Shadow Queen

by Unknown

  ‘Clay.’ Even as I said it, I knew beseeching him would prove useless. Still, I had to try. ‘Clay, you can’t kill me. Look!’ I swept my hair from my forehead, exposing the marks we both bore. ‘We’re the same!’

  He stopped, and raised his free hand to paw at his forehead. I wondered whether he felt the same buzz as me – like lightning trapped beneath the surface of his skin. What skin does a man of clay have? My eyes dropped to the wound Roshi had carved in his arm, still open and showing a glimpse of his worm-veins.

  Clay met my eyes again, searching for something. I lay still, battling my terror, the ground thrusting into one side of me and Clay bearing down on the other.

  ‘We’re the same,’ he said at last.

  A sob lodged, sharp and jagged, in my throat.

  ‘We cannot disobey,’ he continued, extinguishing the breath in my lungs.

  ‘Clay, no –’

  Leaning on one elbow, the other hand clamping ever higher up my body, he drew me closer.

  ‘You didn’t wait for me, little queen,’ he crooned. ‘But I found you anyway. We cannot disobey.’

  Broken grass stems pricked the bare flesh of my neck and wrists as the sun glared down, releasing the scents of blood and dirt. Small dark sods dripped from Clay’s torn lip. A worm forced its blind head out of the wound, waving in the air as it twisted further out before dropping, cold and clinging, onto my throat.

  Still crooning, Clay wrapped his hands around my neck and squeezed. The world brightened to a painful glare, brimstone orange hues leaping across the pale sky, turning Clay as dark as a patch of night. Familiar and hypnotic, the twisting sensation of an oncoming vision gripped me.

  The earth throbbed beneath me, yielding its secrets – the soft places where the crust shielded rich, crumbling soil; the fire buried deep under the land like a sun, calling to its twin arcing across the uncertain sky.

  It was the simplest thing I had ever done to close my eyes and imagine the crust breaking, the earth collapsing beneath him like water …

  A thud ripped Clay’s weight off me. When I opened my eyes, Sepp stood over me holding a thick branch in both hands. Discarding it, he pulled me to my feet. Clay was clutching at his head, a dark stain visible beneath his broad fingers. His legs had vanished up to his knees in the earth, which was raw and bubbled, as if it had been boiled. Clay started digging, his great hands scraping out great clods of dirt.

  I stumbled as cold crept through me and the world snapped back to its normal hue, the sky a sweep of pale blue gone to white at the horizon, the broken grasses a rotting yellow.

  Sepp on one side and Roshi on the other, we limped towards the river. Roshi’s ankle hurt, and I hunched around the pain of my broken rib. Every time I looked back, Clay was handfuls closer to freedom.

  The river ran bright and sharp, cutting through the summer-grass scent of the plains. ‘Here,’ said Sepp, pointing to a rope staked between the banks of the river. Beneath the rope’s slack span, the water ran fast and troubled, throwing off glints in every direction. A ford, of sorts.

  We plunged into the water which rose above our knees, the rocks of the ford slick and treacherous beneath the river’s pull. The force of the water shoved us against the rope, threatening to pull us beneath and past. My arms burned as I strained to keep my feet. Two slow, wrenching paces out from the bank, the water rose to my neck, and only the rope kept me anchored. The water’s icy touch washed the sensation from my muscles and sapped my strength.

  A spume of dirt swirled downstream as we struggled into the river’s centre.

  ‘Little queen!’ came Clay’s angry cry.

  ‘He’s free,’ Roshi gasped.

  The rocks pitched sideways beneath me, the rope burning my hands as I scrabbled back to stand against the water’s pull.

  One step at a time, we pushed onwards, pulling ourselves along the rope until the water sank from our necks to our waists, then to our knees. Gasping, we burst onto the bank one by one. I stumbled and fell to the ground, unable to continue.

  The pine trees were close enough for me to see the cones scattered at their base. But not even Clay’s cry could pump blood and strength into my legs now.

  ‘Tilde,’ Sepp cried, hooking his fingers into the shoulder of my gown and pulling. ‘Come on. You have to get up!’

  ‘We can’t outrun him,’ I replied, fully spent.

  Roshi dragged herself up, but her face twisted with pain when she tried to put weight on her ankle.

  A splash and a shudder through the ground told me Clay was attempting the ford. We had only moments left.

  Roshi hobbled to the staked rope, slipped a small blade from her boot and set to sawing through the fibres. ‘Hurry!’ shrieked Sepp, his gaze fixed on the golem pushing across the river.

  The final fibres separated with a twang, and the rope slithered downstream, whipping Clay away with it.

  It was no victory, however. He regained his feet and braced himself against the flow, using the staked rope to anchor his position in the centre of the river. At first he looked trapped, unable to release the rope for fear of being swept away, his only recourse to pull his way back to the opposite bank. Instead he turned his back to us and edged to his right, pushing against the flow. At the same time, he took a step backward, letting the taut rope play carefully through his hands. The river battered him, but with the rope’s aid he had the strength to resist it. Inch by inch, he would reach the unsecured end of the rope, and his path would arc him back to this riverbank, and us.

  ‘Now what?’ shouted Sepp, rounding on Roshi.

  She ignored him and looked at me. ‘The sun can burn without casting heat. The soil can deny life while a stone can nourish it. Water can run hard as a rockfall.’ She spoke as if she knew what I’d done to the earth around Clay’s legs, and how. And why not? She’d been raised to it, raised to women wielding it. Water can run hard as a rockfall.

  This time the colours didn’t shift, but still the world thrummed beneath my touch. I imagined the slavering roar of a wall of water, the swell and surge of it as it slammed over the ford, tearing away all it encountered …

  Nothing happened. A sting of panic quickened my breath and made it hard to concentrate, but still Roshi’s gaze held me, and I bent all my will to the task. Perhaps I could not manipulate the water, but I knew how to influence the earth – and Clay’s hold relied only on a thin sliver of wood thrust into the ground, a splinter barely scratching the surface of the world’s layers.

  The rope’s anchored stake jumped free of its mooring. Clay let out a yell and was quickly swallowed.

  I saw the white pinch of Roshi’s eyes relax, releasing me from her gaze and hold alike.

  The river foamed across the ford, its rush impossible to withstand without the rope’s aid. A dark head bobbed up and disappeared beneath the white froth and churn. When I next glimpsed him, Clay was a speck far downstream.

  Sepp helped me upright. The light alternately dimmed then brightened to a glare, disorienting me and threatening to make me topple. After a moment’s wobbling, I thought I might actually be able to stand without falling. I fixed my gaze on the pines and started walking towards them.

  ‘The pony?’ Roshi asked Sepp.

  ‘Panicked and bolted when that creature came close enough to drop worms on her rump,’ said Sepp. ‘All our food is gone with her.’

  Dazed, I wondered vaguely why the pines had boughs needled with spear-tips, and trunks with steel skirts and greaves, too. Then the truth seared through me.

  ‘Iltheans!’ I cried.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THEIR COVER BLOWN, a swarm of the southern serpents pushed forward out of the pines, spears raised, eyes hard behind the cheekplates of their helmets.

  ‘Hold!’ cried the foremost, the Turasi word rough and guttural in his mouth. A red horsehair crest topped his helmet, marking him as an officer.

  My heart thudded at the sharp spears levelled at us.

  ‘I hope you know what you’
re doing,’ Roshi hissed.

  If he hadn’t been supporting half her weight, I think Sepp might have sunk to his knees then and there.

  ‘I seek an audience with Sidonius,’ I said, hazarding what little of the southern tongue I knew.

  The name brought a shuttering of their gazes, their spear-tips dipping a little before settling once again on a line for my heart.

  ‘Naturally,’ the officer answered in Turasi. ‘But why should he grant you an audience?’

  I hesitated. I could proffer my name and former position, but an ousted queen meant only supplication for aid, which was not the best opening gambit. His men would, at best, laugh and enslave me as a quaint spoil of war.

  ‘Because water can run hard as a rockfall, and the earth can boil like a pool of water over a geyser,’ I said at last. ‘If the right person bids it.’

  To a man they stilled, eyes wary. It was clear they’d been watching our battle with Clay. The release of the staked rope might have been a fortuitous accident from their vantage, but not the way I had buried Clay.

  ‘You expect us to let you within sight of the general?’ the officer said. ‘What else can you do, witch? Bring down a mountain on his head, perhaps, or set the trees alight around him?’

  ‘I value my own life too highly for such tactics, Captain.’ Was it weariness that made my voice so calm, as if my life might not be ended by the thrust of a spear at any moment? ‘Besides, I don’t wish him dead. In fact, I come to ask his aid.’

  I wondered how far downstream Clay had washed ashore, and whether a creature of his ilk succumbed to weariness or wound. None of it crossed my face as I waited for the captain to make his decision.

  ‘You’ll keep your powers in check, witch,’ he said at last. ‘One hint of anything unnatural and we’ll slice you open.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Get behind her,’ the officer barked at two of his men. ‘If she twitches, run her through.’ He paused and regarded Roshi and Sepp, as if wondering what powers they might summon. ‘The rest of you watch the other two,’ he snapped, then bid us all move with a curt gesture.

  Steel-tipped spears touching my back, I followed his red crest into the shadow of the pines.

  It took the better part of a day to reach the main camp. It was a regimented affair: hooded bedrolls in precision lines, a circle of stones to mark a cookfire every sixth place, a thicket of spears and swords every second.

  The foreign soldiers glanced at us only in passing as we were led through their midst, their assessment of us as prisoners obvious in their slack, distant expressions. Some stared a little longer, quick enough to wonder what it was about us, filthy and bedraggled and without obvious assets, that warranted a personal escort instead of a swift throat-slitting. But even they dismissed us soon enough: not my problem, I read in the glaze of their eyes.

  It made me shiver.

  In a Turasi army, the arrival of any new factor warranted speculation and investigation. It could provide leverage, after all, or an opportunity to wrangle more standing in the alliance. These southerners were different – cold and impartial. They would stand their ground – and accept their position – without question. Could the fractious, scheming Turasi hold against such discipline?

  The officer motioned us to a halt in the camp’s centre – a great open space, rectangular to a fault. On the opposite side stood the full tents, more utilitarian than luxurious. We watched as he approached the centremost tent alone. After slipping his helmet and crest off short-cropped hair, he ducked inside.

  To calm the anxiety flooding through me, I occupied myself with mustering arguments for my meeting with Sidonius. Any slight movement – smoothing a sweaty palm over my skirts, or flicking a wisp of tickling hair from my cheek – made the soldiers sharp-eyed. When I reached down to scratch an itch on my calf, one of them threatened me with his spear. ‘None of your tricks, witch.’

  It was almost funny. I was so staggeringly weary, I could barely stand. A sheen of grey overlaid everything, as if I viewed the world through a pane of imperfect glass.

  Finally the officer returned to the entrance and gestured me forward. A poke in the small of my back with the flat of a blade got my legs moving before I was ready, and I stumbled. Another soldier jerked me up by my bicep. ‘None of that now, either,’ he barked.

  I said nothing, too tired to correct him.

  ‘Just the witch,’ the officer said, when Roshi and Sepp tried to follow me.

  I glanced back, and Roshi gave me a look heavy with meaning: Bargain well, cousin. Beside her, Sepp kept his head down and his shoulders hunched.

  I ducked into the tent, with the officer immediately behind me. All my senses felt on high alert, taking in the lamps throwing shadows around the single, cloth-walled room. Braziers either side of the entrance radiated warmth and the sweet, cloying stench of burning dung. A man stood with his back to me, bent over a table in the centre of the tent.

  The officer prodded me further inside. ‘The witch, General,’ he said.

  The man straightened and turned. His eyes were pale and piercing as frost. Amalia’s eyes. Ravens above, it seemed he was Dieter’s brother. How then had he come by an Ilthean name and army?

  ‘Sidonius,’ I said.

  ‘My men did not bother to learn your name. I presume you have one?’ he greeted me in turn.

  ‘Matilde,’ I replied, opting against meekness. ‘Daughter of Luitger Svanaten and Laleh of the Nilofen, niece of Helena Svanaten, granddaughter of Beata – rightful Duethin of the Turasi. You speak my language well.’

  Good, child, Grandmother murmured in the back of my mind. Disarm him, unsettle him. Settled is certain. You can’t afford for him to be certain against you.

  ‘I should do,’ he returned. ‘It’s my milk-tongue. Which is how I know that anyone who can take and hold the throne is the only rightful Duethin.’

  ‘Anyone with might enough can take the throne, General. Holding it is the trick.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said, with a crooked smile.

  I wrapped my arms around my ribs, nursing the pain. ‘Might I enquire as to your purpose, General? I can’t help but notice you’re marching an army unerringly towards my palace.’

  ‘My brother’s palace, actually, at this precise moment,’ he corrected. ‘And throne, too – although he’ll soon be sitting it under the auspices of the Ilthean emperor.’

  Sidonius’s clear confidence sent chills down my spine. If Dieter and he had an alliance, my ploy was beyond foolhardy. The memory of Clay, however, and his implacable grip on my leg, firmed my resolve. Allied with Dieter or not, Sidonius was the only thing between me and the golem right now.

  ‘If he refuses?’ I said, keeping my fear in check with an effort.

  ‘He’ll be vacating it in favour of one less squeamish.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, letting a smile touch my lips.

  He pushed a stool towards me with a foot, inviting me to sit with a lift of his chin. I didn’t hesitate: pride could only keep me upright for so long. A throne is a state of mind, child, Grandmother added, so I inclined my head in a gesture learnt at her knee and, spreading my skirts as if they were the glorious garb of a queen, I sat. My ribs sent a burst of pain through my lungs at the movement, forcing me to clutch the seat’s edge before I could regain my breath.

  Sidonius leant back against his table and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I suppose this is where you tell me how you come into the picture?’

  ‘I am his wife, General. One might imagine he’d be eager to see me returned,’ I said, offering an elusive smile.

  ‘One might also imagine he’s already taken what he needs from you,’ Sidonius countered.

  ‘I presume your men told you of the creature we escaped.’

  Though he neither assented nor denied it, the flicker of interest in his eyes told me they had.

  ‘It was wrought by my husband, to recapture me,’ I continued.

  Sidonius glanced over my head, seeking
confirmation from the officer. I prayed the distance had clouded their vision enough for the encounter to have appeared as though Clay was trying to capture me, not kill me. Behind me, the officer must have assented.

  ‘So he wants you back,’ Sidonius said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I dare say he wants an heir, General. Men in the midst of building empires generally do.’

  ‘An exceedingly good reason for me not to return you to him.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I shot back, though it came out more quietly than I’d have liked, my voice nigh buried by the pain of Dieter’s betrayal. Perhaps that helped. ‘I thought we were looking for ways to bend Dieter to your will. I never insisted you honour your bargains.’

  He grunted. ‘You would have made a good Ilthean matron.’

  ‘I am my aunt’s niece.’

  His pale gaze, so like Amalia’s, pinned me, and again I wondered at his ancestry, how he and Dieter fitted together as kin. To judge by his looks he was between Dieter and Amalia in age. How had the middle child landed in the snake’s pit when the elder and younger had not?

  ‘Indeed,’ he said, pushing up and away from the table, then turning back to study whatever it was he had weighted to its surface.

  Unseen currents tugged at me, threatening to pull me under. ‘You mean to put Renatas on the throne?’ I asked.

  ‘When he’s of an age,’ he replied matter-of-factly.

  ‘In the meantime?’

  ‘A boy can’t rule in his own right, lady. He’ll need a regent,’ he said, his gaze fixed on the shadow tracery of branches behind the tent wall.

  Naturally. Grandmother’s voice merged with my own thought as I measured his profile – Turasi man, clad in Ilthean garb. ‘And what better man for the job of regent than the emperor’s most loyal general?’ I said. ‘You aim high, considering your start in the slave pits.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, I will not be regent, lady, although I will remain to advise the boy, if my emperor bids it.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘The boy’s father is the obvious choice,’ Sidonius said, ‘but Jurgas Avita Angeron, may he reign forever, has granted me discretion in the matter.’