by E. J. Beaton
“Mea Tacitus crawled through the frozen northlands, toward the sea.”
The words had sounded like an oath on Sarelin’s lips. They came out like a whisper on hers.
The room felt very still, all of a sudden, as something settled upon the two of them. Lysande recalled the hours spent copying out Queen Illora’s Precept, inking the wording of the ban on discussing elemental magic. It was not the writing of those words that changed things, but what came after—the moderating of what you said, the learning of what not to say.
“They never found proof that she died.” There was more that she could add. But she did not know him well enough for that kind of confidence, and could only judge him by the color in his cheeks. “Consider our situation. The White Queen may be dead or broken in spirit. The question is, can we afford to assume that she is vanquished, at a time when no monarch sits on the throne?”
Her question echoed in the crypt. It was hard to forget what she had warned Sarelin of, just weeks ago, in the garden of the royal suite: the counter-effect of injustice.
“There is no reason we could not both be right,” Derset said, slowly.
Their eyes met. “You think one of the city-rulers may be working as a spy for the White Queen,” Lysande said.
“It is possible. When an heirless monarch dies suddenly, from a poison of great rarity, one must open one’s mind to possibilities.”
Lysande remained silent. She thought of Sarelin jerking on the ground in the rose-garden, and remembered the famous story she had been made to recite in the orphanage—about the queen riding into the flames, her hair burning, as the power of the most terrible elemental died—the legend of the Iron Queen whose will alone had brought down her enemy.
The poets had claimed that Sarelin charged out of death’s grasp. But death came back for her, in the end.
Sarelin had told her once that she had not expected the fire to fail; that she had led the Axium Guards toward it thinking that they would all burn. When they did not, she never stopped to thank Fortituda. She had slashed, hacked, and thrown daggers, watering the ground with the White Army’s blood, but in the moment of the fire’s failing, Elira’s future had flipped like a dagger in flight. That was history, Lysande thought: a series of dagger throws.
There would have been a comfort in asking Derset for advice about the blade spinning toward them now.
“I will have the steward order a watch on your door—a double watch,” Derset said. “Forgive me, my lady, but I have served as an envoy. City-rulers do not merit trust.”
Lysande did not say anything, but she watched him and saw no sign of a façade. She had opened her mouth to reply when a knock sounded at the door. As Derset bowed his head and left her, the knock came again.
“Come in,” she called.
She recognized a wiry page-girl who had sat beside her a few times in the staff dining hall. They had never spoken, until two of the senior guards, Oxbury and Risset, had asked Lysande about her day’s duties as “queen’s pet.” The wiry girl had glowered at them. She had pushed their hands back when they made to snatch Lysande’s goblet of wine. Lysande had liked the girl for that.
“How may I greet you?” she had asked, at the time. “Litany,” the girl had muttered.
Now, she looked at the page standing in the doorway, a statue in green livery.
“The steward, Signore—Councillor Prior—he asks to see you.”
“Some goodbyes must be said slowly, Litany.”
The girl tiptoed out.
Lysande turned to the line of white monuments and walked slowly past the resting-places, while the statues cast shadows on the wall: an elder-oak tree for Queen Jebel, the first monarch to establish a library; a sculpture of three crowns for Queen Alighiero, who had been famous for burning the Royamese envoy at the stake after a deal with the west soured; a shield adorning Queen Brettelin’s thick headstone, carved with her motto: Always Might. A poem stretched below King Ramsar’s name, covering most of the marble. Lysande smiled as she spotted the reference to the young lord that Ramsar had famously wooed. She had never thought she would stand beside monarchs in a place like this, a girl of no breeding among the crowned dead. Stopping for a moment, she soaked up the silence.
There was a quality to a silence like this. Once you noticed it, you could not ignore it. It was as if the thoughts that you could not voice had leaked into the air and were brewing.
The tomb at the far end of the crypt led her further down the chamber. Dust had not yet settled on its surface. She could see a stone dagger mounted on the headstone, pointing at the ceiling. Although she knew whose name she would find, she knelt beside it anyway.
Sarelin’s headstone bore no verses, nor any engravings of flowers. Only four words carved out a phrase beneath her name: Savior of the Realm.
The inscription was still raw at the edges.
Something wet fell on Lysande’s cheek. The tears flowed out now, faster for having been checked, and she leaned down to press her lips to the cold marble.
“Help me, Sarelin,” she whispered. “If you’re in the halls below . . . if there are halls below, as you always said, then guide me through this. You gave me this task.”
There was no answer from the tomb.
“Please. Don’t be so damned selfish, Sarelin. I love you.” The words echoed off stone. She was talking to silent bones, and waiting for a reply.
When she left the crypt, the door swung shut with a bang, oak ringing on stone, and a symphony of echoes followed her into the corridor. Litany averted her eyes from Lysande’s damp face. The air grew warmer with each step they climbed, yet the chill of the marble slabs in the vault still lingered, and she felt it in her flesh after she had left the tower.
Give me strength, she thought, as she climbed into bed that night. Just let me do what Sarelin wanted and get the right ruler on the throne, before swords are drawn.
This time, she slept without dreams. Her body softened until it was almost weightless; an autumn gust carried her beyond mist and vapor into the upland of peaks, and she floated in the empty air, like a feather that had never been used as a quill. All the cares that had borne her down were gliding away to somewhere out of sight, until she was passionless, drifting on a current without sorrow or pain.
When she woke, it was to the sound of horns.
Four
“If they had to shake the walls with their damned blasts, the least they could have done was wait until midday. But you try telling a pack of Valderrans to turn around.”
“I value my head.” Surrick laughed. “Did you hear the stable-hands? Poor things had to wake up a dozen horses and move them early. One of them got a kick in the face.”
“My attendant claims the Pyrrhan lot rode in on thirty mares. Look at this, she says, calling me to the window: there’s a bunch of Pyrrhans threatening to throw punches if they don’t squeeze through.”
“I shouldn’t like to catch a Pyrrhan punch,” Surrick said.
Shifting further into the shade of blackfoot branches, Lysande watched as the two women conversed, noting how the second physician grinned, dipping her fingers in the fountain. “You know why I was really looking, anyway.”
“And is the Lyrian prince as pretty as they say?”
“Didn’t get a glimpse. His carriage nearly blinded me. The thing’s adorned with solid gold.”
“Well, I’d sooner have gold than something feral.” Lysande could hear a note of relish in Surrick’s voice. “I heard that Prince Fontaine has brought an animal in a basket and given orders for it to be handled only by him, in case it snaps off the hand of an attendant.”
“Best hope he doesn’t bring it near this one.” Surrick’s friend tapped her own hand. “There’s at least a dozen things I need my right hand for, this morning.”
“And then there’s surgery. You use it for that, too.”
It had all gone well enough, then. The advisors had done their job, and the city-rulers should all be relaxing in their suites while their retinue ran about. She had even dispatched her gift for Prince Fontaine, with the help of a page who had darted into his suite and left the flower on his desk. So why did she feel no contentment?
She resumed her progress along the path. At the target range, only straw women waited. It took a moment for her to realize that she did not need permission from the steward to practice.
She drew the daggers from her belt, one by one, placing them on the table. Five blades and five blank hilts. The hilts were only blank, of course, if you were used to seeing family insignia there. If you had never seen an eagle, a bear, or a pair of twined snakes on a dagger-hilt, then perhaps the smooth metal was normal.
Her first blade carved the air, soaring past a straw woman. The next dagger struck the shoulder, but as she found the flow of her practice, she hit the neck, stomach, heart, and lungs marked on the target, reusing her four steel blades. Her hand hovered over the hilt of the gold dagger, but she could not quite bring herself to pick it up. Derset joined her as she was pulling a blade out of the target’s heart.
“Preparing for our royal company?”
“Perhaps.” She yanked the dagger free, sending the target wobbling on its stand.
“The red streaks in your eyes tell me something else.”
“It still feels like she’ll walk up behind me and guide my aim.” She dropped her voice. “My lord, I keep thinking about what you said to me in the crypt. What if I pick . . .”
“The city-ruler who might have organized the poisoning?”
Lysande said nothing, but nodded. He watched her slide the gold dagger into its sheath on her belt. “If I may, I would suggest that you get to know each leader and linger with them beyond the dinner. Some would say it is customary to provide entertainment. Why not use tomorrow morning’s festivities for your own ends?”
Of course. The only event in Axium where you could hack people to pieces for money and claim that it was sacred. Kill someone in an alley, and you were a criminal; kill them in front of a crowd, and you were honoring the goddesses. She had forgotten about the prize-fighters’ tournament that was scheduled for tomorrow, what with losing her best friend, becoming Councillor, dealing with the advisors, calming the capital, and turning over the circumstances of Sarelin’s death . . . but that was no excuse. Details were not supposed to slip by her.
“If I sit with the city-rulers in the box . . .” Yes. She could observe them more closely while they watched the fight. “You have a talent for quick thinking, Lord Derset.”
“So Her Majesty said, once.” He gazed into the distance. Lysande studied him for the second time since they had met, noticing the focus in his gaze and wondering what it was that he was imagining. He turned his face away, slightly, after a few seconds. Though she was tempted to cough to bring his attention back, she refrained from doing so.
She knew how it felt to have grief sneak up on you. One moment, you were going about your work, and the next, you were clutching your stomach, wondering what had hit you and when exactly you had doubled over. Derset deserved a moment to breathe. She counted to twenty, pausing between the numbers.
“Perhaps we should discuss that briefing, Lord Derset,” she said, gently.
“My lady.” He held out a scroll. “I came on that very matter.”
She took in his face. He had veiled the pain quickly, she thought, the Axiumite way. “You were able to procure it, then?”
“They may not have been exactly . . . eager, but at short notice, Lady Tuchester and Lord Chackery have compiled statements for you on the four city-rulers.”
She read through the comments in silence, moving from name to name down the page. The longer she read, the more anxiety threatened to flow from her. The First Sword of Valderos had defended the north during the Ice-Rose Campaign against Periclean raiders, Lord Chackery’s brusque phrases explained. The Irriqi of Pyrrha had brought her city out of internal warfare “and into a certain prosperity,” which Lysande suspected was a deliberate understatement on Chackery’s part. The prince of Lyria was the youngest ever city-ruler; and no matter what aspersions Lady Tuchester cast on the prince of Rhime, it was noted that he had amassed a following of loyal supporters, in a city known for anything but “the standard of fidelity we Axiumites uphold.”
She tried to dwell on the report, yet she found herself thinking of the black rose Prince Fontaine had sent her—and the flower she had prepared in reply, tying its wrapping with a complicated knot, accompanied by a message. For the palace guest. She had thought it rather witty, a reply to match his own, doubling as a warning that she would not be easily manipulated; but now she wondered what his reaction would be, especially if he managed to decode her flower-puzzle the way she had decoded his. She had not sent him the politest of challenges, after all.
If a prince doled out a public reproach to the palace scholar, would anyone intervene? Or would the nobility of Axium look on in approval?
More to the point, why did she keep focusing on Prince Fontaine? Something about the audacity of the black rose and the message kept tugging at her mind, and she did not like it—did not enjoy the way that he had slithered into her consciousness and coiled in her mind, refusing to remove his words.
He was not her only concern, of course. Four rulers. All of them accomplished; all of them, surely, practiced in the ways of court.
Gather yourself, like a star-plant, she told herself. Bind yourself to a wooden stake and stay upright, so that your branches do not spread. This was no time to feel inadequate.
She listened while Derset expanded upon the background of each city-ruler, and she ran through her prepared questions: the state of each ruler’s army, their personality, any known alliances. Derset leaned against one of the straw targets while he answered, absorbed, at one point, in an account of the last five decades of enmity between Valderos and Lyria. She suspected that he could tell she was mentally taking notes on the details of Lyrian smallsword maneuvers in the Southern Skirmish, for he finished with a smile. “Scholarship is the noblest pleasure of the mind, I have always thought.”
“Noble or not, I appreciate the gift.” She matched his smile.
Once they had parted, with a brief bow from Derset this time, she took herself further away from the staff tower, to a place where she could sink onto grass and look out at the branches that dangled from a row of slim copper trunks, the dragon-willows kissing their twins in the water.
A spot of white moved on the lake. It glided around the side and came near to where she sat, and she saw the visor of black atop the beak, the bird shaking its feathers, rising up, feet skimming water marbled by sun. She had watched swans bathe here plenty of times, usually while eating a hastily packed repast, but today something was different, and the way this one puffed out its chest reminded her of someone.
She felt her throat tighten. The bird landed with a splash. A silver spray arced over the water, shining dagger-bright, and she looked out at the surface of the lake until warmth touched her cheeks.
These people, she told Sarelin, holding the page up before her. I am not enough for them. When I meet them, I will be a sheet of thin paper, the kind made cheaply for the populace; and they will be torches, in whose light my veins and flecks will show.
A movement caught her eye. Beside her boot, a purple flower swayed, its petals cast into relief against the leather. She cupped it in her hand.
A queensflower, growing wildly and alone. She had not seen such a thing in the palace grounds for many weeks.
It was hard to pull herself away from the lake, but she
managed. Back in her chamber, she halted beside the window. As if it were yesterday, she was walking in here for the first time, flinging open the curtains and declaring that this was the chamber she wanted—the one on the sixth floor, farthest from everyone—and Sarelin laughed, loud enough for all the tower to hear. “You’re a gem, all right,” the queen said. “An odd gem.” Then she was bobbing atop a horse, Sarelin’s strong hands curling around her waist, holding her in place as they trotted through Axium Forest. The queen barked words of encouragement in her ear. And then she was laughing at a play in the capital, but not as hard as Sarelin, whose hand slapped her own knee hard enough to produce a sound: bap, bap, bap, while one of the players struck down another with a wooden sword, pouring red juice over his chest.
Lysande opened her eyes again. Her fingers reached into her drawer and brushed the cold glass of the jar. She mixed a dose of scale into the vial, heated it, prepared a goblet, and drank half the mixture so quickly that her stomach fizzed and bubbled. Instantly, her heartbeat battered against her ribs, and for a moment she felt that they might break: that she might split from the middle like a wineskin that has been squeezed too hard, spilling its contents on the floor.
This time, she smelled rotten floorboards, as she had not done for weeks, and with it a hint of sour sweat: the tang of too many children packed into one room. It was not enough to stop her from downing the rest of the mixture.
The violence of the reaction surprised her. She had not thought it possible for her heart to hammer even faster. It was one spoon of scale, exactly, therefore it could not be harmful; Charice’s lecture already sounded far distant, fading.
Her hands found their way to the jar again. Somehow, she was measuring an extra half-spoon. Surely, if she was more distressed, more remedy was required? Yes. That made sense. The night-quartz lay there, waiting beside the jar, just in case. She mixed the flakes and downed the concoction without pausing, ignoring the smell of the orphanage.