Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

  “And where are we going?” Barty demanded, bewildered.

  “Where I should have gone all along, Barty. To the people. To the Circus.”

  Chapter 12

  ON THE PLATFORM

  In examining the Blue Horizon’s motives and ideals, it is perhaps easy to overlook the group’s practical impact, which was hardly admirable. The Blue Horizon was one of the biggest movers of stolen goods in the Tearling, keeping any number of fencers and middlemen in business. Their armorers bought weapons in proportions almost as great as those of the Tear army, and they were not above kidnapping and ransom when the price or the information was right. Those who informed on the movement often disappeared, never to be seen again.

  Seen in this light, the popular image of the Blue Horizon—that of starry-eyed idealists offering food with one hand and freedom with the other—is risible. In fact, William Tear’s disciples were highly-trained terrorists, led by one of the most violent criminals in the history of the Tear. Do not be misled by the fact that he often gave his ill-gotten gains away, for he was quite happy to murder to get them. . . .

  —The Fetch: An Unpopular History, Martin Bannaker

  This won’t do,” the Fetch remarked, looking over the sheet of figures in front of him. “We need fifty, not twenty-five.”

  “This is the best I can do, sir,” Glover replied, lifting his hands. “I have two boys out sick and one lamed in a forging accident. It will take two weeks to fill the order as it is.”

  The Fetch stared at the smith, unblinking, until Glover began to turn pale. Niya felt a brief pity for the man, for she knew the sting of that look. The Fetch’s mask was bad, but the eyes behind were worse: dark and cold, with no pity for interruptions or unexpected events.

  “Ten days,” Glover amended. “And we will provide thirty.”

  “Fine,” the Fetch replied, handing back the sheet of paper. “My associate here will collect, and don’t be surprised if she comes at the darkest hour of night.”

  “No . . . no, sir, of course not,” Glover quavered. “We will be ready at any time.”

  The Fetch nodded, signaling Niya. They left through the back door of the smith’s shop, and emerged into the wide expanse of the Harrowgate. Dusk had fallen while they were in the smithy, and as always, darkness seemed to confer a strange license on the Gut, an invitation to open its doors. Everywhere Niya looked, she saw pickpockets and pros, shifty men with even shiftier wares to sell. Behind the cheap brick facades of the pubs rang laughter and screams, the occasional clash of steel. Above their heads, half-clad pros leaned from the second stories of brothels, hawking for customers, their breasts bouncing like ripe moons, cheerful cries echoing along the street.

  “This place,” the Fetch remarked, with a sour chuckle. “So much life . . . and so much waste.”

  Niya nodded. The Fetch often said such things, and even if she could not always understand them, they seemed right in feeling. All around them, people drew back as the Fetch passed, as they caught sight of his dreadful mask. The expressions on their faces were identical, not pure fear but a sort of terrified awe, as though the Fetch were a pagan god.

  “Are you sure Glover can be trusted to deliver on time?”

  “Yes,” the Fetch replied, waving away her question. “He was lowballing, giving himself a cushion. He’s a good businessman. Will thirty swords be enough, do you think?”

  “For certain. But the casualties will be dreadful.”

  “Casualties always are.”

  The Fetch fell silent then, and Niya watched him with some curiosity. He was a dark-haired man, neither large nor small, with a handsome precision in his features. It was a kind face, trusting and trustworthy . . . or so a thirteen-year-old Niya had thought, just before she slipped her hand into his pocket. She had managed to reach the coins, but not to take them out, and now, ten years after she had mistaken the Fetch for a soft mark, she trailed him through the Gut, her hand on her knife. A drunken lout stumbled into Niya, groping, and she shoved him out of her way. He landed in the mud, cursing as they left him behind, and the altercation seemed to shake the Fetch awake, pull him back from whatever dark void he had been traveling.

  “What of the Princess?”

  Niya jerked as though stung, for she had just been wondering the same thing, whether Elyssa had reached the Arvath yet. Niya got only two days of holiday per month, and they belonged to the Fetch, but yesterday was the first time she had been reluctant to leave the Keep, reluctant to leave Elyssa alone. She didn’t know why Elyssa had decided to go to the Holy Father’s party—Elyssa had never expressed any interest in visiting the Arvath before—but Niya didn’t like it, just as she didn’t like the white witch who had now taken up residence in the Keep. Barty had sent Carroll to find out where the witch had come from and who she was really working for, but Carroll had come back not only empty-handed but scared to death. He would not speak of what had happened, not even to the Guard.

  We must find out who the witch really is, Niya thought. And until then, Barty had better be as vigilant as I believe him to be.

  She thought of saying as much to the Fetch, then didn’t. The Fetch already knew about Brenna; he had put Lila and Martin on to the matter. The witch certainly hadn’t come from Lord Tennant’s acreage. Lila had already determined that much, but little else.

  One of the street vendors of the Gut, braver than the rest, suddenly ran up to the Fetch. Niya grabbed her knife, but the vendor merely reached out a hand, entreating the Fetch to shake. The Fetch did so absently, and the man retreated to his stall.

  “The witch continues to meet with the Queen in private,” Niya said. “The guards say she seems fixated on the sapphire . . . always watching it, touching it whenever she can.”

  “That tracks.”

  “Why? I thought they were only heirlooms, those jewels.”

  “To most people, they are. Certainly to the Raleighs.”

  “Then what does the witch want with them?”

  “Hard to say. Those jewels belong to William Tear, even now. No one else can use them, only Tear . . . Tear, and those of his blood.”

  “William Tear had no living descendants.”

  The Fetch nodded, but his eyes remained troubled. He was concealing something, Niya thought, but she didn’t take offense. She was an important foot soldier in the Blue Horizon, certainly, but a foot soldier nonetheless, and the Fetch had done her a great honor by choosing to place her in the Keep. Niya had long ago accepted the fact that she didn’t need to know everything, but she wondered what secret could bring that look to the Fetch’s eyes. He seemed to sense her scrutiny, for he changed the subject in a clumsy manner that was not really like him.

  “How’s Gareth?”

  “He heals quickly. Most of his bruises have faded, and the medics claim that even his ribs will be healed after another two or three weeks. His arm will continue to trouble him for a while; the fracture was severe.”

  “We must have been mad to let him go in there.”

  Niya did not reply. No one ever let Gareth do anything. He had wanted his own look at Elyssa, and so, despite all objections, he had allowed himself to be taken. Gareth was guided entirely by his own stars.

  “But we must be doubly careful now,” the Fetch continued. “The closer he gets to freedom, the more Arla will be looking for any excuse to keep him.”

  “Elyssa will protect him.”

  “You have more faith in the Princess than I do. She may have taken a liking to Gareth—”

  “More than a liking, unless I miss my guess.”

  “Well, Gareth’s no fool.”

  “Neither is Elyssa.”

  “You like her too much, Niya. It impairs your judgment.”

  “Maybe,” she replied, flushing. “But until Gareth comes back, my judgment is what we have. I see goodness in Elyssa. She wants what we want.”r />
  “You want her to be good, certainly. But history is full of fools who allowed want to undermine was.”

  Niya accepted the rebuke in silence, though she longed to argue further. But it was not the Fetch’s opinion that would matter. He was the nominal head of the Blue Horizon, and his dreadful mask was the face the world knew. But that was only smoke and mirrors, designed to cloak the true nature of things. By keeping the eye of the world on the Blue Horizon’s face, they successfully camouflaged the movement’s beating heart. Niya wondered what Gareth made of Elyssa. The two of them had had several private conversations now, conversations in which neither guards nor medics were present, which had scandalized the entire Keep. Elyssa sympathized with the Blue Horizon; Niya knew it already, but if Gareth pronounced Elyssa true, no one in the Blue Horizon would say otherwise. What they couldn’t do with a true believer on the throne—

  “Please!” a man begged to her right. “For my little ones!”

  Turning, Niya saw a family of four huddled just between the doors of two pubs on Hell’s Corner, begging for the scraps that publicans usually fed to stray dogs. A farm family; they had the poor country mouse air of those who find themselves lost in the big city. They were trickling in steadily from the Almont; only a few now, but as the Caddell continued to dry up and the harvest failed, more would surely come. It didn’t matter that they were leaving their homes behind, for it was better to be homeless in the city than starving in the plains. And yet even scraps were becoming a luxury; most people were hoarding their refuse for another meal. As Niya watched, the publican shooed the father away from the pub door, banging it angrily shut behind him. The family huddled in miserable disappointment, and for a rogue moment Niya longed to go to them, tell them that they should not despair, that there was a better world out there, so close they could almost touch it. But what good would words do these people? Men could not eat belief.

  “What is that?”

  The Fetch had stopped behind her, tipping his head. Listening for a moment, Niya heard a roar of voices, muffled by the buildings on their left.

  “West,” she told him. “The Circus.”

  “Come on.”

  Niya followed him through the crowd, keeping her eyes on the back of his neck, which was tanned dark from his recent trip to the Almont. The Fetch went out there personally at least once every few months, even though it might slow down operations in New London. Niya didn’t know why he made such a point of it; even now, after ten years under the Fetch’s tutelage, she understood him little better than she had on that long-ago day when he grabbed her arm and yanked her hand from his pocket. No one knew where the Fetch had come from; he claimed to have been born a street rat, but Niya had her doubts. The Fetch sought the better world as doggedly as any of them, but he was no bright-eyed optimist like Gareth, or even a cautious optimist, like Niya herself. The Fetch did not dream freely, as the rest of them did. Rather, he seemed compelled, driven independently of his will to take on the evils of the kingdom as he found them. “Repairing the gap,” the Fetch called it, and the grim tone of his voice seemed to suggest regret. Culpability.

  That was nonsense, of course; the Tearling had fallen into decline centuries before the Fetch was even born. If any single person was to blame, it was Matthew Raleigh, the first king of the line, who had dismantled William Tear’s system of collectivized land ownership and dispensed most of the kingdom’s acres in private grants to his friends and followers, progenitors of the modern-day nobility. There was no blame anymore, except for the ubiquitous guilt that lay across the breadth of the Tearling, the vast multitude too busy scrabbling for scraps to look up and act.

  He takes too much upon himself, Niya thought now, watching the set of the Fetch’s shoulders, the tension of muscles in the back of his neck. She loved him, not in the silly way of men and women, but something much more important. She loved the Fetch the way she loved Gareth, Amelia, Lila, Dylan, all of them. They saw the better world, and they saw it together; hope had welded them tighter than blood. But the Fetch felt every new setback deeply, as though a boulder had landed upon him. Niya only wished that she could pull him free, take some of the weight.

  At this late hour, the New London Circus should have been clearing out, for most of the food vendors usually closed down shop after dark, and street preachers ran a real danger of being beaten once drunks began to stumble from the pubs. But tonight some sort of mob had gathered in the vast open-air market, a mob of so many people that they overflowed down the side streets. Apollon Road was so crowded that the Fetch was forced to literally shoulder people aside, Niya worming her way through behind him.

  “What—” she began to ask, and then the words were cut from her in a harsh gasp as the Fetch pointed, directing her gaze upward.

  Elyssa was walking up the steep staircase that wound around Preacher’s Seat, the tall, rickety platform that sat in the center of the Circus. The Seat was some twenty feet tall, and it overlooked the entire expanse of the marketplace. Every morning the street preachers would get together, draw straws or deal cards to decide who got to have the Seat that day; the rest of them would be relegated to stumps or chairs or tabletops.

  How can Elyssa be here? Niya thought frantically. She’s supposed to be at the Arvath! Where are the guards?

  “Steady, Niya,” the Fetch murmured. He had found a box to stand on, craning his neck over the crowd, and now he rested a hand on her shoulder. “I mark four Queen’s Guards at the foot of the staircase, and four more spread around the Seat. Calm yourself.”

  Niya relaxed, but only slightly. Elyssa was of the Keep, not the city; she didn’t know how rowdy the Circus could become. Her guards, too, would be out of their depth. An odd, disconnected part of Niya’s mind noted that Elyssa was wearing not the blue gown they had selected together two days before for the Holy Father’s party but a plain, unadorned dress of pale green wool.

  Her riding dress, Niya thought. She rode down here.

  Elyssa had reached the high platform now. For a long moment she stood looking out over them all: a pretty young woman, serious of face, her blonde hair pinned back in a simple coil at the nape of her neck. And now an extraordinary thing happened: the roar of the crowd quieted. No one said a word; no one hushed the others or called for silence. The multitude of voices around Niya simply lessened, dying away until there was nothing, a silence so complete that Niya could hear everything: the warm whine of the night wind blowing through the nooks and crannies of the surrounding rooftops, a woman coughing on the far side of the Circus, even the deep breath that Elyssa took, just before she started to speak.

  “I am Elyssa Raleigh! I have come here to speak, and I ask you to listen!”

  The crowd did not respond, only remained silent, staring up at the slight figure atop the platform. Elyssa’s face was pale, her jaw set, and Niya, who knew the Princess from long observation, saw that she was frightened. But her voice came out without so much as a tremor.

  “My mother has commanded me to speak tonight!” Elyssa cried. “She demands that I publicly denounce the Blue Horizon and make my peace with God’s Church!”

  Of course, Niya thought sourly. I should have known.

  “But I will not do these things!” Elyssa shouted hoarsely. “I do not share my mother’s beliefs, nor her allegiances! God’s Church is a blight on this land, and the Blue Horizon seeks a better world!”

  “Great God,” Niya whispered. Elyssa paused now, taking a heavy breath, almost a sob, and in the sudden silence Niya heard the Fetch murmur, “Great God indeed. Her mother will murder her for this.”

  “And what of the drought?” a man shouted. “Can William Tear’s ghost give us food?”

  Niya frowned, though she had been thinking the same thing only minutes before. For a moment, she thought that Elyssa would give up and retreat, but Elyssa took a deep breath and spoke firmly, her hands gripping the wooden railings that encircl
ed the Seat.

  “William Tear can no longer help us, sir. And neither can I, for I am not Queen yet. My mother should open the Crown hoards, commandeer the nobility’s storehouses. She should offer food to all, but she will not.”

  “Fuck the Queen!” a woman shouted, and the crowd roared agreement. Niya felt the moment trembling on the edge of violence, her own pulse pounding toward panic. The crowd was vast, and Elyssa looked so helpless, all alone up there. She was Arla’s daughter, and a mob might not make distinctions. Elyssa must have sensed the mood as well, for her face fell paler still, but when she spoke, her voice was strong with anger, an anger that even Niya could feel, twenty feet below.

  “I do not sit the throne! I may never sit the throne! But if I do, I swear here and now that my rule will be guided by the principles of the Blue Horizon! I will govern fairly! I will gut the tenancy system and redistribute the land! I will close down the Creche and end the traffic! I will eradicate the spiritual tyranny of the Arvath! I will work toward a kingdom in which everyone is fed, clothed, housed, educated, doctored! I will protect the low as well as the great! This is my promise to you!”

  “True Queen! True Queen!”

  The crowd erupted, so loudly that Niya almost clapped her hands to her ears. She winced, for hands were upon her, slapping her on the back and pummeling her arms, a communal sort of violence, the people around her gone wild. She fought to stay near the Fetch, but he was suddenly gone, carried away from her in the whirls and eddies as the crowd surged toward the base of the platform. Niya too was carried forward, so close that she could see Barty and Galen, swords drawn, standing at the foot of the Seat’s steps, and Niya ducked her head, not wanting them to see her. The air felt cold on her face; only then did Niya realize that she was weeping.

  Elyssa had clearly said what she meant to say; she was descending the platform. All eight of her guards had surrounded the staircase now, but they were not going to be nearly enough to fight off the crowd, and Niya wondered that Barty did not know it. A great judge of assassins, Barty, but perhaps not of people, for he clearly thought this crowd intended violence. The guards raised their swords, but the horde was determined to get to Elyssa, and after a moment Barty and the rest were hauled away, pulled free of their places and raised in the air . . . not violently, but in places of honor, on people’s shoulders. They struggled mightily, but they were no match for the wave that enveloped them. Barty went into the air just beside Niya, two men holding him high as he flailed, his legs kicking.