“Freya—”
“Do you understand?” My anger was spilling out, washing all shyness away. My father had betrayed me in this. He’d done an awful thing, and claimed it was in my name, and I couldn’t let it happen again, not ever.
“I am your father, Freya.”
“And I am the queen. Either you agree that all my laws will pass by me, or I will find a new treasurer.”
My father stared at me.
“This woman was taken by the guards. I want her and her husband freed. And the fee will be returned to every commoner who paid it.”
“Freya—”
“All of them.”
My father’s eyes glinted with fury. “We will discuss it at the next council meeting, Your Majesty.”
“Yes, we will discuss the progress you’ve made tomorrow. And bring me a copy of Gustav’s book then, too. I need it.” I wouldn’t let my councillors keep me ignorant any longer.
I spun back to the door, and jumped. Madeleine Wolff stood there, hand raised ready to knock. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Majesty,” she said, “but they’re waiting for you in the hall, and I heard you needed to change. I came to help, but if it is a bad time—”
“No,” I said. I took a deep breath, forcing the anger down, away. “No, we’re finished here. Thank you.”
Madeleine followed me up to my rooms in silence. When we reached my bedchamber, she stepped back, looking over my dress. “This will have to go,” she said. “But if we dab at your hair, and rearrange it slightly, I think we can get away without washing it. Otherwise you’ll be hours before dinner.”
She searched through my wardrobe for something else I could wear. The choice couldn’t have been particularly inspiring for a girl like her. A few of my old dresses, a few of the queen’s dresses that we didn’t know what to do with, and the four or five new dresses that had already been completed by the sleep-deprived seamstresses. “I was going to ask you if you wanted blue or yellow, but it seems we won’t have that choice.” She leaned back, head tilted in thought. “Red,” she said finally. “Like sunrise. You’ll blend in with all the yellow, but still stand out. And this neckline will look perfect on you if we add a single chain.”
She pulled the dress out of the wardrobe and nearly stumbled over Dagny. The cat had appeared out of nowhere, and was now sniffing around her feet. “Oh,” Madeleine said. “Hello, beautiful.”
“That’s Dagny,” I said.
“Dagny,” she murmured, bending down to stroke her. She was slightly tentative, as though unsure what Dagny would do. Probably a normal reaction for someone not used to cats, but a strange one to see from the ever-poised Madeleine Wolff. Dagny arched her back and twisted her head, demanding more attention, and Madeleine smiled. “Oh, aren’t you wonderful!”
“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “I mean—is Naomi all right?”
“Naomi is still by the river.” Madeleine stood. “Her brother died at the banquet, didn’t he? This morning must have been difficult for her. I thought I could help, in her place.”
“You noticed she didn’t come back?”
“I notice a lot of things. And, I admit, I’ve been wanting the chance to talk to you again. Maybe even talk about fashion?” She draped the red dress on the back of a chair and moved to stand behind me. “You have a different kind of beauty from Queen Martha, I think. I’d love to see what we could do with it.” She began to unfasten the back of my dress while I frowned. What could I even say to that? It was obviously flattery—“different kind of beauty” was code for “not pretty,” I knew—but even so . . .
“Why did you warn me about your cousin? At the banquet last night.”
Madeleine walked over to the side table, where a bowl of water still waited from this morning. She dipped a sponge in. “I thought you needed to know. I don’t have anything to tell you specifically, but . . . I am wary of him. He’s been so angry since the king died. Not entirely like himself. He is looking for enemies in every shadow, and since you are now the queen . . . he has been assessing you. But not accurately, or I don’t believe so. I don’t think he will do anything foolish, but I thought you should know. So that you can be wary, too.”
“So that I can appease him, you mean?” How could I appease someone who suspected me of mass murder?
“No. I think, were he in his usual mind, he would appreciate you. But he is not in his usual mind. Just . . . be patient with him. He is an intelligent ally, once he is willing to listen. I hope he can see you, as I have.”
“You think you see the real me?”
She laughed lightly. “I do not know whether I should say this, Your Majesty, but you are incredibly easy to read. You don’t try to hide your feelings, not when they count. For someone like Sten, used to everyone lying around him, that might look like a lie, too. Another trick. But it is refreshing, Your Majesty. Or at least I find it so.”
She dabbed at my cheek, peering close as she worked. “I heard what you said before,” she continued. “About the fee. I think you’re very brave.”
“Brave?”
“Yes. It can’t be easy, to stand up to your father and your advisers and everything that’s come before. But you did.”
“It’s not bravery. It’s just the right thing to do.”
“Not everyone would see it that way.”
I bit my lip as she tilted my chin, dabbing the sponge behind my ear. “So your advisers didn’t tell you?” she said. “About the fee?” When I hesitated, she added, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Your Majesty, but I couldn’t help overhearing.”
Then there was no point lying to her. “No. They didn’t.”
“People will always try to see their will done, when things change like this. They want influence for themselves, I suppose. But you have good instincts, Freya. You can make things right.”
“And what about you?” I said. Anger still brewed inside me, making me bold. “What do you want to influence?”
“I want to make things better,” she said. “Nothing more or less than that.”
The feast seemed to go on for hours, despite the fact that nobody ate a bite. People whispered together, their voices a harsh buzz, and I tried to eat, forcing the pheasant down my throat. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen in the city. What else had I missed, while I sat blindly in this castle, worrying about speeches and jewels? People had been shouting so many things, too many to make the words out . . . what other crimes had been committed in my name, without me knowing at all?
I’d been so wrong. Everything I thought I knew was shattering away. I’d thought all the old courtiers were callous and selfish and shallow, but just a few days had taught me how unfair and judgmental I’d been. And then I’d thought that a ruler’s job was to lead the court, with barely a thought for the kingdom beyond. Perhaps King Jorgen hadn’t thought about the kingdom, either, but that was why he had been a bad king, wasteful and ridiculous and wrong. This job was far more than learning how to speak in front of crowds and perfecting my smiles. I held everyone’s fates in my hands. And I’d made things worse for them. I’d been so blind.
When the so-called feast ended, we had more entertainment, more forced conversations, before we finally, finally retired for the day. Naomi was asleep when I found her, curled in a ball in bed with her back to the door. I tried to sit in my chair with Dagny, to rest and recover now that the funerals were finally over, but my head was too full of thoughts to sit still. The moment I stopped moving, all the day’s discoveries crawled through me, the horror of the funerals, the number of the dead, the pain I’d caused because I hadn’t been paying attention. My eyes ached with exhaustion, but I couldn’t possibly sleep. Things were so confused now.
So, once again, I headed down to my laboratory, desperate to do something productive.
And once again, Fitzroy was already there. My chest tightened at the sight of him, the way his presence filled the room. “You couldn’t sleep?” I asked, as I closed the door behind me
.
“No.”
“Me either.”
He had said good-bye to his father today. He had said good-bye to everything he knew. And then he had come here.
He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“All right,” I said softly. “Where shall we begin?”
SIXTEEN
THE TESTS DID NOT GO WELL. THE ARSENIC STUBBORNLY refused to dissolve in most acids. It did vanish, with a little nudging, in spirit of niter, and with no nudging at all in spirits of salt, but I couldn’t smell or see anything to identify it. It might have had a detectable taste, but I wasn’t so far gone that I would willingly put arsenic and acid in my mouth, not even for answers.
Yet despite the lack of progress, despite my exhaustion, the evening felt like a success. Fitzroy’s presence was soothing, even as it set my nerves on edge, and I found myself trusting him again, letting all my worries spill into the air between us.
“You didn’t know,” he told me, as I shared my fears. “But you do now. That’s what matters.”
And maybe I was just desperate for comfort, but I believed him.
When the council meeting began the following morning, I was ready. Drained from lack of sleep, heart stuttering with nerves, but resolved.
“Every new law must go through me,” I said. My voice only slightly shook. “I need to approve every tax, and every big expenditure.”
“But Your Majesty,” Thorn said. “That will be incredibly time consuming. That’s why you have us as advisers.”
“I have advisers to advise me,” I said. “Not to rule for me. And these secret changes are unacceptable.”
“They were not secret, Freya,” my father said. “You knew what we were doing. We just did not inform you of the how.”
“So now you will. Taxing the people for the court’s funerals? Arresting them when they can’t pay? And I heard something about a curfew?”
“Necessary, Your Majesty,” Norling said, “while we investigate the murders. We need to ensure that people remain in their homes, so they cannot scheme at night.”
“Then people will just scheme during the day!”
They were all looking at me like I was a spoiled child, throwing a tantrum because I didn’t want a nap. All except Holt. He watched me with steady eyes, nodding slightly. He did not speak.
“All the how will go through me from now on,” I said. “And we have to repay the funeral fee. Say it was a mistake.”
“Your Majesty—”
“I told you, Freya,” my father said. “That will be impossible. We must pay for the funerals somehow, and they were incredibly expensive, as is our investigation of the murder. We do not have the money.”
“Then dredge the river,” I said. “Hunt down the funeral boats. There were enough jewels there to pay for everything else a hundred times over. If we are poor, we shouldn’t be throwing jewels away.”
“Your Majesty,” Holt said slowly, “I am not sure that is wise. It may be seen as an insult to the court. Those jewels were sent off in honor of the dead. It may be wasteful, but—”
“The dead can’t use jewels. We can.”
The more I spoke, the more irrational I felt, as they watched me with raised eyebrows and poorly disguised disbelief. But no matter how they spun things, they couldn’t charge the city’s poor to pay for a funeral where hundreds of gemstones were thrown away. I wouldn’t let that be how my rule began.
“Your Majesty,” Norling said, leaning forward slightly. “May I make a suggestion? There is distrust in the city for you, as you have seen. And if you do this, there will be distrust in the nobles, as well. It might be best to organize a distraction. An open trial, for those who tried to poison you, and other criminals we have apprehended recently. Show people that justice still rules in this city.”
If people thought the laws were unjust, having a trial wouldn’t help. But it would give me, and everyone else, a chance to see exactly what was going on. “Yes,” I said. “All right.”
“Perhaps Her Majesty should make sure she knows what her laws are,” Sten said softly, “before she rules on them.”
I stared at him. “I understand the laws,” I said quietly. “I just expect people to tell me when they start manipulating them.”
“Then perhaps you understand that we are not used to a tyrant for a ruler. King Jorgen listened to his advisers. And to his friends.”
“It’s hard to listen to your advisers when they don’t tell you anything.”
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t look away. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
He suspects me, I thought again. It was the only way to explain that look of careful assessment, the distrust and dislike lurking behind his eyes.
“Pay back the money,” I said. “That’s my final decision.”
My father escorted me after the meeting, his hand tight around my arm. “You are being too rash, Freya,” he said, in a low voice, once we were out of sight of the others.
I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms. “It isn’t rash to treat people fairly.”
“This decision will have consequences. Your council are supposed to be here protecting you from that, but if you plan to ignore us—”
“I’m not ignoring you,” I said. “You are the ones who’ve been ignoring me. I just—” I closed my eyes, all the fight rushing out of me. “It’s one thing to pretend to be someone else, when it’s speeches, and dresses, and balls. It’s another when it affects people. When people are suffering from decisions that I hate. I can’t—I can’t do that.”
“This will affect you, Freya.” He stopped and placed his hands on my shoulders, leaning closer, beseeching. “Sometimes, rulers have to do things that they don’t like, because it’s the best of bad options. Because fewer people will suffer than if you take the other course.”
“But you didn’t even present me with options,” I said, pulling out of his grip. “You just decided for me, and people hate me for it. I would never have agreed to this if I knew. Never.”
“Freya—”
“How can I trust you now? You were already willing to lie to me. How can I know you’re not manipulating me, as well?” I shook my head. “I can’t trust you. I have to make my decisions for myself.” I stepped back. “Have that book sent to my laboratory. And I’ll see you at the trials tomorrow.”
“Freya!”
I walked away.
The book, when it arrived, wasn’t much of a book at all. I’d been expecting an ancient tome, with hundreds of pages of philosophy and religion. Instead, Gustav’s Treatise consisted of roughly six leaves of paper, tied at the spine with string. Naomi and I read it together at the laboratory’s central table, and I scribbled notes as we went.
The essay inside wasn’t what I’d been expecting, either. Gustav had been an exiled radical, a man who despised the nobility and everything we stood for, but his book was hardly a call to mass murder. He claimed that the nobles originally appeared as false heirs to the lost Forgotten, people eager to fill the vacuum they’d left and claim their influence for themselves, but their descendants were now simply misguided, not wicked. The power to convince the Forgotten to return lay in all our hands, through good work and humility. We must purge the corruption from ourselves, and be examples to others, for only true atonement in each person’s heart would be enough to win favor again.
His ultimate goal, he wrote near the end, was to break down the line between the nobility and the people, as we were all equal under the Forgotten’s divine influence. But he recognized that would be a long and difficult path, and a more pious and thoughtful nobility would be the first step—a movement that must come from the nobility themselves.
And this, apparently, was enough to see him exiled and his work banned forever.
I couldn’t imagine how this was connected to the attacks. But Holt had said the work had been twisted over time, forced to mean whatever people wanted it to mean. People could have taken the words about pretenders and forgotten the
rest. Even so . . .
I leaned back, dropping my pen on the paper. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t think.”
Naomi stretched beside me. “It’s a hundred years old, and illegal to own. It makes sense that it doesn’t tell you much about what these people want.”
“They call themselves the Gustavites! They should be following what he said, shouldn’t they?”
“Or maybe they are,” Naomi said softly. “They aren’t exactly around to answer questions, are they? Maybe your advisers are wrong about them.”
“But what about the woman who tried to poison me?”
“She might not represent the rest of them. She might have nothing to do with them.”
And I had thought it was unlikely, when I first heard the accusation. My head pounded. There were so many things to worry about, so many threats. I could barely keep track of all the strands, let alone see how they tangled together. “A break,” I said, pressing the heels of hands against my eyes. “Let’s have a break.”
Naomi stood and stretched again. “You must be tired,” she said. “You haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
“Who needs sleep?”
“Where did you go last night? I came out to look for you, but . . .” She shrugged. “You weren’t there.”
I looked up again. If she’d wanted to talk to me, on the night of the funerals, and I wasn’t there . . . “I’m sorry. I thought you were asleep.”
“I woke up. It’s all right, I was just wondering. Were you working?”
I nodded. “Not that I made much progress.” I drummed my fingers on the table, wondering how much to tell her. But my conversations weren’t secrets. There was nothing unmentionable about them. “Fitzroy was there.”
“Fitzroy?” She shot me a sideways glance. “Is that why you didn’t make much progress?”
“Naomi!” I stared at her, and she grinned.
“Well, you’ve never mentioned Fitzroy before. Last I heard, you didn’t know him at all. And now he’s helping you in your lab? How suspicious.”
“Suspicious? You think he’s manipulating me?”
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