In my kingdom.
Carlin had known, but she hadn’t been allowed to tell. Yet she had done her job, almost too well, for now years of extraordinary cruelty flickered through Kelsea’s mind in less than a second. “I will end this.”
“You’re certain?” Mace asked.
“I’m certain.”
“Then I vow to guard you against death.”
Kelsea blinked. “You do?”
Mace nodded, resolve clear in his weathered face. “You have possibility in you, Lady. Carroll and I could both sense it. I have nothing to lose, and I would rather die attempting to eradicate a great evil, for I sense that’s Your Majesty’s purpose.”
Majesty. The word seemed to ripple through her. “I haven’t been crowned, Lazarus.”
“No matter, Lady. I see the queenship in you, and I never saw it in your mother, not one day of her life.”
Kelsea looked away, moved to fresh tears. She had won a guard. Only one, but he was the most important. She wiped her leaking eyes and tightened her grip on the sword. “If I shout, will they hear me?”
“Let me do the shouting, Lady, since you don’t have a proper herald yet. You’ll have their full attention in a moment. Keep your hand on that sword, and don’t move any closer to the Keep. I see no archers, but they may be there, all the same.”
Kelsea nodded firmly, though inwardly she groaned. She was a mess. The simple, clean gown that the Fetch had given her was now streaked with mud, the hem of her pants torn. Pen’s armor was twice as heavy as it had been that morning. Her long, unwashed hair fell from its pins to dangle in dark brown clumps around her face, and sweat poured down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She remembered her childhood dream of entering the city on a white pony with a crown on her head. Today she looked nothing like a queen.
The mother in front of the children’s cage had begun weeping again, oblivious to the small children who looked fearfully up at her. Kelsea cursed herself. Who cares about your hair, you fool? Look what’s been done here.
“What are those cages made of, Lazarus?”
“Mort iron.”
“But the wheels and undercarriage are wood.”
“Tearling oak, Lady. What are you getting at?”
Staring down at the table full of blue-clad officials in front of the Keep, Kelsea took a deep breath. This was her last moment to be anonymous. Everything was about to change. “The cages. After we empty them, we’re going to set them on fire.”
Javel was fighting sleep. Guarding the Keep Gate was not a challenging job. It had been at least eighteen months since anyone had tried to rush the gate, and that attempt had been halfhearted, a drunk who stumbled up at two in the morning with a grievance over his taxes. Nothing had happened, and nothing was going to happen. That was the life of a Gate Guard.
Besides being sleepy, Javel was miserable. He had never enjoyed his job, but he positively loathed it during the shipment. The crowd as a whole didn’t present a security problem; they stood around like cows waiting for the slaughter. But there was always some incident at the children’s cages, which were closest to the gate, and today was no exception. Javel had breathed a sigh of relief when they finally got the woman quieted down. There was always a parent like that, usually a mother, and only Keller, true dyed-in-the-wool sadist that he was, enjoyed hearing a woman scream. For the rest of the Gate Guard, the shipment was bad duty. Even if another guard was willing to trade, it took two regular shifts to balance it out.
The second problem was that the shipment brought two troops of the Tear army onto the Keep Lawn. The army thought Gate Guard was a soft option, a refuge for those who weren’t skilled enough or brave enough to be soldiers. It wasn’t always true; across the drawbridge, directly in front of Javel, stood Vil, who’d received two commendations from Queen Elyssa after the Mort invasion and been rewarded with command of the gate. But they weren’t all Vil, and the Tear army never let them forget it. Even now, when Javel cut his eyes to the left, he could see two of the soldiers snickering, and he was certain they were laughing at him.
The worst thing about the shipment was that it reminded him of Allie. Most of the time he didn’t think about Allie, and when he did start to think of her, he could find the nearest bottle of whiskey and put an end to that. But he couldn’t drink on duty; even if Vil wasn’t on watch, the other guards wouldn’t tolerate it. There wasn’t much loyalty in the Gate Guard, but there was plenty of solidarity, a solidarity based on the understanding that none of them was perfect. They all looked the other way for Ethan’s incessant gambling, Marco’s illiteracy, and even Keller’s habit of roughing up the whores down in the Gut. But none of those problems impaired their job performance. If Javel wanted to drink, he had to wait until he was off duty.
Fortunately, the sun was beginning to set and the cages were almost full. The priest from the Arvath had risen from his place at the table, and now he stood beside the first cage, his white robes rippling in the late-afternoon wind. Javel didn’t recognize this official, a great, thick fellow with jowls that hung down almost to his neck. Piety was good, so the saying went, but it was especially good with everything else. Javel loathed the sight of the priest, this man who never had to face the lottery. Perhaps he had even joined God’s Church for that reason; many men did. Javel remembered the day the Regent had granted the Church exemption; there had been an outcry. The lottery was an indiscriminate predator; it took everyone it could get its hands on. It was indiscriminate, but it was fair, and God’s Church only took men. Yes, there had been an outcry, but like all outcries, it soon quieted.
Javel fidgeted with his sleeves, wishing the time would pass faster. It couldn’t be long now. The priest would bless the shipment, Thorne would give the signal, and then the cages would begin to roll. It was technically the Gate Guard’s job to disperse the crowd, but Javel knew this routine as well: the crowd would disperse itself, following the shipment when it left the lawn. Most of the families would go at least as far as the New London Bridge, but eventually they would give up. Javel closed his eyes, feeling a sudden pain behind his ribs. When Allie’s name had been pulled from the lot, they had talked about fleeing, and at some point they’d almost done it. But Javel had been young and a Gate Guard, and in the end he had convinced Allie that it was their duty to stay. Javel believed in the lottery, in loyalty to the Raleigh house, in the sacrifices that needed to be made for a larger peace. If his name had been pulled from the lot instead, he would have gone without question. Everything had seemed so clear then, and it was only when he saw Allie in the cage that his certainty crumbled. He thought longingly of the burn in his throat, the way it would hit his stomach like an anchor, setting everything in its place. Whiskey always put Allie back in the past, where she belonged.
“People of the Tearling!”
The man’s voice, sonorous and powerful, rolled down the slope and across the lawn before reverberating against the walls of the Keep. The crowd hushed. Gate Guards weren’t supposed to have their eyes anywhere but the bridge, but all of them, Javel included, turned to peer toward the top of the lawn.
“The Mace is back,” Martin murmured.
He was right. The figure at the top of the slope was unmistakably Lazarus of the Mace: tall, broad, and terrifying. Whenever he passed by Javel on the gate, Javel did his best to be as invisible as possible. He was always afraid that those deep, calculating eyes might linger on him, and Javel didn’t want to be even a speck in the smallest corner of the Mace’s mind.
Beside the Mace was a smaller figure, cloaked and hooded in purple. Probably Pen Alcott. Queen’s Guards were usually tall and well built, but they’d taken Alcott despite his slim build; he was reputed to be very good with a sword. But then Alcott pushed back his hood, and Javel saw that it was a woman, a plain woman with long, tangled dark hair.
“I am Lazarus of the Queen’s Guard!” the Mace’s voice boomed again. “Welcome Queen Kelsea of the Tearling!”
Javel’s jaw dropped. He’d hear
d rumors that the Regent had intensified the search in recent months, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Songs about the girl’s return sometimes went around, but Javel dismissed these. After all, musicians had to write about something, and the Regent’s enemies liked to keep people’s hopes alive. But there wasn’t even any proof that the princess had ever escaped the city. Most of New London, including Javel, assumed that she was long dead.
“All of them,” Martin muttered. “Look!”
Craning his neck, Javel saw that a group of grey-cloaked figures had formed a ring around the woman, and as they pushed back their own hoods, Javel recognized Galen and Dyer, then Elston and Kibb, Mhurn and Coryn. It was the remainder of the old Queen’s Guard. Even Pen Alcott was there, just in front of the woman with his sword drawn, wearing a green cloak. According to rumor, the Regent had tried to kick them all out of the Keep several times by stopping their salaries or assigning them to other duties. But he never managed to get rid of them for more than a few months or so, and they always came back. Carroll and the Mace held plenty of clout with the Tear nobles, but the real problem was deeper: no one feared the Regent, at least not the way they feared the Mace.
The crowd began to murmur, a buzzing that grew louder with each passing second. Javel felt the mood shifting around him. The shipment ran like clockwork each month: the check-in, the loading, the departure, Arlen Thorne at the head of the Census table in his usual fashion as though he was the grand emperor of the New World. Even the inevitable screaming parent eventually quieted down and left the lawn, weeping, when the cages had vanished into the city. It was all part of an orchestrated piece.
But now Thorne leaned over and began speaking urgently to one of his deputies. The entire Census table was moving, like rodents who scented danger. Javel was pleased to see that the soldiers around the cages were eyeing the crowd uneasily, that most of them had their hands on their swords. The priest from the Arvath had leaned in as well, his jowls shaking with each word as he argued with Thorne. The priests of God’s Church preached obedience to the Census, and in return, the Arvath received a healthy tax exemption from the Regent. The Arvath’s head bursar, Cardinal Walker, did a lot of drinking down in the Gut, and he wasn’t particular about who he did it with; Javel had heard several reminiscences about the Holy Father’s dealings that chilled his blood.
But like most of the Holy Father’s moves, this had been a shrewd one. Church doctrine did seem to make the Census run more smoothly. Javel could almost pinpoint the devout families by the resignation on their faces; long before their loved ones ever went into the cage, they had accepted it as their duty to country and God. Javel himself had attended the Church, long ago, but he had only done it to keep Allie happy, and he hadn’t been back since the day she shipped. The priest’s face grew more choleric the longer he argued with Thorne. Javel imagined going over and giving the fat man a good kick in the gut.
Suddenly a man’s voice rose above the low hum of the crowd, pleading: “Give me back my sister, Majesty!”
Then they were all shouting at once.
“Please, Lady, pity!”
“Your Majesty can stop this!”
“Give me back my son!”
The Queen held up her hands for silence. At that moment, Javel knew for certain that she truly was the Queen, though he never knew why or how he knew. She stood up in her stirrups, not tall but imposing nonetheless, her head thrown back combatively and her hair streaming around her face. Even raised in a shout, her voice was dark and deliberate, like syrup. Or whiskey.
“I am the Queen of the Tearling! Open the cages!”
The crowd erupted in a roar that hit Javel with the impact of a physical blow. Several soldiers moved to obey, pulling keys from their belts, but Thorne barked sharply, “Hold your positions!”
Javel had always thought Arlen Thorne the scrawniest human being he’d ever seen. The man was a collection of long, sticklike limbs, and the deep navy of the Census uniform did nothing to augment his girth. Watching Thorne rise from the table was like watching a spider uncoil itself and prepare to hunt. Javel shook his head. Queen or no, the girl was never going to get those cages open. Thorne had grown up in the Gut, raised by whores and thieves, and he’d clambered his way to the top of that particular shitheap to become the most profitable slave trader in the Tear. He didn’t see the world in the same way that most people did. Two years ago, a family named Morrell had tried to flee the Tearling when their daughter’s name came up in the lot. Thorne had hired the Caden, who found the Morrells in a cave within a day’s ride of the Cadarese border. But it was Thorne himself who tortured the child to death before her parents’ eyes. Thorne made no secret of these dealings. He wanted the world to know.
Vil, braver than the rest of them, had asked Thorne what he hoped to accomplish, reporting back: “Thorne said it was an object lesson. He said you couldn’t underestimate the value of a good object lesson.”
The object lesson had worked; so far as Javel knew, no one had tried to smuggle out one of the allotted since. Both Morrells had gone to Mortmesne in the next shipment, and Javel remembered that departure well enough: the mother was one of the first to march into the cage, docile as a rabbit. Looking into her blank eyes, Javel had seen that she was dead already. Much later, he’d heard that she’d succumbed to pneumonia on the journey, that Thorne had left her body for the vultures on the side of the Mort Road.
“The Queen of the Tearling has been dead these many years,” Thorne announced. “If you claim to be the uncrowned princess, this kingdom will require better proof than your word.”
“Your name, sir!” the Queen demanded.
Thorne stood up straight and drew in a deep breath; even from twenty feet away, Javel could see his pigeon chest expand. “I’m Arlen Thorne, Overseer of the Census!”
While Thorne was speaking, the Queen had reached up behind her neck and begun fiddling there, in the way a woman did when there was something wrong with her hair. It was a gesture Allie used to make, when the day was hot or when she was exasperated about something, and it pained Javel to see it on another woman. Memory cut infinitely deeper than swords; that was God’s truth. Javel closed his eyes and saw Allie for the last time, six years ago, that final glimpse of her bright blonde hair before she vanished over the Pike Hill into Mortmesne. He’d never wanted a drink so badly in his life.
The Queen held something high in the air. Javel squinted and saw a flash of blue in the last of the dying sunlight, there and then gone. But the crowd erupted again in bedlam. So many hands went into the air that the Queen was momentarily blocked from view.
“Jeremy!” called Ethan from up the bridge. “Is it the Heir’s Jewel?”
Jeremy, who had better eyesight than any of them, shrugged and called back, “It’s a blue jewel! Never seen the real one!”
Several groups of people had begun to push forward toward the cage of children. The soldiers pulled swords and turned them back easily, but the area around the cage was in a tumult now, and none of the swords returned to their scabbards. Javel grinned; it was good to see the army forced to work for once, even if the small rebellion was doomed. The troops who guarded the shipment were entitled to a bonus from the Regent. They didn’t reap as much reward from the shipment as the nobles who took toll from the Mort Road, but it was a fair chunk of money, from what Javel had heard. Good money for bad work; it seemed fitting to Javel that they should meet with some difficulty along the way.
“Anyone can hang a necklace around a child’s neck,” Thorne replied, ignoring the crowd. “How do we know it’s the true jewel?”
Javel turned back to the Queen, but before she could react, the Mace was shouting at Thorne. “I am a Queen’s Guard, and my word has been bonded to this kingdom! That is the Heir’s Jewel, just as I last saw it eighteen years ago!” The Mace leaned forward against his horse’s neck, his voice carrying an undercurrent of ferocity that made Javel recoil. “I’ve bound myself to this Queen, Thorne, to guard her life!
Do you question my loyalty to the Tear?”
The Queen sliced the air with her hand, and the gesture silenced the Mace immediately. The Queen leaned forward and shouted, “All of you down there! You’re part of my government, and my army! You will open the cages!”
The soldiers looked blankly at each other and then turned back to Thorne, who shook his head. And then Javel saw something extraordinary: the Queen’s jewel, almost invisible moments ago, now flared a bright aquamarine, so bright that Javel had to squint, even at this distance. The necklace swung, a glowing blue pendulum over the Queen’s head, and she seemed to grow taller, her skin lit from within. She was no longer a round-faced girl in a worn cloak; for a moment she seemed to fill the whole world, a tall, grave woman with a crown on her head.
Javel grabbed Martin’s shoulder. “Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“Nothing,” Javel muttered, not wanting Martin to think him drunk. The Queen had begun speaking again, her voice angry but controlled, reason on top and fury underneath.
“I may sit on the throne for only one day, but if you don’t open those cages right now, I swear before Great God that my sole act as Queen will be to watch every one of you die for treason! You will not live to see another sun set! Will you test my word?”
For a moment, the scene before the cages remained frozen. Javel held his breath, waiting for Thorne to do something, for an earthquake to break the Keep Lawn wide open. The sapphire above the Queen’s head was now glowing so brightly that he had to raise a hand to shield his eyes. For a moment, he had the irrational feeling that the jewel was looking at him, that it saw everything: Allie and the bottle, the years he’d spent with the two of them tangled inside his head.
The Queen of the Tearling Page 12