Steeled

by Liam Reese

  But that was an issue for another day.

  Irae took hold of the bars in both hands and pressed her face against the cold iron.

  “How dare you,” she whispered.

  “You don’t understand,” said Lully. Her voice was small and clear.

  “You’re correct. I don’t. So, explain it to me.”

  The small kitchen maid, delicate as a daisy, looked away, toward the little barred window set up high near the ceiling.

  “I don’t think it matters,” she said. “You know where I was. You’ve made up your own mind already as to what I deserve. So, you might as well tell me my sentence, and leave me in peace.”

  “Sir Merundi called them subversives,” said Irae. “He said they wanted to start riots and create havoc and hold the crown to ransom until there was a change. He says they spread the story that I am incompetent, irresponsible, that I have no real right or claim to the throne.”

  Lully looked up at her. There were bruises on her face.

  “Why is it that you always believe everything he says?” she asked.

  “Because he has never lied to me.”

  “If he lied well enough, you wouldn’t know about it, would you?”

  Through numb lips, Irae said, “What were you doing with them?”

  “Nothing,” said Lully, sullenly. “They’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Not yet, perhaps.”

  “You know nothing about it. You know only what he feeds you. Do you not wonder why he hasn’t allowed anyone else to be elected to the Council? Do you not have the slightest bit of suspicion as to his motives in serving the crown?”

  “Sir Merundi is not on trial here.”

  “Nor am I!” Lully stood up and pushed forward toward her, lifting her head and putting her face into the light. The bruises were ugly and dark, all along her jawline, as though she had been struck with something long and heavy there on the underside of her chin. Underneath her eyes, too, there were bruises, though they were the darkness of exhaustion. “I am already condemned, aren’t I?”

  “I’m condemning no one,” said Irae sharply. “Not even those who want to make a difference — I have always been in favor of free speech. Sometimes there needs to be a change. I’m not denying that. My problem is when those who are meant to be loyal to me, who I have been friends with, turn on me and stab me in the back when I am not looking.”

  “I showed my loyalty to you and I was punished for it. Arrested and fined.”

  “No, you were punished for starting a fight.”

  “You never minded me being in fights before! As long as it served your purpose, that is — and I thought that was what I was doing. Serving your purpose.”

  “Oh, really? Is that so?” Irae put her hands on her hips. “Was it serving my purpose to consort with those who conspire against me? They may claim that they’re loyal to the throne, but all they want is to change everything —”

  “And what’s wrong with change? You claim to like it, yourself! You say you see the need for it. And when I have fought for you, and been willing to give up everything for you, what do you do? You take it. You take everything. You even sent Berren away!”

  “I needed him to go and help Thorn!”

  “Maybe I needed him! Maybe I needed his help! Did you ever think of that?”

  “You don’t need anyone,” said Irae. “That is evident. You are doing just fine on your own, out there, having left the castle — your home! — behind and sought out new friends —”

  “You made me do that!” cried Lully. “I have only ever been loyal to you, and you treated me like dirt! The very day that you became queen, I was back serving at the tables, while you and your important new friends feasted and reveled. Where were they when you were outcast and exiled, all on your own except for Graic and Karyl and me? Where were they then, hmm?”

  Irae stomped her foot. “I didn’t want you to be serving at the table! I asked that you be seated and served yourself!”

  “Oh, yes? And they just ignored the request of the queen, did they?” She scoffed and shook her head. “No, my lady, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that you deserve my respect as my regent and then, when it comes time to show me respect in return, shrug and say that your hands are tied because no one listens to what you order. I was willing to give up everything for you, and you couldn’t even effectively give an order that I be thanked! What sort of friend are you? What sort of queen?”

  The silence that fell between them was like a sudden snowfall, freezing cold and muffling all noise. It went on for longer than it ought to have, and it was Lully who broke it.

  “I — I didn’t mean —”

  “You did,” said Irae, distantly. “You meant every word.” She looked away, down the hall, to see if there was some clue there as to how she should handle this. She had not felt so at a loss for some time. “Perhaps — perhaps that is where I have fallen short. I have tried to be a friend. Perhaps I should instead have just been a queen.”

  Lully’s head was still held high, but her mouth trembled. Irae broke from her reverie to turn back to the kitchen maid.

  “We cannot have subversive behavior in the castle,” she said. “Though I support the right of every citizen to hold their own opinion, we cannot allow riots and disruption of the peace. You will remain here for the time being, until I am able to arrange for your case to be heard.” She twisted her hands on the bars, took them away and rubbed at the residue of damp iron left on her fingers. “It won’t be long.”

  She moved back along the corridor, listening all along the way for any sound from behind her. But there was nothing, no call for her to come back, no appeal to her name, not even the sound of a quiet sob. Lully was absolutely silent as she was left behind.

  Still numb, Irae went to where she had left Sir Merundi in her study. The man had drifted off to sleep in the large overstuffed chair before the fire, his spectacles sitting neatly on the little table at his side; she went to him quietly and sat down across from him. He was only dozing and opened his eyes almost as soon as she appeared.

  “I want to know where they were meeting,” she said.

  “They won’t be there anymore,” he told her, shaking his head a little. He seemed a bit dazed with sleep still. “Most of them got away.”

  “I’m sure that they will be back.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “That isn’t your concern, regardless. I will figure something out. At any rate, they’re out

  there somewhere now, and I want to know where they have been meeting.”

  He looked at her closely in the flickering light of the fire, then sighed.

  “King’s Court,” he said. “They met in a public house in the corner, I forget exactly what it was called. The Calendar, perhaps.”

  She smiled a mirthless smile.

  “Of course,” she said. “The Calendar. Named in honor of the new reigns, the change in houses. Tell me, Sir Merundi, do you believe that I have the right to claim the throne as December Queen, although I had been deposed and there was already a King in December?”

  He weighed his words carefully.

  “If I did not believe that you were in the right and your uncle in the wrong, my lady, I should not have fought for you.”

  She nodded at him.

  “I thank you, Councilman. Call up the captain of the guard. He may still be settling into his duties. It is time that he was trained more thoroughly.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “I have had enough of rebellion. Have them ready to act.”

  She left him there in the study and went to her chambers for a plain black cloak.

  “No daughter of mine,” she whispered to herself. “She is no daughter of mine.”

  It was as she was preparing herself that the numbness finally broke, like an ice flow in the spring, and the feeling came rushing back, overwhelming her, pushing her down and into a small curled-up circle of sadness, weeping for her people, her kingdom, f
or her friend, and for herself.

  The noise of the iron door of the cell clanking open startled Lully awake. She shot up on her cot, swinging her legs immediately over the side to get to a standing position, ready for whatever was coming despite the fuzziness in her brain. Having spent all day dozing off and on in the cell, she had no true concept of what time it was, but it felt so late that it might well be early.

  To her shock, the shadowy, dark-cloaked figure that opened her cell proved to be Irae. She put a finger to her lips to keep Lully quiet, and gestured with her head for the kitchen maid to follow her. Wondering, and keeping as tight a lid on her simmering anger as she could, Lully padded along behind her as she led the way from the cells to the main door.

  The guard merely nodded at them as they left, and it wasn’t until they had left the castle proper and emerged out onto the street of Balfour town that ran along the castle walls that Irae turned to her and spoke.

  “I have trusted you implicitly,” she said, “for the last year of my life. So, do me the honor now of telling me true. You have listened to the voice of the people. Do they want me gone?”

  Lully’s lips and throat were parched and dry. With a small and broken voice, she said, “They want a change. They want peace. They want — what’s right. You can’t fault them for that, even if it does go against what you want. You have always tried to be good and fair.” She bit her lip. “Don’t fail us now.”

  Irae drew her cloak a little more tightly around her and gave another to Lully.

  “Wrap yourself up warm,” she instructed her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’re the one who can answer that. Where will they be meeting, now?”

  Lully sent her a shocked look. “You can’t ask me to willingly betray them. Even if I did know where they would be —”

  “I am certain that you must. And it isn’t a question of betrayal.” Irae sighed and pulled the hood of her cloak a little further down over her face. “I want to hear them for myself. I don’t trust Sir Merundi, I don’t know that I can trust you — I need to be there. I need to hear what they say.”

  “I don’t know that —”

  “Lully. Please. You say that they want to do what’s right — I want nothing less. Please. Trust me.”

  It was on the tip of Lully’s tongue to ask why. What had Irae done to deserve her trust? What had Irae done other than order her around, make poor decisions that ended in pain and even in death, struggle and scrape to regain her throne, and then immediately forget about those who had helped her? What had she done for Lully?

  But the moon came out from behind a cloud, and the cloak fell away again from her face, and Lully saw that Irae’s eyes were wet with weeping; her mouth drew down with sadness and stress; her hands were clasped in front of her. And Lully remembered that Irae was young, younger than Lully herself, and orphaned too, and though Irae had indeed made poor decisions, and ordered her around, and struggled and scraped to regain her throne — she had never once lied to her.

  Not yet.

  She swallowed.

  “I have an idea of where they might be,” she said slowly. “I could be wrong. But there’s a chance.”

  Irae reached out quickly, as though to move before either one of them could stop it from happening, and clasped Lully’s shoulder. The touch lasted but a second, and then she withdrew again, but it was enough to warm Lully from the inside. As she turned and began to move through the quiet streets, her doubt subsided and drifted into a quiet corner of her mind, where it lurked and watched and waited.

  Leden had indeed introduced her to a few of his friends, all of whom believed much the same that he did. There were more where they came from, too, he had assured her. More, from all walks of life, from the ranks of the nobles, from the ranks of the guards, from the ranks of the poor and the beggars and the homeless who flooded the streets of Balfour these days — more, and always more. But those who met with Leden were the chieftains, the influential ones, the loudest of them all.

  Lully did not know where Leden lived. She wasn’t entirely sure that what she called him was even his real name; he seemed to be quite content to keep everything about his identity a secret, and she assumed that there was some reason for that. His standoffishness about his history had kept her from asking too many questions. She led the queen to the house of one of Leden’s chief associates, Srift, a merchant of modest means but enormous popularity for his honesty and jocularity. The windows of the house were indeed still lit from within, even at this late hour — it emboldened Lully considerably, and she swallowed hard and ascended the stairs to knock on the door.

  It was opened, but just a little, and she murmured through the crack, “For Leden.”

  She had a sudden, vivid memory of doing the same in her home village of Deen, waiting for the queen to come back with the Forged she had gone after. Just Lully and Karyl and Graic, plotting to overthrow the December King, planning to set things right, to take back what was rightfully Irae’s.

  She shook off the memory. What did it matter now? They had done what they intended to, and a great lot of good it had done for them.

  The crack in the door widened and she and Irae were let into the little hall. It was quiet and dark there, but she could hear a noise, muffled, as though several rooms and closed doors away. The servant who let them in looked them up and down, then gave a slight shake of his head, and motioned for them to wait.

  Lully whispered, “I don’t know how you expect them not to know who you are.”

  “I’ve been in disguise before,” Irae whispered back.

  “But not when you were the queen!”

  “Disguises work a great deal better when you don’t say things like that.”

  Lully threw her hands in the air and let them fall with a slap against her sides, frustrated. They waited a moment longer before the servant returned and gestured for them to follow him. He led them down the hallway, to what looked like a back door to the alleyway outside; upon turning the doorknob, however, it proved to be another room, small, cunningly concealed in the plan of the house, with the expected exit on the far side of it. There were five others in the room, and a roaring fire, and Lully immediately looked to Leden for a cue.

  She found him standing in the corner, both arms folded, looking directly at her as she entered the door, as though he knew who was coming and where they would stand. He gave her a deep nod.

  “They let me out,” she said. “It pays to have connections. I’ve brought a new recruit.” She gestured behind her with her thumb.

  “Micera,” said Irae, taking down the hood of her cloak. Her hair was down, and she wore spectacles, which Lully had never seen on her before. It most definitely did make a difference, and though Lully could see that it was clearly and obviously Irae, no one else seemed to have the least bit of suspicion. “I work in the kitchens with Lully, and I want what’s right for Ainsea.”

  The others in the room — Srift, another man Lully didn’t recognize and one she did, and an older woman who she thought was named Cassel, though she wasn’t sure — looked to Leden, who nodded.

  “If you want what’s right, then you are welcome here,” he said. “Lully, I’m glad to see that you’re free once more.”

  Lully smiled warmly at him, but he did not smile back. Instead, his eyes skated vaguely over her face, scrutinized Irae for a long moment, and then returned to the man she didn’t recognize amongst the group.

  “We were just explaining the issue to Faedor here. He agrees with us in principle but feels that we should allow things to remain as they are.”

  “I see,” said Lully, but no one was paying attention to her. The woman in the room, Cassel, stood up and went to Leden’s side.

  “He may have a point,” she said. “With Elgodon likely to attack at any moment, can we really stage our own rebellion? We need to consolidate our forces for the good of Ainsea.”

  “Precisely what I am attempting to do. The people have spoken.
Even the queen’s house feels that a change is in order, you see,” said Leden, holding a hand out to Lully and Irae. “Lully here was one of the ones who fought for the queen when she was in exile. She fought against the December King. But she knows now — don’t you, Lully? — that things need to change.”

  “Change is one thing,” said Faedor. “Rebellion is another. If she isn’t meant to rule, perhaps we should just let things take their course and she can destroy herself with bad decisions.” He laughed. “And her uncle, too, if it comes to that and he resurges. They can take each other down.”

  “A position of caution, which I respect,” said Leden. “And yet, it avoids the main issue at hand.”

  “Which is?”

  “She is little more than a child. She was trained — and by whom? Her father and her uncle. One known as a reasonless tyrant, when the mood struck him, and a drunken fool otherwise. Her uncle plots against her, exiles her, orders her execution, which she only just escapes. And what does our princess do? She makes a series of decisions that end badly for everyone involved. She starts off with a few loyal friends — one of whom was badly wounded — weren’t you, Lully? You were telling me about it — and another of whom is now dead. She tries and for the most part fails to rally an army around her, and when she does at last re-take her throne, it is only because her uncle has inexplicably abdicated, exiled himself, and completely disappeared. Something is wrong here, my friends.”

  “It isn’t her fault that her uncle did what he did,” said Faedor. “And if he chose to exile himself, against all reason, well, we can hardly blame her for taking advantage of it.”

  “Taking advantage is exactly the concern. Look at her bloodline,” said Leden simply. “Her father, her uncle. The house is tainted, doomed, cursed. There is every chance that she will turn out to be just like them — or, if not, that she will err on the side of caution, and not take a strong enough stand to keep Ainsea safe. She may turn out to be a tyrant; she may turn out to be nothing more than a young and stupid girl. The real question is, with loss certain no matter what occurs, can we afford to wait and see?”