The Queen's Rising

by Rebecca Ross

  Luc overturned a bucket to sit against the wall while I joined Yseult at the center of the courtyard.

  “A sword has three foremost purposes,” she said. “To cut, to thrust, and to guard.”

  So began my first lesson. She taught me how to hold the pommel, then the five primary positions. Middle, low, high, back, and hanging guard. Then she transitioned to the fourteen essential guards. We had just perfected the inside left guard when the chamberlain brought us a tray of cheese, grapes, and bread, along with a flask of herbal water. I hadn’t even been aware of the hours that had slipped by, fast and warm, or that Luc had fallen asleep against the wall.

  “Let’s take a break,” Yseult suggested, wiping the sweat from her brow.

  Luc woke with a start, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth as we approached him.

  The three of us sat on the ground, the tray of food in the center of our triangle, passing the flask back and forth as we ate and cooled off in the shade. Luc and Yseult teased each other with a familial affection, which made me wonder what growing up in Valenia must have been like for them. Especially Yseult. When had her father told her who she was, that she was destined to take back the throne?

  “A ducat for your thoughts,” Luc said, flicking a coin from his pocket my way.

  I caught it on reflex as I said, “I was just thinking of how you were both raised here. How difficult that must have been.”

  “Well,” Luc said, popping a grape into his mouth. “In many ways, Yseult and I are very Valenian. We were raised in your customs, your politeness. We don’t remember anything of Maevana.”

  “Our fathers have not let us forget it, though,” the queen added. “We know what the air tastes like, what the land looks like, what a true brogue sounds like, what our Houses stand for, even though we have not yet experienced it wholly for ourselves.”

  An easy lull came about us as we each took a final swig from the flask.

  “I hear you are Maevan on your father’s side,” Yseult said to me. “So you are similar to Luc and me. You were raised here, you love this kingdom, embrace it as part of yourself. But there is more to you, which you cannot begin to fully know until you cross the channel.”

  Luc nodded his agreement.

  “Sometimes I imagine it will be like our time here was all just a dream,” the queen continued, glancing down to a stray thread in her sleeve. “That when we return to our fallen lands, when we stand in our halls among our people once more . . . it will feel like we have finally woken.”

  We were silent again, each of us lost to our own thoughts, our own imaginations quietly blossoming as to what it would be like to see Maevana. Yseult was the one to break the reverie, brushing the crumbs from her shirt, and then she tapped me on the knee.

  “All right, let’s do one more guard, and then we will call it a day,” Yseult said, drawing me back into the center of the dirt. We gathered our swords, Luc lazily chewing the last of the bread as he watched us with hooded eyes. “This is called the close left guard, and . . .”

  I lifted my practice sword, to mirror her as she demonstrated the guard. I felt the wooden hilt slide in my sweaty palms, a steady ache drum up my spine. And then she was suddenly, unexpectedly lunging for me. Her practice sword shed its wood and shimmered into steel as it cut for me. I lurched back, fear piercing my stomach as I tripped and heard an irritated male voice snap, “Hanging left, Tristan! Hanging left, not close left!”

  I was no longer standing in an enclosed courtyard with Yseult. The sky was cloudy, troubled above me, and a cold wind washed over me, smelling like fire and leaves and cold earth. And him—the one cutting his sword at me, the one who had barked at me as if I were a dog. He was tall and dark-haired, young but not quite a man yet, as his beard was still trying to fill in along his jaw.

  “Tristan! What are you doing? Get up!”

  He was talking to me, pointing the sharp tip of his sword at me. I now realized why he looked so irritated; I had tripped and sprawled out on the grass, my backside throbbing and my ears ringing, my practice sword fallen uselessly beside me.

  I clambered for the discarded sword, wooden and scuffed, and that’s when I noticed my hands. Not mine, but the uncertain, grubby ones of a ten-year-old boy. There was dirt under his nails and a long scratch across the back of his right hand, still swollen and red, as if it wanted to break its scab.

  “Get up, Tristan!” the older one shouted, exasperated. He took hold of Tristan’s collar—my collar—and hauled him up to his feet, lanky legs kicking momentarily before boots found the earth. “Gods above, do you want Da to see you like that? You’ll make him wish we were daughters and not sons.”

  Tristan’s throat tightened, his cheeks flushed with shame as he retrieved his sword and stood before his older brother. Oran always knew how to make him feel worthless and weak—the second-born son, who would never inherit or amount to anything.

  “How many times are you going to get that guard wrong?” Oran insisted. “You realize I nearly cut you open.”

  Tristan nodded, angry words swarming in his chest. But he kept them locked away, bees buzzing in their hive, knowing Oran would hit him if he talked back, if he sounded the least bit defiant.

  It was days like that one when Tristan fervently wished he had been born a Kavanagh. If he had magic, he would blast his brother into pieces like a broken mirror, melt him into a river, or turn him into a tree. The mere thought, however impossible with his Allenach blood, made Tristan smile.

  Of course, Oran noticed.

  “Wipe that off your face,” his older brother sneered. “Come on, fight me as a queen would.”

  The anger stirred, dark and blazing. Tristan didn’t think he could hold it in much longer—it made his heart rot when he held it in—but he settled into middle guard, just as Oran had taught him, the neutral guard that could shift into offense or defense. It wasn’t fair that Tristan was still forced to wield a wooden blade, a child’s blade, while Oran, who was only four years older, was holding steel.

  Wood against steel.

  Nothing in life was ever fair, was always set against him. And Tristan longed, more than anything, to be inside the castle, in the library with his tutor, learning more about history and queens and literature. Or exploring the castle’s hidden passages and finding secret doors. Swords had never been what he wanted.

  “Come on, maggot,” Oran taunted him.

  Tristan shouted as he lunged forward, bringing his wooden sword down in a powerful arc. It lodged into Oran’s steel, stuck, and Oran easily twisted the hilt from Tristan’s hands. Tristan stumbled and then felt something hot on his cheek, something wet and sticky.

  “I hope that scars,” Oran said, finally yanking Tristan’s wooden sword off of his blade. “It’ll make you at least look half a man.”

  Tristan watched as his brother tossed his training sword in the grass, lifting his fingers to his cheek. They came away bloody, and he felt a long, shallow cut down his cheekbone. Oran had purposely cut him.

  “Are you going to cry now?” Oran asked.

  Tristan turned and ran. He didn’t run toward the castle, which sat on the crest of the hill as a dark cloud that had married earth. He ran past the stables, past the weaver’s guild, past the alehouse to where the forest waited with dark green invitation. And he could hear Oran pursuing him, shouting at him to stop. “Tristan! Tristan, stop!”

  Into the trees he went, weaving deep within them, bounding like a hare, or like the stag of his heraldry, letting the forest swallow him, protect him.

  But Oran still trailed him; he had always been fast. His older brother rudely broke branches, blundering through the pines and alders, the aspens and hickories. Tristan could hear Oran gaining on him, and he nimbly jumped a little creek and shot through a thicket, finally reaching the old oak.

  He had found this oak last summer, after he had fled from another one of Oran’s brutal lessons. Quickly, Tristan scaled her branches, going as high as he could, the leaves
beginning to thin with autumn’s glamour.

  Oran reached the clearing, panting beneath the massive branches. Tristan held still in the crook of his chosen branch, watched as his older brother walked all the way around the tree, only then conceding to glance up with a squint.

  “Come down, Tris.”

  Tristan made no noise. He was nothing more than a bird roosting in a place of safety.

  “Come. Down. Now.”

  He still didn’t move. Didn’t so much as breathe.

  Oran sighed, jerked his fingers through his hair. He leaned against the trunk and waited. “Hark, I am sorry for cutting your cheek. I didn’t mean to.”

  He did too mean to. He always meant to these days.

  “I’m only trying to train you the best way I know how,” Oran continued. “The way Da taught me.”

  That made Tristan sober. He could not imagine Da training him. Ever since their mother had died, their father had been ruthless, sharp, angry. No wife, no daughters, two sons—one who was trying desperately to be like him, the other who couldn’t care less.

  “Come down, and we will go steal a honey cake from the kitchens,” Oran promised.

  Ah, Tristan could always be bribed with something sweet. It reminded him of the happier days, when their mother was alive and the castle was filled with her laughter and flowers, when Oran was still his playmate, when their da still told stories of brave and heroic Maevans by the hearth in the hall.

  Slowly, he climbed down, landing right before Oran. His older brother snorted, made to wipe the blood away from Tristan’s cheek.

  “Wake her up.”

  Oran’s lips were moving, but the wrong words, the wrong voice, came out. Tristan frowned, frowned as Oran’s hand faded, the invisibility eating up his arm, turning his brother into a swirl of motes. . . .

  “Amadine? Amadine, wake up!”

  The trees began to bleed, the colors dripping as paint off a piece of parchment.

  I didn’t realize my eyes had been closed until they opened, and I looked up into two worried faces. Luc. Yseult.

  “Saints, are you all right?” the queen asked. “Did I hurt you?”

  It took me a moment to fully shift my mind back to the present. I was lying on the dirt, my hair spread out around me, the wooden sword at my side. Luc and Yseult hovered over me as protective hens.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice croaking as if the dust of a century still crowded my throat.

  “You fainted, I think,” Luc said, a frown creasing his forehead. “Maybe it’s the heat?”

  I took in this morsel of news—I had never fainted before, and to think the shifts might cause such was troubling—but then I remembered what I had just seen, the new memory finding space among my own.

  A smile curled on my lips. I tasted the dirt and my sweat, reaching for each of their hands. Luc took my left, Yseult my right, and I said, “I know exactly how to find the stone.”

  EIGHTEEN

  OBLIQUE

  On the last day of August, the first planning meeting was to be held over dinner at Jourdain’s, an exact fortnight since the most crucial of memories had manifested at my first sword lesson. As that date drew near, I continued to meet with Yseult every other day, to broaden my swordsmanship. Jourdain permitted it, thinking another memory might jar forward. But I knew that Tristan Allenach had not been fond of spars or his sword lessons, at least as a ten-year-old boy.

  So I continued my sword lessons to improve my skill and to learn more of the queen.

  Yseult was older than I’d first thought her to be, ten years my senior. She was friendly and talkative, patient, and graceful, but every now and then, I could see her eyes dim, as if she battled worry and fear, as if she was overcome with the feeling of inadequacy.

  She opened up to me during our fifth lesson, when the chamberlain brought us our usual refreshments. We were sitting face-to-face, just the queen and me, sharing ale and mutton pies and sweating in the heat, when she said, “It should be my sister. Not me.”

  I knew what she was implying, that she was thinking of her older sister, who had ridden beside her father the day of the massacre, who had been slain on the royal castle’s lawn.

  So I said, very gently, “Your sister would want you to do this, Yseult.”

  Yseult sighed, a sound inspired from loneliness, from inherited regrets. “I was three the day of the massacre. I should have been killed with my mother and sister. After the slaughter in the field, Lannon sent his men door to door of those who had rebelled. The only reason I was spared was because I was at the estate with my nurse, who hid me when Lannon’s men came for me. They killed her when she would not give me over. And when my father finally arrived, thinking I was dead . . . he said he followed the sound of a child weeping, believing he was hallucinating in his distress, until he found me hidden in an empty cask outside the alehouse. I don’t remember any of it. I suppose that is a good thing.”

  I rested in all she had just revealed to me, wanting to speak and yet wanting to remain silent.

  Yseult traced a fingertip through the dust coating her boots and said, “In this time of day, it is dangerous to be a daughter of Maevana. My father has spent the past decade preparing me for that moment when I will finally stand before Lannon, to take back the crown and the throne and the land. And yet . . . I do not know if I can do it.”

  “You will not stand alone, Isolde,” I whispered, using her Maevan name.

  Her eyes flickered to mine, dark with fear, with anxious longing. “In order for us to be victorious, we need the other Houses to follow us, to stand with us. But why would the other lords gather behind a girl who is more Valenian than she is Maevan?”

  “You are two in one,” I replied, thinking of Merei, of how my arden-sister had known my heart so thoroughly. “You are Valenia as you are Maevana. And that will shape you into an exquisite queen.”

  Yseult mulled on that, and I prayed my words would find their mark. Eventually, she said with a smile, “You must think me weak.”

  “No, Lady. I think you everything you ought to be.”

  “I grew up here without friends,” she continued. “My father was too paranoid to let me get close to anyone else. You are the first girlfriend I have truly ever had.”

  Again, I thought of my arden-sisters, thought of how much my life was enriched because of them. And I understood her loneliness then, felt it as if I had been socked in the stomach.

  I reached out my hand, let my fingers link with hers.

  You are enough, my touch assured her. And when she smiled, I knew she felt my words, let them settle in the valleys of her heart.

  But for all my encouragement, I was just as anxious as she was, my mind impatient for the first strategic meeting, when the plans to recover the stone and take back the crown would finally become tangible.

  The last day of August finally arrived, and I helped Agnes set the table for seven people. It was to be Jourdain, Luc, me, Hector and Yseult Laurent, Liam the thane (who had remained with us, safely tucked away on the third floor), and Theo d’Aramitz, who was the last piece of our puzzle and the final rebelling lord I had yet to meet, his Maevan name being Aodhan Morgane.

  The Laurents arrived, right on time, and Liam descended the stairs to enter the dining room. We gathered about the table, only one chair vacant: Theo d’Aramitz/Lord Morgane’s.

  “Should we begin without him?” Jourdain asked from his place at the head of the table. The platters had been set down, the fragrance of the food taunting all of us as we waited for the third lord. Agnes was filling our goblets with ale, discreetly reaching between us.

  “He’s coming from Théophile,” Hector Laurent commented. “That is not too far away, but perhaps there was trouble on the road.”

  “Hmm,” Jourdain hummed, no doubt thinking of our own escapade with the thieves.

  “He wouldn’t want us to wait,” Luc insisted, but probably because he was hungry, his eyes on the meat platter.

  “Le
t us go ahead and eat, then,” Jourdain decided. “We shall hold off on planning until after the meal, until d’Aramitz arrives.”

  The platters were passed about, and I filled my plate with far too much food. But Pierre had truly outdone himself with preparing the Maevan-inspired meal, and I couldn’t resist taking a little spoonful of everything. We were halfway through dinner when there was a knock on the door.

  Luc stood instantly. “That would be d’Aramitz,” he said, disappearing down the hall to greet the lord.

  Hector Laurent was in the middle of telling us the story of how he’d met his wife when Luc returned, alone. But a piece of paper was unfolded in his hands, and he paused on the threshold of the dining room, his eyes scanning the letter’s contents. Jourdain noticed this at once, the conversation dying at the table as my patron father demanded, “What is it?”

  Luc glanced up. The tension had woven around us as a rope, cutting off our air as we all thought the worse, as we all imagined we were caught before we had even started.

  “D’Aramitz has business in Théophile that he cannot abandon,” Luc explained. “He writes an apology, saying he can arrive in two weeks’ time.”

  Jourdain relaxed, but there was still a deep furrow in his brow, his displeasure evident.

  “Should we postpone the first meeting, then?” Hector inquired, his white hair gleaming in the candlelight.

  “The question is,” Luc said, folding d’Aramitz’s letter, handing it to Jourdain. “Do we feel comfortable forging plans without him?”

  Jourdain sighed, burdened, and read the letter for himself. I was sitting at my patron father’s left, Yseult beside me, and I exchanged a glance with the queen. This should be her call, I thought. And as if reading my mind, Yseult cleared her throat, drawing all the men’s gazes to her.

  “The rest of us are here,” she said. “It is unfortunate d’Aramitz is absent, but since he is only one and we are six, let us begin with the plans.”

  Jourdain nodded, pleased with her decision. We finished our dinner, and then Agnes quickly took up the plates and platters, and Jean David brought forth the map of Maevana. It was unrolled over the heart of the table, the land we were about to reclaim. A reverent quiet settled over the six of us as we studied that map.