“And what of this hillichmagnar?” she continued. “What of this woman named Daryna Olekovna who serves at the Loshadnarodski court? I’ve heard she is like a high priestess or bishop to the whole kingdom. Surely she deserves her own apartment, and yet Mister Kemp has placed her in a suite with the Loshadnarodski royal family, almost as if she is some kind of...of servant!”
“In Loshadnarod,” said Brandon wearily, “the royal family and their chief retainers live in a little compound of tents. I really don’t think they’re going to be offended if we put them in the same suite.”
“Oh, but Brandon, it’s the appearance of the thing. I mean—”
“My decision is final,” he said. “Treasurer Kemp will decide the room assignments, and that is the last I expect to hear from you on the subject.” Hildred looked about to retort, and he realized that, perhaps, he had been rather shorter with her than necessary, thanks to his fatigue. He smiled softly. “You are a remarkable woman, and I need you focused on the state functions. Please.”
She twisted her mouth into a frown. “I wish you would let me take over all the planning.”
“And I wish I could still sleep eight hours a night and that it wouldn’t snow so much in winter, but here we are.” He stood so that she might not have any question that the discussion had reached its end. “Good night, Hildred.”
She rose but continued frowning at him. “You know my only concern is for the king and the good name of Dryhten.”
“I do know. Please never think I am any less concerned.”
“Very well,” was all she said, but Brandon could hear the unspoken “for now.” Hildred departed, and Brandon fell back into his chair.
Once more, he found himself staring into a fire, his mind racing, yet strangely blank, constantly working but unable to settle on anything. A quarter of an hour went by until he recalled that he had intended to mention the Loshadnarodski hillichmagnar, Daryna Olekovna, in his letter to Ethelred. The possibility that she might accompany Queen Nina was another argument in favor of letting Merewyn free, at least briefly, during the upcoming visit. If Daryna felt that Merewyn was being mistreated, she might complain to her fellow hillichmagnars. And that might cause more problems for Myrcia than an awkward royal visit ever could.
With a frown, he searched his room for his robe, which he found hanging on a peg on the other side of his bed. He walked over to claim it, and once he had his robe wrapped around his body, he made his way back downstairs to rewrite his letter to Ethelred once more.
Chapter 4
THE RED FLAME DANCED and flickered in the brass safety lamp. With each step, it swung and jolted, throwing up wild, jagged shadows along the rough stone walls of the tunnel. The ceiling sagged lower here, and the wooden braces were made of newly-cut timber that still smelled faintly of distant forests. Daryna had to duck low, almost squatting in some places. It wasn’t terribly dignified, but it was better than letting people see her smack her head against a beam.
She nearly missed a pair of miners watching from a side tunnel. Their faces and bare chests were covered in fine dust that made them disappear against the gray rock behind them, but when they recognized her, their eyes snapped open, bright blue and white.
“Daryna Matushka,” they muttered, lowering their heads. “Bless us, my lady.”
She bowed to them and raised a hand in benediction. There wasn’t time to do more, but perhaps that was all they expected. Grigory was moving on with the lamp, and when Daryna turned to look back, a few steps later, the two men were lost in the gloom.
As she started to go on, though, she heard one of them whisper, “I didn’t know she’s so pretty!” The other man shushed him and said, “Have some respect!” Daryna chuckled softly to herself and blew them a kiss, unseen.
The floor of the tunnel sloped abruptly down, and then Grigory stopped, holding out the lamp at the edge of what seemed to be a flat, gray surface that went on and on before them, fading out to black beyond the reach of the light.
For a truly disturbing moment, it put Daryna in mind of death and the final Void.
Then Grigory kicked a pebble forward. Ripples appeared, and the sound of the splash echoed off unseen walls high above.
“The water gets higher every day, my lady,” Grigory said. “A year ago, the men were still taking their lunch in this chamber, and the shafts on the other side followed the vein down another hundred yards.”
Daryna muttered a spell and a little ball of yellow flame rose above her outstretched palm. She sent it floating away above the underground lake, pushing it with her mind until she felt it reach the far side. Then, with a wave of a finger, she extinguished it again.
“This is where the cave-in happened?”
“Yes. Five men are still down there.” Grigory said it matter-of-factly, but there was a tremble in his lip that betrayed him. He had probably known all five of them. They might have been his cousins, in fact.
“Earstien grant them Light,” she said piously.
Her voice barely rose to a whisper—not loud enough to echo in that awful space. It was one thing to talk about accidents when they were above ground. It was quite another to do it here, with a whole mountain above them and all that water rising slowly from below. Daryna took a deep, steadying breath. It had been her idea to come down here and see things for herself, after all. She could have stayed up with the queen.
“Is it like this in all the mineshafts?” she asked.
“It’s worse in some of them.” He patted the nearest support beam. “In this one, we can still reach the ore. But not for much longer, I’m afraid.”
She had more questions, but she heard voices, and they both turned to find that the miners had overcome their shyness. There were dozens of them, all bowing respectfully and asking for her blessing. Many were clutching Ptitskas to their hearts or were holding the little wooden bird figurines up to their lips.
The foreman, who happened to be Grigory’s Uncle Ivan, asked for a prayer, and of course Daryna had to oblige them. She had dozens of prayers for every occasion, so she gave them something appropriately solemn, but with some vague hope at the end: “Earstien, we trust that in thy holy Light, all will be made plain.”
“This is a trial sent by Earstien,” Ivan said, when Daryna had finished her prayer.
“No doubt,” she sighed.
“What will we do without the silver?” one of the men asked, his voice trembling.
“Daryna Matushka, why is this happening?” asked another.
Grigory started to answer. “Because our old pumps can’t handle—”
“It is a punishment,” intoned Ivan. “For our lack of faith. For allowing paganism and heresy to enter our holy land. For tolerating sin and vice of every kind.”
Poor Grigory turned pale, obviously mortified by his uncle, and cleared his throat. “My lady, if you’d care to come with me, we can examine the old pumps.”
Daryna knew little about engineering or mining. It was embarrassing how little she knew, in fact, given that the silver mines were the lifeblood of the kingdom, and she had been advising kings and queens for almost a century and a half now. But she could trust Grigory. He was a genius; that was why she had arranged for him to study abroad. And she didn’t even need to see the ancient pumps, powered by sweat and muscle, to know that he was right. They could no longer keep the mines dry.
“When we reach Myrcia, will their engineers really be able to help us?” she asked. “One doesn’t like to think that we’ll be riding hundreds of miles for nothing.”
Grigory’s young face reddened. “There are newer kinds of pumps, though I...I am embarrassed to say I don’t personally know how to build them. I’m sorry, my lady. This is my fault, isn’t it?”
“You can hardly be expected to know everything,” she said gently. “You knew enough to warn us. And you knew where to look for the answer, which is more than anyone else at the royal camp knew.”
He didn’t seem to find much comfort in her wo
rds, though. He was still quiet and downcast when they climbed into the rickety old lift together and started the long, gut-clenching ride to the surface. They crammed together on a little bench, with only a small footplate and railing to stop them from falling out. Daryna had spent most of the ride down trying to remember every spell for levitation that she had ever learned, and wondering if any of them were powerful enough to save them if something broke. Now she had enough confidence in the massive cables that she could concentrate on other things. Things like the physical discomfort of the narrow seat and the long, awkward silence with Grigory.
“Really, you have no reason to be ashamed,” she finally said to break the tension.
He looked around, startled. The motion sent the little car swaying for a few nauseating seconds. “I’m sorry, my lady. I was just thinking....” He cleared his throat several times. “My lady, do you think it’s true what my uncle said? Is this a punishment for...for our sin and vice?”
As he spoke, he drew a Ptitska out of his pocket and began turning it around in his fingers. The little dots of color on its wings—painted on by Daryna herself, as it happened—had been nearly rubbed away. How odd. She hadn’t thought he was so devout.
“Did you have some particular vice in mind?” She regretted the levity when she saw his pained grimace.
He lowered his voice and switched from Loshadnarodsk to Myrcian—a rather strange thing to do in a place where no one could possibly overhear them. “My lady...perhaps I should not accompany you and the queen to Myrcia.”
“Why not? You speak the language. You understand the problem with the mines. Your father says you’re already the finest engineer in the entire Sobol clan. Not to mention,” she added, waving a hand in the general direction of the world above, “you’re one of the few people in Loshadnarod who’s spent significant time outside the country.”
“When I am here at the mines, I can concentrate on my work” he said, clutching the little wooden bird tighter. “When I leave, my lady...when I leave, I am troubled by...feelings. By...desires....”
“Ah.” This was always an awkward conversation to have with young people. They imagined they were the first in history to discover sex. It would only be more embarrassing with her practically sitting in his lap. She drew herself up straighter and shifted away from him as much as she could. “Grigory, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Most people have similar feelings from time to time.”
In her mind, she added, “Including me.” But she would never, ever have said that out loud. It was none of the boy’s business, and in any case, that was all over and done with.
Even so, for half a second, she had a private little vision of strong arms, wavy brown hair, careless stubble, and a beautiful, beautiful smile on a handsome face that begged to be slapped. “No, stop it,” she told herself. “Now is definitely not the time for him.”
Luckily, Grigory broke into this unwelcome reverie. “My lady, you don’t understand. I don’t know what I would do if I were faced with temptation again. My lady, I’ve never told anyone before, but when I was in school....”
“Go on,” she said, even though she was pretty sure what he was about to say.
“When I was studying in Briddobad, there was this...this....”
“This girl?”
“This boy.”
“Oh!” She turned to study him for a few seconds. “Oh. I see.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. His eyes fell and he gripped the Ptitska so hard it was surprising the tiny wings didn’t snap. “I’m sorry, my lady.”
“Why would you be sorry, exactly?”
“Because...because, my lady, to begin with, fornication is one of the Six Loathsome Sins. Not that you need me to tell you that, of course. And what I did was..., well, it’s worse, isn’t it?”
“It’s different, perhaps, but I can’t see how it’s ‘worse.’”
His mouth flapped open and closed a few times. “But...but my lady, my parents and Uncle Ivan always say that men who—”
“Your parents...,” she started. She almost told him how his parents had been obliged to marry in a hurry, as had his Uncle Ivan and Aunt Katya and half the couples in Loshadnarod. But she stopped herself. The poor boy was dealing with enough at the moment. And his desires were immaterial, in the grand scheme of things. So she changed tack. “Are your parents hillichmagnars?”
“Er...no.”
“Is your uncle an angel of Earstien?”
He started to smile. “No, my lady.”
“Are any of them the Blessed Daryna Olekovna, mother to her people?”
“No, my lady. Obviously not. You are.”
The look of devotion that he gave her was almost painfully embarrassing. And yet, at the same time, it was intoxicating, like the best Immani fortified wine.
“Yes, I am. So you will allow that I might know a little more about Earstien’s will than they do. He made us all what we are. All of us, for better or for worse. What I think, Grigory Rodianov Sobol, is that Earstien needs you to come to Myrcia with us. The queen and I need you to come to Myrcia with us.”
“My lady, I...I....”
“Besides,” she grinned and nudged his arm lightly. “It would do you some good to get out of these tunnels once in a while. You can see the sun, travel abroad, see the great city of Leornian. You can meet people who don’t spend all their days singing hymns about Earstien.”
“They sing hymns about you, too.”
“Yes, you definitely need to get away from that sort of people,” she said. “Come on, now. It’s Earstien’s will. And mine. You can’t let both of us down, can you?”
“Never, my lady. But when we go to Myrcia, we can’t let them see our weakness.”
“That is true. But yours is not the kind of weakness that we need to worry about.” She put her hand on his. “Be at peace.”
He was smiling and crying all at once as they reached the sunlight and fresh air at the top of the lift. Daryna felt happy for him; she felt the rush that always came when she helped one of her people. But as always, it faded quickly, and she hated herself a little for the pretense. “Blessed Daryna Olekovna, mother to her people?” she muttered under her breath. “What utter nonsense.”
The men at the giant windlass who had raised the lift gathered around to ask her blessing, and she spoke to them for a few minutes while her eyes adjusted to the daylight again, and while Grigory stepped away by himself with a handkerchief pressed to his face.
When she had finished dispensing blessings and prayers again, she stepped outside the wooden shack and out from under the mine’s towering headframe. The steep hillside here was barren, covered in gravel and scree and cut through with little gullies. All the trees in this area had been cut down, generation after generation, and the ghastly gray scar on the land extended for miles in every direction. To her left and right, and farther up the hill, there were other shacks and other black headframes, like skeletons of fire-breathing creatures who had landed here to scour the landscape and then die. In the distance, at the edge of one of the larger ravines, stood the beehive-shaped stacks of the smelting furnaces, belching clouds of acrid smoke that rolled up the devastated hill to be scattered by the wind.
She looked downhill to the east, to where the gravel and destruction ended and the rolling steppes began. Her heart lifted as she saw all the dozens of little streams and rivers, running high after the summer rains, glittering in the sunlight. Ripples of wind showed in the long grass: green, then gold, and then green again. Down there, where the horses could graze free, the queen’s camp had been set up. There were half a dozen big white tents around the sprawling royal pavilion itself, separated from the common folk by a fence of embroidered fabric.
The tents of Grigory’s clan were down there, too. Even here, where the Sobols worked the mines day in and day out, year after year, they disdained building villages and houses. Daryna’s people moved with the seasons and with their flocks. The mines beneath these mo
untains—and the labyrinths of the holy hermits—were almost the only permanent structures in the entire kingdom.
On good days, Daryna admired her people for this. On bad days, she wondered if it showed some basic deficiency in their national character. On any day, she could roll her eyes at the hypocrisy of people who talked about living simply while they raided their neighbors, traded in slaves, and killed dozens of people a year while mining half the world’s silver.
Fortunately, before she could get too cynical, Grigory joined her again, and they walked down to the royal camp. They found Queen Nina outside the great pavilion with Anik Kaur. Anik served as the Posolsky Dyak, or foreign minister, but at the moment he was holding the bridle of the queen’s favorite mare while her majesty gently worked out a stone from the horse’s hoof. The queen’s eldest child and heir, Prince Vadik, lounged nearby in a camp chair, reading a foreign book with a bored expression.
Nina got the stone out and then turned, brushing back sweaty hair, to see Daryna and Grigory. “Daryushka, there you are!” she cried, bouncing up on her little toes from excitement. “How were things in the mines?” With a shivering laugh, she added, “My father took me down there one time when I was 12. Said I needed to know where ‘the wealth of Loshadnarod’ came from. But once was enough for me on those wretched little lifts.”
The young princess had suffered from nightmares about being buried alive for years afterward. Daryna remembered it vividly, but she politely refrained from saying so out loud.
“I went down there twice,” said Anik. “And I can’t say I enjoyed the experience at all.” He smiled at Daryna. “The Blessed Matushka is braver than I am, though.”
Nina pulled a little gilded Ptitska from a pocket of her leather apron and kissed it. “Oh, our darling Daryushka always knows what to do.” She looked up with wide, hopeful eyes. “You do know what to do now, don’t you?”
“We will go to Myrcia as planned,” said Daryna. “We will consult with their scholars and their soldiers. Someone in Myrcia will know what to do.”
The Queen's Tower Page 4