The True Queen

by Zen Cho

  “Take Georgiana of Threlfall away,” she said. “And the mortals she brought with her. They are to be detained while I consider the punishment for their offences.”

  Henrietta and Muna shrank against the wall, but it was impossible to hide. Dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed upon them. Not one pair was friendly, and nowhere among them could Muna see her sister.

  “I cannot finish the spell,” whispered Henrietta. “Will you help me?”

  “I cannot,” said Muna. The hall was spinning around her. Her head hurt abominably, and her breath came short. Even if she could formulate an appeal to the fine ones in her state, all the spirits here must have sworn allegiance to the Queen; they were unlikely to help her and Henrietta. Still, guilt wrenched at her. “I am sorry!”

  She did not know if Henrietta even heard her. Before the Englishwoman could answer, the spirits fell upon them, hurrying them towards the great doors at the end of the hall. The doors opened directly onto a tunnel—a narrow space shrouded in gloom, whose end could not be seen. A musty underground smell gusted from the opening.

  The spirits rushed into the tunnel, jostling their mortal burdens unmercifully.

  Muna’s arm scraped against a rocky wall; her head was bumped against the ceiling. Cold water dripped on her face, and nightmarish visages surrounded her, hooting and shrieking. She drew in a terrified breath, but before she could scream, she was plunged into darkness.

  19

  MUNA REMEMBERED THIS. It had happened just this way, once before. She had been caught like a fish in the net, while her sister looked on, unmoved . . .

  She could not scream, for she could not breathe, but whether it was terror or magic that had taken her breath, she could not tell. Perhaps she was dying. But the thought did not bring relief, for if that was so, she had died before, and that meant one could die again and again; suffering did not need to have an end.

  A hand clutched at hers, cold and dry, the skin soft. Muna recollected that there was another with her, no less frightened than herself. Henrietta—that was her name.

  “Do not be afraid,” Muna tried to say. She wound her fingers through Henrietta’s.

  The magic spat them out, and they tumbled onto a damp yielding turf.

  Muna opened her eyes. There was a pale blue sky above, embroidered with leaves in brilliant shades of yellow, red, orange and burnt umber. She glimpsed Henrietta’s pale blond hair out of the corner of her eye.

  Trees with brilliant white trunks loomed over them. Thin gold sunshine poured into the glade, but the crystalline light did nothing to counteract the cold.

  Muna sat up, rubbing her arms. She felt feeble, but her mind was clear.

  “We were captured,” she said aloud. The last thing she remembered was being seized and borne off by the Queen’s attendants. Then she had been overcome by unconsciousness. They must still be in the Unseen Realm, but . . . “Where have they brought us?”

  Henrietta started up with a glad cry. “But I know this place! These are my father’s lands in Shropshire.”

  Muna could not have said why, but she was quite certain they were not in England, nor anywhere in the mortal realm. Perhaps it was the effect of having swallowed Rollo’s scale; it had lent her a sense she had not possessed before, a feeling for magic.

  Or perhaps it was something else. She thought of the serpent she had seen in her vision in Henrietta’s classroom, slumbering beneath the sea.

  “But the Queen will not have freed us,” said Muna. “It must be an illusion.”

  Henrietta had arrived at the same conclusion as she looked around. Her face fell.

  “Yes. It is only a glamour put on to deceive us. I wonder what they mean by it!” Still she looked about hungrily, as if she could not have enough of seeing, though she knew all she saw to be false. “This grove was my particular refuge when I was a girl. It was here I fled to evade punishment for mischief.”

  Muna rose to her feet, brushing twigs off her dress. She was still somewhat dazed, but Henrietta’s voice was reassuring, an anchor to ordinary things. To keep her talking, Muna said, “Were you a mischievous child? You surprise me!”

  Henrietta smiled. “I believe I was as obedient a girl as anyone could hope for—certainly my sisters were less biddable! But my minders were persuaded I could conquer my magical nature if I wished. They thought if I were spanked I should in time learn not to fly in my sleep.”

  “And did you learn?”

  “No,” sighed Henrietta. “I tried my best, for my family found my habits distressing, but it was no good. I did not stop floating in my sleep till I joined Mrs. Wythe’s Academy. Mr. Wythe said it was because I had been obliged to suppress my magic during the day—it burst out at night when I slept and could not restrain it. But since at the Academy I began to make full use of my powers, there was no longer a surplus to be drained off. It vexed Prunella that I stopped; she had wished to study how I did it.”

  The reference to the Sorceress Royal seemed to give her thoughts a melancholy turn, for she fell silent. Muna was opening her mouth to ask why she looked so grave when a chill wind blew, making them both shiver.

  “Does your father have a house here?” Muna said.

  They saw it when they emerged from the grove—an imposing structure of pale gold stone, standing upon a rise in the distance. It was larger than any building Muna had ever seen, surpassing even the English king’s house in Malacca. She would not credit it was the Stapleton family’s residence until Henrietta had repeated herself.

  “But it is even grander than the raja’s house in Malacca!” said Muna in awe. She gazed at Henrietta with new respect. Nothing in her comportment suggested she was accustomed to such grandeur, but this explained Mr. and Mrs. Stapleton’s high-handed manners.

  The thought of her family’s good fortune seemed to give Henrietta little pleasure, however. There was a shadow on her face as she gazed at the house. She said abruptly:

  “I wish I had not said what I did of Prunella! We don’t know what may happen. I hate to think of”—she swallowed—“of dying, with matters as they stand now—with no chance of telling her all.”

  “But you were only play-acting,” said Muna, puzzled. “Mrs. Wythe agreed you should say what you must to persuade Fairy you were subverted by the French. It is not as though you said anything very shocking. Mrs. Wythe ought not to borrow her friends’ clothes only to spoil them.”

  “She could have all my finery and be welcome to it, if only I could see her again!” declared Henrietta, with a sob in her voice. “She is my dearest friend in all the world, and she has no conception of what has troubled me for the past several months—does not know why I mean to marry a man for whom she does not have the least regard! I wish I could have told her. We had no secrets from one another at school.”

  “I am sure you refine too much upon it,” said Muna. She was still distracted by the scale of the Stapletons’ mansion. “Is this where you live, then, with your family?”

  “In the summers,” said Henrietta absently. “Shropshire is a considerable distance from town. We have a town house in London.”

  Muna gazed at her, round-eyed. “You have two such houses? Your father must be vastly wealthy.”

  “My father is ruined,” said Henrietta flatly. “If he does not find a means of discharging his debts, he will be obliged to sell both houses.”

  Muna stared. Henrietta did not meet Muna’s eyes, but the tightness in her shoulders had eased. She seemed relieved to have unburdened herself.

  “I have not apologised for my mother’s conduct at the Sorceress Royal’s ball,” she said after a pause. “You will have thought it odd—even offensive.”

  So much had happened since Muna’s encounter with Henrietta’s mother that it seemed remote and unimportant. Muna said politely that she recollected nothing in Mrs. Stapleton’s behaviour to cause offence. “She seemed most hosp
itable.”

  Henrietta shook her head.

  “My mother’s manners do not always do her credit,” she said awkwardly. “She has the best of intentions; it is only that my father’s secret weighs upon her. My father has sought to hide the true state of his affairs, but it is impossible to conceal such a matter indefinitely. My mother fears we shall be debarred from the society to which we have always belonged. That is what makes her worry so about setting the fashion and—and all that sort of thing. It is not that she is eaten up with ambition, whatever Prunella says!

  “And her fears are not groundless,” Henrietta added. “Already there is a wounding decline in the attentions she and my father are accustomed to receive. If his creditors should find out, we are finished. Unless . . . unless something is done.”

  Understanding dawned on Muna. “This is why you intend to marry the thaumaturge of whom Mrs. Wythe disapproves.”

  Henrietta nodded. “Mr. Hobday is a friend of my father’s. He has promised to settle my father’s debts after our marriage—and to do it discreetly, so no one need ever know.”

  Indignation flickered to life in Muna at Henrietta’s resigned expression. “But it is very wrong of your father to require you to marry for such a reason.”

  “Oh, I have not been forced into it. My father is not so gothic!” said Henrietta, trying to smile. “He would not have encouraged the union if he did not esteem Mr. Hobday and think he would make a good husband. If I had opposed the match, or”—Henrietta blushed, lowering her eyes—“or if my affections had been engaged elsewhere, then I am sure my father would not have asked it of me. But I am very willing to be married.”

  Muna did not know why she should feel so troubled by this pronouncement. Whom Henrietta chose to marry was none of her business—and yet it seemed to Muna there was something seriously amiss in the whole affair.

  “You like the gentleman, then?” said Muna.

  “I don’t dislike him,” said Henrietta unpromisingly.

  Muna thought of Mak Genggang. The witch had always made it her business to intervene in any matches on the island that she suspected to have been forced upon one of the parties. She was wont to remark that she had liberated far more brides than she had educated witches.

  “I don’t dislike cabbage,” Muna found herself saying, “but I should not consider marrying it. Not disliking seems a poor foundation for future happiness.”

  Henrietta would have been quite within her rights to tell Muna off for presuming to advise her, but the Englishwoman did not seem offended.

  “For my happiness, perhaps,” she said. “But there are my sisters to think of. It is Amelia that gives me the greatest anxiety, for she is to make her debut in society soon, and she is the prettiest of us all, everyone says so. I am afraid for her—she is so headstrong, she is bound to do something reckless if she is obliged to marry a gentleman she does not like. But if I marry Mr. Hobday, there will be no call for that. The girls could wed according to their inclination.”

  With each word from Henrietta, Muna’s vexation increased. She said snappishly, “So you will sacrifice yourself! That is very noble, to be sure.”

  For all Henrietta’s sweetness of temper, even she could be provoked.

  “You are speaking as Prunella would!” she said. “I know she will enact theatricals over it—that is why I have not told her. But why should not I decide to marry Mr. Hobday if it serves my purpose? Dozens of girls do the same every day. And it is not as though . . .” She cut herself off, flushing.

  Muna raised an eyebrow. “Not as though?”

  Henrietta gave her a defiant look. “Well, it is not as though there is anyone I should prefer to marry.”

  “It is only that you have not met the man to whom it is your fate to be bound,” said Muna sagely.

  But Henrietta only looked thoughtful and a little removed. “No. Even when, in the past, I have conceived an admiration for a gentleman, I could never imagine being married to him, nor desiring it. Perhaps I was made wrong. As God gave me magic, He decreed that I should desire other things. Mr. Wythe says there are records of spinsters who devoted their lives to the secret study of thaumaturgy. Their connections believed them to be mere old maids, of no account, when in truth they were pioneers—Britain’s first magiciennes! I believe I should have liked that—to have been married to magic.”

  Somehow Henrietta’s declaration rang hollow; there was some part of the truth that she withheld. As Muna watched the colour deepen in Henrietta’s cheek, a thought surfaced in her mind, like a crocodile emerging from a brown river.

  Henrietta admires Mr. Wythe! Muna thought, thunderstruck.

  It was a new idea, but immediately convincing. It was only natural for Henrietta to harbour a secret passion for Zacharias Wythe. He was not only handsome but a brilliant thaumaturgical scholar, with a command of magic that must be as much of an attraction to Henrietta as his person and manners. Was not Henrietta always quoting his sayings with a respect that bordered on reverence? Certainly she blushed a great deal—the smallest thing set her off—but did not she colour with particular rapidity when she spoke to, or of, Mr. Wythe?

  No wonder Henrietta could name no one whom she would prefer to marry. Her affections were indeed engaged—but their object was one she could not disclose to her father, since Mr. Wythe was so closely associated with the Academy, which Mr. Stapleton abhorred.

  Muna was conscious of a sinking at her heart, but there was no reason she should feel either disappointed or surprised. When she was reunited with Sakti, Muna would never see any of these people again. And after all, she ought to be happy for Henrietta. For Muna had seen, in a flash, the solution to Henrietta’s difficulties.

  It was a delicate matter to interfere in affairs of the heart. Muna was not at all confident of her powers in this area, and yet the idea was so obvious and sensible that it could cause no offence to raise it. The first thing to do was to confirm her suspicion.

  “But what if the gentleman you married were a practitioner of magic, who could teach you?” Muna suggested. “You could devote your lives to the study of thaumaturgy together.”

  Henrietta blinked. “I suppose . . . but few gentlemen would countenance their wives or daughters having anything to do with thaumaturgy. I shall have to give up magic upon my marriage, for I doubt whether I shall be able to conceal my activities from Mr. Hobday.”

  “There can be no question of your marrying him, then,” said Muna, dismissing Mr. Hobday. She was now quite certain of her ground. “There is only one gentleman you can marry—Mr. Wythe!”

  Henrietta gaped. “What?”

  She looked so scandalised that Muna added:

  “I don’t suggest that you go behind Mrs. Wythe’s back, of course. That would not do at all! But I don’t see why she should object, once all is explained to her. Most men of substance take several wives, and I am sure she would rather her husband marry the friend of her youth than a stranger. You would not be obliged to wed Mr. Hobday, which you say she would not like, and since Mr. Wythe is wealthy, you would still be put in the way to help your family.”

  Muna thought her proposal a neat one, likely to be productive of happiness for all concerned.

  But Henrietta did not receive it with the joy she had expected. The Englishwoman opened her mouth and shut it again, like a fish, then did this two more times. It was a matter of some doubt whether she would ever speak again when they were interrupted by the sky splitting open.

  It did this with an enormous crash like thunder at the height of a storm. Henrietta jumped, clutching at Muna’s arm. Muna returned her grasp, looking up in alarm.

  There was a crack right across the sky, through which only darkness could be seen. But as they gazed upwards, the darkness receded, till it was surrounded by white. They were looking into a gigantic dark eye, peering through the fissure in the sky. Its owner drew back, so that th
ey could see the bridge of a nose, and then a second dark eye.

  “There you are,” said a great rumbling voice, setting the leaves on the trees a-shiver. “Just a moment!”

  A massive foot appeared through the crack in the sky, followed by another, and a giantess lowered herself through the gap. At first she was large enough that even as her feet touched the ground, her head was still among the clouds, but she was shrinking all the time as Muna and Henrietta watched her. By the time she turned to them, she was almost exactly of a size with Muna, save that she was a little taller.

  Muna had forgotten that Sakti was taller than her.

  “Muna, are you quite well?” said Henrietta.

  “Yes,” said Muna. She dried her eyes, but even so her vision was blurred with tears.

  She went towards her sister, unsure of whether she wished to embrace Sakti or slap her. But none of the questions or reproaches that rose to her lips found expression, for Sakti spoke first.

  “How came you to be so late, kak?” said Sakti. She was in the same outlandish dress in which Muna had seen her earlier, with black teeth and her face painted, but her impatient expression was wholly familiar. “I have been waiting for an age!”

  * * *

  • • •

  SAKTI was not quite so cross as her greeting suggested. While Muna was still sputtering in outrage, Sakti flung her arms around her, exclaiming:

  “I had quite given up on ever seeing you again! I thought you must have been eaten by spirits, or perhaps the English had turned on you and thrown you in gaol. I nearly died when I saw you in the Queen’s presence chamber.”

  “Why did not you speak to me then?” said Muna. Any vexation was rapidly melting away in the face of Sakti’s delight in seeing her. “I thought—oh, I don’t know what I thought! I feared you didn’t wish to see me.”

  “I like that! When I put a spell on you just so you would come to me,” said Sakti, indignant. “How could I have spoken to you with the Queen of the Djinns watching, pray? I have been doing all I can to avoid her notice! But why did not you stay there? I gave you a look so you would know you should stay where you were and I would come and find you when the Queen was gone.”