by Cait Spivey
She opened her eyes. “Now. Neren said the balance of Arido has been upset. I do not think it is the balance of power, nor even of population. I believe it is the balance of preference,” she said.
“It is as Evadine-ami said. The closer the people are to the clans, the more they favor the Kavanaghs,” Lanyic said.
Jon shook his head. “It’s not all geographical. It’s political. If a citizen is unhappy with our method, they use the witch method and vice versa. Theodor’s discussion of stationary was quite close to the mark, really. I think the best course of action would be to invite the Kavanaghs and their captains to a special council to discuss and rectify discrepancies in our laws. We should send a message to the witch-son, and have him arrange it.”
“I agree,” Guerline said. “Since we can make no further progress on that subject without the witches, I propose we move on to—”
“Wait!” Pearce shrieked. “We have addressed the threat of Thiymen, but what of Adenen? Morgana is not Fiona; her sisters would not suppress her. She must be dealt with!”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Shon asked. His upper lip was curled in a disdainful scowl.
“We regulate her. Send a battalion to her fortress and subject it to military rule,” Pearce said.
“No, Pearce. We cannot do that. The soldiers will not raise arms against she who trained them,” said Jon.
Guerline sympathized with the exasperation in his voice. They were making no progress on the subject of witches, and likely wouldn’t until witches were included in the discussion. There was simply no point in continuing. She picked up her quill and scribbled a note on the parchment before her: invite witch representatives to be councilors.
“Out of fear!” Pearce’s nasal voice carried in the chamber. “They fear her!”
“Out of love, Pearce,” Guerline said. “They have her love, and she has theirs. I fear they are more loyal to her than they ever will be to me,” she added, smiling crookedly.
“And that is the very danger,” Evadine said. “If they had to choose, and could not follow both of you, who would they support?”
Guerline watched Eva carefully. “I cannot answer that. The most I can do is to work with Morgana so that the choice does not come.”
“I fear it has come already,” Evadine said. She produced a letter from the folds of her overdress. The seal on it, made of red Braeden wax, was broken.
“It is from Derouk Madacy, the governor of Braeden,” she said, louder now so the whole table could hear her. She stood. Her expression was smug; Guerline imagined for a moment that she was being taunted, and her heart twinged painfully. She frowned, the skin of her face uncomfortably and unusually tight.
“What does it say, Eva?” asked Jon. His tone sounded indifferent, but his eyes were fixed on Evadine in a more severe expression than Guerline liked to see directed at a friend. The intensity gave her pause. She did not like the thoughts she had in that moment.
Eva turned to him now. She smiled, but it was not a mirthful look.
“The wizards of the Atithi tribe are in Fortress Adenen. Three of them. They have met with Morgana and dined with her. She calls them her brothers.”
“This is an outrage!” Lanyic stood and slammed his large hands on the table. Guerline flinched; Evadine did not. Lanyic looked down at the councilors, fury in his eyes. He turned those eyes on Guerline.
“Do you not recall, Majesty, the letters of recent weeks, bemoaning the destruction of forges by violent sandstorms out of the west? Out of Raeha?” he said. “And now, Red Morgana makes pacts with the desert rats! They are the likely cause of Braeden’s troubles—”
“Enough.” Guerline stood and mimicked him, slapping her palms against the cold stone. Her body quivered, and she pressed her hands harder against the table.
“I inquired into the storms when we first had word of them. Morgana informed me that they originated in the Wastes of Aadi. We discussed the possibility of Raeha’s involvement, but she thought it unlikely. Having no reason to suspect them myself, I agreed. The Raehan tribes have always kept to themselves, have been peaceful. There is strange power in the Wastes, independent of wizards and witches—is there not, loremaster?” she asked, turning to Jon. He nodded. Guerline looked at Eva. The other woman didn’t answer. Guerline looked down the table once more.
“Morgana assured me that she would keep her eye on the sandstorms, and possibly confer with the wizards of the Atithi should there be need. It appears that the time has come to confer with them. I think this is a wise choice, since they do know much more of wind and sandstorms than we here in Arido,” Guerline said pointedly.
“But can you trust in her honesty, Empress?” asked Pearce. His voice whined.
“The witches of Adenen use Braeden’s forges as well, Pearce,” said Jon. “Do you think Morgana would willingly suffer her forges and workshops to be damaged?”
“More’s the point, what could she possibly gain by such a deception?” Guerline asked. “As Eva has already pointed out, if Morgana wanted to usurp me, she could assuredly do so without the subterfuge of blaming Raeha, nor would she need their help.”
Shon laughed an agreement with Guerline’s words, and Eva sighed. Pearce glared at Jon, who only regarded him with indifference. When Pearce turned his beady eyes back to the parchment in front of him, the older man caught Guerline’s eye and winked. She gave him a grateful smile.
“Councilors, the midday bell rang an age ago and we have not rested our minds for hours,” she said. “Please take time now to eat and refresh yourselves. We reconvene at the third hour after noon.”
Evadine swept up her books and paper and leaned closer to Guerline. The young empress patiently stacked her own notes, waiting for her lover to speak and hoping her words would not belong to the new ideas she seemed to have, ideas that echoed strongly of Alcander.
“Lina, can you not trust me? My only wish is to save you from making a grave mistake,” Eva said.
Her hopes were disappointed.
“Eva, I will take my meal alone today,” Guerline said.
Evadine didn’t speak. The words hung heavily between them. The headache that had been threatening Guerline all morning became pronounced and insistent. Doubt filled her as she stood no more than a foot from the friend who had become so distant in the space of a few hours. To speak as she had with Eva felt wrong, but so did everything the other woman had said in the council. The only thing of which Guerline was sure was that she needed time alone to think.
Finally, Eva turned and left. Guerline watched the far door close behind her. She gasped for breath to quell the sobs that threatened to break out of her chest. She hadn’t known what to expect from the council meeting—certainly not a debate about the place of magic in Aridan society. Eva’s position had been most shocking to her. Eva had always been uninterested in magic; she’d never seemed so vehemently opposed before. The last thing Guerline wanted was to fight with Eva, her best friend, her dearest love, her one true ally in this strange new life as a monarch; but she also couldn’t go along with what Eva said without considering things for herself.
Two servants brought her meal in and set the tray in front of her. One of them cut a tiny piece of the steak off and ate it. The three waited in silence for a few moments; then the taster nodded and both servants backed away. Guerline cut into the steak herself, glad for something to do with her hands. She chewed a bite once, twice, then spat it out when her mouth was flooded with a bitter, too-sweet taste.
The taster dashed forward. “Your Majesty? What’s wrong?”
Guerline took a large gulp of her wine and looked down at her plate. The steak, once brown and pink in the middle, was green and oozed yellow fluid.
Someone whimpered. She looked at the servants—both stared at the food with wide eyes. The taster clutched his throat. Even as she took in their fear, she felt a giddy streak of relief. This was real. “Not a word to anyone,” she said. “Throw this out immediately.”
> They scuttled away with the offending meat, clearly only too happy to follow her orders. Guerline waited for a minute or two so she wouldn’t meet them again, and then she ran full-tilt to the gardens. She needed to lose herself in living things.
Guerline jerked awake, managing to do so without screaming. Her windows were still dark with night, and she grimaced at them. If she made it till morning, that would be a full week without being woken by the sound of her own hoarse cries. Her reign was off to a fine start.
She rolled to the other side of the bed, but the sheets were fresh and had no trace of Eva’s scent on them. The other woman had left the second session of the council in a rush, and Guerline had not seen her since. She had gotten ready for bed alone, and it was now clear that Eva did not intend to join her that night. Eva had moved into the Chief Adviser’s quarters, which were the only other ones on this floor of the high tower, but that meant little when the empress’s chambers were a small mansion unto themselves. They were rooms and rooms away from each other, she and Eva. Guerline pulled the pillow Eva had used into her chest, hugging it tightly.
The afterimages of her nightmare faded more quickly than ever, and a smile tugged at her lips as she thought about Eva; but memories of the council meeting flooded her, washing away the fantasies with such a force that it was almost like a sentient warning. Wide awake, Guerline sat up, frowning into the darkness. Evadine was tender with her, but she was also becoming politically extreme—and it mattered because they were the lawmakers. They couldn’t just love each other; they couldn’t be women who had pints with their friends and ranted from barstools about the state of the empire, women who shared a bed and a love and a life. She was empress, and Eva was her Chief Adviser. A political rift between them was the dynamic that had to matter most, despite what they felt for each other.
Tears stung Guerline’s eyes; the darkness pressed in on her and she couldn’t stand to be in bed another moment. She climbed off the mattress, edged around the room with her hands out until she found her Adenen lamp, tapped the globe to light it, and then made her way out of her chambers. Twice she almost turned through the doors that would lead her into Eva’s adjoining chambers, but she resisted. One of them had to be well-rested.
She made her way to the library and strolled through the stacks, not really looking at the books but being comforted by their closeness. The wide open darkness of her bedroom was oddly claustrophobic compared to the tall narrow lanes between bookshelves. She paused and just rested her free hand against the spines besides her. In a way, the books were protection. An escape she would always have access to. A sanctuary, there for when she needed it.
Without looking, she plucked a book from the shelf and carried it to the circle of soft chairs at the end of the row. She settled in, and then looked at the title, which almost made her laugh: it was a volume of nursery songs.
She flipped through them, humming along a bit, until—
“Guerline-basi, what are you doing up so late?”
She looked up and saw Jon Wellsly standing several feet away with his own Adenen lamp and book. His dark black skin glowed warm in the welcoming pink light, and she returned his smile.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
His smile faltered. “You’re not still having nightmares?”
Guerline sighed. Eva had said she’d told a few of the councilors who had been nagging her about the empress’s health. Guerline knew that Theodor had been one, and she supposed Jon was the other obvious choice. He had, after all, known her all her life, and had been her unofficial teacher.
She opened her mouth to reassure him that she was fine, but everything that came to mind at first was false. The nightmares weren’t getting better. The nightmares weren’t going away. “They’re not affecting me as badly,” she said. But only because they were becoming routine.
She was going numb to them. Perhaps to everything.
Jon sat next to her, set his lamp with hers, and turned to face her. She mirrored him out of habit.
“Will you tell me what the nightmares are about?” he asked.
Her breath caught in her chest. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Eva, about the incident that formed the anchor of her nightmares, nor about the week that followed, in which she had been constantly afraid—locking all of her chamber doors, sleeping in the dozens of empty guest rooms so that he wouldn’t find her, hiding in the sewing rooms and pantries and any place she could think of that he would never go. She spent two whole days in the palace Temple pretending to pray for her parents, because Alcander had his own altar and never went to the Temple except for formal ceremonies—and because of a fleeting hope that if she pretended newfound piety, he would spare her.
While Alcander lived, telling the truth would have left her not only at his mercy, but the mercy of a court that had been largely indifferent to her. It wasn’t hard to imagine how they would turn a blind eye to whatever punishment her brother could have devised for her. She could have counted her predicted defenders on one hand.
And once he was dead . . .
People still talked about him. Her brother, the true heir. If she told the truth now, when Alcander was dead, it would only undermine her. Perhaps even throw suspicion on her for his death, however improbable it seemed. She was known to be sympathetic to the witches, and if someone accused her of colluding with them to take the throne, it would be oil on the fire of the debate surrounding the place of witchcraft.
And yet, something welled up in Guerline’s throat as Jon watched her, waiting patiently. What did he expect to hear? The desire to say it out loud grew hot in her chest, to tell someone the truth. Up until now, she had avoided acknowledging what happened—though her nightmares forced her to revisit it—because doing so would have made it real, an actual event separate from the horror her mind reproduced. But what if saying it out loud took the horror away? What if making it real would allow her to really put it behind her?
Jon tilted his head and the motion caught her gaze, refocused it on him. The Lord Historian had always been one of the more loving adult figures in Guerline’s life. She could tell him. He would believe her.
“The night my parents fell ill, Alcander . . . tried to force himself on me,” she said. Her voice was steadier than she thought it would be. “He didn’t succeed, but the memory. . . . It’s hard to sleep in my bedroom.”
Jon frowned and didn’t speak for several minutes, during which Guerline stared past his shoulder and silently hummed nursery songs over the mental chant reminding her that she could not take the truth back now.
Finally, he said, “You moved into new rooms, though.”
Guerline’s eyes widened in disbelief. That was what stuck with him? “It’s less about the room, Jon-ami.” How could she begin to explain? This was a mistake. “He came after me in a private space, a space that was mine.” Her voice started to tremble and her mouth snapped shut. She breathed deeply, nostrils flaring, and tried to diffuse the panic tingling through her.
“Why would he do such a thing, Guerline-basi?” Jon asked, his voice soft with what sounded like legitimate confusion. She couldn’t blame him for that, she supposed. She had been so confused when Alcander reached for her and spoke almost as if he was in a dream, talking to some imagined version of her instead of the real thing.
She unclenched her teeth and spoke slowly. “Alcander always found ways to torment me, to punish me for stepping outside the boundaries he established. He enjoyed . . . being more important than me. More . . . powerful.”
Jon shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. What benefit would there be to him?”
Guerline opened her mouth to answer, but was stopped by a flare from one of the Adenen lamps that mimicked the burst of anger inside her. She stood, the nursery songbook still clutched tightly in her hand.
“You asked about my nightmares, Lord Historian, presumably because you were concerned about me—and now you’re only concerned about my dead, abusive brother?” she seethed.
“I don’t know why he did what he did, nor do I care. I care only that he hurt me, and I—I have been trying to recover my sense of safety, I have been trying to protect my trust in others . . .”
She sobbed once and choked the remaining cries down, then picked up her lamp. She tried to bid him goodnight, but no words made it through the block in her throat, so she simply left. He spoke words she couldn’t understand through the blood pounding in her ears, and she looked back once. Behind him, she thought she saw the indistinct form of a woman reflecting the magical light, but she blinked and it was gone, and Jon was too far away to see clearly. Guerline returned to her chambers, locking all her doors behind her, and slipped the nursery songbook under her pillow before settling down to an uneasy rest.
Chapter Ten
Kanika touched down on the gravelly field just outside the city of Jerica, jogging lightly to slow herself down. As she stopped, she turned and shook the last flight out of her black sail, and then wound the strip of silk around her arm to settle it. Once it was calm, she pulled it through her belt and left it hang where she could get to it easily. She didn’t know what to expect in the city, and she might have need of a quick getaway. She unhooked the panel of cloth that covered her face while flying and pulled her hood down.
From where she stood, the city looked normal. She raised a hand over her eyes to block the bright grey light filtering through the clouds. The Citadel had a corp of witches—pulsers was the unofficial name for them—who spent their days casting magic out over the country, searching for the dying and monitoring them until it was time to collect the person’s soul. The concentration of death was always higher in cities, but never as high as the pulsers had sensed in Jerica that day. Something was killing the entire population.
Fiona had sent Kanika to investigate.