“I want my Maman,” said the girl, her voice plaintive. “Where are we going?”
“You’re no ghost,” the Queen countered. “You’re a pawn. He told you to say this to me.”
The girl vaulted over the edge of the sofa, reminding the Queen again of a hunting spider. The child’s size was deceptive; it had tricked the Queen into expecting a child’s speed and reflexes. The Queen backed across the room, nearly stumbling on the hem of her nightgown, and the girl darted forward, her blank face becoming eager and hungry. The Queen suddenly remembered a long night out in the Fairwitch, the snow steeping into drifts and the wind howling across the frozen wastes of the mountainside. The dark thing had wrapped her with fire, keeping her warm, and the Queen had been astonished to find that even though she was inside the blaze, she felt no pain. She had reached up to touch the flames, and the dark thing had grabbed her hand.
Don’t be fooled by the reprieve, he told her. In the end, we all burn.
“Burn,” the Queen whispered, almost wondering. Her entire acquaintance with the Orphan had been a history of fire held in abeyance, but now the flames were upon her.
She turned and fled for the door, heard the slap of the girl’s running feet right behind her. She got the door open and slipped through, but then her trailing hand was seized as though in a vise, and she screamed as she felt the girl’s teeth sink into the flesh of her wrist. She caught a wild glimpse of the sofa beside her doorway, and there was Ghislaine, dead, his skin bleach-white. The cushions beneath him were soaked with blood.
We all burn.
“Not yet,” the Queen snarled. She jerked her arm forward, ramming the girl’s head against the far side of the door, and felt the teeth dislodge from her wrist. Then she was fleeing down the corridor toward her audience chamber, the rabbit-patter of the girl’s feet right behind her. The hallway in front of her was empty and endless.
What can I do? the Queen wondered. She recognized the voice of incipient panic, but could not seem to control it.
Where is everyone?
Through an open doorway on her left, she saw several of her generals piled against the far wall, their limbs haphazard, as though they had been thrown there. Blood had puddled and trailed on the chamber floor.
I heard nothing, the Queen thought, almost marveling, before the girl caught the trailing end of her robe and the Queen was suddenly jerked backward, landing painfully and thumping her head on the floor. The girl jumped on top of her, giggling, the laugh of a child playing a particularly good game. The Queen grabbed the child’s throat, holding her off, but the girl was stronger than a man, and she wriggled free of the Queen’s grasp. The Queen summoned what strength she had and shoved the girl away, across the corridor to slam into the wall, but a moment later the girl was back up again, her grimy face full of white teeth. She didn’t even appear dazed.
Can’t win, the Queen realized. Already, she felt herself weakening. Her wrist was pouring blood; she pressed it against the waist of her robe, trying to staunch the flow, and felt something hard and unyielding in her pocket: the Tear sapphires.
“You are fun to hunt,” the girl lisped, her eyes no longer dull and lifeless but bright, sparkling with a glee so dark it was almost madness. “More fun than the others.”
The Queen turned and fled down the corridor. Behind her came the girl, giggling. The Queen reached a connecting door and slammed it behind her, then turned and ran, the breath tearing from her throat. Behind her, she heard a cracking sound as wood shattered, but she was nearly to the door of her throne room now, and that door was made of good Mort steel with an answering steel deadlock. It would not hold forever, but it would give her some breathing room, time to figure out what to do. She stumbled through the door, limping, gasping, and slammed it shut behind her, shooting the bolt.
Behind her came the sound of stifled gasping. The Queen turned and found a naked man and woman on her throne, intertwined, oblivious to her entrance.
“On my throne,” the Queen murmured, her voice a series of ghastly echoes that faded into the far corners of the room. The woman looked up and the Queen saw that it was Juliette, her brow shining with sweat.
“M-Majesty,” she stammered.
“On my throne!” the Queen howled, her wounds and weakness forgotten; even the child forgotten. She shoved out with her mind, flinging Juliette across the room and into the far wall. Juliette’s spine shattered and she fell to the floor, her corpse still twitching.
The Queen turned to the man, curled up now on the throne, clutching his legs, trying to shield his rapidly wilting erection. The spectacle was so sad that the Queen began to laugh. She thought he was one of the Palais guards, but could not be sure, and either way he seemed so insignificant that the Queen could not even recover her anger. Normally, the throne room would have a full complement of guards, even in the middle of the night. But not now. The Queen ignored the man as he crept off the throne and crouched behind it, his terrified eyes peeping over the arm. She turned to Juliette’s broken body and felt a brief moment of regret; even Julie would have been better help than no one at all.
A thundering blow slammed against the steel door of the throne room. The Queen looked around wildly, seeking any weapon, only to realize the futility of that; no sword would take the girl down. Even her own magic was not enough. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Tear sapphires; perhaps now, in her peril, they would respond . . . but nothing. Their power was as far beyond her reach as ever. Only one person knew how to use them.
Another blow at the door. This time, the impact sent a long blister down the steel surface. The Queen turned and fled, through the great double doors, into the wide hallway that led to the Main Gate. She could not go out the Gate; a massive mob had been gathered around the Palais for days, a mob that would probably tear her to pieces if given an opportunity. But there were other routes out of the castle; the Queen, who believed in prudence, had prepared well for this day, though she had believed it would never come.
Running, her mind whispered as she ran, her bare feet slapping against the flat stones of the hallway. Running away. The idea made the Queen snarl, but she could not deny it. She was running, fleeing the seat of her power, the Palais she had built brick by brick. The construction had taken more than fifteen years, and she had given the architect, a man named Klunder, a lifetime pension for his work. The Palais was the seat of her government, but it was much more than that: it was the place that had allowed her to forget her youth, to wash away her childhood in the Tearling, to build her own history from scratch. She could not believe how quickly the fall had come.
Ahead of her, around the next corner, a man screamed, and she heard the sounds of a struggle, muffled by the thick stone walls. Her feet slowed automatically, and she turned to look behind her. There was only a long, empty hallway, dappled with patches of darkness where the torches had been allowed to burn out. But now, distant and yet not too distant, she heard a high, happy giggle.
Damned either way.
The Queen took off running again, breath tearing from her throat. But as she careened around the corner, her feet came together in a flat halt.
Some twenty feet in front of her was Ducarte, veering madly from side to side, bashing himself against the walls. Two children, a boy and a girl, were attached to his body; they twined around him like serpents, hands and arms seemingly everywhere, and Ducarte screamed as the girl bit into the back of his neck. The Queen remained frozen for a long moment, trying to sort out what she was seeing—did they drink blood, these children, or were they trying to feed?—but then the giggle came again, and the Queen whirled around. There was nothing behind her, but the sound had been very close.
Ducarte stumbled to his knees, and the boy made a low, growling noise, the satisfied grunt of an animal that had brought down prey. The Queen could not outrun these children forever; they were too strong, and while the scattered reports from northern Mortmesne had become increasingly bizarre over the past month, t
hey were very clear on one thing: there were a lot of these things, too many to repel. The Queen needed help, but her only ally was dying before her eyes.
You lost.
The Queen’s eyes opened wide. She had thought she was out of options, but no. One remained. She felt suddenly galvanized, new life in her legs. Leaving Ducarte to his fate, she turned right and darted down a nearby staircase, heading for the dungeons.
The man in the next cell knew more science than anyone Kelsea had ever met, including Carlin. His name was Simon, and he had been a slave since his sixteenth year. Upon his arrival in Mortmesne, he had been sold from master to master for heavy labor, until his fifth master finally realized that Simon had a great aptitude for building and fixing. The next sale had been to a scientist, a man who designed weapons for the Mort army. The scientist—whom Simon spoke of with real affection—had also loaned Simon out to several like-minded men, all of whom had taught him something. Elementary physics, a bit of chemistry, even the properties of plants, a subject on which Simon seemed to know as much as Barty. He had quickly surpassed his new master and begun to design more complex offensive weapons. It had not taken long for him to come to the Red Queen’s attention.
“The footbridges?” Kelsea asked. “The platforms the Mort used to cross the river. Were those your handiwork?”
“A group effort,” Simon replied. “The design was mine, but I needed the help of a physicist to understand weight ratios and leverage. My gifts are mechanical, not theoretical.”
“Yet you made a printing press,” Kelsea mused, still marveling at the idea.
“It’s a simple press, hand-operated. But it will output twenty pages a minute if run properly. The hourly rate goes down, as you need to include loading time for the plates. And each page needs at least several minutes to dry properly; someday a better man than I will invent ink that doesn’t smear.”
“Twenty pages a minute,” Kelsea repeated faintly. The man on the far side of the wall seemed suddenly more valuable than all the gems in Cadare.
It was the middle of the night, but Kelsea had been awake for more than two hours. Emily, the page, sat outside her cell, apparently standing guard. It was almost like having Mace himself there, except that Emily had fallen asleep, her knife clutched in her hand.
Kelsea’s mind continued to run busily on the same track it had run so many times before: what were the sapphires, really? Why could she use them, when the Red Queen could not? The small chunk of sapphire from Katie’s world was in Kelsea’s lap, but it merely lay there, inert. She felt that she was very close to an answer of some kind, but every time she reached out to grasp it, it danced just beyond her reach. The dungeon was wearing on her, on her ability to think critically. A few more months in here, and even rudimentary thinking might feel like slogging through mud. She lashed a vicious kick at the bars, hating them, hating the Red Queen, the Palais around her, this cursed country, all of them conspiring to keep her from her home.
“You’ll break your foot doing that,” Simon remarked mildly, and Kelsea drew her feet beneath her with a low oath. She sensed a storm brewing, but whether that storm gathered in the present, the future, or the past, she could not say. William Tear’s town was beginning to crumble. Kelsea looked down at the rock in her lap, considering it. So much sapphire underlying the Tearling; was it all the same? And did it even matter? Tear had understood his sapphire, controlled its power, so much better than Kelsea did, but he still hadn’t been able to save his town, or his son. A few more years, and the dark-eyed boy who only wanted what was best for everyone would be dead.
How did Jonathan Tear die?
Kelsea didn’t know why, but sometimes she felt that everything hinged on this question. Row Finn was the obvious suspect; even if Katie couldn’t put two and two together, Kelsea could. Corpses stolen, silver stolen, Row’s bright fascination with Tear’s jewel . . . Kelsea would have bet her kingdom that the second Tear necklace had come from Row’s talented metalworking hands, but that wasn’t all. In the dark of the Town, Row was up to no good. Katie didn’t want to think about these things, but Kelsea could and did.
Who killed Jonathan Tear?
Kelsea frowned at the piece of loose sapphire in her lap. She wished she could speed up Katie’s memory, skip over that mental film, but sapphires or no, that had never been within her power. She could only watch and wait. She wondered if she had the power to make Katie kill Row Finn before it was too late—for they were not always divided, Katie and Kelsea; sometimes they blended, in that wholly organic way that Kelsea remembered from those last desperate moments with Lily—but something in her balked at that solution. It seemed too easy. Row was riding a wave in the Town, a wave of discontent and fear, but was he really the cause? Kelsea didn’t think so. A part of her wanted to kill Row anyway, just on principle, but she recognized that part very well: the Queen of Spades, forever circling in her mind, always looking for a way back in. Past, present, or future, it made no difference; that side of Kelsea would be perfectly happy to run through the new world, grinning blackly, meting out justice with a scythe.
“No,” Kelsea whispered.
“You’ve gone very quiet over there,” Simon remarked. “Did I put you to sleep?”
“No,” Kelsea replied slowly, in a louder voice. “Simon, let me ask you: if you had the chance to go back into history and correct a great evil, would you do so?”
“Ah, the old question.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, with a clear answer. Physicists look at it in terms of the butterfly effect.”
“What is that?” Kelsea didn’t know why she was pursuing this; killing Row was no answer for the Town’s troubles. According to history, the Tear assassination was the problem, but there was no guarantee that killing Row would prevent that. She wished she could see everything, know everything, all at once.
“I’ve only read one book on the subject,” Simon told her. “The butterfly effect deals in the tendency of infinitesimal variations to amplify over time. You never play around with history, because the change you thought you were making for the better is likely to cause so many unforeseen ripples that it may well add up to a net loss. Too many variables to control the outcome.”
Kelsea considered this for a moment. Simon had presented a scientific argument, but beneath it was a moral question: whether she had the right to gamble with the future. In the brief six months she had sat on her throne, she had made many decisions, some good and some disastrous. Two Kelseas warred inside her: the child raised by Barty and Carlin to believe in easy rights and wrongs, and the Queen of Spades, who had come to see everything in shades of dark grey. The Queen of Spades didn’t care about moral questions.
“You didn’t answer me, Simon. What would you do?”
“You mean, would I dice with the chance that something even worse would come along?”
“Yes. Is it a good gamble, or a poor one?”
“I think the outcome would be entirely a matter of chance, of circumstance. Neither a good gamble nor a poor one, but a great gamble, one in which you would stake all, seeking a vast reward that might not materialize even if you did succeed. I am a cautious man, not a gambler. I don’t think I would chance it.”
Kelsea sat back on her heels, nodding. She saw the argument. Even if she somehow succeeded in killing Row Finn, another Row might simply spring up in his place. Power was a double-edged sword; it didn’t make Kelsea any more likely to do the right thing, and oh, the disastrous results when it led her wrong . . . She closed her eyes and there was Arlen Thorne again, his face scrubbed with blood.
“Strange turn of the conversation,” said Simon. “Can I ask—”
A hollow boom echoed through the dungeon. Emily woke instantly, jumping to her feet; Kelsea sensed that she, like Mace, was embarrassed to be caught napping. She raised her knife to face the end of the corridor.
“It is them?” Kelsea asked. If, as Emily said, Mace was planning a rescue attempt, it would explain what
Emily was doing down here in the middle of the night.
“No.” Emily shook her head. “More than a day early.”
A fusillade of clanging blows rang through the corridor. It sounded like a child banging pots together, but in the echo-prone environment of the dungeons, the noise was almost deafening, and Kelsea had to clap her hands to her ears until it stopped.
“Is it a mob?” asked Simon from his cell.
Kelsea raised her eyebrows at Emily, who shook her head. According to the page, the Palais was now surrounded by a mob, one selected and directed by Levieux. Mace and the Fetch, working together; Kelsea would have to see it to believe it. As the echoes faded, a woman appeared on the staircase and came sprinting down the corridor.
Mad, was Kelsea’s first thought. The woman appeared to be wearing only a robe, and her hair was in disarray. She held a torch just above her head, and it seemed only blind luck that she had not set her own hair on fire. Her breath gasped from her throat, and her eyes were wide and desperate. The hem of her robe was stained with blood.
“Declare yourself!” Emily cried. But a moment later Emily was flung aside like a rag doll, straight into the wall, where she collapsed to the floor. As the woman skidded to a stop in front of her cell, Kelsea’s mouth dropped open. No one would have recognized this deranged creature as the Queen of Mortmesne.
“No time,” the Red Queen panted. “Right behind me.”
She dropped to Emily’s inert body and began digging through her pockets. “Key, key, key. Where is it?”
The squeal of wrenching steel echoed down the hall from the stairwell, and a low animal moan emerged from the Red Queen’s throat. She took her hands from Emily’s pockets, defeated, and sat back on her heels for a moment before moving on to the chain around the woman’s neck.
The Fate of the Tearling Page 27