Grave

by Michelle Sagara

  “What do you mean to do?” Enslaved or not, the woman asked questions the way Amy did.

  “I told you. We’re here to find our friend.”

  “And I told you—”

  “And free him.”

  “You will not free him—or any of the dead—while the Queen lives.”

  Chase said, “The Queen surviving isn’t part of our plan.” He was the only person speaking so far who could speak of death—of killing—so naturally.

  “You are all fools.”

  Amy folded her arms.

  “You do not have the power to kill the Queen. I am bound to Emma—she has whatever power I have. It will not be enough. Emma will need to gather the dead and hold them.”

  “You’re not the only one that Emma holds,” Margaret told her, as Emma said, “There has to be another way.”

  “Do you think you’re the only one to try to kill the Queen?”

  She knew she wasn’t, and, oddly enough, this lent her argument some strength. “No. And every other person who did try tried it your way. It didn’t work for them, and they knew what they were doing. It won’t work this time, either.” She turned away from the angry dead woman, to Amy and Allison.

  The woman said, “You must find my son.” Had her expression not been so cold, it might have been a mother’s plea. “My son witnessed many attempts against the Queen. He understood intimately how each had failed. He was not a fool. He would not have made the attempt if he thought there was no possibility of success.”

  “Finding your son,” Emma replied, “is easier said—by far—than done. But . . .” she exhaled. “The Queen trusted your son.”

  The woman nodded, sombre now. “He had no living children of his own. She was the child of his heart. When you have children of your own, you will understand.”

  Emma hoped that this would never be true. “Was his name Scoros?”

  Silence. It was heavy with suspicion, anger, and the bitter tang of fear. The woman did not acknowledge the question, but it wasn’t necessary. Names have power.

  “We were told that a man named Scoros might be our only hope.” Emma’s gaze fell to the floor. “Scoros attempted to kill the Queen.”

  Silence.

  “He failed. Helmi was certain that he wouldn’t be part of a floor or a wall—his was the greatest betrayal the Queen faced. She thought something might be made of him, but she couldn’t tell us what. She has no idea where he is—and Helmi spent a lot of time with her sister. There’s not a lot she didn’t see. Scoros, however, was hidden.”

  The old woman’s grimace of distaste could probably be seen from orbit. “Helmi?” To Margaret, she said, “Are they all fools?”

  Margaret’s answer—and her lips did move—was lost to the sound of music. Amy’s response was lost as well.

  Organs rattled the floor beneath their feet. The notes were dolorous, almost funereal; Emma raised her hands to cover her ears. It didn’t help. The song went on for what felt like hours, and even when it had finally paused, she could still hear it, could still feel it.

  • • •

  “We probably don’t have much time before the organ starts up again,” Amy said, into the blessed silence. “Where are we going?”

  Everyone looked at Margaret, and when Margaret failed to speak, they looked at the grim-faced, bitter stranger. Even Emma.

  “Did the Queen’s sister tell you where my son might be found?” She asked the question as if everything about speech was distasteful.

  “No, sadly.” It was Amy who answered. She returned a youthful glare for the ancient, weathered one. “Do you have any ideas?”

  Silence.

  And then, surprising everyone who was actually looking at her face, the old woman said, “Yes.” She met Amy’s gaze, held it, looking down at the Emery student in every conceivable way.

  Amy, however, had played this game before, and she won it more often than she lost. She waited.

  Having watched Amy play, none of the other Emery students were stupid enough to break in; none of them, not even Michael, asked the old woman anything. Seconds stretched. Amy folded her arms. She didn’t open her mouth.

  The old woman moved first, turning away from Amy Snitman to gaze at the far wall. “The Queen’s personal chambers. If some clue exists, it is almost certainly there.”

  • • •

  The music resumed, like an aural earthquake.

  NATHAN’S FIRST—AND ONLY—attendance at a wedding had occurred when he was six years old. Friends of his father were getting married; they had asked if Nathan wanted to be part of the wedding party. Parties, at age six, involved other children and loot bags, so of course he’d said yes.

  He discovered that wedding parties were not like birthday parties. Either that, or adult parties were boring. The first night, he waited, playing with the flower girl under the watchful eyes of her mother while adults did their thing. And there was no cake.

  But on the day of the wedding itself, it was different. He was required to wear a suit—and secretly felt that he had suddenly turned a corner into adulthood because of it—and to carry a small pillow that, on the real day, held a ring. It was his job—his single most important job—to make sure that ring did not get lost. Apparently the groom would be so nervous that he’d forget it somewhere or lose it if left to his own devices.

  Nathan believed it, at six, but only because he trusted his mother to more or less tell him the truth.

  He believes it in a different way now. He carries no ring. But he takes the position of attendant, and he stands beside Eric at the Queen’s command. He stands one step behind as Eric is led to the thrones. He stands one step behind as Eric turns, at last, to face the audience.

  They are mute for one second too long; they cheer and applaud on command. Nathan cannot see the Queen’s face from his vantage. He can’t see the expression she turns upon her subjects. He can guess.

  So can Eric.

  Nathan envied Eric, once. He envied Eric’s ability to touch Emma without freezing her half to death, to interact with her, to protect her. It was stupid. It was stupid, and he regrets it now; he would apologize in a heartbeat if he could.

  But he won’t survive interrupting this moment, because it’s the Queen’s, and there’s no room for anyone else in it. Not even Eric, who is theoretically the star of the show.

  Nathan is not required to carry the crown. He’s profoundly grateful.

  Eric, however, is required to wear it, just as if it were a ring and this were a wedding, the end of a long romance in which obstacles to love have finally been vanquished. Nathan thought that the Queen loved Eric. That she loved him so much. And maybe, in her own mind, she does.

  But the holographic image that once occupied the throne at her side was not Eric. It only looked like him. She had forced her Court, living and dead, to acknowledge his presence. She had cried at his absence, at his loss—although no one spoke of those tears. But that Eric, the Eric over whom she had grieved and for whom she had longed for centuries, was not Eric.

  Nathan had not understood that until this moment.

  He understands it now. He is terrified of the Queen, terrified for Eric, terrified, in the end, for himself. He told himself that the Queen loved Eric. He tells himself that Emma loves him. But if the words are the same, they mean entirely different things.

  And the Queen of the Dead is not stupid. Malevolent, yes. Powerful. Delusional in her fear. But stupid? No. There is no love in Eric’s stony expression. There is no joy, no relief, no desire. He is dead and not-dead, like Nathan—but Nathan has seen more expressive corpses.

  She must know. He is certain, as she speaks, her voice carrying an edge of the fear that has informed her entire existence—he won’t call it life—that she does know. But in her universe, she has given her life to Eric. She has built a world for him. She has
done everything she can in the name of love.

  And Eric had better appreciate it.

  Nathan is afraid, for Eric, for himself. For Emma, who is in the City of the Dead. He doesn’t know what the Queen will do when she finds out that Eric doesn’t love her, but he is certain he is going to find out.

  • • •

  The Queen lets go of nothing. Her ancient fears and hatreds are her armor and her cage, and she bears them proudly and defiantly. It is defiance he sees in her face when she at last finishes speaking and turns—briefly—to nod in Nathan’s direction. It is a signal. Nathan moves to stand behind Eric, and one of the Queen’s knights—a title that seems far less ridiculous in this opulent, cold hall—comes forward, bearing a cushion upon which the crown rests.

  Eric kneels. He kneels like a condemned man facing a guillotine instead of a noose or a firing squad. The Queen’s knight holds the cushion to one side of his head and looks daggers at Nathan. Nathan’s hands—which are not in any way his own—tremble as he lifts them.

  The crown is cold.

  The crown is cold even compared to Nathan’s natural state. He is inexplicably afraid to touch it. It looks as if it’s made of gold, gold and gems. Nathan was never into jewelry and can’t tell glass from diamond. He doesn’t need to. This crown is gold the way Nathan is alive. He can almost hear it screaming.

  She can’t.

  It comes to Nathan that she can’t hear anything. She can’t see anything. If she could, she would know that Eric was killed, died, and is dead.

  As the crown trembles in his hands, he remembers his mother. He remembers her shut in his undisturbed room, weeping in isolation. Changing his calendar. His mother won’t do that forever. She won’t. She’s in pain because the loss was unexpected; there’s no way to plan for the death of a son. If it were cancer, if it were some lingering, deadly disease, she might have had time. But a car accident in the middle of the day?

  No.

  The driver of that car didn’t mean to kill Nathan. Oh, he killed him—he and his joyriding friends. But there was no intent. The men who killed Eric hadn’t killed him by accident. His mother probably hates the kids who killed her son—but the hatred has walls. There was no malice. There was no intent. They didn’t shoot him or stab him or—or hunt him.

  He’s no longer certain what would have become of his mother if her grief and her anger had a justifiable target. His mother was always the rational pragmatist. His father had the big, wide streak of sentimentality. It’s possible his mother could have let it go. At this very moment, Nathan doesn’t believe it.

  The Queen saw her family murdered.

  The Queen has never forgiven the murderers—or herself. She fashioned herself into a weapon, and in the end there was nothing else left for her to be.

  Nathan sets the crown on Eric’s brow. Eric looks up, their eyes meet. Nathan sees a reflection of himself in Eric’s eyes. And a reflection of his belief; Eric shudders, in silence, as the crown descends. When he rises—as King of this graveyard—he almost staggers under its weight.

  • • •

  The doors roll open. Nathan steps in to catch—and rearrange—the Queen’s train. Helmi is at his side, showing him, with actions, what he’s expected to do. She doesn’t speak. If the Queen won’t, no one else can—that’s understood, even by her younger sister.

  She doesn’t look young at the moment. She looks ancient—as burdened by death as Eric. She watches Eric’s back with a mixture of profound resentment and a hint of pity. It’s the pity that almost breaks Nathan. He hasn’t had Helmi’s centuries of experience. He doesn’t envy them. But those centuries are the foundation that allow her to go gracefully through the motions in which everyone present—everyone—is trapped.

  If he knew nothing, this would seem like a fairy-tale wedding, a happily-ever-after. The Queen is beautiful in her flowing dress, and the King is tall, handsome, dignified. At a regal signal from the Queen, the crowds—living and dead mingled to Nathan’s eyes—raise their hands and voices in cheers that never quite destroy the solemnity of the occasion.

  But not even a fairy tale could contain the sound of the music that starts the moment the Queen takes her first step—and how could it? Fairy tales are words. Words on paper. He starts to look for the organ that plays these notes; it must be a monstrosity, and he doesn’t understand how he missed it. But his gaze glances off Helmi, and her swift, definitive shake of the head prevents his search.

  He walks instead. He walks behind the Queen and her consort. The aisle stretches out to eternity, and he wonders if that’s an artifact of mounting dread or if it’s literal—if the Queen intends this walk to be significant enough that she has elongated the hall that contains it. Even this, he can’t ask. Shouting at the top of what passes for his lungs these days, he’s not certain he could make himself heard over the music.

  He walks, and walks, and walks. In front of him, Eric does the same, but he pauses to offer the Queen his hand. It is the only deviation from her scripted coronation, and it is therefore the only time she hesitates.

  For one moment Nathan can almost see the girl she might once have been in the widening of her eyes, the slight opening of her lips. He can see the ghost of youth in the corners of her mouth, the sudden, almost shy smile. It is possibly the most shocking thing he’s seen today.

  She sets her hand in Eric’s, but as she does, the smile vanishes; for one moment—only one—she is utterly still, her skin as pale as her dress, her eyes narrowing. She searches Eric’s face; she looks up at the crown. Nathan thinks she might snatch it from his head and throw it to the ground, her anger is so sudden and so intense.

  She doesn’t. The music is the only sound in the hall. Her gaze is dragged to the hand that she now holds, to something that binds his finger—ah, a ring. Eric is wearing a ring.

  By her reaction, it is not a ring that came from her at any point in their life. It is simple, a plain band. Her fingers tighten around his; she forces the bitter rage from her expression. Nathan is reminded that the worst anger is always rooted in pain. Hurt or not, she will not let Eric go.

  Nathan wonders, then, if this is Eric’s test. It’s not a kind thought. But this isn’t a kind place; it is not a city in which joy is easily made, found, or held. The Queen begins to walk again, Eric by her side.

  If Nathan were still alive, this would put him off weddings for the rest of his natural existence.

  GRAVES ARE SILENT because the dead do not occupy them. There has been no silence in Eric’s existence. It is silence, in his darkest of moments, that he yearns for.

  The crown is screaming as it is placed upon his head by Nathan’s unsteady hands; it is a chill band of sound that resonates with his body. His hands shake, and his legs almost fail to hold him as he rises, consort to the Queen of the Dead. King, as she has often called him. He remembers, sharply—terribly—the ceremony of his resurrection.

  He does not remember the facts of his own death so clearly; he remembers the pain, not of the injury that eventually killed him but of his father’s bitter rage, his father’s fear, his father’s ugly disappointment. He had believed, although his father was a stern, harsh man, that he loved him. Love. It’s a silly, thin word, and it has caused endless pain. Eric knows there is joy to be found in it—but he knows there’s joy to be found in narcotics as well, and he’s been around long enough to see the price both demand.

  He remembers the dislocation of seeing his own corpse.

  He remembers the first—and only—time he referred to his body that way in Reyna’s hearing. The madness of her grief, her rage, her pain . . . it comes to him as if it were yesterday. The dead don’t experience time the same way the living do. But they experience its passage nonetheless.

  She ran to Scoros.

  Scoros came to him. Scoros, twenty years older than Reyna, himself childless because of the witch hunts.

&
nbsp; She is grieving, the old man said. Eric remembers his eyes: brown, lined with wind and sun and echoes of a similar grief. Please, Eric. Give her time.

  What choice do I have? The words were bitter. He feels them as if they are solid, textured, as if they’ve remained in his mouth all these centuries. He sees Scoros flinch. Scoros, who is long gone.

  You don’t know what it’s like to lose family, the old man said, his face inexplicably gentle, his hands so warm as they rest, briefly, against Eric’s cheeks—as if Eric is a child, not a man.

  I do. My father killed me. He had help, he adds. And even saying this, he knows that had his father not come to Reyna’s home, had Reyna’s family not been murdered there, she would be free. They would all be free.

  Wait, Eric. I have no right to ask that of you. It is not what I was trained to do—but wait. She loved you, and when the madness of grief and fear abates, she will remember it.

  And me? Eric asked. He did not say the rest. He had no need. Scoros understood the question. Will I remember that I loved her? Will I remember it when her madness abates?

  Scoros said, It is easy to judge. It is easy for all of us. We judge the hunters. We judge the villagers. We judge each other. It is up to you. I cannot keep you here. Scoros’ voice was gentle, then. He was gentle with Reyna and with the young. He was careful and respectful of the dead.

  Scoros left the decision in Eric’s hand, and Eric—whose arms could not enfold his shattered girl—made the only choice he felt he could.

  He remained with Reyna. He remembers her face, reddened with tears, her eyes, the same; he remembers the damp streaks left through the dust on her cheeks. She did not wear a crown then. Did not wear this dress.

  He cannot remember her smile. It is buried beneath too many other memories. It is buried—as deeply as he can possibly bury it—beneath the weight of the lives she has taken and the distant, dawning realization that Reyna will never feel safe. No matter how strong her fortress, how high her towers, no matter how much power she gathers, safety will always elude her.