by Callie Bates
Beside me, Sophy breathes hard through her nose.
I put a hand on her arm. They’re almost to us. The Butcher steps to the side and grasps Loyce by the wrist, pulling her forward and then shoving her to the ground, so that her knees slam into the filthy cobblestones. She utters a shriek, fury mixed with pain. Half her hair is falling down; it looks as if someone grabbed her by it, ripping out the pins.
“Tell the Caveadear you surrender,” the Butcher orders. He speaks quietly, but they’re near enough I can hear him. The crowd around us has fallen silent at this new spectacle: their former queen on her knees.
I step toward them. I want Loyce to see me. I want her to surrender to me. Not Sophy, not Rhia, not even the Butcher. Me.
But she’s glaring at Lord Gilbert. “I should have known you’d betray us. You have no principles. You didn’t want this war, and now you’re taking revenge on me for your family—”
His family? I stop short.
“This is not vengeance,” the Butcher answers, “though the gods know you and your father have wronged me time and again. This is supporting a true queen—a queen who doesn’t murder her own father to gain the throne.”
Other people heard that; there are gasps around us. Loyce has gone white.
“Lord Gilbert,” I call, “step back from Madame Eyrlai.”
For a moment, I think he’s going to ignore me. But then he nods and moves to the side.
Loyce makes no move to rise. She’s looking at me now, at last. The word madame wasn’t lost on her. She knows what it means: She’s no longer the queen of Eren.
Before I can speak, she flings herself around, frantic. “Where’s Denis? Have you thrown him in prison?”
I don’t let the Butcher answer. “Your lover Denis Falconier is dead,” I say, letting my voice ring out so that everyone nearby can hear. “He was found guilty of regicide, and executed for his crime.”
Around us, people exclaim. “Murderer!” “Did she—?” “Patricide!”
It hits Loyce more slowly. Her face turns even whiter, and a strange, high-pitched noise rips from her throat. She doubles over, keening, her fingernails scrabbling at the cobblestones.
I take one step closer. Another. She must glimpse my boots through her falling hair; she rears up.
“Elanna Valtai!” she spits. “I might have known. You look as if you’ve walked out of a Caerisian pigsty.”
I almost laugh. Instead I raise a hand. “You still don’t understand, do you, Loyce? I’m not the hostage you mocked and derided for years. I’m the steward of the land now.”
The power swells through me—a sweet, earthy warmth—and the cobblestones shake. Roots burst out of the ground, crawling over Loyce’s ankles, tethering her down. She screams.
I lean closer to her. “Tell us you surrender.”
She glares at me. “You witch!” But the Butcher kicks her slippered foot with his booted one, and she yelps.
“Father-killer!” someone shouts from the crowd.
Her head whips toward them.
“You will surrender,” I say, and she looks back at me. “You will renounce all claims to the throne of Eren.”
Her voice is almost too low to hear. “I surrender.”
“Say it louder.”
“I surrender!” There’s a sneer under her words, but she says it.
“Good.” I snap my fingers, and a cluster of ancestors spring, glowing, into being around us. This time, Loyce flinches but doesn’t shriek. I look down at her. In the pallor of her face, her small eyes seem more pinched than ever; she’s afraid, but she still stares up at me.
She’s been abandoned by everyone—her ministers, her courtiers, her servants and retainers. Denis is dead. I wonder if the ministers called for her abdication as soon as the trees surrounded the city, as soon as our force appeared. I wonder how it must feel to be crushed like this, flung onto your knees in front of a person you’ve despised, surrounded by people who want you dead.
And I know what I must do.
I say at the top of my voice, “Loyce Eyrlai, by my authority as steward of the land, you are herewith banished from the lands of Eren and Caeris. You will lay aside all pretensions to queenship, and neither you nor your children nor their children shall make any claim to the throne of Eren. A party of my people will escort you and your husband to the border of Tinan. King Alfred will grant you sanctuary, since he is your husband’s cousin. You will remain there, in exile, for the rest of your life. Neither you nor your heirs will ever again cross the border into Eren, or I will have the land tear you apart.”
The roots tighten around Loyce’s ankles. She gasps.
The square is completely silent. Even the Butcher looks astonished. Loyce herself is openmouthed. I realize they all expected me to take her captive, to put her in the Tower, to give her a trial and execute her just like she did my father.
But I am not like her.
I nod to the Butcher. “Arrange a carriage for Madame Eyrlai and her husband, along with an escort, as befits a former queen.” I glance again at Loyce; she swallows. I want to say something, a final dismissal, to make sure she understands what I’ve done. But in the end, I simply step past her and gesture toward the palace. “Queen Sophy, this place is now yours.”
—
I STRIDE UP to the grand, gilt doors, with Sophy at my shoulder. She’s furious, her hands clenched at her sides, but she won’t vent her anger publicly. I pretend not to notice, and I also pretend I don’t feel the tremor running through my body, a sudden cold. Awareness of the earth is pulling at me again, trying to draw me wide open. I have to hold it off, just a little longer.
Inside the palace, it’s chaos. Some people are trying to get out past us; others fling themselves in our path with protestations of loyalty. Guards are yelling after one man who’s carrying out a king’s ransom of trinkets stacked in a basket. We pass several footmen in a corner, throwing their wigs on the tiles and trying to light them on fire. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jahan put the fire out and sweep up behind the footmen, his hands on their shoulders. Whatever he says makes them snap to attention.
Then we’re up the stairs, into the grand audience chamber, where several people are trying to saw the gilt legs off the furniture.
“Stop that at once!” I shout, clapping my hands. “This palace belongs to Queen Sophy now!”
They flee, making obsequious noises, as our people flood the room. Sophy orders the doors closed.
The land is tearing at the edges of my mind, but I turn to her. “You’ll need to make a speech—”
“You let Loyce go, El. She should have had a trial. She should be in a cell.”
I focus on Sophy’s face; greenness is blurring my vision. “You understand why I had to do it, don’t you? If we executed her, we’d be reviled as regicides, the same as she is, and the violence would never end. Someone else could claim the throne in her name, avenging the wrong done her. It’s better this way. Her fear will keep her in check.”
Sophy puts her hands on my arms, bringing her face close to mine. “She killed Ruadan. I don’t understand—I don’t understand how you can be merciful.” She’s weeping.
“We have to be merciful, Soph.” I’m so tired. “If we’re not, then what are we? What have we changed?”
The door opens; we both look around. It’s Victoire, followed by the Butcher. Victoire rushes toward us. “The people are still at the gates! They want to see you again, Your Majesty. Just a few words, to assure them things are over for the night.”
Sophy rubs her eyes on her sleeve. She squeezes my hand, then turns to Victoire. “Very well.”
They go, and I start to follow, but stumble. Jahan is at my elbow in a moment, hugging me against him. “Let Sophy do this on her own. You don’t need to be there.”
“But I’m the Caveadear—”
“Exactly. You’ve woken the land, and you’re exhausted.”
I let him hold me back. The door closes, but the Butcher is stil
l waiting. I smother a groan. “Lord Gilbert?”
“Loyce Eyrlai and her husband are on their way to Tinan,” he says. “I thought it best that they leave at once.”
I look at him. “What has she done to your daughters?”
He winces. “They are alive yet, Lady Elanna, to my knowledge. The former queen and I had a…disagreement over this war against Caeris. When I tried to resign from my post, she had my girls locked up.”
I stare. So this was what pushed him over to our side in the end, I realize—not only my mother and belief in our cause, but a hatred of the Eyrlais so deep he could no longer abide it. I find myself saying, “Then you must send for word of them at once.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I will do that.” He bows and goes out.
Jahan frowns after him. “I know we need his support, but he isn’t exactly a comforting presence, is he?”
I snort and open my mouth to answer, but a wave of cold guts me. Now that everyone else has gone, I’m aware of the land again, like a second skin pulling mine wide open. When I look up, my ancestors crowd the room, so many of them, so bright their light hurts my eyes.
They’ve completed their work. I feel their struggle to remain rooted in this world like a pain in my own body.
“Thank you,” I say to them. “You may go. Mo cri, mo tire, mo fiel.”
The light grows even more blinding—and then they leave in a great gasp, carrying with them their armies and the lingering pieces of the past. The whole binding unravels in one final blow, and I seem to be falling with it. I feel the vastness of the land moving, shifting underfoot, the rivers and forests flung off their natural courses.
I woke the land. Now I have to stop it from turning into chaos. Granya’s stories don’t say anything about that.
I reach again for the land, feeling it course through my own body, and an answer comes to me. The land is always moving. Even the great plates of rock under the surface of the earth are shifting—a movement I feel in my bones. So it’s not that I must stop it; it’s that I must quiet it.
I let my inner senses swell, vast enough to hold all of Eren and Caeris, and I whisper, “Hush.”
A great ripple runs through the earth, as if it sighs. And though forests and rivers are still moving more than they ought to, their agitation has lessened. It may take time before the land quiets back to its natural rhythm, but it’s begun.
Yet I am still so vast. As if I contain all of Eren and Caeris within me.
Somewhere in the smallness of the audience chamber, in my confined, human body, an arm comes around my waist. Jahan murmurs in my ear, “I’ve got you.”
He settles me onto a divan and finds a soft knitted blanket to cover me. I’m so tired my eyes have fallen shut, but there’s one thing I need to know before I succumb to exhaustion. I grab for Jahan’s arm and catch his wrist; he’s crouched beside me. “Tell me how you knit skin and bone back together.”
A soft laugh escapes him. He smooths back the hair from my forehead. “You talk to it, softly, like this. You form an image in your mind and tell it what you want it to do. You say something like, Come together, nice and snug, perfectly shaped, well grown.”
It sounds almost like a nursery rhyme, and I slide even closer toward sleep. I force the other question out. “And how do you get strong again?”
“I call to any power around me—anything that lives or grows. The earth, a fire.”
Like the stones above Barrody. I’m smiling. “I knew it. I knew you were a little like me.”
He laughs again. “I am very little like you, Elanna Valtai, and that is what makes me love you.”
There must be a clever response to this, but I’ll leave it for morning. I let myself fall into sleep, my hand still clasping his wrist.
EPILOGUE
The council acclaims Sophy queen in a unanimous vote.
Representatives from all the clans of Caeris stream into Barrody in the two weeks following our victory—mountain people and lowlanders alike mingling in the town and castle. Yesterday, Sophy took up the key and scepter—the symbols of Caeris’s monarchs—in the castle’s great hall, while anyone who wished came to pay her homage. It was a long ceremony and I left early; my feet hurt from standing for hours, and my mouth ached from smiling. I don’t know how Sophy managed it. She’s strong, but it will be a long time before she loses the weight of grief from Father’s and Finn’s deaths. It will be a long time before any of us will.
Jahan and I came down to Cerid Aven afterward. Next week there will be another vote, this time in Laon, with the same results expected; after all, no other candidates have come forward to challenge Sophy. And after that, there will be more meetings as we decide how this country with two capitals is to function. Sophy has already said she will deputize two first ministers to maintain order from both Barrody and Laon, while she herself travels between. Beneath the ministers will be a parliament of representatives from the clans in Caeris and from the towns in Eren.
It’s a start.
And for a few days, we have the peace of Cerid Aven. The house feels strangely empty with just Jahan and myself here; even the staff has been reduced to a handful after the Butcher claimed Sophy and my mother. Mother is in Barrody now, overseeing the reorganization of the city government and writing music for Sophy’s coronation. Hugh is there, too; he’ll almost certainly be elected first minister of Caeris, and he and Ingram Knoll are busy rewriting our legal codes. Rhia has attached herself to Sophy as a kind of bodyguard, along with Alistar, and for the time being they are busy arguing politics and the use of magic in government.
Sophy transferred the Butcher to Eren, once he oversaw the initial withdrawal of military forces from Caeris; he’s now reposting the men to the borders by land and sea. It’s wise, I think, to keep him out of Caeris now, for his crimes have not been forgotten.
A few days ago, Victoire sent a letter from Laon, telling me that Guerin had returned to the city. Loyce had dispatched him to a prison south of Laon; now he and any others wrongfully incarcerated have been freed.
And we have no more to fear from Loyce. Following our victory at Laon, Sophy appointed a new ambassador to King Alfred in Tinan—Count Hilarion of Ganz. He both smoothed the way for negotiations between our nations and reported back to us that the deposed queen and king of Eren arrived safely at the foreign court.
The latest news, come this morning over breakfast, suggests that the Paladisan emperor may be looking less favorably upon our bid for freedom. Rumors claim he’s ordered the black ships to set sail for our shores, to punish us for the use of magic to achieve our freedom.
“You don’t think the emperor will send them, do you?” I ask Jahan. “Knowing what I can do, would he really declare war against us?”
Jahan frowns. His eyes are distant as he touches the scar behind his ear. He’s thinking of his brothers, I know. One of them is a student at a military academy near Ida. If we go to war with Paladis, will it put this boy in danger?
“Maybe I ought to go back to Ida,” he says, looking at me. “If I could speak with Leontius—if I could prevent repercussions…”
“Can you stop the witch hunters?” I say gently, leaning forward to put my hand on his arm. “Can you change two centuries of suspicion and persecution?”
“No. Not alone. But maybe I could stop the worst from happening…”
I study his face. “Do you want to go back?”
He winces a little, then shakes his head. “I don’t know, El. It is home. I don’t want to leave you, though—not yet, not now. But if it would help…”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know what the empire will do. So stay.”
He looks at me, and a sudden grin transforms him. “Stay? With the Caveadear of Eren and Caeris?”
I roll my eyes. “Is that such a dreadful prospect?”
“On the contrary.” He comes around the table and pulls me up into his arms so quickly the breath is swept from my lungs. “Nothing makes me happier.”
Winter has fallen. We make our way through a woods softened by snow and up the ridge to the Sentry Rock. The stones thrum with energy as we approach and, when I put my hands on them, they begin to sing.
I hum in harmony with them.
The day after our victory, the forests and hills and water stopped moving. Some things went back to the way they were before the land woke, but some others rooted themselves in new places. Barrody has a vanguard of trees surrounding its northern wall, while Laon’s main road is blocked by the river it once crossed. But bridges can be rebuilt, and the dense forest around Barrody seems almost comforting. And now I know, if I wish the land to move for me again, I need only call.
I let myself sink into the land, feeling it unspool around me: the sea cradling the mountains and rivers, the high hills and soft glens, the farmland and forest of Caeris and Eren. My land, free.
And I realize I’ve done more than free the land—I’ve freed myself. I am the Caveadear, and I have woken the land before the whole world. I don’t know what the future will bring, if the empire of Paladis will declare war on us or worse, or what other battles we will have to fight. But I have given my heart to this land and these people, and together we will withstand anything.
There’s a touch on my arm, and I look up to find Jahan standing next to me. He’s looking out over the black-and-white winter landscape. Almost to himself, he says, “There’s something about this land. It’s in my blood, now.”
I wrap my arm around his and grin up at him. “Maybe you wedded the land, too. Maybe it wasn’t just me.”
He looks at me, and meets my grin with his own. “Whatever the case, Elanna Valtai, I have you now.”
“Maybe,” I say, “we should make sure.” I pull his head down so his mouth fits against mine. The hum of the stones around us grows deeper.
I tuck my hand into his and, together, we start down the ridge through the softly falling snow. Behind us, the stones continue to sing.