Nameless Queen

by Rebecca McLaughlin

  Glenquartz is good at keeping a straight face, but I see him wince. “That’s enough, Cadet Dominic. One more outburst and I’ll have you report to General Demure.” He makes a gesture, and the cadet departs—and I note an uncomfortable slant in his shoulder at the mention of the general.

  “I’ll be watching over you for the evening,” Glenquartz says, dismissing the remaining cadets. They salute and depart.

  I make a show of waiting until they’re gone. I have a key, and I have a knife. All I have to do is get out of here and get to Hat. I size the lieutenant up. He’s obviously formal. Gullible, too—what other people might call “trusting.” He wasn’t the guard who went after Hat. He was the one ordering him to stop.

  “Her name is Hat,” I say.

  “Who do you mean?” Glenquartz asks, but with a glimmer of recognition.

  “The girl your new recruit was going to kill,” I say. “She’s young. Too young for an unordered street execution.”

  “How old is she?” Glenquartz asks.

  I pause. “Not sure. The Nameless often don’t know. One day I decided I was fourteen, and now, three years later, I’m seventeen. Hat hasn’t decided yet, so she’s twelve? Thirteen, maybe? Still too young to die, don’t you think?”

  “Is that why you did it?” He points at the tattoo on my arm below my left shoulder. I take a slow breath. He’s already seen me desperate and angry, snarky and confident. To get his help, I have to show him I’m vulnerable.

  “If you’re asking if that’s why I stepped forward and got arrested? Yes. But this tattoo? I didn’t put it there. Can you…?” I trail off and move farther into the cell to remind him that I’m trapped here.

  He puts a hand on the bar and offers a consoling smile. “I can’t get you any pillows.”

  I shake my head and bite my lip. “Can you make sure she’s alive?” When the words leave my lips, I’m stunned by how terrified I truly am. “Can you go after that cadet from the market, and make sure Hat is safe?”

  He seems sympathetic, like maybe he doesn’t want to see Hat hurt any more than I do.

  I remember the sensation and flash of memory that burst into my thoughts when I touched the Royal’s hand yesterday. Glenquartz’s fingers are wrapped around one of the bars. I put my hand on his. Suddenly I see a small, young face staring up at me.

  She has black, straight hair and a scattering of freckles across her cheeks and forehead. She’s smiling, with rays of sunlight settling on her hair and a gentle breeze stirring the sound of distant music. I reach out to cup her face in my hand, and my skin is dark and warmer, and there’s a red sleeve and white cuff at my wrist.

  I let go, and the memory vanishes, and I realize that the red-cuffed arm in the memory was Glenquartz’s.

  “You have a daughter?” I say, probing gently.

  Glenquartz purses his lips carefully. “Her name is Flannery. She’s with her mother, but they both left me a very long time ago. I miss her terribly.” He stares past me as if toward the curving horizon at the edge of the ocean.

  “You understand, then,” I insist gently. “I sensed you’re afraid of forgetting them. Think of what you’d do if Flannery was arrested.”

  “I can send someone to check on her,” Glenquartz says, and he pats the bars of the cell. “It was brave of you to help her. But Cadet Dominic was right. That fake tattoo will get you killed.”

  I take a seat on the long stone bench. “Please check on her.” I don’t address his warning. If my tattoo is fake, I’m dead. But I’m equally dead if it’s real.

  Glenquartz nods at last and withdraws from the door of the cell. I count the seconds as his footsteps fade, and I give it an extra five seconds before I put the key in the lock. I consider for a moment whether I should take the kitchen knife with me or not. If I stow it in the waste drain, it’ll be here if I get arrested again. They’ll search me, and they’ll search the cell, but I’m betting they won’t search the drain.

  Once the cell door is open, I stuff the key in my pocket, hide the knife, and head out. I count the turns I took on the way down here, and when I reach the stairs, I walk up them quickly. Soon I’m at the heavy stone. I place my hand on the cool handle. I can’t get around a blind exit like this, so I have to take my chances.

  Slowly, I leverage the door against its own hinge to keep it from making too much noise as it opens. As I move into the room, I see a woman standing near the opposite door, dressed in a sapphire-blue dress with ornate silver bracelets at her wrist.

  I recognize her from parades in the city: Esther Merelda Fallow, daughter of the recently dead king, the former heir apparent. Her brown eyes are warm, but her expression is anything but. Her aura is like a cold mist that makes me shiver. She unfolds her arms, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find steel claws in place of her fingers.

  “I hear you’re called Coin,” Esther says.

  I narrow my eyes. I regret not bringing the knife now.

  “Didn’t take you long,” she continues. “I’d like to say I’m impressed, but…”

  “But you’re afraid the mere act of uttering those words would shatter you?” I offer.

  Her eyes narrow this time, and she advances.

  “Listen, I have an appointment to get to, and I’m late,” I say apologetically. I step sideways, and she mirrors my movements, blocking my path to the door.

  “The only appointment you’re going to have is when I prove the tattoo on your arm is forged, and that will be an—”

  “An appointment with the gallows?” I give her a disappointed frown. “That’s never not a bad joke. And trust me, as a Nameless, I’ve heard it before.”

  Esther fumes, and she stomps even closer. I let her draw as close as she wants until she gets uncomfortable.

  “You’re making a fool of yourself,” she says, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me against the wall. “You don’t know the first thing about being queen.”

  “I don’t,” I admit as she stands a breath away. “I know how to survive. And the first rule: Getting close to someone?”

  Esther looms over me.

  I continue, “It makes you vulnerable.” I reach up and curl my fingers around her throat, turning my ankle behind hers and bringing her weight down toward the wall. In an instant, I’ve spun her right around and thrown her into one of the waiting chairs. It’s so fast that all I see of her thoughts is the image of high walls and peach stone.

  She puts a hand to her throat, where her skin has flushed a faint shade of red. “You have no idea what world you’ve walked into.” She glares at the tattoo on my arm as if to peel it off. “I think you’ll find it’s as dangerous here as on the streets.” She rises to her feet, but she doesn’t advance on me again.

  I lock eyes with her. “See, the problem is you’re trying to threaten me, but you’re being polite about it. I grew up on the streets, so you’ll have to do better than that. If you want to threaten someone, you do it like this.” I step closer so we’re almost nose to nose, my voice dropping to a dead, even tone. “If you ever touch me again, or if I ever feel threatened by you”—I allow a delicate, careful smile to overtake my features—“I will kill you.”

  Esther’s satin sleeves bunch at her shoulders as she tenses, anger rolling off her like steam. I pivot on the heel of my boot and head for the door.

  “You can’t leave,” Esther commands.

  A flare of anger passes through me. “No. You can’t leave.” I imagine trapping her in the cell I just escaped, bars and stones surrounding her. I open the door and slip out of the room, then pull the door shut with a slam.

  I’m surprised a moment later when I hear her pounding on the door and then the wall. She’s muttering and shouting, a trace of panic in her voice. When I face the corridor, I find Glenquartz standing across from me, leaning casually against the wall. There are three Royal gua
rds on either side of him, boxing me in. I curl my fingers into fists. Even if I had the knife from my cell, it would only be good to take out one or two guards.

  “So this is a trap?” I grind my teeth. “I’d like to say I’m impressed.”

  Esther opens the door behind me and joins us. “Go ahead. No one’s stopping you. And it wasn’t a trap. It was a test.”

  “One that she passed?” Glenquartz asks, his forehead crinkling.

  Esther runs a hand on the door frame. “The tattoo is real. I don’t know how she knew to do it. Probably an accident. But it’s proof enough for me.” She appraises me distastefully, keeping her distance as good old Angry Cadet Dominic puts shackles on my wrists with a too-easy click.

  “What proof?” I say. “What was an accident? That I almost had you dead to rights in there? That’s nothing.”

  Esther’s hand perches on her hip. “You really don’t know.” She looks me up and down with disgust. She says to Glenquartz, “She made me see stones over every surface, and metal bars blocking all the windows and doors. It was good. I believed it. The illusion didn’t last long, though. It faded as soon as she got distracted by you.”

  Alarmed, I realize that when I imagined she was trapped in the room, I made her see something that wasn’t there. “Wait, you’re saying you actually saw a room filled with rocks?”

  She exhales sharply. “A room encased in rocks. Do try to keep up, or else you’ll have us all convinced you are the uneducated criminal you appear to be.”

  I shake my head, not sure how I’m supposed to respond to the insult—not even convinced it is an insult.

  “The tattoo lets you cause hallucinations,” she says, as though she’s explaining to a child why fire is bad. “Whoever you are and whatever you want, at least we know the tattoo is real.”

  I feel insulted, for sure. Angry, of course. Embarrassed, just a little. What Esther said, though, overshadows everything else I feel. The tattoo is real, and I can make people hallucinate. That’s going to come in handy.

  Esther huffs, thoroughly annoyed, and she stalks down the hall. Glenquartz escorts me back down into the dark corridors of the dungeon, with three of the guards in tow.

  “I expect you won’t have to stay down here for long,” Glenquartz says as we walk. He’s trying to be comforting, but he’s also a little smug that he and his guards have outsmarted me. “Now that they know you are the new sovereign, the Royal Council will have to decide what to do next. If you hadn’t escaped so quickly, I might have been able to convince them to let you stay in a proper room upstairs. But if you can escape the dungeon in five minutes, I doubt our simple palace quarters would give you trouble.”

  I remain silent, thinking through my next moves. They’ve reclaimed the key, and they search me more thoroughly outside the cell this time. I only have the lockpick in my pant leg. At least they’re putting me in the same cell, where the knife waits in the drain.

  The cell door clicks shut, and I place my hand on the bars.

  “Will you still check on Hat?” I ask Glenquartz, ignoring the other guards. “I know I was using it as an excuse to get rid of you before, but I really mean it. I’m not sure which is worse: her getting arrested or her disappearing from the streets.”

  “Disappearing?” Glenquartz is puzzled, and I’m not surprised. There’s no reason he would’ve heard about Nameless kids vanishing, because no one else cares.

  “The Nameless have been disappearing lately,” I say. “More and more, and right around her age. No one knows what happens to them. I’m worried. She could disappear from wherever they’ve stashed her—the prisons or the holding cells, or who knows where. Please check on her. But don’t send that spetzing angry cadet who doesn’t know Law Twenty-Two from Law Thirty-Six.”

  Glenquartz raises an eyebrow. “Those are the two most cited sumptuary laws.”

  Frustration overwhelms me, and I slam my open palm against the stones. “Law Twenty-Two: ‘A citizen shall not dress out of their class, such as a Legal wearing clothes of a Royal or the Nameless donning the clothes of either.’ Law Thirty-Six, the common exemption, where a Legal can wear a Royal’s clothing on the day of their wedding to a Royal, at which time the Legal becomes a Royal. Of course I know the stupid laws! I’ve broken more than half of them. I’m already here behind bars, so go ahead and arrest me again if you want to! But, please, will you check on Hat? She’s why I’m here. And if I can’t make sure she’s all right, she is why I’ll escape again. If you can tell me she’s safe, then I’ll stay here as long as you want me to. Please. Think of Flannery.”

  I know it’s a risk to say that. If I promise to stay here, he could lie just to pacify me. But he has a daughter named Flannery with freckles and a carefree smile, a daughter he’s afraid of forgetting. He’s troubled, like a distant storm cloud. He takes a decided step away, but by the way he looks at me, I know he’s considering it. Then he leaves quietly, and I’m left alone, staring at the gray stones of the tunnel wall, which seem to shiver in the light of the lantern held by the guard who stays behind to watch me.

  I press my forehead against the cell bars, letting the cool metal chill my skin. I told Glenquartz I wouldn’t leave the palace, but I didn’t say anything about leaving my cell. After all, I made Esther believe the door had vanished. There’s no telling what else I can do. I have magic.

  I stare up at the dark ceiling, imagining I can see the sky. What have I gotten myself into? Hat has been arrested. I don’t know where she is. She could be dead right now or on her way to be killed. And all I can think about is what kind of magical powers I may or may not have.

  Out in the city and with Glenquartz, I learned that I can see a person’s thoughts or memories when I touch them. Here in the palace, I was able to make Esther hallucinate that she was trapped in a room, but to me everything was normal. Maybe my abilities work on other people but not me? I study the tattoo on my arm in the small trace of light afforded by the lantern, trying to decide if I feel any different.

  In addition to seeing memories and creating illusions, there’s something else. It was the storm cloud building when Glenquartz listened to me talk about Hat. It was the strange feeling of steel and ice that I sensed from Esther. It was the overwhelming pressure of the crowds in West Market.

  I reach for it now. It’s a small buzzing sensation, like an ever-persistent fly buzzing around at the edge of my mind. I focus on it and realize that what I’m sensing is the aura of the guard outside the cell. The more I reach for it, the more I sense. Then, somewhere far overhead, I sense another aura, like a swirling crackle of lightning.

  These auras are the blurs in my vision when my eyes are closed. They are columns of smoke I can barely detect. They are a type of energy I don’t yet understand.

  As I search the dark ceiling, I can almost hear it. It’s a rhythmic pounding, like a distant heartbeat of the city. Maybe it’s the aura of someone else lurking in the depths of the dungeon: a prisoner long forgotten, a guard patrolling the darkness.

  I don’t understand it yet, just as I don’t understand what happens to the Nameless when they go missing, or where Hat has been taken, or what awaits me tomorrow in this palace.

  I don’t understand yet. But I’m going to.

  CHAPTER 5

  Glenquartz returns hours later, and I sense his aura before I see or hear him. It’s cautious and careful as he negotiates the dark tunnels with a flickering lantern and a tray of food.

  He slides the food tray under the cell door—buttered flatbread and some kind of pink egg. Then he passes a thin metal flask through the bars. I examine both, balancing my hunger against the potential that either could be poisoned. He encourages me to eat, and I wonder if it’s worth pointing out that if he cares so much about me starving, he could try caring about the hundreds of Nameless starving on the streets. But caution prevails for once, and I keep quiet.
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br />   “I tracked down the cadet who arrested Hat,” Glenquartz says. “He passed her off to a guard who keeps watch over the northern holding cells, but it doesn’t look like she’s there. I haven’t found her yet.”

  I curb my impatience that it’s taking him so long to find Hat, and I thank him for the food. As he leaves, I shout after him, “Bring me a pillow next time, will you?”

  I see the corner of a smile as he departs.

  There’s not much to do when I’m locked in a cell. I’ve searched every inch of it. Aside from the waste drain in the corner, there are sixteen broken pieces of stone from the wall, a tiny screw, and unpleasant evidence of rats.

  The only thing I really know about my abilities so far is that they don’t seem to work on me. When I made Esther think she was imprisoned, I couldn’t see it. I can see into Glenquartz’s memories of his daughter, but I certainly can’t explore my own memories like that. So testing my new abilities will be tricky. In the evening, when Angry Cadet Dominic—I’ve grudgingly decided to remember his name—brings me dinner and collects the lunch tray, I focus all my thoughts on the tray as he reaches for it. I imagine a spider, hairy with a small dash of red on it. Slow-moving legs. A field of tiny shining eyes.

  When Dominic reaches for the tray, he lets out a small yelp and slaps at it. I sit up sharply as if surprised.

  “Spetzing spiders,” Dominic mutters. “At least they’ve got good company.” He glares at me. I put some effort into glowering, but I’m too smug with pride.

  Aside from eating the food, which so far hasn’t been poisoned, I pace around the cell. I’m not used to sitting. I’m accustomed to scoping out a crowd, running through alleys, ducking between rooftops.

  By the time night rolls around, I’ve paced every inch of my cell. Glenquartz stops by to drop off a new blanket and pillow to soften the news that Hat is probably alive but still “somewhere in Seriden.”

  “If I was one of your guards,” I say, “and I watched a Nameless girl step forward with the crown tattoo, I might be inclined to keep ahold of the girl that the queen tried to save. Keep her as leverage. Blackmail. A hostage, even.”