Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

  “What is it?” Gareth asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Tears of a princess? It’s not nothing.”

  “I must do something terrible tonight. Something I don’t wish to do.” She swallowed, then looked squarely at him, unsure why she told him these things, except that she trusted him instinctively to understand. “My mother demands that I denounce the Blue Horizon.”

  “Is that all?”

  “All?” She stared at him, astonished. “That’s everything!”

  Gareth shrugged. “We’ve been denounced by every ruler since Matthew Raleigh. We will surely survive.”

  “That’s not the point!” Elyssa protested. “How will I look myself in the mirror tomorrow?”

  “I assume the leverage over you is great.”

  Elyssa nodded, wiping more tears away. “My mother, she—”

  “No need to tell me. I know Queen Arla well.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, not personally, but as they say in the Almont, you needn’t know a pig to know it will grunt. Your mother is a ruthless creature.”

  “She says she’ll take it from me,” Elyssa whispered. “Take my heirship and put Thomas on the throne. Thomas! He—”

  “Oh, you don’t need to tell me about your brother either. Your mother must be desperate indeed.”

  Elyssa smiled through her tears. Gareth grinned back, then he began to cough. Elyssa handed him the glass of water, and he took another sip. The cough pained him, Elyssa could tell, probably because of his ribs. His bruises had faded to an ugly yellow. His fingers would never be pretty, not now, but they had first scabbed over and then begun to heal beneath their bandages. The burn wounds on his arms had crusted. His fractured ribs would take longer, but not forever. Soon Beale would release him, and after that, Elyssa did not deceive herself that she would see him again. If he had truly come to the Keep of his own free will, then he would not return . . . and even if not, Elyssa didn’t think her mother’s people would capture him a second time. She had been involved with several young men in the Keep over the years—two servants and a groom—and none of them had cut her deep. But the thought of Gareth’s departure made her feel hollow and hopeless.

  There was a knock on the door, and Beale poked his head in. Elyssa sensed that the senior medic had only been circling, waiting for an opportunity to kick her out. Barty, too, peered around the doorway, his expression similarly disapproving.

  “My patient is tired, Highness,” Beale told her, sweeping into the room. “He must rest.”

  “And you need to get ready for the party, Highness,” Barty chimed in. “Your mother sent word to remind you that her carriage will leave promptly at seven. She expects you on time.”

  “Of course she does!” Elyssa snarled. “When one means to sell out, one can’t be late.”

  A hand clasped hers: Gareth’s. She looked sharply down at him—if Barty saw the touch, he would be outraged—but Gareth was not looking at the men in the doorway, only at Elyssa. His hand seemed to burn her.

  “Have courage,” he told her. “They call you the True Queen for a reason. I believe in you.”

  Elyssa gaped at him, but a moment later he had let go of her hand and turned over in the bed, as though he meant to go to sleep. Mercifully, Barty had missed everything. Elyssa walked toward the doorway, feeling very little, as though her body had gone numb . . . all except her hand, which burned with cold fire.

  Have courage.

  It sounded so good in theory. But in reality, it would mean leaving her kingdom to the mercy of Thomas.

  Do you really believe your mother would do that?

  Elyssa didn’t know. Unlike her brother, she was not a gambler. Given certain outcomes, she could make a decision and feel confident. But this . . . her mother seemed ready to cast the kingdom into the wind. As they passed Thomas’s chambers, Elyssa glared at the slightly open door, then jerked to a halt as a low squealing echoed from within.

  “Don’t! Please don’t!”

  Elyssa had a moment to reflect that her brother was now so brazen that he didn’t even bother to close the door for his predations, but that cool assessment was swept away as she slammed the door aside.

  Thomas had the girl pinned to the bed. She was young, ridiculously so; Elyssa would have guessed her age at no more than fifteen. She had long brown hair, so light that it was almost red. She was not crying, not yet, but her eyes were full of unshed tears, and at the sight of their sparkle, Elyssa forgot about Gareth, the Arvath, Lady Glynn, all of it. Darting forward, she grabbed her brother, hauled him from the bed, and flung him across the room. Thomas bounced off the wall with a satisfying thud, then landed on the floor, and Elyssa was on him in the next moment, pummeling him with both fists.

  “Leave off!” Thomas shouted, covering his face. “Leave off, you bitch!”

  But Elyssa did not. Dimly, she was aware of her Guard, ranging themselves around the room, keeping a respectful distance. They would not interfere, for they absolutely loathed Thomas. “Tommy the Spare,” they called him, when they were not calling him something worse. Elyssa wished this were the first time she had come upon her brother this way, but it was not. She gave him a final square punch in the face, then hauled herself up, panting, her knuckles red with his blood. Dyer and Kibb were helping the girl up from the bed, and Elyssa observed that her dress was ripped, her mouth swollen. She turned back to Thomas, who was pulling himself from the floor now, his eyes narrowed in rage.

  “At it again, are we?” Elyssa demanded. “Didn’t Mother threaten to put you in prison the last time?”

  The Guard chuckled, and Thomas turned red. Once upon a time, that helpless flush on her brother’s face had made Elyssa feel sorry for him, for if her mother was hard on Elyssa, she was merciless with Thomas, parading his failures for all to see. He did not even have a full guard, for the Queen had decreed that a spare did not need guards. Thomas’s life was full of such small cuts, but by now Elyssa could not help sharing her mother’s contempt. The rapes, the endless gambling debts, Thomas’s predatory manner with the Keep servants . . . her brother was a mess that required constant cleaning up.

  “Give her back,” Thomas told Kibb, who was supporting the girl in his arms. “She belongs to me.”

  “Fuck off, you little spare,” Elston growled; he was on guard at the door. “In my village, you would have been gelded long ago.”

  Thomas colored further, then turned back to Elyssa. His nose was bleeding freely, but there was a triumphant gleam in his eye that she did not like at all.

  “Mother said that I should go ahead and pick one woman,” he announced. “She said that if it would keep me out of trouble, it was worth it to her. So she gave me the money. I bought the girl yesterday, and she belongs to me. I can do whatever I want with her.”

  Elyssa felt her stomach lurch. She had a momentary hope that Thomas was lying, but hope died quick. Thomas was a terrible liar, and this was exactly what her mother would do, for Queen Arla was a pragmatist, first and foremost. She could not stop her son’s depredations, no, but nor could she imprison or hang him. So she would make sure that the rape was kept quiet, troubling no one important, causing no scandal. Elyssa wondered what Lady Glynn would say about this turn of events.

  “Give her back!” Thomas told Kibb, more forcefully this time.

  After a questioning look at Elyssa, Kibb released the girl. Thomas beckoned her, but the girl retreated, scurrying away from him, around the bed.

  “Kibb, you stay right here,” Elyssa told him. “Someone will bring you dinner. Thomas, the girl will have a guard at all times until I have discussed this with the Queen.”

  “You can’t do that!” Thomas snarled.

  “You think not?” Elyssa moved forward again, and had the pleasure of watching Thomas back up against the wall. “Don’t test me, little brother, or the very
instant I take the throne, I’ll see you in a dungeon. Maybe even at the end of a rope.”

  Turning, she stormed out of the room and down the corridor. She had been dreading the carriage ride to the Arvath with her mother, but now it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring up this little arrangement. Elyssa could not stand by . . . not here, in the Keep, in this kingdom that would be hers someday. She sped up, almost running now, as she emerged in the great chamber . . . and then came to a sudden halt.

  The seer, Brenna, was seated at the enormous oakwood table that sat in the center of the room. She was alone but busy. She appeared to be casting bones. As Elyssa approached the broad table, Brenna’s low mutters became audible.

  “Six, twelve, fifteen. Crows murder, and stars fall.” She threw another handful of bones across the table, stared at them for a moment, then murmured, “Children lost and children gained. Blood spilled on silk.”

  Behind Elyssa, one of the guards muttered in disgust.

  “The hidden child. The lost child. Flames in a black sky. Six, twelve, fifteen. Charred bones and flesh—”

  Barty cleared his throat rudely. Brenna looked up, and Elyssa noted with interest that her nearly colorless pupils were dilated, clear grey pools floating on a sea of pale blue ice.

  “Surely you have a private chamber where you can do that,” Barty remarked coldly.

  Slowly, almost insolently, Brenna began to gather her bones. She did have a private chamber; it was only three doors down from Elyssa’s own rooms, a matter about which Barty had complained to Captain Givens more than once. But Givens, who was even less superstitious than Barty, had dismissed his concerns . . . or at least ignored them. Givens knew which way the wind was blowing. The Queen had raised the seer to the level of a high councilor; now, even in a time of drought, she spent more time alone with Brenna than she did with her treasurer or her minister of agriculture. As Brenna stuffed a handful of bones into a small pouch tied to her belt, Elyssa noted, disturbed, that the pouch was the exact color of blood.

  “Witchery,” someone muttered behind Elyssa. Elston, it had to be; she always knew him by the height of his voice. Elston was no Christian, but he had been raised in the country, and he evinced a deep-rooted distrust of anything that smacked of magic.

  “Fuck witchery, it’s disgusting,” Dyer replied. “Don’t we have to eat on that table?”

  But the resulting chuckles quickly died, for Brenna had suddenly frozen in place, staring down at the scatter of tiny bones still on the table, seeming to eat them with her gaze. She touched one small bone, then a second, and after a moment she looked up, straight into Elyssa’s eyes.

  “Wishing makes you weak, Highness. Only in action is there strength.”

  “Here, now!” Barty barked. “How dare you speak to the Princess? Clear up your filth and get gone!”

  Brenna smiled . . . a strange smile, smug yet somehow pitying at the same time. She rose from the table but continued to talk directly to Elyssa, ignoring Barty and the rest of them, as though they were not even in the room.

  “You wish for so many things, Highness. I see them all. You may have them, but only if you are brave enough to act.”

  Elyssa stared at her, alarmed, for a bizarre, paranoid certainty had suddenly taken hold of her: Brenna knew about Gareth. She knew that Elyssa thought of him almost all the time. She knew that Elyssa had begun to visit Gareth in the night, that she sometimes sat there for hours, simply watching him sleep. She knew that Elyssa found herself pitiable, even loathsome, in her own growing obsession.

  “I can help you, Highness,” Brenna told her, gathering the last of her bones into the bag. “Believe me, I specialize in dreams.”

  “Get out of here, witch!” Barty snarled. “And take your carnival tricks with you!”

  Brenna gave Elyssa another odd, sympathetic smile, then moved toward the hallway.

  “I apologize, Highness,” Barty said stiffly. “I will lodge a complaint with the Queen.”

  But Elyssa was still staring at Brenna’s departing back. Her mother was forgotten; even her disgust over Thomas and his so-called purchase seemed to fade in that moment, for something dark had uncoiled in her mind. She saw the future, not bright and shining but dim and shifting, as though glimpsed through smoke: the True Queen, Elyssa, with the crown on her head and her mother gone, all restraint removed, nothing to hold her back, to keep her from ordering the world just as she wished it. . . .

  I specialize in dreams. Have the courage to act.

  “Highness?”

  “It’s time for me to get dressed.” Her own voice sounded strange.

  “Should we get you a tray, Highness? For dinner?” Carroll asked. He was the sweetest of her guards, and certainly the only one who would think of dinner on a night like this. Digging up a tired smile, Elyssa shook her head, then turned to Barty.

  “Barty, do me a favor and send someone else to help Kibb look after that poor child. She should not be left alone with my brother, not for one instant.”

  Elyssa retreated to her chamber, giving a cursory glance to the blue silk dress that had been laid out on the bed. Niya should be here, to help her dress . . . but no, Niya was gone, on her monthly holiday.

  I should give her more holidays, Elyssa thought blankly, almost disconnectedly. One weekend a month is not enough. And yet she wished that Niya were not gone now, for she could have used the maid’s advice. Niya was always helpful, always practical, a distant echo of Lady Glynn.

  If she’s alive, she’s not to be found.

  Reluctantly, Elyssa found herself accepting the truth: her mother had murdered Lady Glynn. She would not have done it herself, no; most likely the order had gone to Givens, who was both discreet and competent. But whoever had done the deed, Lady Glynn was surely dead, her bones buried in the deepest basements of the Keep, or out in the small forest that made up the Queen’s hawking preserve. Elyssa would never have Lady Glynn’s eye of judgment upon her again, but in that moment, she would have braved it, if only to have her tutor’s advice once more. She sat down in front of her vanity glass, staring at her own reflection. It pleased her, as it always did; fine blonde hair, bright green eyes, high cheekbones, a pointed chin. She looked like what she was: a girl in the very prime of her youth.

  Then why do I feel so wretched?

  That question answered itself. She felt sick at her own lack of control. She might argue with her mother, yes, and she might even make some headway. But Thomas’s purchase was only one girl. Elyssa did not have the power to help all women; she could not even choose her own life. Tonight her mother would force her to repudiate Gareth and his better world. Elyssa had never been in love before, and now she understood why so many people referred to it as a sickness. She felt as though she had a fever.

  Wishing makes you weak.

  She got up and went to the window. Below, the Keep Lawn stretched out toward the Great Boulevard, the vast stretch of rooftops descending toward the Caddell. The city was hazy, twinkling in the early dusk. Across the distance, a bell began to ring: the Arvath, tolling out six o’clock.

  I love this kingdom, Elyssa thought, but even love was tempered, strengthened by responsibility. There was no room for the personal; obligation crowded all the rest. The twilight deepened, darkening the room until it was only a chamber of shadows, barely seen, and now Elyssa realized that she had only been waiting for the darkness, for the strange sort of permission that came when light slipped away. She reached out to the wall beside the window, where a tiny catch protruded, three stones over and seven stones up, invisible to the naked eye. Elyssa put her finger on this catch, lightly, almost testing it with her finger.

  She had been using the tunnels since she was six years old, mostly to hide: from her mother’s wrath, from her nursemaid, even from Thomas when he used to torment her. The tunnels beehived the Queen’s Wing and traveled downward into the Keep proper
. . . even farther than that, though Elyssa had never dared to venture beyond the moat. When her mother sent her to bed without supper, Elyssa would sneak down to the fourth floor and steal food from the kitchens. When she wanted to go somewhere without the company of her Guard, she took the tunnels as well. Even Niya used them, whenever she snuck down to the Circus to find Elyssa’s syrup. The tunnel behind Elyssa’s chamber gave access onto the arms room, the infirmary, and several of the family rooms, including the chamber three doors down where, even now, the white woman waited. Elyssa knew she was waiting, that she would sit up all night if she had to. Perhaps she did not even sleep at all.

  Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

  Lady Glynn’s voice again, deep inside her head. Because fate had allotted Elyssa a throne, she had to take care of her people, all of them, before she looked to herself. Desire would always be secondary. At her chest, her sapphire gave a sudden shiver, as though it were capable of feeling her chill.

  Kelsea. The victory of ships.

  The better world.

  I specialize in dreams.

  “No,” Elyssa whispered, turning away from the wall and moving back to the window to stare out across her kingdom, this damnable, maddening kingdom that had once had such potential to be great. Everyone seemed content to accept the fall . . . everyone except the Blue Horizon, with their better world.

  It doesn’t matter that they don’t know how to get there, Elyssa realized suddenly. It doesn’t even matter if we never do. The important thing is to die trying.

  “Barty!”

  A moment later, Barty poked his head around the door. “Highness?”

  “Saddle my horse, and all of yours.”

  “Highness?” Barty asked. “Your mother expects you to ride with her in the carriage.”

  “I know she does,” Elyssa replied, tossing the blue dress aside. “But we’re not going to the Arvath. Say nothing to my mother or her people. Just saddle the horses.”