I looked away. “I’ll do it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because. There has to be a way. I’m not going to let myself fail now.”
“And you feel that way about solving the murders?”
“I have to.” We had shifted closer again as we talked. He was less than half a foot away now, and I could have sworn I could feel the creases on his sleeves against my skin. He was so unsettling. Nothing about him made sense. I ran my fingers through my hair, shoving the sensation away.
“You have to,” he echoed. “Because you cared about my father and the court? Or to protect yourself?”
The words should have stung, a fierce accusation, but from Fitzroy, it sounded like a genuine question. Like the answer itself less important than the act of knowing it.
“Partly to protect myself,” I said quietly. “Partly to protect everyone. If there’s another attack . . . a lot more people could die. And it’s my responsibility, isn’t it, to make sure that doesn’t happen. Not that it was your father’s fault, that everyone died, but now that we’re warned—”
“My father was a horrible person.”
I stared at him. The statement had come out of nowhere, shattering everything around it, but he continued to measure out the acids, like he hadn’t said anything at all.
“What?”
“My father. He was awful. He didn’t care about anyone other than himself.” He spoke levelly, but anger lingered beneath the words, long-suppressed feeling pressing against the surface. “If you weren’t exactly who he wanted you to be, he’d punish you until you changed. And I was never who he wanted me to be.”
“Fitzroy . . .” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know him well enough to disagree. “I—I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true.” He sounded so matter-of-fact as he said it. “He wanted me to be a real son. A real heir. But I couldn’t. So then he wanted me to not exist at all. But I couldn’t do that, either. If he’d picked one or the other, it would have helped, but he changed his mind several times a day. Even if I could do what he wanted, I’d never get the chance before he switched it again.”
“You were a real son.”
He laughed. “I told you, Freya. I’ve always had to work to make people accept me. I’ve always been a threat. If my father had a real son, I would have been a threat to him. If he didn’t, I was a threat to everyone else. If I was too serious, I was a dull disappointment. If I was too frivolous, I didn’t deserve the honor of being his son. And I could never give my opinions if they went against his, or refuse to give an opinion if asked. I spent every minute of my life trying to count. I tried so hard, I don’t even know who I am any more. And none of it mattered, in the end.”
I didn’t know how to help him. I wished I did. “What about your mother?” I said instead.
“I don’t know. She didn’t really have a part in my life. My father wanted her forgotten.”
“What happened to her?”
He shrugged. “She’s gone. That’s all anyone would tell me. I found out a little on my own, but—” He sighed. “Even after all that, I still loved him. I still wanted his approval. And now he’s dead, along with everyone else, and I’m still—” He shook his head. “You asked me if I wanted to be king, before. I don’t know if I wanted to rule. But if I became king, that would be—I would have his approval then, wouldn’t I? So yes, I wanted it. It was all I wanted, sometimes. But I wouldn’t fight you for it. I wouldn’t fight anybody. It just—it meant something, before. It doesn’t mean anything now.”
“I’m sorry.” The impulse was too strong to resist. I reached across the gap and touched his arm. He looked down at my hand, and I looked at it as well, feeling the weight of it.
Then Fitzroy stepped away, reaching for another bottle of acid, and my hand hung in the air where he had been. “So, how about you? Are you ready for tomorrow?”
I closed my eyes. “I’ll never be ready for tomorrow.” I had to be honest, too, but it was so difficult, my concerns so selfish. “I feel like I’m going to be an intruder, somehow. Everyone will stare at me and hate me for being there, when the people they cared about should have been there instead.”
“They won’t,” Fitzroy said. “Not tomorrow. They’ll be too focused on themselves and their own grief to hate you for it.”
“But I’ll be there. Right at the front, being queen, when I shouldn’t be.” I glanced at him, suddenly afraid. I shouldn’t say that I wasn’t really queen, not out loud, not to anybody. But Fitzroy just shook his head.
“If people don’t know you, they won’t even notice you tomorrow. And if they do, they won’t have the energy to spare to hate you. No one will really be watching.”
“People are always watching.”
“Normally. But not tomorrow.”
“I always thought—” I paused, pulling my thoughts together. “I assumed it was easy for you. Everyone always seemed to like you.”
“I would have thought it was easy for you. No one would really have cared what you did.”
“I cared,” I said, more forcefully than I intended. “And my father. People who remembered my mother, and how wonderful she was. I felt like everyone was watching me, all the time. And I didn’t want to be part of it. I wanted to be here, with my science.”
“But you forced yourself to try?”
“No, my father forced me.” I let out a breath. “I was going to leave, to study. Be a scientist. Make big discoveries, far away from here. I can’t do that now.”
“You could,” he said softly.
“No, I can’t. I’m supposed to be queen, and if I don’t hold on to this throne—”
“But you could,” he said, more forcefully this time. “If you went far away, across the sea, and changed your name, and never mentioned this at all. They’d make Madeleine Wolff queen, and as long as you never challenged them . . . most people would forget about you. And those that didn’t probably wouldn’t be able to find you. You could leave.”
The possibility had never even occurred to me. I could go. Run far away. Follow all my dreams after all. But the thought wasn’t as relieving as I’d have expected. It just made me tenser, more anxious, faced with a possibility that I knew, deep down, I could never pursue. That plan had belonged to the Freya of a week ago, and she felt as far away now as if she were a dream. I couldn’t leave. I had to make things work here.
“I won’t leave,” I said.
Silence filled the laboratory again. And then, so softly I almost didn’t hear it: “Good.”
FIFTEEN
WE WATCHED THE RIVER AS THE SUN ROSE.
The nobles sat in huge stands along the banks, dressed in the soft yellow of sunlight and spring. Their jewels glittered in the dawn.
Everyone else stood farther down the river. The crowd heaved as people pushed forward to reach the water. Many of them held flags or banners, some official with the three stars of King Jorgen, some crafted from old clothes and scraps. A few unscrupulous merchants walked the street near the bank, offering tokens to wave for the king’s final journey, alcohol to toast him with, special lucky coins to toss as the bodies passed.
The dead were by the riverbank, too, upstream of the crowds. Hundreds of wooden boats bobbed in the water. Some were plain, but others had carvings on the sides, etched names or drawings that represented the person or their family. The richest victims lay in elaborate boats—given swan necks or mermaid tails or the wings of a hawk—with silks as blankets.
The king and queen lay in a boat together, on a mattress of gemstones. The jewels wouldn’t get far. People would be scouring the river as soon as the funeral was over. Even a single stone could feed a family for several years. People would fight over them. They would drown in the river for the hope of finding one.
It was such a waste. All of this was a waste.
I glanced at Fitzroy. We stood on a wooden platform by the water’s edge, inches from the royal boat and his father’
s body, but he wasn’t looking at them. He stared resolutely at the trees on the opposite bank, his jaw clenched.
I wanted to reach out for him, as though doing so could fix even a tiny part of this. But the priest from my coronation stood between us, talking on and on, flanked by huge glowing metal torches.
“We can take comfort in this tragedy,” he said, “that our beloved king and queen, all those we loved here, have now begun their journey to join the Forgotten. Their travails in this realm have helped to move them closer to their true place in this world, and they await us in the bliss to come.”
Dawn was coming, reds and golds spreading across the sky. The priest bowed his head at me, and I stepped forward, a huge wooden torch clutched in my hand. My dress floated around me.
I held the torch above the fire. The flames leaped across, and I flinched at the sudden heat.
All along the riverbank, other people, relatives of victims or important well-wishers, raised their own lit torches. Naomi was somewhere in the mass, I thought, as I glanced over all the flames. I hoped she was all right.
I stepped toward the bodies of the king and queen. They had been doused in pitch, and the smell partly disguised the slight stench of decay that even the best preservation attempts could not stop after a week of death. They both looked peaceful, eyes closed, faces relaxed. Someone must have arranged them, I thought dully, to cover up the horrors of their deaths. The queen looked younger without her hair piled a foot in the air, kinder. The king looked as stately as ever.
I knew they were dead—of course I knew—but my stomach jumped when I thought of setting them alight. They looked so real, like maybe we could wake them, if we just shouted loud enough. If I burned them, they’d never get that chance.
“Your Majesty?” the priest murmured. Everyone was waiting for me. I stretched out my arm, the torch shaking slightly, and touched the flame to the king’s feet. The fire caught with a rush, sweeping over the two bodies.
I stepped back, and Fitzroy moved forward, his father’s sword in his hand. He cut the boat free with one quick stroke. The current swept it up at once, carrying it downstream as the flames grew and grew, black smoke billowing. Once the boat reached the middle of the river, people all along the banks lit the other boats, too, cutting them free so they followed the king.
“May they find peace,” the priest intoned. “And may we meet again.”
“May we meet again,” the crowd repeated, but the solemnity of the words was belied by their enthusiasm. As the king’s ship passed, they waved their flags and tossed their lucky coins into its wake. Some cheered when the coins landed on the ship itself, as though the feat had won them extra luck for themselves for years to come. As though it was lucky to throw in your lot with someone who had died at his own birthday celebration.
Already, jewels were falling from the ship, sparkling in the water as they fell to the riverbed. How long would it be before someone dove in after them?
The first of the other boats pulled level with me. I stared at those fires, too, at the faces being swallowed by the flames.
Fitzroy still stood beside me, inches away now, staring at the water, seeming to see nothing at all. I wanted to comfort him. To do something. But I barely knew him, and even taking his hand felt like an intrusion. So I stared at the water, and so did he, as the boats passed.
Coins splashed into the water. The wood crackled and buckled. And the crowd cheered, and wept, and waved the old court away.
My carriage rattled through the streets after the funeral. The horses plodded so slowly that I could have walked faster myself. I sat alone in an open-topped carriage as crowds of people pressed around me. I had assumed—naively, it seemed—that most people would be by the boats, giving me a quiet journey home. But either people had chosen to wait here, or they had left the funerals before me, because the streets were packed now.
I forced myself to take a deep breath. Fitzroy had been wrong here, too. The nobles might have been too consumed by grief to watch me, but many people weren’t. The crowds stretched on forever, tens of thousands of them, each with their own voice, their own thoughts, their own reasons to reject me.
People were shouting different things at me, but all the voices mixed together, the words indistinguishable beyond vague cries of “Your Majesty!”
Then something wet splatted against my face. I flinched away, my hand flying up to rub my cheek. Sticky red liquid clung to my fingers and dripped onto the blue silk of my dress, as another tomato splattered against my shoulder. I looked up, my heart firing into overdrive.
“Long live the queen!” a woman said, as she hurled a rotten turnip at the carriage. It struck the door and exploded on impact. The rest of the crowd shifted away from the group as my guards advanced, grabbing the protestors by the arms.
“Long live the queen!” they all shouted again, voices ringing together as they were dragged away. I wiped my cheek with shaking hands. What had I done to earn that? Rotten fruit was a huge step down from an attempted poisoning, but those people must still despise me, to risk themselves in that display.
My carriage plodded on, and I leaned forward slightly, straining to hear the shouts of the crowd. They all still blurred together, but I could make out a few words, being said over and over by different people. Money was one. Curfew.
I spun around to look at the people I’d just passed. A woman must have realized that the crowd had my attention, because she leaped forward, grasping for my hand. “Your Majesty!” she said. “Your Majesty, please. We couldn’t pay the funeral fee, and my husband has been arrested, please, let him go. We can’t afford it, truly we can’t, but no one will listen—”
Her pleas were cut off as a guard grabbed her and wrenched her away.
“Wait!” I said. “What funeral fee?” But the carriage continued on, the woman almost out of earshot. “Stop,” I said to the driver. “Stop, I have to speak to that woman.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” the driver said. “It wouldn’t be safe.”
“That doesn’t matter. I need—” But the woman had been swallowed by the crowd again, and the carriage was relentless, plowing its way down the street.
I turned to look ahead again, feeling suddenly sick. I had no idea what the woman had been talking about, but I should have. I was queen, and people were getting arrested in my name, because they couldn’t afford to pay for—for all this? And no one had told me?
The words hit me like a punch to the chest. I was queen, and I had no idea what was happening in my kingdom, beyond the Fort’s walls. I’d been concerned with the murder, and with the nobles, while my advisers were doing things in my name, making decisions that changed people’s lives. No one had told me about a curfew. No one had told me about a funeral fee. I hadn’t known to ask, but I should have. It was my responsibility now, but I hadn’t recognized it.
Like the jewels in the ships. I’d looked at them, not an hour ago, and thought about how wasteful they were. How people would drown in the river to find them. I’d thought it, and I’d done nothing, even though I was the one person with the power to change it. If people drowned in the river, they should blame me. If we didn’t have enough money to fund the kingdom after throwing all those gemstones away, that was my fault.
I hadn’t thought. I was spending all my time worrying about murders and nobles, a single threat and a couple of hundred people at most, when hundreds of thousands of people filled the kingdom, their lives relying on whatever I did.
And no, I hadn’t made any of these decisions. I hadn’t even known they were being made. But I was queen. Ignorance wasn’t an excuse.
As soon as my carriage stopped in front of the Fort, I leaped out and marched through the front gates. I had to find my father. I had to speak to him.
I didn’t have to search for long. He was waiting for me in the corridor. “Freya!” he said. “What happened?”
“I need to speak to you. Right now.”
“About the tomatoes? Freya, w
hat—”
“Right now.” I strode over to a side room and yanked open the door. I was almost shaking with anger. I was failing, and my father was letting that happen. He was treasurer, wasn’t he? And he hadn’t told me. He hadn’t told me.
“What’s the funeral fee?” I said, leaving the door to hang ajar behind us.
My father frowned, like he still couldn’t understand what this was about. “It’s a fee, Freya. To pay for the funerals.”
“I never agreed to a funeral fee.”
“We needed to fund the funerals somehow. Freya, why are you asking me about this?”
“A woman grabbed me in the street.” My voice was shaking. My whole body was shaking. “She said she couldn’t afford to pay the funeral fee, so her husband was arrested.”
My father nodded. “We have to be fair to everyone, Freya. Everyone must contribute. There must be consequences if they refuse.”
“They’re not refusing if they can’t afford to pay! Are you actually saying that you’re arresting people for being unable to help fund a funeral where we burned silks and threw hundreds of jewels into the river?”
“May I remind you, Freya,” my father said, his voice sharp now, “that you are the one who wanted us to involve all of the dead in the funeral? That was not cheap. If all the city’s dead were included, all the city must pay for it.”
“But it wasn’t all the city! These were nobles who died because they ate a cake that was literally made of gold. And then we say we can’t afford their funerals, so people in the city have to go hungry to pay for it?”
My father rested a hand on my shoulder. He looked annoyed now, as though I were the one being unreasonable. “Freya, calm down. You don’t know what you are talking about.”
“If I don’t, it’s because you kept this a secret from me. I am the queen. Me. You are not to impose any more fees—any more laws—without my explicit agreement. Do you understand?”
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