Queen of All

by Anya Josephs

  “That knowledge died with Garem. Excuse me,” he says, and his voice is cold as he walks away—but as he does, he leans close to whisper something. “Midnight, tonight. Find me in the library, and I’ll show you.”

  I meet his eyes for a single second, to show that I’ve understood, and then let him go.

  As I hurry back toward my family, I see Lord Ricard watching me. I meet his sharp hazel eyes for only a moment before breaking away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I’m as quiet and as careful as the bird Sisi used to call me as I leave our rooms that night. I sneak past our maidservants without them noticing me. The fact that our entire wing of the palace is now occupied with my extended family might have something to do with it—no doubt the servants have more work than usual to do.

  As I expected, Jehan is waiting for me in the great library, where we used to meet for our study sessions.

  He speaks in a low whisper. “Thank you for coming.”

  “No problem. I’m just surprised you’d want to meet now. This must be such a hard time for you.” I go to reach out for him, just to take his hand and offer him some reassurance, but he jerks away as though my touch might burn him.

  “Please. We’re in a hurry. I just wanted to tell you. There might be another way.” His voice is clipped, short, not at all like his usual kind, stammering self.

  “For the wedding?”

  “For the Kingdom. Secret knowledge, perhaps written and preserved. Perhaps saved, somehow, from the ancient days—before the konim, before any of this was formalized. Your cousin might have almost found it herself, as she looked into the oldest secrets of the Kingdom.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  He gestures, widely, all around us, and I realize what he means. Somewhere in this library is the ancient knowledge, forbidden and forgotten. “But I can’t help you. I’m being watched, I know it. I’m suspected. By both the King, who wants to find Garem’s murderer—and by whomever the killer is. Wherever I go, I’ll be watched.”

  And no one ever notices me. No, if someone is going to look for this secret, it’s going to have to be me. “I see,” I say quietly. “Do you know where I should start?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is that the konim haven’t always existed, that there have been kings and queens chosen by Gaia’s will since long before our order was founded. And that if that knowledge survives, it is here.” He stands. “I told my manservant that I’d eaten some bad fish and wanted the privy. If I’m gone much longer, he’ll get suspicious.”

  And report back to Ricard, or some other player in this dangerous game I’ve suddenly found myself in the center of, I don’t doubt. I am keenly aware of the advantage of the thing that has plagued me all my life. Because I am unremarkable, I am able to slip beneath everyone’s notice. It’s given me a lonely childhood. It’s also given me a chance to help ensure Sisi’s future.

  He pauses before he leaves the library and looks me right in the eye. “Jena, before you do this, please make sure you know what you’re doing. That’s all I can ask. If you get involved, you’ll be in the middle of the most dangerous situation in the Kingdom. And you’ll be assuring that your cousin becomes the Queen.”

  He nods to me, and then he’s gone.

  And. Not but. And I’ll be assuring that Sisi becomes the Queen of All the Earth. As if he knows how much that is going to cost me. As if some part of him knows just how little I want to see her wear that crown, take those vows, choose her husband and her future over me once and for all.

  This is what I wanted. It’s why I crept out of my bed in the dead of night to come here, why I asked for this secret, whispered meeting. I wanted a path to this very thing—to give Sisi her happiness with Balion. To give her a way to escape our quiet farmhouse life together.

  And yet, if I can find the answer I’m looking for, if I can save Sisi’s wedding, I’ll lose her forever.

  Surrounded by the weight of all these books, all these untold stories, I feel the weight of my own loneliness. I feel the absence of Sisi at my side, her warm, steady presence, and her inner fire. I think of the thousand jokes we will never laugh over together, the days that will go by without her, the sorrows we will mourn apart. And then I do what I know I have to do.

  There’s always only been one way for me, really. Because no matter what else I may feel for Sisi, no matter what impossible desires I may have, she is still my best friend. And I want her to be happy.

  So, I find The Code of the Nation, the impenetrable book Sisi was reading the other day, and I begin my quest to ruin my own life.

  The Code of the Nation is several thousand pages long, and it’s all as dense as the section I read earlier. There’s no way around that. I figure at first that I’ll have to read the whole thing from beginning to end, but I quickly realize that, no matter how carefully I think I need to look, there is simply not much of a chance that the answer to Sisi’s problem lies in the midst of a dense chapter on the methods of agricultural water management most favored by Gaia. Furthermore, if I stick to that strategy, we’ll all be old by the time I make it through the first bookcase worth of texts.

  Every tedious detail in this dull and dense book goes back to the Goddess. No matter how minor, no matter how obvious it seems (that crops must be planted in the spring, and harvested in autumn, for example), every single thing needs to be attributed, not to common sense, but to the will of the Goddess.

  I flip through the pages, looking for any sign at all that the Goddess might will Sisi to be able to get married. I’m dozing off in the midst of a description of the Goddess-favored method for planning a Royal naming when I finally catch sight of something promising.

  The three powers being the branches onlee, and Gaia being the trunke and the roote, yet might the kingdome be sustained without them if onlie Her Will were for it.

  I read the sentence again. The Three Powers are the Power of the Sword, the Power of the Crown, and the Power of Magic, I know that much. I feel it’s safe to assume this book is referring to the same thing. All three have to approve Sisi as the Queen. She’s been through the Testing of the Sword and the Crown already, and still needs to be confirmed with the Power of Magic, to be followed by the ceremony of marriage and crowning. I knew all that.

  But this seems to be saying there’s something more than the ceremonies Sisi has already done—that the many things in the Kingdom that require their approval can exist without them. I’m not entirely sure how much I can rely on a sentence that spells the word “only” two different ways, neither of them correct, but it’s all I have to go on.

  Gaia being the trunke and the roote…

  Again, it all comes down to the Goddess. But maybe that means that there’s another way. A way around the approval of the konim, through some deeper magic.

  I read the sentence over and over, but I still can’t get any more meaning out of it.

  The trunke and the roote…

  There must be something there, but I can’t make the words resolve into anything that would actually let me help Sisi.

  Perhaps this isn’t the book I need. I decide to find another, maybe one that will be more useful.

  Unfortunately, the library is in a state of some disrepair. I don’t think it gets used very much. There is no structure to the order in which texts are stacked on the shelves: I find collections of poetry sitting in between histories and travelers’ tales. After half an hour of careful scanning of titles and indexes, I carry a heavy stack of texts back to the table and begin to skim through them.

  Morning dawns, finding me with a fierce headache and no answers. I am beginning to wonder if this entire idea was nothing but folly. I’m only one girl, and a few months ago I was completely illiterate. It’s stupid to believe that I could find something that the King and all the learned men of the Kingdom couldn’t.

  Still, I have to try. For Sisi’s sake. Because no one else will.

  Oh, Balion would try, no doubt, because he wan
ts to marry her. And he could probably command any number of people to try to find a solution, on his orders. But I’m the only one who cares for nothing except Sisi’s well-being.

  I creep out of the library for breakfast, which I eat in our rooms with Merri and the boys. The rest of the family is still in bed, but I want to get this done with—have myself seen and accounted for, so no one will wonder where I am when I disappear back to the library. If, for once, I happen to be noticed, I know there could be danger. Jehan certainly seemed quite frightened, and I suspect, as Sisi does, that this murder was no random crime. It must have been Ricard’s doing.

  After all, he’s the only person I can think of with a motive to stop Sisi from becoming the Queen. Ruining her future with Balion out of sheer spite seems like exactly the sort of vengeful thing he would do.

  At that thought, the image of Kariana’s cottage in flames flashes before my eyes, as does Ricard’s voice, whispering, threatening me and our whole family, even the baby, if he didn’t get what he wants.

  What he can’t have, he destroys. Whether it’s magic—or Sisi.

  I may be equivocal about the idea of Sisi getting married, but I’m convinced of one thing. If I can stop Ricard’s plans, with this or with anything, I have no choice but to do so.

  “Jeni?” Merri asks. “You seem distracted. Is everything okay?”

  “I was just in the middle of a good book. I think I’ll head back to it now.”

  No one notices as I sneak back to the library, ready to search through more texts. I toss aside several volumes on the religion of the Kingdom, since they all seem to have the same depressing message: only one of the konim can admit a new member to their order. After five say the same thing, I finally get some details on what that entails.

  In Ye True Faithe, only the High Priest may stand forth for the Coronation of the King and the Queen. And only one can be the High Priest. Therefore such a one can be made only through sacrifice.

  Well, that’s something at least, even if I don’t understand it. I wish I could ask Jehan, since he knows more about this than I do, but I know he’ll be in too much danger if I try to speak with him about this again. I have to figure it out myself.

  Just after lunch, I find a book entitled A Path to Priesthood: My Journey from Farmer’s Son to Head of the Konim. That looks promising, and it’s written in language I can understand with ease. Relieved to at least have consistent spelling to count on, I flip through the pages and discover the story of a young man who had risen through the ranks to become a trusted advisor to the King himself.

  On the cover is the author’s name: Garem Linson.

  I wonder if the author could be the same man whose body I saw lying in state so recently. I can imagine those gnarled hands, once young and smooth, writing these words and setting them aside, perhaps knowing that the knowledge he had, of a Kingdom filled with different peoples, would one day disappear.

  My best friend in boyhood, he writes, was Elric Ireith, a member of one of the Dar’fish People, one of those tribes called the Pahyat. There were several families of his tribe in our little town in the Eleventh Corner, and we made no note of his stature or the long beard he sprouted at birth. He was simply one of us, and my dearest friend.

  Yet when I was five and ten, he told me that his family had heard the call: they needed to retreat, from our town to a place of their own, far away, over the mountains. I knew even then, as I watched them walk away, that I would never see him more. Our Earth was changing, and not for the better.

  It was the loss of this friendship that drove him to the Capital, that made him leave his own family and his expectation of inheriting his father’s bakery in order to pursue the secrets of the Kingdom. He had hoped, at first, to find out where the tribe had gone, so he could at least find his friend and say farewell. Instead, his journey led him to the konim.

  Unfortunately, the book doesn’t go into as much detail as I need it to about exactly how he went about becoming a priest. All Garem writes on the subject is:

  As is tradition, I could take on the role I had trained to assume for so many years only after making a great sacrifice. It was not I alone that had to make it—my mentor, Tinius, who held the title before me, made a sacrifice of his own as well. He set aside his dream, and the title he had worked for as long and as hard as I myself had in his own time, in order to pass it on to me. Not for my sake, but for the sake of the Kingdom’s good, did he do this, and it is only thus that such a change can be effected.

  Well, that’s a dead end if I ever saw one. Not only does the High Priest have to choose his successor, but he also must willingly sacrifice his role for a new priest to take his place. Garem is quite incapable of doing this, or anything else, as he now rests in his grave and has nothing left to sacrifice, even if he wanted to.

  The rest of the afternoon is fruitless. I look for other books like this one, other memoirs of the konim written by men who, like Garem, have experienced life in the order firsthand. There are none. So, I try to read more broadly about the ceremony of royal marriage itself. Everywhere I turn I see the same hopeless words—the test must be blessed by the High Priest. The only exceptions I can find are from the ancient days, when there were adirim to perform the ceremonies with their great magic. No hope from that quarter, either. Well, there are still thousands more volumes in the library, maybe millions. I’ll try again tomorrow. Today, my pounding head has gotten the better of me.

  The entire next day is a useless, eye-straining, head-hurting waste of time. The only thing I find that seems even remotely relevant is a footnote in a thin volume about, of all things, court etiquette.

  The well-prepared Numbered lady or gentleman may wish to familiarize him or herself with the contents of the ceremony. It is always easiest to be a gracious guest when one is prepared for what may occur at any event. The details of some religious rituals, as for instance the Third Test of the ascending King or Queen-to-be, may be shocking to the Numbered personage not familiar with these practices, and yet one surely would not want to miss such a momentous occasion! I recommend to the interested reader a direct source, c.f. Gaia’s Booke, or other religious texts, which may be found in the royal library or by enquiring of a member of the Konim.

  Well, at least now I have a title. Gaia’s Booke. Although if I had run across anything like that in my searches, I surely would’ve pulled it aside to read based on the title alone. I spend the afternoon and evening searching for it in vain.

  There’s just one place I haven’t looked. I’m going to have to go to the priest’s tower and search for it there. I remember Jehan telling me about the hundreds of books lining the walls in Garem’s office. Either one of those volumes will have the answer, or it doesn’t exist.

  I plan my trip up there carefully. I know it’s dangerous. I know that Ricard is probably looking out for me, and that if I’m caught, the consequences could be dire, and not just for me.

  But there has to be a way.

  I decide that the easiest time is at night, though the silent, empty palace is terrifying. My footsteps seem to echo as loudly as falling rocks off the polished floors, however careful I try to be. It’s painfully easy to imagine myself getting lost in these hallways and never being found, becoming just one more mystery of the royal palace, one more secret for a future explorer to discover.

  As I turn the corner to the stairway at the foot of the Tower of the Konim, I see a single gold-cloaked guard. At least it’s only one. I take a deep breath, rehearse the lie I’ve come up with in my head, affix the saddest look I can manage to my face, and approach him.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Yes?” The guard is a young man with a friendly face. He looks a little bit like Daren, the potter’s apprentice back home, with the same dark hair cut short around his ears, the same tan skin. Daren is friendly and not too bright, so I hope the resemblance between the two goes deeper than looks. If I imagine I’m with Sisi playing some friendly trick on Daren, and not breaking
into a forbidden part of the royal palace against the orders of the Prince, this interaction is, at least, a little less frightening.

  I gesture up at the stairway that he’s blocking. “My lord sent me to fetch something from the tower.”

  “No one goes up, no one comes down. I’m sorry, miss.” At least the guard is polite about it, so I should be able to sneak away and make my escape if I can’t persuade him to let me in.

  “Please, sir. It will just be a moment. My lord will be so angry if I come back without it.” I let my nerves show on my face, though the reason I give is a lie.

  “Who’s your lord?”

  “His Royal Highness, Lord Ricard. He wants some book.”

  The guard laughs, which is a promising sign. “Of course he does. Tells me he’ll have my head if anyone gets up there, then sends you looking for something he’s forgotten.”

  “I’m new to the service, and I can’t risk my position…”

  The guard steps aside slightly. “All right. Say I stepped away because I heard something in the far corridor, if anyone asks how you got up there. But I think I’m the only one on guard, so you shouldn’t have any trouble. Just don’t disturb anything, and be quick about it.”

  “Thank you so much,” I say, a little shocked at my own success. This is much more Sisi’s area of expertise than my own, and I don’t know that I’ve ever managed to tell a convincing lie to anyone before in all my life. My hands are trembling from the fear, but there’s no time to relish my victory.

  I all but run up the long flight of steps and into the small book-lined chamber that was once inhabited by the unfortunate Garem. At the center of the room, laid out on a pedestal, I find it as if it were waiting for me. The volume is slender, perhaps a hundred pages. It is bound in black leather, the pages edged in gold. My hands hover nervously over the open book for a moment before I dare to flip it closed to see the words embossed heavily on the front: Gaia’s Booke.