by C. L. Polk
Tristan sighed, loud and annoyed. “Enough, Aldis. She doesn’t know about that.”
Avia let go of her camera and reached inside her coat for a pad of paper and a pen. “Aife of the Solace, Throne of Great Making…” She dropped her pen in the snow. “You’re Guardians. You’re Amaranthines. You’re real.”
Gasps erupted from the protesters behind her. A woman shoved Avia aside, falling on her knees. “Blessed Ones. What have we done to bring your justice down on us?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I guided my mount with nudges and gentle hands to move in front of Aldis. “The blame is not yours, people of Aeland. Please remain calm. These are the Blessed Ones, and they have come to speak to Queen Constantina. Let them proceed into the palace in peace.”
I let myself look at Avia Jessup one more time. She watched as I turned toward the cohort of scarlet-coated guards, my ears bitten by the icy air.
“Grace, stop!”
Miles’s voice. I kept my mount’s gait steady and rode with my hands up. “Ahoy,” I said. “I’m Fiona Grace Hensley.”
The guards raised their rifles in one motion. “You are wanted on suspicion of treason,” the guard captain said. “Surrender.”
“Please see the Blessed Ones to comfort and hospitality. I need to speak to the Queen. It’s life or death.” I spread my empty hands, imploring.
Bolts pulled back in a chorus of slides and clicks. A shout went up from the company of the Amaranthines, and Tristan rode forward, one hand raised for peace.
“The Liberator is protected by Grand Duchess Aife of the Solace,” Tristan called. “She is our guest, and we will defend her from insult and violence.”
They could fight. Right here. The guards and their rifles against the Deathless and their magic. Would they be stupid enough to spill Amaranthine blood?
I wouldn’t let them fight, not over me. I planted one hand on the saddle and dismounted. “Tristan, stand down. Please. I have to do this. She has to know right away.”
Tristan shook his head. “You have the protection of Grand Duchess Aife.”
I held my hands up, palms out. “Should I insult my Queen by staying under that protection when a loyal subject would trust her monarch’s wisdom? I throw myself on her mercy. I have every faith that she will hear me out.”
“Queen Eilidh would expect the same,” Tristan said.
Something in his tone made me look at him, to read his face. But his expression was still as a pond, and he stepped back, allowing me to surrender.
“Take her,” the guard captain ordered, and scarlet coats closed in on me. One of them wrapped copper-lined manacles around my wrists. Cold flames shuddered over my skin. My lips tasted like metal. The world warped and snapped back with a clang. My empty stomach shuddered, and two more guards seized me before I could fall.
I couldn’t react. I couldn’t scream, or retch, or indicate in any way that I couldn’t bear the touch of copper against my skin. They’d know what I was, and no one could save me from the examiners.
“Gently,” Aife said. “She surrendered. Treat her with respect.”
The guard captain regarded Aife with a worried pinch to his brows. “She’s wanted for treason, Your Radiance.”
“‘Highness’ will do,” she said. “I am Grand Duchess Aife of the Solace, Hand of the Throne of Great Making. I wish to see your Queen immediately. Will you go and tell her?”
The captain gave an order and an underling ran, kicking up chunks of snow as he sprinted through the gates.
The others marched me away, turning down the snow-tamped path to Kingsgrave Prison.
“I must see the Queen,” I said. “It’s the fate of the kingdom.”
“We have our orders, and they don’t come from you,” a guard said. “Now shut up and march.”
I held my tongue. We passed under an ash tree, its boughs draped in snow. A flight of scarlet jays circled the rough gray stone of the prison tower as the heavy doors swung open, ready to swallow me whole.
* * *
It was time for a meal in Kingsgrave Prison, and I couldn’t stay here another minute. The awareness of the storm pressed on the base of my skull, tying knots in my stomach and twisting my dreams in the dark. The others had to have felt it by now. They had to have come to the Queen with the news. She wouldn’t leave me in here, not when she needed me. I could convince her if I could just speak to her. She would understand everything. If she would see me, even for a minute.
The door opened with a rusty groan. Prince Severin strode into the cell block, his fashionable attire incongruous in the rough stone and stink of the prison. From the shiny toes of his shoes to the hand-eased shoulders of his suit to his dark hair dressed and gleaming, he was every bit as handsome as the last time I’d seen him. A satin-woven orange silk tie-dyed the same shade as the Hensleys’ heraldry descended from under the collar of his shirt. After a day and a half, my hair hung in my eyes. I was unwashed and clad in the shapeless undyed hemp of prisoners.
“I came as soon as I could,” he said. “I can’t believe you brought the Blessed Ones to us.”
“Your Highness. Please. A storm is coming—” I lifted my head and groaned. “Sorry. It hurts.”
“I know about the storm. The others sent messages an hour ago, and they all say the same thing.”
I fought to sit up. “There’s no time to waste. It’s the biggest storm I’ve ever seen. Did Her Majesty send you to get me? No one else can lead the ritual.”
He came closer to the copper-plated bars. “Listen to me. I can help you get out of this cell, but I need something from you.”
I stood up and swayed, but I stayed on my feet. “If it’s in my power.”
“Whatever she says, no matter what she says, agree to the Queen’s terms.” Prince Severin spoke so quietly I had to watch his lips to understand. “But after, I need you on my side. Aeland is in deep trouble with the Amaranthines because of this mess with aether and the asylums, and she won’t listen to me.”
I came as close to the bars as I dared. “What kind of trouble?”
“They want things the Queen doesn’t want to give. I’m trying to compromise, but she can’t be convinced to bend.”
“And you want me to help you convince her?”
“I want Aeland to survive this storm and the Amaranthines’ pronouncement of justice,” Prince Severin said. “We must surrender to their word and do as they tell us, but Mother won’t do it. But it’s even worse than that. The people are angry.”
How angry? I hadn’t any idea what had happened in Kingston since we discovered the truth deep in the basement of Clarity House. Was it more than just protesters standing in the parade square? “They should be angry. The lights are out.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to discuss this when you’re released. Will you support me?”
“What do the Amaranthines want that Queen Constantina won’t give?”
Severin counted one point on his finger. “Reparations for Laneer, for Aeland’s aggression against them.”
“Oh.” The old tales were clear. An Amaranthine’s justice cost the punished what they least wanted to pay. Queen Constantina prided herself on the success of her reign, measured in millions of marks. “Is that all they want?”
“No.” A second finger joined the tally. “They want the witches freed, and reparations paid to them.”
And once freed, they would tell their stories. That knowledge would have the people in a rage. Constantina could lose her crown over that revelation. Maybe even her head. “She’ll never do it.”
“She must,” Prince Severin said. “Lastly, they want Aelanders to know the truth of what has been done in their name.”
I stared at the third finger counting the point that would destroy us. “Aeland will burn to the ground if that happens.”
“We might be able to control that part, if we can convince Mother to agree,” Severin said.
“But if she doesn’t?”
“Then
I need you.”
To turn my back on the Queen, he meant. Severin suggested that I promise to commit treason as a condition of acquitting me of that same charge. How hard would he try to preserve his mother’s place if I stood with him? How could I turn against the rightful monarch? How could I turn generations of service to the Crown to dust as I betrayed her?
“Must you ask this of me, Your Highness? Is there nothing else I can pledge?”
He wrapped his hands around the bars, his chin raised to meet my eyes. “I don’t want to do this. But it’s the Amaranthines, Grace. It’s them. Here in the palace.”
His eyes shone with awe and wonder. I understood that. It hit me too, sometimes, when I remembered they knew the faces of the Makers. I found it easy to forget—but the Prince attended temple. He kept his book of meditations. He saw them differently. “Is it strange, sometimes?”
“It’s a blessing,” Prince Severin said. “The fact that they’re granting us the chance to beg them for mercy can’t be wasted. She doesn’t understand that they could simply take their justice, and what that could mean for Aeland.”
“What will they do?”
Severin’s shoulders came up. “You know the Blessed Ones better than I do. One of the Grand Duchess’s courtiers is no friend to Aeland. Do you know who I mean?”
“Aldis.” His advice to Aife wouldn’t favor us at all. “What does he want?”
“He argued that they should take the royal family and all the Royal Knights prisoners, and make us a vassal state to Laneer—”
“They can’t!”
“And if we refuse,” Prince Severin said, “he’s asking that we be withered.”
I stopped breathing. Poets sang of the Amaranthine who cursed King Randulf, his twenty heirs and bastards, and his sixty-eight grandchildren: “You will wither.”
His wife had miscarried on the spot. A year later, neither he nor his children nor the children of his children proved fruitful. Ten years later, brides were returned, treaties broken, the land taken or emancipated as Randulf’s line grew old and powerless, and died, vanished from all but poetry and legend.
I understood why Severin looked so pale. I had to get out of here.
“The Grand Duchess said she would give us her decision after she has seen the truth of Aeland for herself, but I fear she won’t be patient with Mother’s resistance.”
Queen Constantina would choke to death before she apologized to Laneer and admitted the war was a criminal act. If she learned of the Prince’s plans, she wouldn’t hesitate. He would hang, and his accomplices with him.
But if she brought Aeland to ruin, could I really stand by and plead loyalty? Never. I would never let Aeland fall, if I could help it.
And so I committed treason, in truth. “All right. I’ll support you. And if it comes down to it, I will stand with you.”
Severin let out a long-held breath. “Thank you. Let me get you out of here. Guard!” he called. “Unlock this door. I am taking Dame Grace into my custody immediately.”
TWO
The Spider’s Web
Severin let me have time and privacy to dress in my borrowed Amaranthine garb before he offered his escort through the chilled halls of Kingsgrave. I matched his unhurried pace even though I wanted to run. I had so much to do, starting with rallying what was left of the Circle of Invisibles. But I could use this time if the Prince would inform me on what had happened while I had been in Bywell.
“The Queen arrested them all?” My voice bounced off the stones and resounded in my ears. I lowered it to a murmur, turning my head to point the words in Severin’s ear. “The entire Cabinet?”
Severin inclined his head in my direction, already familiar with the stone hallway’s acoustic tricks. “They’re all imprisoned.”
So that was why it had snowed so hard a week ago. The entire First Ring was in chains. They certainly deserved it. They were absolutely guilty. But the storm made my skull ache and tied knots in my stomach, and I needed their power and skill to fight it. “Since when? Oh, I apologize, Your Highness. It’s only that this is so urgent—”
He covered my hand, curled around the crook of his elbow, with his. “Severin. I rely on your candor, Grace. Please don’t withhold it from me, not when I need it the most.”
“Severin,” I said.
He gave me the smile that half of Kingston sighed over, the one that featured in so many photographs of him with Aeland’s most famous beauties in the news. “To answer your question, about three days after the lights went out.”
“That’s before the storm on the eighth,” I said. “And that one was a mere blizzard. It wiped out the last of our crops.”
“We always reap a surplus,” Prince Severin said with a shrug. “We can manage.”
It wouldn’t be that easy. Hundreds of tons of food lay rotting under the snow. Thousands. “I mean that this coming storm is worse. The eye is enormous. I must have the First Ring in ritual. I need every Storm-Singer I can get.”
“I know you do. But Mother’s in a rage. I’m not sure she’ll let you have them.” Severin led me around another corner, deep into the twisting maze that would confuse anyone trying to escape. But weren’t we going the wrong way? The Prince turned right where we should have gone left. He didn’t have the Cauldron boiling in his senses forever to the west, but he knew the palace better than I could ever hope to.
I tried to find a graceful way to ask, but Severin turned another corner and spoke again. “I thought Sir Christopher the Younger was dead.”
So much for my brother’s attempt at freedom and privacy. “He wanted it that way,” I said. “And he uses Miles, now.”
That curled the Prince’s lips in a smile. “An alias? How dashing.”
“He deserves all the credit for doing the right thing and staying the Amaranthines’ wrath. He was the one who acted. I just helped.”
“Did you hesitate to help him?”
I shrugged. “No. He was right.”
“Then you deserve credit too. Many people wouldn’t have moved to do the right thing so quickly. But you made the hard choice, for the good of Aeland.”
His approval warmed my cheeks. “Thank you, Your High—Severin.”
He patted my hand and led me around another corner. “You’ll get used to it. But about the Amaranthines.”
I wasn’t the only one who needed information. “What do you wish to know?”
Again he smiled at me, crinkling the skin at the corners of his fine dark eyes. “Is it true they can’t lie?”
“I have never caught an Amaranthine lying.”
“That doesn’t mean that they always tell the truth, does it?” He nudged my arm, guiding me to a wide set of stone stairs that curved upward.
I stopped in my tracks. “This is the Tower of Sighs.”
“Yes,” Prince Severin said. “Someone wants to see you.”
I fought the urge to pull away from his arm. “My father.”
“He’s in the tower with the rest of the Cabinet, awaiting judgment.”
“And what will that judgment be?” My voice bounced off the stone, louder than I had intended. He didn’t know what Father had done, how close he’d come to killing his own son. Severin probably thought this was a kindness—and I had to accept it as such.
“It’s a complicated case. All conspiracies are. It will take time to unravel exactly who knew what, when, and what they did about it. One must be careful and sure, when delivering a punishment. And sometimes, one has to be swift.”
We halted on a landing next to a window. Outside, gray-coated soldiers cleared off the stair of a gallows, sending clumps of snow cascading to the ground.
Prince Severin spoke, breaking through my awful fascination with the scene outside. “How long do we have before the storm comes?”
I set my gaze past the execution grounds, letting the horizon blur as I sensed beyond sight to read the wind. “If I had the full Circle, it would be in reach today.”
“And wit
hout the First Ring?”
“Tomorrow evening. It might shed some of its power in that time, or it might get even stronger.”
“You’ll do everything you can,” Prince Severin said. “I know it. So does Mother.”
He led the way past cells walled with bars. At these lowest levels, the Laneeri delegation who had come under the guise of surrender languished in bare cells, their long, bleached hair bound in plaits and wrapped around their heads, attempting to hide the dark roots growing from neglect. Their eyebrows were growing back in, and their faces were bare of the complex, colorful makeup they used to signal their rank and importance. They hovered near the copper-plated bars and watched us pass, silent and hateful. Some of them glowed with magical talent, their auras dotted by witchmarks.
Outside their cells stood Sir Aldis Hunter, vibrating with fury.
“What is the meaning of this mistreatment?” he demanded.
“Good morning, Sir Aldis,” Severin said with a bow. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Her Highness wished a report on the status of the diplomatic envoys Laneer sent to this place,” Aldis said. “And you have caged them, humiliated them with these rags. You have denied them all but the meanest of necessities.”
Severin’s expression went blank. “They’re prisoners.”
Aldis took a step toward Severin, close enough that he towered over the Prince. “They are ambassadors. Your imprisonment was supposed to be ceremonial. They should have been released days ago.”
“We’re in a state of emergency, Sir Aldis,” Severin said. “We had to increase coverage of guardsmen and police throughout the city to keep order. We haven’t the personnel to spare to watch them.”
Aldis seethed, every muscle stiff with repressed ire. “I will report this to Her Highness.”
He pushed past us and stalked off.
“He’s really not happy with us,” I said.
“He’s wrathful,” Severin said. “He’s a test.”