by E. J. Beaton
Litany sprinted to the stairs that led up to the balcony. Chidney rushed after her. The captain drew her sword and was halfway up the stairs behind Litany before Six’s scream cut through the air, just louder than the shouts of the worshippers as they ran from the prayer-house. Was it the warning shout that prompted Chidney to swerve, smacking into the stair-rail, or was it blind luck? Whatever the reason, the next bust missed the captain by an inch. She gasped her relief.
“Get down, Councillor!” Litany called.
A second replica of Sarelin in black marble struck the floor and rolled, fire licking its sides and lighting up the dim prayer-house. Fire on marble, Lysande thought. But how? The bust rolled further and set a fallen scarf aflame before Litany ran over and stomped the fire out. “Fortituda’s fist—excuse me—but take cover!”
Lysande could see no figure on the balcony. Surely, she should be solving this: working a trick with strategy. She looked at Six. The woman shook her head. “Let the two of them handle it,” she said. “This is our opportunity.”
I think that it is in doing that we find meaning, Litany had said. The girl was moving so fast across the floor that a captain of the Axium Guards could not keep up. Catching Six’s gaze, she felt certain that Six was noticing Litany’s talents now.
Chidney made up for her shock, bounding up the stairs, following Litany and drawing level with her, the two of them walking side by side. They advanced along the balcony from which the busts had fallen, weaving around sculptures and tiers of candelabra, the big woman and the smaller one moving to a wordless music of their own.
Lysande called to Litany that she would return, clapping her hand to her chest as her attendant turned. The girl clapped her hand to her chest in return. The salute came as they had agreed, with easy confidence, and Lysande tried to let her doubts be assuaged.
Six turned again to the triptych and pushed the side of the frame on the right. It swung backward. “Quickly, Councillor, if you please,” she said, pushing the painting further back.
Lysande had to stoop to get through the gap, and the top of her head bumped the stone, sending tendrils of pain through her skull. She moved into a cavity, where two tables waited. At the far one she made out a familiar white-haired figure, sitting with a candle and dishes of honey-glazed nuts, herb-bread, and stiff-crusted cheese before him. The goblets on either side of his bottle brimmed with wine. “Fine work, my dear.”
“Someone just set a bust on fire out there and hurled it at me,” Lysande said.
“Congratulations.”
“Congratulations?” She stared at Three.
“To make someone want to eliminate you that much, you must have taken a firm position on something. Now, I insist that you take a seat.”
Lysande sat down slowly and took a sip of wine. Three pushed the dish of herb-bread wedges across the table. “I am confident our friends out there will deal with the problem. And we have little time—so let us examine bigger events. I expected you to make some kind of intervention in the Room of Accord. But even by our standards, you performed admirably.”
Performed admirably . . . aside from angering Luca Fontaine. Apart from the sudden violence of the prayer-house, there was only room for the recent incident in Castle Sapere in her thoughts. It should not be this hard to expel Luca’s cool stare and swift exit from her mind. Ever since he had sent her a black rose wrapped in summersilk, he had worked his way into her thoughts with discomfiting skill.
The rest of her was calming down, slowly, though she still wondered how Litany and Chidney were doing. When two women were throwing themselves into the paths of marble busts for the sake of her neck, she could not so easily shutter her conscience.
Three studied her. She gazed back at him. She was aware that much had changed since their meeting in the farmhouse, and not only in terms of archers stepping out from behind tapestries. Something in her had altered when she held the purse up and addressed the room; or perhaps, something had grown, a vine that had only needed an opportunity to climb.
That’s when I realized: there’s more than one kind of queen. The comment echoed in her mind. Restrain, constrain, subdue . . . the motto always returned, but its words seemed a little duller now, and Lysande had an inkling that it faded a little more with each day that she made decisions as Councillor.
A plate of pale and shining objects that she recognized as quail’s eggs accompanied the bread. At Three’s insistence, she peeled the shell and bit one in half, savoring the taste of the warm yolk. She noticed that a sprig of yellow heather had been pinned to Three’s hat.
“Two was very pleased,” Three added, taking a wedge of bread. “To dissolve the threats without an arrow being fired or venom thrown: it was the resolution we hoped for.” He touched his pendant, that same movement that she had observed throughout their first encounter. Lysande watched him and realized that she was no longer on edge; that despite her best attempts to stay aloof, she was enjoying this, as she had enjoyed solving the purse.
“Some would be shaken, after a flying bust,” Three said.
“I am.”
“So I see. Positively trembling.” He was looking at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. In a seamless movement, he rose, walked to the second table, and picked up several papers. Lysande noted the gray paper: ragged sheets, with dark veins running through them. The Periclean books in Sarelin’s library had been made with paper like that. She had already guessed that Three had not risked his safety to come into Rhime merely to congratulate her.
“Thoughtful of you, to bring a present for me.”
“These messages may not be easy to unwrap.” Three dropped the papers onto the table. “They cling to their secrets.”
Why did that make her think of Luca again? She should be harboring resentment towards him, after his callous rebuke of her in the Room of Accord, she reminded herself—she was not supposed to be thinking about what she would say to him if they found themselves alone, or how she might try to strip his secrets from him.
Setting to work on the first letter, she translated the sentences from Old Rhimese into modern Eliran, untangling the phrases; several of the lines had been coded in a rudimentary cipher and required even more unpicking, yet falling into the dance of alphabets, she forgot about the shattering bust, about everything but the strokes of ink. She managed to make out the details of an exchange. Gold was flowing across the North Sea, under the guise of shipments of grain.
“The White Queen is trading with merchants in the Periclean States,” she said, putting the letter down. “Unless her spies seek to deceive us about her servant.”
“There is too much of a pattern in the remarks we have overheard. Our neighbors may have turned her away, but large sums of money are being passed back and forth by her people on the other side of the North Sea. We think the Umbra coordinates it from here . . . I don’t like the skill of it.”
Lysande wondered if Three ever felt outmaneuvered; if he was ever afraid.
Sometimes I think the White War was a stocking-up exercise, Sarelin had said, once. Lysande could count on one hand the number of times that she had heard doubt creep into Sarelin’s voice. But she remembered well the way Sarelin’s countenance had darkened, that day. I wouldn’t have put it past her to slaughter all those ladies and lords just to loot their castles, the queen had said.
“If you had walked through the docks of the Periclean States, you would know that there are many mercenaries in need of coin and food in the north,” Three said. “We have heard of Pericleans being offered handsome payment—ex-soldiers, able-bodied, lacking work.”
People did not become desperate on a whim. Poverty pressed its teeth to your limbs, wearing away the fat and gnawing until it had made an indentation in the bone, not ceasing until it had collected its due.
Lysande thought that something in Three’s voice belied a knowledge of this. But did it matter? Sh
e had taken on this task with the intention of sharpening her thoughts, pointing her quill, and wielding words. Her mind would produce ink enough for the job.
She looked through the remaining letters without comment, but with each page, her spirits sank lower. There was no acknowledgment of the strengthening of the border guard. If anything, the Shadows’ spies quoted Mea Tacitus’ servants speaking in a buoyant tone.
A yearning, a familiar feeling stirred in her, and she tried to quash it. Maybe later. A dose might help . . .
“Your thoughts, Signore Prior?”
Lysande weighed the parts of the situation. “Before, she was recruiting a few mercenaries. This seems like much more.” But it was not only the soldiers that worried her. Not compared to the web of fine threads behind them, which had begun to catch the light. “Let me put something to you,” she said, “that has been formulating in the back of my mind. The Irriqi nearly choked on a silent sword. That weapon was first devised to be used against elementals at the Conquest.”
The pause in which they looked at each other elongated.
“I have asked myself, many times, why the White Queen continues to attack us now that Sarelin is dead.” The breath she took traveled down to her core. “I think she means to show us that she will do as non-magical people did to elementals. A great Surge.” Take the whole realm, Lysande thought; not just the crown, nor the cities and towns, the forests and rivers and hills, but own the spirit of Elirans; take enough land to dictate the scope of their choices. “Conquest-era tactics, as you yourself pointed out when we first met. But this time, she will use our neighbors to wedge us in politically.”
“Must I remind you she is shifting to the Periclean States?”
“Why assume she has given up on Royam or Bastillón?” Lysande had spent enough nights studying her charts of the war. “Returning to our neighbors with an army might place the White Queen very differently in their eyes. Force begets force.” Who had said that? Volerus. And not with praise. The thought was not comforting, as quotes from ancient texts were supposed to be. “Bastillón and Royam did nothing during the White War, but it was not so in ancient times, if one reads the histories. If she intimidates them now, well . . .”
Three smiled wanly. “Tell me,” he said, “why do you think Mea Tacitus calls herself the White Queen?”
“Some banned sources suggest—I mean, if I had access to them, I might know that Mea Tacitus wore a white cape into battle. When soldiers saw the spotless white cloth, they knew that no one could come close enough to stain it with blood or dirt. Everyone who saw it understood how powerful the White Queen was.”
“I have always liked banned books the most.” Three’s smile remained faint. “Yes, the white part of her name has been much discussed. But why do you think she chose her particular title? Not the White Warrior, or the White Rebel . . . but the White Queen?”
She remained silent.
“It is a game of image. A White Rebel exists only in opposition to a regime, but a White Queen . . . she could take the throne and rule. When elementals hear her name, they do not picture themselves fighting and struggling. They picture themselves winning. And while a White Warrior sounds violent, bloody, perhaps even chaotic, when people hear the word Queen . . . they think of order, control, and calm.”
“No one who remembers the White War could believe that.” Sarelin had spoken of whole villages full of hacked-up corpses; the histories overflowed with blood, and she had seen the drawings that accompanied them. Never mind the legacy of children left parentless, like herself. Again, she felt the desire for scale rising in her.
“Twenty-two years have passed since the White War, my dear. Years in which elementals have not been treated kindly, by anyone’s measure. They are broken and scattered. All Mea Tacitus needs to do is offer them hope.”
The memory of the women and men hunched on the executioner’s cart, peering up at the palace, from faces more bone than flesh, resurfaced in Lysande’s head. The image had not grown softer around the edges; if anything, it had sharpened in her mind. Sarelin shouldn’t have let this happen, she thought. She shouldn’t have allowed the executions.
The idea had popped up from the bottom of her mind again. She had to remind herself that she was not leading only for Sarelin—that she had chosen to lead for people who were sent to bait wolves, for people who hid while their shop-fronts were smashed. People like Charice. People who liked to read histories, dream about ancient creatures, mix medicines, and keep heather sprigs. People, in short, who had all the desires and hopes and weaknesses of any others, but not the voice.
And it was not only elementals she thought of now. Members of the populace had broad shoulders on which fellow members could be lifted, and Lysande could imagine where she might be borne. She saw herself bobbing atop that tide.
Of course, though, this was about doing the right thing. There was no merit in thinking about where she, herself, might rise. Was there? Three’s hand pressed something into her own, and she uncrumpled the piece of paper.
The last missive reported a single comment: We will do this in the sunlight.
“I suspect there may be a metaphor lurking in that sentence.” Three tapped the page.
“If she kills the whole Council in public, she serves two purposes in one stroke. Terrify the realm, and show elementals that she can restore them to power.”
“It is pleasing to meet someone who shares my pessimism.”
Lysande took another egg and sliced it open, looking at the daub of orange against the white. The glob marked the place where life might once have been. Three let her chew in silence until she had finished, sipping his wine and watching her. It seemed, as she ran through maps and old conversations in her head, that she knew more of their attacker than most of Elira, and still not enough.
“Our border defenses are strong,” she said, when she had reflected for a while. “The troops have been reordered; the last legions should be at their posts within a week. Even if the White Queen acts fast, Cassia says she wouldn’t get her army past the eastern border.”
“Perhaps you are right. There is something else, however.”
He reached inside his cloak and, from a pocket that had been sewn into the lining, produced a coin of a dark color. The metal was bumpy under Lysande’s fingers, and turning it over, she saw a crown carved in the middle, but not one that she recognized: she noted the rounded points. The band around the bottom bore a name.
“Chamsak.” She remembered Sarelin repeating that word before the twenty-year jubilee of her victory, when she had bought chariots, finely wrought cages, and several exotic animals from a merchant’s helper in a western cloak. Sarelin had ranted to Lysande that it took some kind of jumped-up Royamese merchant to send an envoy in her stead; Lysande felt the weight of the memory.
“I do not wonder that Signore Chamsak uses a crown as her symbol, since she rules the world of trade. This,” Three took the coin from her palm and held it in his thumb and forefinger, “signifies a purchase of great importance.” Lysande waited. “While I do not mean to alarm you . . . Signore Chamsak’s specialty is weaponry.”
She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cool air.
“Nine took it off a man who was trading for the White Queen in the Periclean States—the man had an accident, poor thing, and got swept off his horse by a gust of wind.” The casual manner with which Three said this reminded Lysande what kind of people she was dealing with. She shifted in her seat. “In his saddle bag we found this token, along with a receipt of purchase from Signore Chamsak.”
From the same pocket he brought out a slip of paper. Lysande read the figure on it once. She read it again. Her lips moved silently, trying to come to terms with the amount of money written on the paper. “That has to be most—if not all—of what she owns.”
Three nodded.
“If something’s worth that much t
o the White Queen, I don’t like to think what it is.”
She knew that they were both thinking the same thing. A weapon of great power could turn a fight. Coupled with the unknown, possibilities bred . . . even a simple weapon could destroy chunks of an army in seconds, if that army had no idea what it was facing.
“This must be why the White Queen is confident,” Three said, after a moment.
Put it all together, and you had an army, a weapon, and enough experience to assemble any number of dangerous tricks. You only needed the will to act. Fear surged, and she worked to push it down.
“It is also why Elira must not give her the chance to stage an attack. I would have you avoid a public event. Perhaps you are right about her strategy. But if she works on our neighbors in the hope of building a bigger force, she may still be aiming to deal a swift and public blow to you as soon as she can. While you attempt to smooth things over with Bastillón, keep your eyes and ears on alert for a ball or a festival—hold your Councillors back from crowds.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll jump at my order,” Lysande said.
“No need to fear, Signore Prior. I have confidence in you. A good leader makes themself water, not rock.”
Who was he, to throw out aphorisms? But she thought of Derset’s words last night: there’s more than one kind of queen.
Three took a long sip from his goblet. “Let us hope your jail is finished sooner rather than later. Other elementals are stirring. A little respite does not sate an appetite for liberty, but increases it.”
Lysande knew better than to ignore those words, after the flaming bust. She nodded. Questions were planting themselves in her head, ugly bulbs that sprouted quickly, their stalks piercing the soil of her mind. Why did Three not support the rebels? Did the Shadows not feel the same desire as their sisters and brothers? If you had a reason to attack, then you needed a better reason to exercise restraint. She would wonder, later, about that.