  “Get off my sister,” she spits out, and she pulls my arm up, securing my hand in a fissure. I kick with renewed effort until I feel the grip on my ankle loosen, and then I wrench my boot up and down, connecting with something soft—an arm, maybe. The spy lets go and I shoot up, clambering over the rocks, yelling at Sasha to come on, hurry up, move.

  Feliks shouts from above, first my sister’s name and then mine. I look up and see his face, twisted with worry, his hair hanging down. He’s made it—he’s reached the top.

  Below me, Inessa’s spy has stopped. She’s clutching the cliff face with one hand, her other arm held close to her body. Her teeth are bared, though whether in pain or rage I can’t tell. I keep going, climbing with shaking legs and numb hands, Sasha by my side, until Feliks grabs a handful of my furs and tugs until I’m up, gasping and rolling over on the snow, lying flat on my back on the cliff top with the cold wind blowing in my face and the white sky spreading wide above me.

  When I try to flex my fingers, I can’t. So I lie there, panting, until Sasha joins me.

  “About time.” Someone pulls my mittens from my pockets.

  “Katia?”

  A pale braid swings in my face, and she puts my mittens on me like my mother did when I was little.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” she says. “Water I do not like. Heights? Not a problem.”

  I look across at Sasha on the snow. Her eyes are closed, and she’s breathing fast and hard. Beyond her, Anatol’s face appears, his dark hair clinging in damp strands to his temples.

  Feliks runs to help him up just as Nicolai clears the edge of the cliff. I lift myself onto my elbows, fresh panic quickening my heartbeat.

  “They’ve stopped climbing. There’s no one behind us,” Anatol gasps out.

  Feliks lies on his stomach at the edge and peers down. I scramble around to join him. It’s true—the spy is making a slow descent using only one hand. Anastasia’s boat bobs out on the sea, almost at her ship. Inessa and the rest of her spies stand at the bottom of the cliff.

  And the six of us are on a cliff top in the wind and snow, miles from the city and even farther from the mountain pass, while a fleet of warships heads around the curve of the bay.

  Feliks’s elbow knocks mine. “What do we do now?”

  Anatol’s boots scuff the snow next to us. “We head for the mountain pass. If we can find my mother, she’ll be queen of Demidova again. She’ll imprison Inessa for treason and send ships after the Pyots’kan fleet.”

  I get to my feet and stand in front of him. He looks so tired, so torn. But I know exactly how it feels to want to give everything to save your family.

  “Anatol,” says Sasha, “we all understand—we do. But we have to head to the city, to the palace, and raise the alarm.”

  Nicolai bites his lip, looking at his prince. “We could split up. Three to the city, three to the pass.”

  I open my mouth, then pause.

  “Valor?” Sasha pleads with her eyes. She’s thinking about Queen Ana—I know she is—but she’s also thinking about what Queen Ana would want us to do now. What Demidova needs us to do.

  “We must stay together and go to the city.” I hold up my hand as Anatol begins to protest. “Anatol, I want to rescue the queen, believe me. I want to with all my heart. But we won’t make it to the pass without horses. And the swiftest horses are in the palace stables.”

  “We’ll be too late,” he says.

  Maybe he’s right. I falter, but Sasha touches my arm. She places her mitten on my sleeve and traces down the thin, silvery scar that runs the length of my forearm. It’s been a sign that she’ll back me on anything ever since the incident that caused it. Sasha and the princess had been trying to coax a cat down from the top of some heavy drapes, and I’d been summoned to help. The cat had clawed my arm, and I’d dropped it. The cat was fine, but the princess was frantic. I knew right then how much trouble I was in, even as I stood with blood dripping between my fingers and my whole arm on fire.

  I didn’t hear what the princess shouted at me. I was afraid Sasha wouldn’t take my side, but then my sister stepped forward and started talking. After that I was taken to the palace doctor and salved and bandaged. My arm throbbed, and I thought about what had happened all day. It was the first time I was ever afraid Sasha wouldn’t take my side.

  And until the Magadanskyan palace, it was the last.

  But as I stand there with a wicked wind blowing in my face, I hear all the words she just said about me to Anastasia and Inessa, and I know she meant them. The hot ember of hurt smarting in the core of me goes out as though the snow around us has been heaped on it.

  I smile at my sister. “We can do both,” I say, though Anastasia’s words are as fresh as brands in my mind. “But if we don’t start now, we’ll do neither.”

  I look out across the desolate lands lying between us and the city. They stretch into the distance, white and unending, studded with farm buildings here and there.

  Then we start walking.

  The crunch of snow under boots is the only sound until a screech echoes across the land. A lone bird of prey plummets to the ground, and a small brown shape skitters over the snow near the first farm building we reach. The doors and windows are shuttered fast against the cold and wind. The bird lands talons down, its beak piercing its prey and then wrenching back.

  I turn to the others and see Sasha’s face. Her ankle is still bothering her, and she hasn’t said a word.

  “Wait here.” I break into a run and head for the barn, steering clear of the farmhouse. Maybe I can find a donkey, or even a horse, that we can borrow.

  The slatted wooden door creaks. I freeze. A goat bleats, but nothing else happens, so I pull the door open fast. Inside there’s a cow, two goats, and a pig with six tiny piglets snuffling in straw. The goats look at me and bleat louder, so I make a hasty exit and stop only to shake my head at the others’ questions before we carry on.

  By the third farm, we’ve slowed considerably. Sasha still hasn’t complained, but we all keep stealing looks at her, and it’s plain to see she won’t make it.

  I squeeze through a gap in a gate to get to the next barn. Chickens squawk their mistrust at me, and I almost leave right away, but then I see him—one cart horse, with great shaggy fetlocks. He cants his head when I step forward, snickering at me.

  I tell myself it’s not stealing, only borrowing, as I open the stable door and lead him outside. A glance at the farmhouse tells me no one’s watching.

  “Valor, we can’t,” says Sasha.

  “It’s … commandeering,” I say, though I feel my cheeks flush. “In the name of the queen. For the good of the country.”

  “The country will thank us more if we take this too,” says Feliks, brushing snow from the seat of a cart.

  We hitch the cart to the horse behind the cover of the barn, and then, with Prince Anatol’s assurances that we’ll return both horse and cart along with compensation for their use, everyone piles into the cart, and I urge the huge horse through the snow and onward to the city.

  We pass through farmlands and villages thick with winter, then at last the outskirts of the city. Near the palace we hitch the horse.

  “What do we do now?” Feliks asks nervously. He does
n’t like being in plain sight so close to the palace. I’ve been thinking about what to do when we got here the whole way back. Feliks isn’t going to like what I have in mind.

  “There’s no time to be subtle; we have to get to my father.” I don’t even break stride. “You don’t have to come, Feliks. Or you, Katia,” I say. “Sasha and I can do it.”

  Feliks drops back, but a few seconds later he’s right next to me. “No way. I’m not missing out on this now, after everything I’ve done these past couple of weeks.”

  “Me neither,” says Katia.

  “We played every hand we had. This is a bigger risk now,” says Sasha, keeping pace at my side now that her ankle is rested.

  I raise my eyebrow. “Isn’t everything we do a big risk?”

  The guard at the gates straightens. Recognition flickers across her face, along with a resigned sort of annoyance—she remembers Sasha and me from last time.

  “Official business,” I say in a loud voice.

  “Queen Inessa is not here to receive visitors,” says the guard.

  “It’s just as well that we are not here to see her, then.” I tilt my chin up. “We need to speak to the queen’s advisers, the general of the Guard, the admiral of the Navy, and likely the stablemaster too.”

  The guard’s mouth drops open slightly, but she stands firm. “On whose authority? The queen is not—”

  “On mine.” Anatol takes a swift step forward and removes the hood of his cloak.

  The guard is even more taken aback now. She looks more carefully at all of us, frowning when she meets Feliks’s scowling face.

  I gamble on her not being privy to Inessa and Anastasia’s plans and pray to the saints that she joined the Guard because she cares more about our country than they apparently do.

  “Look,” I say, “do you think any of us, least of all the prince, in his situation, would turn up here if the fate of the country didn’t depend on it? A fleet of Pyots’kan ships launched from a secret bay along the coast, and they’ll be passing by our harbor any minute now, so if you have any care for your own personal safety or that of your family, you will escort us immediately to my father. If I’m wrong, you can arrest me yourself.”

  I take a breath and wait while the guard presses her lips together.

  “Come with me,” she says.

  I exchange glances with Anatol and my sister as we follow the guard through the gates and the garden and into the palace. Feliks’s eyes are as round as targets as we hurry through the great hall, up the staircase, and down various corridors.

  Eventually, we come to a set of double doors. The guard gives us a wary look. “There were … orders,” she says as she swings them open.

  There, at a desk, his hands clutched in his hair as he reads a book lying open before him, is Father. He looks up in surprise, and his face crumples even as his sharp eyes take in the six of us.

  The guard clears her throat. “These girls say—”

  I cut the guard off, talking as I run with Sasha to Father. He folds both of us into his arms and doesn’t ask me to stop or slow down or repeat myself. He just listens, though I feel him gasp quietly several times as I explain.

  When I’m finished, and Sasha has added a few bits, I pull away from Father. His face is grave, dark circles under his eyes. But there’s no time to ask what happened to him.

  I glance at a clock on the marble mantelpiece. “Inessa must be returning soon.”

  Father steps forward, hesitating when he locks eyes with the guard. They look at each other for a long moment, and then she steps aside. He nods and flies from the room, Sasha and I flanking him, Anatol and Nicolai behind, Katia and Feliks bringing up the rear. I can hear Feliks making little noises of surprise every time we pass a piece of art or walk across a mosaicked floor.

  We pass a few servants, and all of them register wide-eyed shock before lowering their gazes to the floor. Father ignores them, a frown etched deep into his features. Eventually we stop at a small door. Father opens it without knocking and disappears inside. I glimpse a desk heaped high with papers and a heavily stocked bookcase before the door swishes shut.

  “What’s happening?” asks Feliks. Sasha opens her mouth, but before she can speak, the door opens again, and several harried junior advisers rush out and disperse down the hallways. Father stands in the doorway and takes a deep breath.

  “My mother—” Anatol begins, but suddenly the sound of footfalls seems to come from everywhere at once.

  “I will make sure everything that can be done to rescue her will be done,” says Father, and then he’s off again, winding through the hallways, the rest of us half running to keep up. Advisers flock to Father as soon as we emerge into the main corridor. All around are tight faces, information being exchanged, terse orders being given. I can barely keep up with the sudden commotion.

  As we sweep down the central staircase, Father issues commands, and servants fall away to see his bidding done. I hurry to keep pace with him as he calls for other advisers, for reports from the armory and the garrison. Out a window, I see riders arriving on foam-covered horses, the news they’ve been given plainly visible in their frantic haste. The Queen’s Guard assembles in the grounds, all heavy boots and shouted orders.

  “I’m sorry, but you must wait here. You’ll be safe in the palace.” Father barely pauses as he sweeps into a chamber containing a long table, the seats already half-filled with members of the immediate court. I recognize many of the faces—women and men who work with my father and mother.

  Father stands at the head of the table, and he and Sasha share a bleak look that’s cut off by the closing of the doors and the waft of air that accompanies the solid sound of them shutting on us.

  We stand in stunned silence for a few seconds.

  “What … What’s happening?” asks Feliks.

  “They’re going to decide on a course of action, and then … do what’s best for the country,” says my sister.

  Anatol kicks the thick carved marble of a table in the hallway. “If I were a girl, I’d be in there making those decisions. They’d be listening to me.”

  Sasha says nothing, but the way she presses her lips together plants a question like a seed inside me.

  “Look!” Anatol strides over to a window that faces the square outside. Beyond the gardens and the gates and the square itself is a lone rider, her braids flying, her horse’s hooves clattering on the cobbles. I press a hand to the glass beside Anatol. The rider’s arms are bare, and I see the black marks twining up them. A Peacekeeper, riding in the streets of Demidova.

  Faces press against business windows, and some people run into the streets, bewildered. The guards are all assembled in the palace grounds, and as if that wasn’t a strange-enough sight, now comes the surreal spectacle of a Peacekeeper. I bet the six of us standing here are the only ones gazing on this scene who’ve seen such a thing before.

  The Queen’s Guard streams out of the gates on foot, and the Peacekeeper has to slow, her horse picking its way through the marching mass. “They’re heading to the harbor,” says Nicolai.

  “All of them?” I peer around the grounds, but in a few short minutes, they’ve emptied.

  Nicolai scans the flood of women and men in the streets. “I think so, yes. Why?”

  “Because if they’re sending all our forces to the harbor …” I whirl to Sasha. “What about the queen?”

  Sasha’s eyes are wide. She looks exactly the way she did when she pilfered that pastry from the palace kitchen all those years ago.

  “Why would a Peacekeeper be here?” I ask. “Why would the whole Guard be sent to the harbor?” I look straight at her. I won’t be able to take it if she tries to keep something from me again. “Don’t—”

  “I won’t,” she says quickly. “I’ll tell you exactly what I think, I promise. I think … I think maybe it’s not a good tactic to send the Guard anywhere else.”

  “What about Mother?” demands Anatol.

  Sasha’s
face is pleading, begging us to understand. “If we want to stop a war, we have to send our own fleet after the Pyots’kan ships as fast as possible.” She looks to Nicolai, who nods.

  “All the guards have to go after those ships?” asks Feliks.

  Nicolai bites his lip. “It’s standard orders,” he says. “If there’s a threat of this size to the country, then the whole Guard must mobilize. It’s what Queen Ana would have ordered if she were here.”

  “Anatol,” Sasha begins.

  He throws his hands up in the air. “I must speak to your father at once. I will command him to send half the Guard to the mountain pass.” He rushes to the door of the chamber, but I haven’t taken my eyes off my sister’s face while she’s been talking, so I dart there at the same time and stop him, my hand over his on the handle.

  “Wait. Let her finish.”

  Anatol’s chest is heaving. He stares at me for a second, and then I feel his grip relax.

  “The mountain pass is too small to permit a whole army through undetected,” Sasha says. “That’s why there’s no point in sending part of the Guard up there. But Father would never just ignore the plight of Queen Ana. You can rest assured that he’ll send the best spies, the very best of the guards to bring her back. It’s just that …”

  “What?” I ask.

  She lifts her shoulders. “It will be a very small contingent.”

  Anatol takes in a breath.

  “But that will be for the best,” Sasha protests.

  “It’s also a risk,” he says. He takes his hand off the door altogether. “An unacceptable one.”

  Just then, the doors to the chamber are flung wide, and Father and all the other advisers hurry out, some speaking, some clutching papers, all of them grim and purposeful. Father’s gaze lands on us, but then he drags it away, forcing himself to focus on the general of the Guard as she speaks to him.