Nameless Queen

by Rebecca McLaughlin

  Glenquartz winces. He isn’t thrilled with the idea that one of his guards would do something like that. But the longer it takes him to track down Hat, the bleaker things become. When he leaves, his aura teems with puzzled frustration.

  As Dominic settles into place guarding my door, I use my knife from the drain to quietly slice open the pillow. It’s a mixture of chunked fabric and feathers, which I distribute underneath the blanket in the shape of a body. Then I sit quietly, breathing slowly, staring at the wall.

  If I made a door invisible to Esther, I can make myself invisible too.

  I imagine the textures of the dungeon wall on my skin. For a while I imagine my body not as translucent, but as a mirage of dark color. I get up after a while and approach the cell bars, where Dominic faces outward. I focus all my energy and thoughts on being exactly what is around me, on not being there at all. I use my metal lockpick to tap the bar behind Dominic’s head. He swivels around, bored.

  I hold my breath. He looks straight through me and scans the cell, spends an extra moment glancing up at the corners of the ceiling.

  I sigh with relief, and Dominic’s head immediately snaps back. I cover my mouth with a hand to keep myself silent.

  Dominic may not be able to see me, but he can hear me. He stares at the cell for a moment longer, his eyes resting on the pillow and blanket. His lip twitches in disgust, and he returns his attention to the tunnel. I exhale. Slowly.

  It’s not difficult, I tell myself. My whole life, people have looked at me and only seen the alley and the trash around me. They see my circumstances, but they don’t see me. They don’t see me. I repeat the mantra in my head.

  The guards change places every three hours during the day and then every two hours at night. If they were smart, they’d check my cell in person when they traded places.

  I move to the cell bars once again, but I won’t be able to reach around to Dominic’s inside jacket pocket for his key, so I use the metal lockpick from my pant leg and the small screw pressed with my thumb for torque. When I get the lock to turn, I leave it unlocked and closed. I withdraw to the bench and silently curl up under the blankets, reshuffling the disassembled pillow into a ball at my stomach.

  It’ll be another half hour before the next Royal guard comes to relieve Dominic, and when they’re trading places—if I can be quiet enough—I can slip through the unlocked door, and be back in two hours at the next trade-off.

  It takes everything I have not to count the seconds aloud. I haven’t been inside the palace before. Patrolling corridors in darkness and solitude is how I’ve explored countless homes. I may be an excellent pickpocket during the day, but at night I’m a rather splendid thief. In familiar shops in the Inner Ring, I know every creak of the floorboards. Here, not so much.

  When the guards change places, no one notices when I slip out of the cell. I move slowly down the corridor. It takes a lot of concentration to make myself invisible to them. That’s why, even though I want to search for Hat myself—check the docks, the holding cells, the prison, even the crematorium—I don’t. I can’t. Not yet.

  Besides, if Glenquartz is as trusting as he seems, then he is my best chance for finding out what happened to her.

  At ground level, I move from room to room furtively, and in the first few, there’s nothing unusual—just a storage room filled with cabinets of fanciful dishware. The kitchen isn’t too far off when I see someone in pastel-blue clothing. A Legal working late for some reason. He wears a white waistband and small white epaulets, which mean he’s a servant in the palace. The Royals can put as many walls around their court as they want to, but someone has to fix the drains to the sewers, scrub the stoves, and cook their fancy meals.

  I don’t have much experience cooking in a proper kitchen. I’ve only used a stove once, really, and that was to start a fire in a house I was robbing. That was hardly my fault, though. They came home early, and a distraction became necessary. What I know of food is limited to what I see in the markets. I know what’s poisonous. I know what’s cheap. I know how to sell a bag of near-spoiled potatoes for full price.

  Over the next hour, I move through twelve rooms in the eastern wing of the palace, searching them and building a map in my head. There are closets filled with clothing and shoes, countless sitting rooms, and some spaces that are entirely empty except for a single podium or rug. I even come across a hall with a small elevated stage in front of several clusters of pews.

  I’ve been gone for about eighty minutes, which means I don’t have much time to get back into position before the guards change again. I head to the dungeon, moving a few trinkets along the way. I snag an artist’s chisel and hammer and place them on the table nearest the dungeon. Always good to know where the nearest weapons are.

  I stop off in a final sitting room. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d sleep in the horsehair rocking chair. But maybe…I run a hand along the decorative pillows resting on the couches. I’ve got maybe twenty minutes left until the guards switch places.

  It’ll be a risk, but I can’t resist.

  * * *

  “Where did you get all of these pillows?” Glenquartz demands.

  I can’t tell if he’s amused, aghast, or frustrated, but I’m certainly smiling.

  Throughout the rest of the night, I stole seven pillows from the sitting room. Six of them are decorative and small, and one of them is actually quite plush. I’ve lined the edges of the cell with them, evenly spaced like decorations. Glenquartz holds his lantern as close to the bars as he can, as if he can squeeze more light into the cell.

  “They brighten the place up, don’t you think?” I say proudly. “Now, is that food for me, or are you going to eat that yourself? Don’t take this the wrong way: you don’t seem like a stale-bread type of person. But I am.” I gesture at the plate in his hands.

  “Did…did one of my cadets bring them?” Glenquartz asks.

  I purse my lips, considering. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? After all, I am a Nameless grifter from the streets. Odds are, I’m smarter than your guards, and I’ve conned them into doing my bidding. Or bribed them. Or threatened them. Though the pillows could just be hallucinations, couldn’t they? I could’ve invented them. Do you think I did?”

  I press down on one of the pillows. “It’s quite soft. Hard to tell. Could be either.”

  I throw the pillow up in the air, and before it falls down, I concentrate on making it disappear. Glenquartz rubs his eyes in shock as the pillow vanishes before it can fall. Of course the pillow landed in my lap, but he doesn’t know that.

  “Now,” I say, “did I make a real pillow disappear? Or was it never really there to begin with?” I frown pensively.

  Glenquartz shakes his head as he slides the plate underneath the door. I bite into the bread. Not quite stale, but close.

  “Have you found Hat yet?” I ask.

  Glenquartz shakes his head. “Not yet. The Royal Council has been meeting almost nonstop since you arrived, trying to decide what to do about you.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” I say. “I shouldn’t be the only one locked up through all of this. And now that they’ve verified the tattoo is real, they’ll want to know why I’m Nameless as well. Was it a mistake? Do I really have a name? What is the purpose of magic, anyway?” I roll my eyes. In fairness, the questions do plague me. The tattoo can only be passed on by name, which means that somehow, I have to have a name. And the king knew it. Vexing.

  “What do you think is going to happen?” I ask. As I speak, I make the pillows disappear one by one. The only way I know it’s working is that his eyes follow the pattern around the room. I feel a bit crass testing him like this, but the alternative is spiders.

  “They’ll be hard-pressed to admit you’re Nameless. They’re scared about what it’s doing to the city.”

  “What do yo
u mean, ‘what it’s doing to the city’? I’m not doing anything to the city. I’m in prison, in case you forgot.”

  He waves his hand and hums under his breath. “They should have a decision by tomorrow, certainly.”

  “We should be friends, you and me,” I say.

  Glenquartz nearly laughs. “Friends with a grifter? Is there such a thing?”

  I brush his comment off. “You’re the only one who cares about Hat. We both want her to be safe. We both want to make sure I don’t die down here. Need I mention our shared fondness for pillows?” I spread my arms out at my colorful collection of mostly real pillows.

  Despite his obvious amusement, he appraises the pillows with a critical gaze. “I’m having your guards rotated more frequently.”

  I flash him a winning smile. Excellent.

  Glenquartz is true to his word. He increases the guard shifts so that they change every hour instead of every three, and I hardly see the same face twice. If I was trying to build a relationship with one of them to run a con, that would make it more difficult. But I’m strictly in theft mode, and more faces means fewer people who get wise to my actions. I’m able to practice on more and more people, sneaking up on them while making them unable to see me.

  By the time Glenquartz shows up the following afternoon—day three in prison—I’ve fished twelve oddities from the pockets of my guards. I keep the four copper coins in my pocket and a handful of writing utensils under a small pile of rocks in the corner. I’ve started keeping the knife hidden under my one remaining sleeve, ready to wield at any moment.

  “What can I do for you, Glen-beard?” I ask.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Glen-beard? Just Glen is fine.” He absently runs a finger down the jawline of his crisp, graying beard. Then he does something I don’t expect. He unlocks my cell door, opens it, and steps aside. He’s as somber as can be, and my immediate thought is that something terrible has happened to Hat and this is his way of showing remorse.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate you saving me the trouble,” I say, “but what’s going on?”

  I keep my shoulders and posture loose, but my legs are tensed to run if he so much as utters a single word that sounds like “gallows” or “execution.”

  “The Royal Council has been debating since you arrived about whether to execute you or not.”

  I’d be running already if it wasn’t for the gentle gray fog of his aura.

  He gestures for me to leave the cell and he doesn’t reach for his cuffs. He simply stands aside as I join him tentatively.

  “And?” I ask, gripping the kitchen knife.

  “They’ve made up their mind.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Glenquartz leads me through the palace in the northern corridor. I’ve been this way before, but I make a show of looking around curiously as if I’m trying to figure things out.

  “We’re meeting the Royal Council in the north assembly room,” Glenquartz explains. “There will be ten of us, not counting you. General Demure, head of the Royal Guard, will lead the conversation. It’s not far from here.”

  “A left at the bronze bust and a right at the lion statue, yeah?” I say.

  Glenquartz regards me skeptically. “We…didn’t come through this way when you were escorted to the dungeon….”

  “Your cadets love to talk, dearest lieutenant.” I get a certain kind of satisfaction from his bewilderment. Obviously, I can get to the assembly room on my own, but I can’t resist flustering Glen-beard.

  Now he’s trying to give me a brief tour. “Here is where the second sovereign was assassinated—there’s still a snowflake splinter in the green stained glass where the bloody arrow tip pierced the window. Here is where citizens who have left their cities or been exiled can petition Seriden’s sovereign for citizenship. Farther along is the palace’s Med Ward. Down that corridor is the kitchen, where the Legal servants work, and down this corridor is a private library.”

  He’s so nervous that he actually points the wrong way for the kitchen, and I stop myself from correcting him.

  “Your friend, Hat,” Glenquartz starts. “I was able to track her down, finally.”

  “Where?” I almost pull to a stop.

  “She’s in the prison outside the city.” Glenquartz twists his hands together in knots.

  “Why would they take her there and not to one of the temporary holding cells inside the city?” I’ve been in my share of holding cells. It’s where guards throw us when they want us off the streets for the night or under control but they’re not willing to cart us to the prison for a permanent stay.

  At first Glenquartz doesn’t answer. Finally, he says, “I don’t know, but the people in this room have the most power in the city—second to you, technically.” He slows down as we approach a double set of wooden doors. “This is it. Now, if things end up going poorly, I’ll be the one to escort you. That way, if their decision is to…um…I can help you…”

  My heart pinches. If they sentence me to execution, he’s willing to do what? Help me escape? Give me a head start before the chase begins? Give me a quick end?

  I put my hand on the shoulder of his uniform, and his aura is like a bell on the edge of tolling. He fidgets.

  I gesture at the door. “Shall we?”

  He doesn’t make a move to enter quite yet. “As long as they focus on the simplest solution, everything should be fine.”

  “What’s the simplest solution?” I ask.

  “That you aren’t really Nameless,” Glenquartz says almost eagerly. “That you were lost and forgotten, but you still have a name.”

  I wonder if it’s true, or if I even want it to be true.

  He continues, “Their biggest concern will be that you’ll want to change the legal status of the Nameless.” He fixes me with an expectant gaze.

  Let’s say the Nameless start working jobs and learning skilled trades. Let’s say they get small houses on the outer edges of the residential quadrants. Would that be so terrible?

  But I’ve spent my life listening to the Legals complain that the Nameless would take away jobs that the Legals struggle to keep. The Nameless would swindle their way through the markets and trade would collapse. The Royals maintain a delicate hold over the city, established by peace treaties and sustained by prejudice. The names that unite them just give them a reason to hate the Nameless.

  “As of right now,” I say slowly, “my concern is staying alive and finding out what happened to Hat. And I want to stop people like her from vanishing from the alleys. I mean, gaiza, there’s a lot of craziness out there that no one here knows about.”

  Glenquartz nods as if he understands, but he doesn’t. He’s never had to choose between robbing a Legal woman on her way home from East Market and tiptoeing between the tails of vicious sleeping dogs to get at the butcher’s latest cuts. He’s never had to pretend to hate the Nameless in order to run a long con on a shipman, or stare down the endless barrel of a Royal’s musket and hope to escape before the trigger is pulled.

  I sigh angrily. “The dead king. Could he see the illusions he created? Could he sense his own aura?”

  “Yes,” Glenquartz says.

  “Then here’s the real problem. I am Nameless. I can’t see my own illusions. The simple solution they want is a lie.”

  Glenquartz considers this. “Simple solutions often are.” He grips the handle of the door now, and I feel his aura pulsating. He’s torn between two worlds: one in which he opens the door and one in which the door stays closed.

  The truth is heavy inside my chest. I am Nameless. Really and truly Nameless. But then how did King Fallow name me queen?

  “Allow me to give you some advice,” Glenquartz says. “For you. And for Hat.”

  “I love advice,” I say. I even sometimes pay attention to it.

  “They know about yo
ur talent for sensing auras and creating illusions. You can use that to your advantage. Give them the proof and comfort that they seek, but keep in mind that even though they’re willing to hear you out, they can choose to kill you today.”

  A weight presses down on my shoulders. Suddenly I’m supposed to understand the inner workings of the Royal world. It’s as if someone has handed me a watch and, instead of asking me the time, is asking me to understand how all the gears fit together.

  He waits expectantly.

  “The Nameless have been going missing. For months. Years, really. But more and more frequently. You’re part of the Royal Guard here in the palace. Are the Royals deporting the Nameless? Killing them? Using them as slave labor? Selling them to other cities? If these people are a part of that, I need to know.”

  Glenquartz is troubled. “I don’t know. I’m sure that the Nameless vanish all the time, but…” He shakes his head when he sees my sharp glare, and he winces in apology. He starts to pull the door open. “Just, please, make me a promise?”

  I appraise him warily. “What?”

  “Promise me that while we’re in this room,” he says, “you’ll do your best to present yourself like a lady. Let them know that you can lead them. Don’t let them disregard you.”

  “I’ll behave as best I can,” I say. “I promise.”

  With that the door opens, and we enter a room that is sharp and imposing. The ceiling is severe, with steep support arches that look as if they’re designed more to fall and decapitate us than to support the heavy stone ceiling. At the center of the room sits a glossy wooden table. Twelve chairs surround the table, nine of them already filled. As the council members rise from their seats, a sour scent of body odor wafts and then lingers, which tells me they’ve spent a lot of time here over the last three days, no doubt discussing what to do with me.

  As I move toward one of the empty seats, everyone watches me with the attention of alley rats following the scent of discarded food scraps. I come to a stop behind one of the unoccupied seats, and there’s a long moment when no one speaks. I stand awkwardly, wondering if they’re waiting for a secret signal or handshake that will commence the meeting. After a minute, I realize everyone is waiting for me to take my seat.