Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

  “Highness?”

  Elyssa jerked with fright. Then, with unutterable relief, she realized that Gareth had spoken. He was awake, sitting up in bed, his now-healed torso barely visible in the candle’s thin glow, his head in shadow. His arm was still encased in plaster.

  “I am sorry,” she said feebly. “I didn’t know where to—”

  “What are you running from?”

  “From her. The witch.” Fear had loosened her tongue. “She knows what I want. She knows everything.”

  “What witch?” Gareth asked sharply.

  “The white woman. Brenna.”

  Gareth was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I have seen her.”

  “She’s been in here?” Elyssa was suddenly outraged, for it seemed, somehow, a direct intrusion on her own life, a shot aimed at her.

  “No,” Gareth replied. “But I have seen her, all the same. Don’t be frightened; she will not dare come in here. She knows I see her, as clearly as she sees me.”

  Elyssa didn’t know what to make of this statement. In the corner the two medics slept on and on, gentle smiles on their faces, as though they dreamed the pleasantest of dreams.

  “I heard about what you did,” Gareth murmured. “In the Circus.”

  “What else was I going to do? Sell my soul to the Arvath?” Elyssa kept her tone light, but it was difficult, for the memory of that night still had the power to move her deeply, more than any other single moment in her life. They had carried her away on their shoulders, and it had gone on all night: visits to pubs and restaurants, drinks offered to her on the streets, people leaning in close to touch her hand or the hem of her dress. She had spoken to so many people, heard so many stories . . . shopkeepers, merchants, pros, the idle. But it had finally come to an end, and as she had snuck back into the Keep with her Guard through the tunnels, she felt much as she imagined a young girl of the city would feel after being out all night with a boy: both furtive and proud, terrified of the sound of her mother’s voice. She did not regret what she had done, but she did not deceive herself that the price would not come due in blood.

  “Still, you have declared for us,” Gareth told her, his light eyes clear, almost brilliant. “And we do not forget.”

  I love him, Elyssa thought. It was when she talked to Gareth that she came closest to seeing the better world, not as a vague dream but a reality, a place that they could reach together . . . and that was love, Elyssa suddenly understood, much more than any of the feelings she had ever had for men before.

  “What will you do?” Gareth asked. “When your mother calls you on the carpet?”

  “Try to be brave, I suppose.” Elyssa wished it were as easy as she made it sound. “Pray she doesn’t give Thomas the throne.”

  “She will not. Don’t worry about Thomas. We will deal with him shortly.”

  The statement carried such quiet assurance that Elyssa could only nod. She wondered whether the Blue Horizon meant to kill Thomas, and found that she didn’t care, not in the slightest.

  “You will be a good queen, Elyssa,” Gareth told her gently. “I am certain of it.”

  Elyssa nodded, smiling . . . but her eyes were full of tears. She would be a good queen, and that should have been enough, but she couldn’t help wanting other things.

  “You can have them, Elyssa,” he told her, taking her wrist. “Everything you want.”

  At that point, Elyssa became certain that she was dreaming. And that was a blessing, because everything was acceptable in dreams. Dreams were no one’s fault, and no one could be held accountable for them later. When Gareth slid off her shift, using his good arm, she did not feel even the slightest twinge of shame, for she understood now that the moment was everything. When she got old, when she reached her mother’s age, she knew that youth would have faded, lost its brilliance and turned dark and muted, like a pre-Crossing photograph. All she would have were flashes of memory, single moments . . . and she wanted this to be one of them. Gareth grabbed her hair, yanking her head back, and the feeling was so unbearably exquisite that Elyssa shuddered, forgetting all about her missing Guard, the two medics sleeping in the corner, even about the white witch down the hall.

  It was only when they were nearing the end—Elyssa could sense that end, approaching for both of them, was working toward it with all her heart—that she turned her head and saw the witch, just beside the bed, less than a foot away. The albino’s face was twisted in a grin, lascivious and predatory at the same time, and her colorless eyes gleamed, a bright and burning white. She had loosened her dress, and her hands cupped her own breasts, which were firm and young, a terrible contrast to her ageless face. At that moment Elyssa began to climax, a dreadful, crowning spasm that seemed only partly hers. She moaned, and the witch moaned with her. Elyssa began to scream, and in that moment, the witch vanished.

  “What is it?” Gareth asked roughly. His voice was drifting, almost lost, as though he too had been dreaming.

  Maybe we both were, Elyssa thought wildly, feeling a desperate hope. Maybe none of it was real.

  But the hope vanished in an instant, for she could still feel Gareth between her legs, warm wetness beginning to drip down her left thigh. And now her mother’s medics were sitting up, staring at the two of them: Elyssa astride Gareth, neither of them wearing a stitch.

  “Great God,” Elyssa breathed.

  The medics ran for the door, shouting for the Guard, and Elyssa leapt off Gareth and sprinted toward the far wall, not bothering with her clothing. All around her, she could feel the Queen’s Wing stirring, all of them waking from a deep dream. She heard the pounding footsteps of Queen’s Guards in the corridor. They were coming, swords in hand.

  “Over here!” she cried to Gareth. “Now, if you don’t wish to die!”

  Gareth followed her, grabbing his trousers as he went. Elyssa fumbled against the stones until she found the invisible crevice that triggered the door. It opened into darkness, and Elyssa nearly shoved him through. His bad arm hit the wall, but he did not cry out.

  “Go left,” she ordered him. “Go left, find the staircase, and keep going down, under the moat. Run. The Guard know the tunnels. They will come for you.”

  He looked at her for a moment, and Elyssa thought perhaps he would say something; some ultimate summation that would crown her memory when long years were gone. But he said nothing; in fact, he looked as horrified as she did, and now Elyssa began to wonder whether he actually had been dreaming, whether the entire night had been his doing at all, or even hers. But it was too late to ask. Gareth disappeared into the darkness, and Elyssa yanked the hidden door closed.

  Gone, she thought. Gone, but we had our moment first.

  Her shift still lay on the floor by the bed; she darted that way, but the door burst open before she even came close, and the entire Guard seemed to pour into the room in small, tight groups: Givens and Barty, Elston and Coryn and Dyer, Bowler and Kibb and Wallace. Elyssa stood before them as though paralyzed, her thighs sticky, her entire body red with shame. When Givens charged off toward the hidden door, she tried to stop him, but he shoved her aside, and Elyssa could do nothing but huddle on the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs to cover her nakedness . . . and waiting for her mother.

  Chapter 15

  SONG OF THE SCYTHE

  The Almont Uprising was unique in the history of the Tear, in that it had no clear catalyst. Conditions were certainly ripe for discontent; that summer remains the driest in Tear history, and there was little food and even less patience. But we must ask: what caused a nucleus of downtrodden tenants to coalesce around the figure of Aislinn Martin, a fifteen-year-old girl who could not even wield a sword? Comprehensive history is often a matter of simple word of mouth . . . but in this matter, no one has ever talked.

  —The Early History of the Tearling, as told by Merwinian

  Push!” Aislinn shouted.
“Push, for your lives!”

  They drove the wagon forward down the rutted dirt road, gaining speed and power with each step. As they neared the bottom, Aislinn felt her muscles singing, not with exhaustion but with exhilaration, oncoming and inexorable victory. More than ten tenants lined each side of the wagon, pushing with all their strength. They had been at work on the doors for more than an hour, and reward was at hand. The ram slammed into the double doors of the storehouse, breaking them open. The bolt on the far side snapped, and pieces of wood flew in all directions; Aislinn heard grunts and screams as the wood connected. At least five bailiffs had holed themselves up in the storehouse; Aislinn hoped they were not all dead, for she meant to end at least one or two herself. Liam had helped her to set her family’s cottage on fire, but before they lit the match, Aislinn had gone in to have one more look at the line of corpses on the wall: eight, far too many to have been the work of one man.

  They were all in on it, she thought now, baring her teeth. They’re all the same.

  “There they are!” someone shouted behind her. “Get the bastards!”

  In the next instant, Aislinn’s companions had begun to leap over the remains of the doors, heading toward the corner of the storehouse, where a group of bailiffs were huddled: Parnell, Wyndham, and several others Aislinn did not know. Most held pitchforks; two had knives, but even these two were white-faced and frightened, ringed as they now were by more than thirty tenants.

  “What do we do with them?” Liam asked. His own father stood behind him, but the question was meant for Aislinn, and she considered the seven men for a long moment. Bailiffs were convenient villains, but they were only what their nobles demanded they be. Did that excuse them? Aislinn thought of Bailey, the bloody legs that sprawled from her tiny emaciated frame, and the issue was decided.

  “Bring them outside.”

  The tenants moved forward, roaring happily, seemingly oblivious to the pitchforks and knives in the bailiffs’ shaking hands. Aislinn heard several cries of pain as tenants were wounded, then howls of glee as the bailiffs went down, subsumed under a human wave.

  “What do you mean to do?” Liam asked her.

  Aislinn paused. More than a month had passed since she had returned to the acreage, and the entire period felt like a fever dream, an ongoing panoply of anger and violence. They had killed the priest, and that might have been the end of it, for Aislinn had been looking no further than revenge. But then, just as she was trying to decide what to do next, some thirty tenant families had missed their quotas for June, and Lady Andrews had sent word that she would be adding the shortfall to their aggregate debt. This was standard practice during the normal harvest, but unheard of in a dry year, let alone a drought. When Aislinn and Liam had set fire to the cottage, they had emerged to find more than fifty tenants waiting outside, holding pitchforks and spades. Aislinn had never led anything in her life, but her single act of defiance in killing Fallon seemed to have inflamed the other tenants, emboldened them somehow, and she was at least old enough to recognize the duty implicit in that situation.

  Word had traveled fast; as Aislinn emerged from the storehouse, she saw that some hundred new tenants had arrived from the far corners of the acreage, and now they stood outside, just beneath the high scaffold used for drying produce, waiting.

  “Aislinn?” Liam asked again. “What should we do with them?”

  “String them up.”

  She expected some argument; few of the tenants had needed to be talked into anything, but Liam’s was the voice of caution. He said nothing, however, and as the eager tenants hauled the bailiffs forward, he turned and pointed them toward the scaffold.

  It was done quickly. The storehouse was full of rope, and old Guinness and John Pearce were both good hands with knots. They tied seven nooses, threw them over the scaffold, and then stood, waiting, for the screaming group of men who were being dragged from the storehouse. One by one, the bailiffs went gagging into the air. They strangled slowly, and Aislinn, who had been worried that she would be unable to watch, found herself not only able but pleased. Seven Fallons hung above her, and beside them dangled the white-clad figure of Father Moran. Liam and Aislinn had strung him up three days before, just after they burned down the church, and though the priest’s corpse was rotting quickly and horribly in the July heat, no one had suggested taking him down.

  “What should we do now?” Liam asked.

  For a long moment, Aislinn did not answer. The bailiffs swung back and forth, some of them kicking, and the swinging ropes reminded her of something.

  It’s clever puppetry, she thought, staring at the eight men who dangled from the beam. Three-card monte, a shadow show. But I saw her face, and I do not forget.

  “I’m going to the manse.”

  “You can’t do that,” Liam’s father said, breaking from the crowd. “You’re brave, girl, for sure. But Lady Andrews has more than fifty retainers up there, and twice that many servants. You’ll never even get through the doors.”

  “Not alone, no.” Aislinn turned to face the crowd, a sea of faces in the lamplight. “Who will come with me?”

  Except perhaps for Liam, she truly did not expect any of them to come. Stealing food, and even killing bailiffs, was one thing. Attacking a noble was another. But several tenants came forward immediately—Willie Pearce’s parents, their faces grim and hungry, were the first—and soon another ten or twelve followed.

  “We have the food!” someone cried. “Why don’t we just take the food in the storehouse and run?”

  “Run where?” Althea Pearce demanded. Her face was pale with grief, but her mouth was set. “Food won’t last forever, and there’s barely any water out there! Over the hill is just another noble’s castle! We’re all dead already . . . but I’ll have that bitch before I go.”

  “Aye!” someone else shouted; Aislinn thought it was Anna Liles, who had no husband and four children, who had been forced to expose her newborn during the winter just past. The acreage didn’t speak of such things, but they were there, all the same. Aislinn turned back to the remaining tenants, most of whom stood staring at the swinging bodies overhead, their expressions horrified. If she could not hold them, they would soon panic and bolt, and then they would be easy meat.

  “We have done this thing,” she announced firmly. “We have done it already. Lady Andrews is not forgiving, nor will she hear pleas for mercy.”

  “She can’t kill us all!” someone shouted. “Who would farm the land?”

  “Whoever she hires to do it!” Liam snapped, moving up to stand beside Aislinn. “The Tear is full of poor farmers, and she will replace us and think nothing of it. If need be, she’ll borrow tenants from some of her noble friends . . . or steal children perhaps, as we’ve heard they do in the lower Almont.”

  Several people nodded, murmuring agreement. Aislinn shot Liam a grateful look.

  “What of the Crown?” a man demanded. “We could go to New London, send someone to plead our case!”

  “To Arla?” a woman replied, disbelieving. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Not to Arla. To the True Queen.”

  “You’ve always been feeble-minded, Mills!” the woman snapped back. “There is no True Queen; that’s just a fairy story the Blue Horizon cooked up for the city folk. The Martin girl has the right of it. There’s no way out of this, not unless we break through, like we did with them doors!”

  This time the roar of agreement was louder.

  “Fine!” Mills cried. “But what happens if we move on Her Ladyship? Even if we could do it, the Crown will come right down on us, hammer to anvil! Arla will send the army! Won’t none of us live through it!”

  “Maybe not,” Aislinn cut in evenly. “Mills is right, and Liam too. Tenants are expendable, and if we raise hell, even way out here, the Crown will have to come and make an example of us.”

  “You think
we should run?” Althea demanded.

  “No,” Aislinn replied. “I think we should fight.”

  The crowd remained silent for a moment, turning this over.

  “We’ve raised hands against a noble,” Aislinn went on, feeling her voice grow stronger. “We’re all dead men walking, and there are too few of us to accomplish much. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Lady Andrews has profited from us for far too long. She has food hoarded up there, and water too, an entire cistern. It’s wrong, and no matter what we might lose, someone has to make the fight. I’m going, and anyone who wants to can come with me.”

  In the end, some thirty people followed her up the hill. Many of them held torches, a few knives, but all of them looked grimly determined. Aislinn would never know who began to sing, but she recognized the tune: a reaping song, a song of the scythe. Gradually Aislinn became aware of more voices raised, and then more still, and when she looked back, the flat field at the bottom of the slope was empty. They had all followed her now: more than five hundred farmers, the tenancy of the entire acreage, all of them moving steadily up the rise toward Lady Andrews’s manse.

  Chapter 16

  A BUBBLE IN THE ALE

  Expecting nothing, one may gain everything.

  —Cadarese proverb

  Wake up, boy. Wake up.”

  But he didn’t want to. His head felt as though it were full of boulders.

  “Wake up, Lazarus. Lazarus.”

  My name isn’t Lazarus, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t seem to find the energy to open his mouth. He was no longer bound; he sat slumped in a soft chair, softer than any piece of furniture he had ever encountered. His arms and legs were free, but he could barely move them.

  “Christ, he’s turned to mush. What did you dose him with?”

  “Nothing, boss,” another man’s voice answered, high above him. “We didn’t need to. The witch had already put him out.”