Queenslayer

by Sebastien de Castell

  “And what do you believe in, Count Martius?” Mariadne asked. “Would you see us at war simply to sack the gold of another nation and grow fat on its wealth?”

  “Me?” He gave a laugh and patted his belly. “I am more than rich enough and fat enough, countess. I am a plain-faced man, married to a plain-faced wife who loves him. I have a nice home in the capital, and one here for when I grow too old for the city. I couldn’t care less about money or politics.”

  “Then perhaps you can imagine how little interest I had in being the wife of a man who didn’t love me, so that he could pursue war and personal power. Perhaps you can sympathise just a little with the fact that I have lived under siege since my husband died. Perhaps you can even forgive me for being angry when those I love best are taken from me.”

  Martius rose from his chair and put his hands on Mariadne’s arms. “Ah, dear woman. That I can do. That I can do.”

  He began to pull her into an avuncular hug but she put her hands on his chest and pushed just enough to keep her distance. “Then perhaps you will even go so far as to understand that I can’t go back to my home and wait out my days, never having tried to find justice for those who have died for their love of me, until one day someone decides that I, too, am in the way. And when they do? Tell me, what son or daughter of Darome will stand beside me?”

  Martius nodded once, and made a small choked sound. I saw a tear in his eye. “You shame me, my lady, and you are right to do so. I will give you what help a foolish old man has to offer. We will take my carriage and return to Sarrix for the body of your beloved Tasia. From there I will take you both to the capital and before the queen, that you may say your piece.”

  41

  Breaking Faith

  All told, it took us three days to get back to the capital and the queen’s court. None of us spoke much along the way. When we arrived, servants greeted us with a mix of confusion and deference, advising us strongly that we would benefit from a chance to rest and bathe before entering the throne room. In the end though, they got out of our way.

  Except for Arex, the queen’s social secretary.

  “I’m telling you again—you don’t go into the throne room angry.”

  “Get out of the way, Arex,” I warned. It occurred to me that Arex was also the queen’s cousin and knew, perhaps better than anyone else, how the strings of power and politics can be pulled.

  “Sorry, kid—royal tutor or not, you don’t go in there angry.”

  “And me? Will you stand in my way too, ‘secretary’?” Mariadne asked, quiet fury in her voice.

  Arex gave her a sympathetic look. “Countess, you especially I plan to keep out of this room. You’re both lucky that the queen returned early from the north, so there aren’t many of your fellow nobles here to see you acting this way.”

  “I’m asking you one last time, Arex. Step out of the way.” I didn’t want to fight him. Hells, I wasn’t that sure I could take him. But Tasia was dead, and if someone in there hadn’t ordered her death, they had certainly put the noose in her hand. Mariadne deserved answers.

  “Don’t do it, kid. It’s not worth it.”

  He was probably right, but I didn’t care. I could feel Reichis tensing next to me. He always knows when the time for talk is over.

  Martius sighed. “You’d better let them in, Arex. Two more stubborn souls the world has never seen.”

  Arex shook his head. “With all due deference to your rank and relationship to the queen, my lord, this isn’t your concern.”

  Martius smiled. “And with all due sympathy for your obligations and lack of rank, Arex, I’m afraid I’m making it my concern. Let them pass.”

  Arex was visibly shaken, and seemed uncertain how to proceed. “Do I take it that you are threatening me, Count Martius?”

  “Oh, Arex, get off your high horse. You spend too much time in political intrigues. It’s a wonder anyone ever manages to secure an audience with the queen. Just let these two in. Do you seriously think she’d refuse them?”

  But Arex wasn’t done. “On your head then, Count Martius?”

  “Yes, Arex. If it makes you feel better, it’s on my head.”

  Arex stood aside. “All right, kid,” he said resignedly. “Go ahead and see what happens when the countess here starts screaming at the world’s most powerful eleven-year-old. I’ll be sure to visit you in prison.”

  Arex needn’t have worried about Mariadne getting us in trouble with the queen. I managed that all by myself. It took all of two minutes for things to get out of hand.

  “You will keep silent now, master of cards,” the queen said to me finally, holding up a hand in warning.

  She whispered to one of the marshals standing next to the throne.

  “The court will adjourn,” he declared, his voice reverberating through the room and the crowd itself.

  Like a wind-up machine, every marshal in the room started moving people towards the exits. They executed their orders with a forcefulness that reminded you they were trained to kill anyone who threatened the queen. Within minutes the room was cleared.

  Almost.

  “You as well, cousin,” the queen told Mariadne.

  “No,” she replied.

  The queen turned to the remaining two marshals. “Lirius, Ricard, you will escort Countess Mariadne from the throne room and accompany her to her rooms in the palace. If she finds those insufficient, you will provide her accommodation in the dungeon.”

  “What about the animal?” Ricard asked, wary eyes on Reichis.

  “He can stay.”

  “My lady,” Lirius said, reaching a hand towards Mariadne.

  “No,” Mariadne said.

  “As you will it,” she replied. Then she and Ricard calmly lifted the countess off the ground and carried her out of the room.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” I said once they’d left. “It was childish.”

  The queen looked at me a long time before she spoke. “If I acted as a child does, what would I do now?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Yell at me, I guess. Hit me. Have me carted off to some dungeon somewhere.”

  “Is that what you want me to do?” she asked.

  “I suppose not.”

  “Good, then stop behaving like a child yourself, and stop trying to goad me.”

  I had to admire her composure. “You visited Tasia in Sarrix before this all started,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You told her to kill Leonidas.”

  She shook her head. “I’d hoped she would simply seduce him, embarrass him. Then Mariadne would have had a reprieve for a while.”

  “But Tasia failed.”

  “I made a foolish miscalculation. Leonidas, for all his faults, had somewhat more restraint than to sleep with the maid of the woman he intended to marry. Tasia should have left it alone.”

  “So you didn’t want her to kill him?”

  The queen sat back heavily on the throne. “We discussed it. Daroman women train in the combat arts from as young an age as men, and she considered herself up to the challenge. I thought it was a risk, but I told her that if it was safe, if she could catch him asleep, then it might be better for all of us.”

  “But she failed.”

  “She did what she thought was best. We all do. Sometimes we’re wrong.”

  “So you had her condemned.”

  “There was no other way. Tasia was a good girl, but she would have broken eventually. Someone would have got to her. It was a stroke of luck that Leonidas, venal as he was, chose to demand her death, otherwise the magistrate might never have sanctioned her execution.”

  “That’s a cold way to see the situation,” I said.

  “Look around you, Mister Kellen. I rule over a cold country.”

  I considered her explanation, but then shook my head. “I might have bought the necessity argument, Your Majesty. But when I convinced you to—”

  “Forced me,” she said.

  �
�Fine. When I forced you to stay the execution, you lied to me. You had Tasia killed anyway.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then you sent her a message. You told her to take her own life.”

  “I did send her a message,” she admitted.

  “So you as good as killed her—”

  “I told her to come with you back to the capital. I told her I would get her out of the country, that she didn’t need to worry about betraying me. I told her she’d done enough.”

  “Then why did she kill herself?”

  Tears began to well in the queen’s eyes. “Because she didn’t believe me. She didn’t think I could keep her safe. She did what she thought was best.”

  “She died for you.”

  “For me, for Mariadne, for everyone.” The queen lowered her eyes. “We all play our parts, Kellen.”

  “And what is my part, Your Majesty? What role do I play in these grand schemes you navigate?”

  “You?” she said, her eyes meeting mine, tears streaming down her face. Suddenly she leaped from the throne and wrapped her arms around me, her face buried in my stomach. “You’re supposed to be my friend, Kellen.”

  She cried, like you’d expect an eleven-year-old to cry when she’s realised the world really is against her. I looked down at her, then at Reichis. He gave a little grunt. “She’s not faking, Kellen.”

  The queen sniffed awkwardly. “At least one of you believes me.”

  It shocked me for a moment. With everything that had happened I’d forgotten that she could understand Reichis. That meant something. It had to. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I can’t lose you, Kellen,” she cried. “I’ve been alone such a long time now. Everyone else wants something from me. I have no…”

  I felt something break in my chest. Friends. She was going to say she had no friends. An exile in her own palace. I’d lived as an exile for the past two years, but at least I had Reichis. Without him… I didn’t want to think what that would be like. But who did the queen have?

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “I need you to promise me, Kellen.”

  “Promise what?”

  “I need you to promise to stay with me. I can’t do this alone, not now. I’ve been brave. For a long time now I’ve been brave, but I can’t do it alone any more. I need you to promise to stay with me. Just give me two years. Just till I’m a little older. I need you to promise.”

  I felt pulled in two directions. The queen had, at least in her own mind, given me a chance at life. She could have killed me when they’d first brought me here. Hells, she probably should have, for all the trouble I’d caused her. And yet she kept trusting in me, kept believing that I was looking out for her. But Mariadne needed me too. She was… I wasn’t sure I could even make sense of what she was to me. Maybe Shalla was right and I craved love and acceptance so badly that I’d take it wherever I could, no matter how unlikely it was to last.

  The smart thing to do was to run, or at least to pick a side. Mariadne or the queen. Love or duty. How could two people who seemed to care about each other as much as those two be on opposite sides? Ever since this mess had started I’d felt myself pulled by conflicting loyalties. I was sick of it. I wasn’t built for intrigue and politics. The biggest decision I’d ever had to make in life had been whether to have a squirrel cat for a business partner. So why should I let anyone force me to choose sides? I could protect the queen, couldn’t I? I could protect Mariadne too. I just had to find out who was behind all of this and put them in the ground. I had plenty of experience with that lately. In fact, I’d just killed the man who had probably intended to make himself king. Killing more arseholes like him was definitely something I could do. I looked down at Reichis. He shrugged. “This seems like just as good a place as any to make a stand.”

  “All right, Your Majesty,” I said to the queen.

  “You’ll stay? You’ll stay and help me?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  She shook her head. “Ginevra,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My name. It’s Ginevra. When we’re alone, when they aren’t here, call me Ginevra.”

  “All right then, Ginevra. I promise.”

  My acquiescence unleashed another flood of tears, so I held her like that for a little while longer, not knowing what else to say, or what else to do.

  42

  Scars

  I found Mariadne locked in her room with the two marshals standing guard outside.

  “You can go in, if you want,” Lirius said, the mild disinterest in her voice at odds with the way her gaze told me she was searching for an excuse to pummel me senseless. “Our orders are to keep her in, not to keep you out.”

  “You go,” Reichis said. “I’ve had enough crying humans for one day. Just promise me you won’t make hump-hump with the red-haired skinbag.”

  I couldn’t imagine a less likely outcome for this visit. “Sure, Reichis. I promise.”

  “Idjit,” he grumbled, and wandered off down the hall.

  I nodded to the marshals and they let me in and closed the door after me. Mariadne was sitting by the window.

  “I made a fool of myself,” she said. “Again.”

  I joined her and sat down on the bench next to her.

  “Seems like we’re all doing that these days,” I said.

  She gave a small, unhappy laugh. “What a circus of dunces we make. Every one of us bouncing around like a puppet on a string. Someone, somewhere, is laughing at us.”

  “Of that I am sure, countess. But I plan to make them stop laughing very soon.”

  She leaned into me, and pulled my arm around her before turning to look into my face.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Now is that a polite question to ask a gentleman?”

  “Come on. I want to know.”

  I sighed. “I had just turned eighteen years old when this nonsense began, a couple of weeks ago. I reckon I’m somewhere around fifty by now.”

  “Eighteen,” she marvelled. “Practically a baby. And here you are, acting like an old man already.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “That’s definitely not a subject fit for conversation. Much too old for you, that’s for sure.”

  I found it funny that she hadn’t considered I’d have thought about this already. “Twenty-three,” I said. “You’re twenty-three years old.”

  She pushed a finger into my chest. “How could you know that?”

  “Erras,” I said. “That night at the inn. He told me you were seventeen when you got married.”

  She shook her head. “Poor old Erras. Never has a man so loyal been so unable to keep his mouth shut.” Mariadne leaned into me and started weeping again, and I couldn’t help but hear Reichis complaining about humans crying all the time. Maybe that’s all there was left. Tears and sorrow.

  Then she looked up into my eyes. “Not you too,” she said.

  “What?”

  She shook her head and then kissed me. After a while, she stood up from the bench and took my hand and guided me to the bed. “Are you promised to anyone, Kellen?” she asked.

  The question drew a bitter laugh from my lips. “I’m an outlaw shadowblack, my lady.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  We stood there a moment while I searched for the right tale to tell. It shouldn’t be hard. Deception had become second nature to me. Now though? The lies wouldn’t come. Not when it came to Nephenia. “There’s a girl. We’re not… promised. That’s not the way she thinks.”

  “But you love her, and she loves you.”

  A stab of resentment took me unawares. “She loves the man I ought to be.”

  Mariadne’s eyes caught mine, and she nodded as though what I’d said had made any kind of sense. “Arafas, my husband, used to believe that if he just kept telling me how brave I was, how wise and true, eventually I would somehow live up to his ideals.” She shook
her head. Angry tears slipped from her eyes. “How is it love to demand we become something more than we are?”

  Those words were like the keys to a thousand chains that had been holding me down my entire life. My parents. Ferius. Nephenia. Even Reichis. All of them expecting me to be something I wasn’t, for my actions to prove them right. The weight of it… Ancestors. I couldn’t bear it any more.

  Neither could Mariadne.

  The two of us stood there a moment, holding each other, not quite brave enough to lie down on the bed’s soft coverings and deal with everything that would come next. Surging desire kept being tamped down by the awkwardness and uncertainty of our situation. I could practically hear Reichis chittering at me, “It’s literally the one thing other than breathing, eating and shitting that skinbags do by instinct, you idjit. Just—”

  “I’m sorry,” Mariadne said.

  I took my hands away from her hips where they’d wandered.

  I nodded. “It’s all right. I understand.”

  She put her hands on my chest and looked down at the floor.

  “No,” she said. “No, I take it back. It’s not all right.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head and I felt her fingers playing at the buttons of my shirt. “It’s not all right,” she said, so softly I thought she might be talking to herself. “When Arafas died, I felt completely alone in the world. I thought I knew what solitude was, but I was wrong. Tasia was there, and Erras. Now they’re gone and I truly am alone, a woman with a title that matters only insofar as it inspires others to want it for themselves.”

  I started to speak, but she put a finger against my lips for a moment and then went back to the buttons of my shirt. “I’m tired of being desired by those I despise and not good enough for anyone else. I want to decide for myself what’s right for me, Kellen. And what I want is to be free from politics, from strategy and, gods help me, free to act on my own desires, not my fear over what comes afterward. If you want to say no, say it because you don’t want me, not because you’re afraid for me. I’m sick of being afraid. I’m sick of not being good enough. I want to be someone else for a while.”