“How you survive?” That was a bit melodramatic.
“Of course. I was a threat to pretty much everybody there. I still am, I guess. So I had to make people like me.”
“You didn’t consider just being nice?” I didn’t mean to attack him, but the questions poured out of me, demanding to be answered.
“Nice? In this court? Not for me. People would think I was weak and tear me apart. Or think I was being manipulative, and tear me apart.”
“So you make fun of them instead?”
He sighed. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you. I was just—it’s awkward, all right? All of this is awkward. I thought you would laugh. But you didn’t. And I’m sorry.”
It was a strange feeling, to believe him. “Is that why you were honest with me? Because you felt guilty?”
“I don’t—” Another sigh, definitely frustrated now. “I don’t know where you got your opinion of me, Freya, but it’s not true. I was honest with you because I have nothing to hide. I’ve seen you, over the past few days. You seem honest. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing, from your perspective, but I trust you. I don’t know. Something about you makes me want to trust you.”
“And you think I should trust you?”
“You probably shouldn’t. I am the last king’s son, after all.” The words should have been another one of his jokes, but his tone didn’t change. “Not really one that counts, but I’m sure your advisers will be quick to tell you how much of a threat I am. Just try not to cut my head off, all right? I rather like it where it is.”
Still no change in tone. I shivered. “I’m not cutting off anyone’s head.”
“I’ll take that as a promise.” He turned away, stepping toward the middle of the room. The tension between us snapped, leaving the ground unsteady underneath me. “Here’s why you can trust me, Freya,” he said. “For all my father’s spontaneous sulks, he was in the middle of legitimizing me. He wanted to make me his heir. If he hadn’t died, I would have been the next king. Even if you think me ruthless enough to kill my father and everyone at court for the sake of my own ambition . . . even then, it couldn’t have been me. I would have been king. I would have been accepted here, surrounded by everyone I care about, and now I’m not. I’m not your murderer, Freya. And if you find them, let me know. I’d like to be there to skin them, myself.”
He gave me a little smile and a casual tilt of his head, as though that were a joke, too, nothing serious meant at all. But the strain in his shoulders ruined the illusion. He might not actually be willing to murder the person responsible, but he wasn’t entirely joking, either.
“I will,” I said. “Don’t—don’t worry about that.” I wanted to say something else, something more, but I didn’t know what. It felt like something significant should follow, but instead the silence hovered between us, waiting to be broken.
Part of me wanted to continue the conversation, to draw it out, to dwell in the rawness of it. But my hands were still shaking, and my heart was beating too fast. It felt dangerous, all of this. Far too open. “Thank you,” I said. “For coming here. For answering my questions.”
He nodded. “It was my pleasure. I mean, without the pleasure, but—still.” He stared at me for a long moment. “I hope your investigations come to something, Freya. Try and survive until then.”
THIRTEEN
I FELT ON EDGE FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. I WAS CONFIDENT I could cross Fitzroy off my list of suspects, after that conversation, but I was even more confused and uncertain than I had been before I’d summoned him. I tried to organize my possessions as they arrived in the lab, but it was almost as if his piercing blue eyes were still watching me from across the room. I could still feel his rawness filling the air.
Shame swirled in my stomach as I worked. I’d always thought Fitzroy was a fool, but I had never paused to think that it might all be an act, that there might be something more substantial underneath. I’d never even really thought of him as a person. First Madeleine Wolff, now William Fitzroy . . . was it the murders that had brought out these sides in people, or had they always been there, lurking underneath the court’s gold veneer all along? What did that say about my observation skills, if I’d never noticed?
What did it say about me as a person, if I’d never cared to try?
Naomi slipped into the lab in the afternoon, but she was no closer to getting her hands on a copy of the book. It would be too dangerous to let people know about her search, considering all that had happened, and although Naomi was brave, she wasn’t stupid. She’d spoken to as many people as she could without raising suspicion, turning the conversation to the Gustavites, using flattery to convince the older members of court to explain the problems to her, again and again, teasing out each person’s beliefs. The survivors of the banquet had been more reticent, she said, but many nobles had begun to arrive for the funerals, and to many of them, the situation was more a source of gossip than one of grief.
“Everyone I spoke to thought the Gustavites were stupid, though,” Naomi said, curling her toes around the slats of her stool. “No one seemed to support them. But I suppose they wouldn’t want to give that away, would they?”
“I suppose not.” After my encounter with Fitzroy, I was wary of dealing with people again. They were too unpredictable. I longed for science—clear, indisputable, easy-to-understand science. “Let’s work on the poison test,” I said to Naomi, shuffling our piles of notes aside. Perhaps that would give me somewhere solid to stand.
I pulled on thick leather gloves and tied a cloth over my face before passing a second cloth to Naomi and reaching for the jars of arsenic left by the room’s original inhabitants. We had both the white powder form, perfect for poisoning enemies, and the pure metal, flaky and gray.
Step one, I decided, would be to burn it. Different metals produced different-color flames when thrown into a fire, and if the arsenic was distinctive enough, we could simply burn some of the food to detect it.
There was no chance that the solution would be that simple. But it was a good place to begin.
I lit a candle and broke off a piece of pure arsenic with my tongs. Naomi stepped back, her face covered too. I held my breath as I pushed the arsenic into the flame.
The fire turned blue, and a garlicky smell filled the room.
“You did it?” Naomi said, shifting closer. She sounded unsure.
“Not yet.” I placed the pure arsenic in a bowl and snuffed the flame. “It’s the powder that’s used to poison people. If that has the same reaction . . .”
It didn’t. I couldn’t hold the powder in my tongs, so I lit another candle and sprinkled it on top, letting it settle in the slight dip of melted wax. Nothing happened. At least, nothing I could identify. The smoke might have been a little thicker, perhaps, but the powder just sat there, completely uninterested in doing anything useful.
I took notes anyway, making sure I didn’t leave out a single detail. That garlic smell felt like the key here. If I could get the powder to release the same gas, then it would be easy to detect.
My pen was too loud as it scratched the paper. I could feel Naomi watching me.
“It’ll be all right, you know,” she said softly.
“I know. The answer’s here somewhere.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She touched my shoulder. “I meant—court. The funerals. All of it. I know you can do it.”
I chewed my lip. “I wasn’t made for this, Naomi. I was supposed to leave. I was supposed to be doing science, not—not worrying about court gossip and fashion and the right way to smile. I was supposed to escape all this. I don’t fit here.”
“Freya—”
“Do you think I’m selfish?”
Naomi stared at me. “Freya, no. Of course not. You—”
“I think I am.” I stared at the stains on the table. It seemed so important, suddenly, to say it out loud. Not to get Naomi’s reassurance that I was wrong—what would be the point?—but to let myself accept tha
t I was right. I’d found a huge flaw deep within me, one I’d previously thought was a strength . . . what was I supposed to do with that? “Fitzroy—he’s not who I thought he would be. And Madeleine, when she bumped into me, she just wanted to talk about charity. About orphans. And I thought maybe she was just putting on an act, but . . . I think she really is like that. I think she really does care. And I always dismissed her, because she fit in, and I didn’t. How can I be the queen of these people, when I think like that? I wouldn’t even accept me.”
“Freya. Listen.” Naomi pulled her stool closer, so we were practically sitting on top of each other. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I sank into the strange sideways hug. “I don’t think you’re selfish. Things were different before. You didn’t feel like you fit in here. Neither of us did. You wanted to leave. Of course you didn’t want to make friends, or think the people making you miserable were nice. But now things are different, now you’re a part of it . . . you’re seeing things differently, too. And that’s okay, isn’t it? It means you aren’t selfish. You’re thinking about them as people. That’s all right. That’s what you need to do.”
“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes, shifting closer. Her hair tickled my nose. “How am I ever going to understand them?”
“They’re just people, Freya. You’ll be all right.”
But even that thought was terrifying. People were complicated. I’d never be able to please them all.
More visitors poured through the Fort’s gates the following day. Since none of these nobles had been at the banquet that night, and many barely knew the victims, they didn’t talk in the same somber tones as most of the survivors—they greeted one another with enthusiasm, their voices swelling in speculation. When I passed them in the corridors, they would fall silent, bowing and curtsying, before resuming their gossip as soon as I was out of sight.
I tried to smile as my mother had, to walk as though the corridors belonged to me. I needed the visitors’ approval—as my father had told me, over and over again. They held far more power than any ruler would like to admit. They collected the taxes in their regions. They were the face of law and justice to whoever lived under their rule. Common people knew them, respected them, or feared them, as the case may be, and they had old families, old connections, knowledge of the land and resources that the crown never saw. I needed their support. How could someone declare themselves queen in one city, when all the land around disagreed?
I had no chance to go to my laboratory. Instead I practiced my speech with my father until I knew it so well that my ghost would probably recite it in these halls a thousand years from now. I answered Holt’s questions about cutlery and curtsies, and whenever I had a spare moment, I scribbled down ideas for conversations, phrases I could say, anything to make me feel more prepared.
Naomi helped me to dress in near silence, pinning my hair up so it looked like a spiraling black pastry balanced on my scalp. It looked ridiculous, I thought, as Naomi added another ten pins to ensure in stayed in place, but it was a familiar style. I just needed to be familiar. Naomi dusted silver over my eyelids, and tied me into another huge skirt, layered with cascading silk and studded with yet more jewels. It swamped me, making my face and hands look inhumanly small, and I scowled at my reflection, willing it to shift into proportion.
When my father came to collect me, he looked calm and confident, as he always did in court, but he worried the edge of his sleeve with his thumb as he nodded his approval. He was nervous.
We met Holt outside the throne room. He looked over my dress, my hair, my jewels, and he frowned. But he didn’t get a chance to speak before my father barreled ahead.
“Do you remember your speech?”
I nodded, feeling too sick to reply.
“The Forgotten are with you, Your Majesty,” Holt said. “Even now. Have faith that they knew what they were doing, when they brought you here.”
It wasn’t comforting, but I nodded again, and Holt steered me toward the door. “Smile, Your Majesty,” he said, “and all will be well.”
Servants opened the double doors, revealing the throne room beyond. “All bow to Her Majesty Queen Freya, ruler of Epria!” a guard shouted.
People must have worked nonstop to transform this room since the feast after my coronation. Banners hung from the ceiling—still bearing King Jorgen’s sigil—and paintings were hung on every inch of the walls, making it look slightly less like a dungeon. The coldness had lingered, though, even with the crowd now waiting inside.
Some of the people were familiar—Fitzroy was there, and Torsten Wolff—but there were many strangers, too. A hundred unfamiliar faces, all staring at me expectantly, eyes burrowing under my skin.
Smile. I just had to smile. I could feel the corners of my lips straining, the muscles in my cheeks twitching. They must all have seen the falseness of it, the fear in my eyes.
I slowly crossed the room, heading for the throne. I wanted to stare straight ahead, to pretend I was walking alone, pretend it wasn’t real, but I couldn’t. I forced myself to look left and right, to meet people’s eyes, to smile to them. Challenging myself to notice the details.
This time I didn’t trip. That was a blessing, at least.
I stopped in front of the throne, and felt another jolt of fear. The throne had belonged to the king, and had been designed for a king’s frame, a king’s clothes. My skirt was twice as wide as the seat, and the crinoline was not going to bend. I wouldn’t fit. I could possibly sit over the throne, my skirts ringing it and hiding it from sight, but that didn’t exactly seem like a dignified solution.
But it would be fine. It was fine. I’d just have to stand. Standing would be fine.
I tried to turn gracefully to face the nobles, but the skirt was too large, and I wobbled. A few people in the audience laughed behind their hands, and my face flushed.
But I could do this. I could do this. I just had to say the speech, and everything would be fine.
The words caught in my throat. I knew them, I did, but they wouldn’t travel from my brain to my tongue. A hundred people watched me, waiting, judging, expecting me to fail, and the more I snatched for those perfectly memorized phrases, the quicker they danced away. The silence stretched on.
“Welcome,” I said eventually. It came out as a rasp. “Welcome,” I said again, but that time the word sounded too loud, like I was shouting at them.
Had my tongue always been this large? The room spun at the edges.
I could do this. I could. I just had to speak. Just speak.
“I am delighted to welcome you all back to the capital, although it grieves me that we must meet under such tragic circumstances.” That was right, wasn’t it? The words were stiff, entirely unnatural, but I was speaking them. It was all right. “We have all lost so many friends in this tragedy, and I know we will all feel their absence tonight. But I also know that we are strong, and we can come together in our grief, to honor and remember them, and forge Epria anew.” Once I’d started, the words tumbled out, with the ebb and flow that my father had drilled into me, over and over again. The rhythm of them took over, and I lost any sense of what I was saying or where I was. I just spoke, and gestured, letting it happen.
And then the nobles were applauding, and I crashed back into myself, swaying on my feet.
I had done it. I’d reached the end of the speech. It hadn’t killed me. I didn’t really know what had happened, or what I had said, but my father was smiling at me, and Holt was walking forward, and I’d done it.
I felt proud, flush with my success, but I seemed to have rushed through two days’ worth of energy to support myself through that two-minute speech, and I needed time to sit now, to recover.
But of course, we weren’t finished yet. I had to meet all of the guests, every single one, in a never-ending parade of bows and curtsies.
“This is Sir Leonard, Your Majesty, and his wife, Isabella,” Holt said, as the first couple approached. “They have traveled her
e from the moorlands in the east.”
“Oh, we were so heartbroken to hear of what happened at the feast,” Lady Isabella said, sinking into a curtsy. “So many good people—it must have been so painful, to be there.”
“I was not there,” I said. “I didn’t see.”
“Thank the Forgotten for small mercies, I suppose.”
“I remember your mother, Your Majesty,” Lady Isabella said. “She was a wonderful woman. She lit up every room she was in. I was much grieved to hear of her death.”
“Thank you,” I said softly. “So was I.”
“Your Majesty,” Sir Leonard said, “when the business of the funeral is over, I am hoping we can discuss the issue of taxation over the marshlands. The people there are not rich, as I am sure you know, and these high taxes from King Jorgen are putting an unnecessary burden on—”
“I will be delighted to discuss such matters with you,” Holt said smoothly, “or perhaps you could discuss them with the treasurer, Her Majesty’s father? After the funeral, of course.”
“I can discuss it with you,” I said, the blunt words bursting out of nowhere. “If people are struggling, I want to know about it.” Holt stared at me, and I faltered. “Although—I’m sure my father will be able to provide more help. But if you wish to discuss . . .” I ran out of words, as suddenly as they’d appeared, but Leonard was looking at me slightly differently now, appraising me.
“Of course,” he said. “I will take you up on that.”
More people followed, and I tried to greet them as I should. But I felt slightly detached from it all, and nothing seemed quite right. When I stretched my smile wide and tried to be friendly, welcoming, I felt like I was mocking the occasion, too cheery for the funeral of the entire court that came before. When I attempted to be somber, I was too quiet, too cold, an unwelcoming figure with nothing much to say. And when my true thoughts burst through, I felt a rush of relief, just for a moment, before I remembered how unqueenly I was being, and shoved the thoughts away.
Long May She Reign Page 12