Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

  “Of course she will,” Elyssa replied. “But it doesn’t follow that we shouldn’t be here.”

  She crept closer to Gareth’s bed, moving quietly . . . but not too quietly. She wanted him to wake up. She had spent the past week going over her mother’s various security reports on the Blue Horizon, finding them almost entirely worthless. Oh, they covered the Blue Horizon’s nefarious deeds well enough: acquisition of arms, robbery of nobles, raids on Arvath storehouses. But they did not include, to Elyssa’s mind, the important information. They did not report who had founded the Blue Horizon, or when, or why they had suddenly appeared in such force in the past few years. They did not report why the Blue Horizon had targeted the Arvath for their fury. They did not report who the Blue Horizon blamed for the slow and steady decline of the Tearling, or what the movement was really after when they named Elyssa the True Queen. These omissions were hardly surprising; Queen Arla was an autocrat, and autocrats were not interested in why. Her mother’s agents knew that as well as Elyssa did, and they tailored their reports accordingly. But Elyssa was not her mother, and she was determined to know the Blue Horizon, to understand them.

  “He’s awake,” Barty remarked suddenly. A hint of humor crept into his voice. “A good spy, this one, listening for information.”

  Elyssa pulled a chair up to Gareth’s bed. She had waited until the senior medic left for lunch; the junior medics she could handle, but Beale was another matter, for he had her mother’s ear. Elyssa had sent the two junior medics away, and so there was no one here but the three of them.

  “Why not open your eyes?” she asked, and Gareth smiled.

  “Because, as your captain has surmised, one hears much more useful things by keeping them closed.”

  He opened his eyes, and they were just as Elyssa remembered them: a bright and piercing grey.

  “Your Highness. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve come to ask you some questions.”

  Gareth raised his eyebrows. “Welwyn Culp couldn’t compel answers with his knives and pokers, and you think I will break down before your pretty face?”

  Elyssa winced, stung both by the implication of vanity and by the reminder of what went on in her mother’s dungeons. In her mind’s eye, she saw again the wooden board, the manacles. The bloodstains on the floor.

  “I am a creature of the Keep,” she told Gareth. “I rarely leave, save to accompany my mother at hunt or to ride along in one of her processions. For intelligence, I have to rely on my mother’s agents, and they are biased. My maid, Niya, has a wealth of information on the city, but she knows little of the Blue Horizon.”

  “And what would you know of the Blue Horizon?”

  “I only want to understand. I want to build a better throne than my mother’s. I want to listen. What is your movement’s grievance with the Crown, with the Church? Why do you think a better world is possible now, when even William Tear could not make it work the last time around? I want to know what you believe.”

  “What we believe? It’s very simple, really.”

  “Nothing is simple about belief.”

  “Good.” Gareth nodded approvingly. “Lady Glynn taught you that much.”

  “What do you know of Lady Glynn?”

  “Only that she was your tutor. The city says she’s dead, murdered by Arla the Just.”

  Something tightened in Elyssa’s stomach. “She was a good tutor. I miss her. She was . . .”

  “What?”

  Elyssa shook her head. Like a mother to me, she had been about to say . . . but that was wrong. A better comparison was old Vincent, the swordmaster. Lady Glynn was not there for mothering. She had come with a purpose and a will.

  “She was a friend,” Elyssa finished lamely. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “Of course you do. She redistributed her acres and shattered the universe open. Such people rarely survive the fallout.”

  “I don’t want to talk of Lady Glynn. Return to my question. Pretend I’m an ordinary person, someone you’re trying to convert. Explain it to me, from the very beginning. Please. What do you want?”

  “Kelsea.”

  “Kelsea?” Elyssa frowned. “Who is that?”

  “Not a person, an idea. Kelsea comes from an old word, bastardized Anglican of the pre-Crossing. Loosely translated, it means ‘the victory of ships.’ William Tear crossed the ocean seeking a better world, a world where all were fed, clothed, housed, educated, doctored. When we achieve the better world, the perfect summation of William Tear’s dream, then we will have Kelsea.”

  Fed, clothed, housed, educated, doctored, Elyssa thought wistfully, taken despite herself by the vision he presented. But under Barty’s watchful eye, she was forced to remain skeptical.

  “William Tear might have reviled weapons, but I’ve read the reports on your Blue Horizon,” she countered. “You rob, you kidnap, you kill. Last winter, the Fetch hung one of Lord Winter’s bailiffs from a tree in the near Almont. You hardly practice what you preach.”

  “True,” Gareth acknowledged, tilting his head. “The road to the better world is a complex one.”

  “‘Complex,’” Elyssa repeated dryly. “Damascus had fewer approaches than your better world.”

  “But we will have it in the end, all the same.”

  “In a drought year?” Elyssa asked, thinking of the new reports from her mother’s agents in the Almont. “Crops are dying everywhere. If rain doesn’t fall soon, people will be killing each other over a head of lettuce. How important will your better world be then?”

  “More important still.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Join the Blue Horizon. In time, perhaps, you’ll know all of our secrets.”

  “You’d never take me.”

  “Why not?”

  “My mother had you beaten within an inch of your life.”

  “Bruises heal. So do fractured ribs.”

  Elyssa glared at him, trying to decide whether he was joking. The corners of his mouth were tucked in, and his silver-grey eyes twinkled at her. . . . Yet beneath these signs of humor, she detected seriousness, sensed him watching her closely.

  “How did they capture you?” she asked.

  “What makes you think I was captured? Perhaps I’m here by choice.”

  “For what possible purpose?”

  “To have a look at you.”

  “At me? Why?”

  “The Blue Horizon, as a whole, does not believe in sorcery, or prophecies,” Gareth replied. “But we know as well as any opportunistic seer that this kingdom needs a ruler, and certainly a better ruler than Arla the Just. So when we hear that the Eye of the Crithe has prophesied the coming of the True Queen, we pay attention.”

  “What makes you think she was talking about me?”

  “Who else would she be talking about? Not your mother, that’s certain . . . though I hear even your mother seeks the comfort of prophecy these days.”

  “The albino’s no prophet,” Barty growled. “She’s just a cheap palmist, like the rest of the Queen’s menagerie.”

  “Be careful in that assessment, Captain,” Gareth replied, his face suddenly grave. “Arla is a despot, and despots are always most desperate to know the future.”

  Alarmed, Elyssa glanced toward the open doorway. She saw no one, but it seemed best to move the discussion away from both her mother and the seer. This was the Queen’s Wing; someone was always listening.

  “Your movement has done a good job of painting me as the True Queen,” she told Gareth. “And I assume a tidy profit went with it. More converts, more donations, more volunteers. So don’t play with me and pretend that the Blue Horizon believes in prophecies or saviors. You have too much to gain.”

  “The Blue Horizon doesn’t believe in the prophecy. But I do.”

  “Why?�
��

  “Because I see far. Further than any of them.”

  Elyssa blinked, unable to make sense of this statement. At her chest, the sapphire gave a slight shudder, reverberating with her own jagged heartbeat.

  “Are you the True Queen?” Gareth asked, and Elyssa realized that he had no memory of that delirious moment after he had woken. Perhaps it was better so, for she had answered him then with her heart, not her head. But by now, she had had days to consider his question, to answer it for herself.

  “I’m not the True Queen. But it hardly matters.”

  His eyes brightened with interest. “How so?”

  “As you say, this kingdom needs a ruler. A good ruler, one who will take care of the weak as well as the strong. I don’t believe in prophecy, or destiny either, and so I don’t claim to be the True Queen. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be. The True Queen is only the shape of the vessel this kingdom requires, but I will fill it, because those people out there need a leader. And because there’s no one else.”

  Barty grunted in approval. Gareth considered her for a long moment, then remarked, “Your mother would have answered very differently.”

  “She would have,” Elyssa agreed, for her mother would happily seize any scrap of mystique that would augment her power. Elyssa was surprised that she had not already laid claim to the prophecy for herself.

  “Speaking of your mother,” Gareth remarked, “has she come up with a solution for the situation in the Almont yet?”

  Barty stirred uneasily, and even Elyssa shifted in her seat, thinking of dinner last night. Her mother had consumed a fair amount of wine, and the words struggled out of her mouth like slippery olives. “Naught to worry about. It’s a dry year, but we’ve had them before. The nobles will open their storehouses and cisterns; they’ll have to.”

  Elyssa had not said anything; her mother was too drunk to take advice, and wine in particular always made her belligerent. But the blithe assurance in her words had chilled Elyssa. Nobles did indeed warehouse large stores on their land, and in a normal year, a given noble’s stores would be sufficient to see several villages through the winter and planting. But this was the third straight dry year. Few of the nobles had realized profit from last year’s harvest, and most had taken an outright loss. They would be hoarding their stores for themselves. Her mother could order the nobles to open their warehouses and cisterns, but if shortages of food and water got bad enough, they might refuse. Her mother only ever saw the nobility smiling and openhanded, but Elyssa knew what they really were.

  “No, then,” Gareth replied softly, answering his own question. “I thought not.”

  Someone knocked on the door, making Elyssa jump.

  “Come!” Barty called.

  Elston leaned his head in. “A message from the Queen. She demands that the Princess attend her.”

  “Where?”

  “Private court.”

  Elyssa and Barty turned to each other, and she saw an expression of consternation in his eyes to match her own. The time of reckoning was here.

  “I must go,” she told Gareth, rising from the bed. “I’ll come back tomorrow, if you permit it.”

  “I permit it. I enjoy trying to convert you.”

  “You will not convert me,” she replied tartly, turning to face him. “Your movement’s ideology is a bit too flexible for my taste.”

  “Is it?” Gareth smiled, tipping his head. “We’ll see.”

  Elyssa wanted to smile back, but instead she turned and went out the door, into the waiting circle of her Guard. Niya, too, had appeared from nowhere, walking beside Elyssa as she swept up the hall.

  “That criminal is too impertinent with you, Highness,” Barty remarked. “You should not encourage him.”

  “I didn’t encourage him!”

  Barty snorted.

  “We were only talking!”

  “‘Talking,’” Barty repeated. “Yes, I know that sort of talk.”

  Elyssa frowned, wanting to say something cutting, but she could think of no remark that served her purpose. Several of her guards—Carroll, Dyer, Mhurn—were grinning broadly, and Elyssa had a moment to reflect that Queen’s Guards were truly a mixed blessing. They defended her life, certainly, but they also crawled around inside it. Niya, Elyssa was pleased to see, was looking straight ahead, her expression disinterested.

  “Were you never young, Barty?” she demanded. “Were you never tempted by someone you couldn’t have?”

  This was a shot in the dim, but not entirely in the dark. For years, Elyssa had suspected that Barty was in love, or at least in admiration, with Lady Glynn. The two of them fought like cats and dogs, and Lady Glynn invariably saved the roughest side of her tongue for Barty, particularly when she caught him drinking in the Queen’s Wing. But when the old tutor disappeared, Barty too had vanished for more than a week, reappearing drunk as a plowman’s bitch. Givens had nearly kicked him off the Guard, but even after he was allowed to remain, Barty had been in a bad mood for months.

  “We’re not speaking of me,” Barty replied stiffly. “I am not the heir to a crown.”

  “My mother has spent the past twenty years bedding half the kingdom,” Elyssa shot back. “I can’t see that it’s done her any harm.”

  “Bedding is one thing, Highness. The fate of a throne is another. Your mother had already produced a legitimate heir and spare before she went her merry way.”

  “And she’s had no children since . . . or at least, none legitimate,” Elyssa amended, for there had always been talk about her mother. Elyssa’s father had died when she was still in nappies, and her mother was hardly one to practice celibacy; rumor said that Queen Arla had borne at least one child on the wrong side of the sheets. “My mother is very careful; don’t you think I might be at least as clever as she is when I drop my knickers?”

  That, at least, silenced Barty; he turned red and remained mercifully mute until they reached the set of broad green doors that opened onto her mother’s private throne room. At the sight of them, Elyssa began to tremble.

  I am the Crown Princess of the Tearling, she told herself firmly. I am not afraid.

  But she was afraid, and all the brave pronouncements in the world would not convince her muscles otherwise. The ornate scrollwork on the green doors before her seemed to ripple and writhe, like some sinister animal. Elyssa had challenged her mother, challenged her in open court, and Queen Arla believed in punishment.

  A gentle hand clasped her shoulder. Elyssa looked up and found Barty looking down at her, his gaze sympathetic.

  “It will be all right, child,” he murmured. “Don’t let her frighten you.”

  The other guards nodded. Carroll offered Elyssa his flask of water, and she took a grateful drink, then wiped her mouth.

  “I will go with you, Highness,” Niya offered, “if you wish it.”

  Elyssa did wish it. She would have liked to have all of them in there, around her. But then her mother would know she was afraid.

  “Thank you, Niya,” she said. “But I must go myself.” Her mother’s guards began to open the green doors, and Elyssa moved forward, her head held high, not flinching even when the doors banged shut behind her.

  Her mother sat on her private throne, a smaller version of the great silver chair that sat in the throne room. But at first Elyssa didn’t even notice the Queen, for all of her attention was taken by the white woman, Brenna, who sat at the low table before the throne, dealing cards. Brenna did not look up as Elyssa entered, and after a moment Elyssa realized that the cards she dealt were of the tarot variety. Brenna flipped them up, and Elyssa saw three of them in rapid succession: the Hanged Man, the Empress, the Seven of Swords.

  “Leave us alone,” her mother commanded.

  Brenna gathered her cards and scrambled to her feet. Her mother’s guards also left the room—though, Elyssa noted, th
ey waited until Brenna had left as well. None of the Queen’s close guards liked the seer, and Barty had told Elyssa that several of her mother’s men were convinced that Brenna was a witch. Elyssa would have chalked up their animosity to Brenna’s appearance, but she herself wondered. There was something unsettling about the seer; even Elyssa, who fancied herself relatively hardheaded, could feel it. Givens and Barty both wanted Brenna gone from the Keep, but the Queen had decreed that she should stay. Servants’ gossip said the Queen and Brenna were closeted together several times a week, and Elyssa wondered what her mother could possibly be getting out of the relationship to justify the odd air around the woman. Carroll was right; she left one feeling cold.

  “Elyssa Anne.”

  Elyssa flushed. She was twenty-one years old now, but that tone never failed to make her a child again. Once, when she was five, she had wet herself in the face of her mother’s anger, fear and shame simply rolling into a ball until her bladder let go.

  I am not five years old, Elyssa told herself. And no True Queen would ever flinch, so long as she was in the right.

  “Mother.”

  “How is your little friend? I trust you found him well.”

  Already? Elyssa thought, dismayed. Her mother’s spies were everywhere in the Keep!

  “Beale tells me he will heal,” her mother went on. “And then I will have to make good on my promise and release him. You dealt me a pretty blow that day, I can tell you. Do you know how many missives I’ve received from His Holiness in the past week on this issue alone?”

  “I assume that after the first, the number becomes redundant.”

  “Be careful, Elyssa.” Her mother’s voice had chilled, lost even the false note of playfulness. “Your little game has brought the wrath of the Church down on us.”

  “And what of that? Didn’t the Holy Father once call you Arla the Godless?”

  “Yes, and I call him a filthy old hypocrite whenever his name arises. But there’s all the difference in the world between what we believe of others and what we need from them, Elyssa.”