Except the Queen (25 page)
Authors: Jane Yolen,Midori Snyder
“Is this how you honor the memory of my sister and your wife?” she asks, glancing at the girl coiled in pain. “How many have you marked, Hugh? How many have you doomed before their time?” She steps closer to me and I weaken at her scent—rosemary and betony—so like my wife’s. “This is not our way.”
“Aileen, why are you here? I did not send for you.” I close my hand on the needle to feel its prick, thinking that the pain will destroy her glamour. I have no concern for the poison, for it is mine and it knows its master. Still, it leaps like fire in my veins.
“I heard rumors that Long Lankin was abroad again, come to the mortal realm to bleed a sacrifice for the tithe, even though you were forbidden to do so by the Queen. I prayed it was not true, but I could not ignore the warnings of my own heart.”
Angrily, I look away, refusing all memory of our brief time together, when our mourning made a kind of marriage between us. “Curse the Queen. Have not our kind suffered long enough? Did not Gwenth suffer enough? We deserve better.”
“And
this
is better?” She stretches a gloved hand to the girl who is rocking in silent weeping. “Gwenth would not have wanted her death celebrated with such . . . cruelty.”
“Perhaps, if I had acted sooner, she would not have killed herself. There would be a child of our blood
between us. There would have been a light in our hearts.” I turn to face her. She dims the harsh glare of her golden eyes.
“Hugh, grief has made you into a monster. You must stop this. No good can come of it. When the time of the UnSeelie rises, all must join to help the Queen in holding back their hunger for death and misery. This time it promises to be the Battle We Most Fear. The Queen forgave you once but she will not a second time and we need you at the court. We cannot do this without you, old love. Come with me and leave this dark sorrow behind.”
Her words move me; awaken a longing for the joy I thought destroyed with Gwenth’s death. But my jaw sets against another injury. One she has forgotten to mention.
“I too hear rumors, Aileen. The Queen has whelped a child.”
Aileen purses her lips in annoyance and her eyes flash like sunlight striking water. “It is mere tale-telling, spread by boogans with no wit nor wisdom to separate truth from lies.”
“What says the Queen of this charge?”
“Nothing, and why should she? She is above reproach. There is no child.”
I cannot help myself, I reach out and touch her cheek. Impatience with me spreads a rosy blush across her face and slender neck. Her skin is warm and she shivers at the caress of my cold fingertips. I want to go with her, but it is too late. There is no mercy for me, not even the Queen could cleanse my honor so stained as it is with mortal blood. I have no choice but to follow the path I set for the future of my house and my clan.
“For all that you know, the Queen has birthed and murdered her offspring like any miller’s daughter, hiding her crime beneath the stones. She has too much power and no one to temper her wanton desires. Perhaps it is her lust for power that has—”
“Enough, Hugh,” Aileen snaps, and I stop, knowing I have put my finger into an open wound. As Highborns,
we trust our clans but never the Queen. We serve her, but do not love her.
I turn away so as not to see the tears brimming in those golden eyes. “One day, there will be a child of pure blood born to the House of Inver Chechmaine again. The blood tithe will give us back our future. And were you to ask, you would find many a Highborn lord hopes for just such a resurrection.”
I lay a hand on the wretched girl and she uncoils at my command. Her eyes are red with weeping but she is submissive as I dip my needle into the bowl of ink and stab its point under her skin. A bead of blood rises to the surface. I wipe it away to show Aileen. I am in no hurry to collect the blood.
It is only when ordinary noise erupts again that I know she has left. A phone rings, the overhead lights buzz, the door to the shop opens with a chime of artificial bells. I listen for the sibilant hiss of the ink penetrating the girl’s skin and force a smile as I hear her moan.
* * *
L
ATER, AFTER EVERYONE HAS GONE
, I think about the Queen’s bastard child. Aileen’s dismissal does not ring true.
How old would such a creature be
? I wonder.
And what sort of mongrel’s face does the child have?
For the Queen is a cold bitch, and I cannot imagine her gifting one seed of her own power or beauty, even to an offspring.
But
—I think—
how valuable might such a creature be in a game of blood and politics?
I know that answer: for rumor has it that the Dark Lord has sent his servant Red Cap abroad in the world to find the child, to make it his own, and thus taunt the Queen and weaken her more.
I touch the lid of the casket that holds my precious vials of blood and reflect on the girl who challenged me not too long ago. She was difficult to subdue, and her blood rolled away from me, refusing to enter the pipettes. I thought her nothing more than the unexpected descendant of an old throwback; the distant child of a
goody wife who once wet-nursed a fairy child with her own and mingled faerie blood and milk into her veins.
I shall find her again, for I laid the trouble knot deep into her skin. And when I do, I will strike a bargain with Red Cap, dupe him into believing she is the child he seeks—for she carries enough of the sap of the Greenwood to feel true. In exchange, I will demand the UnSeelie court grant me the fertile power of the tithe and I will use her blood and these collected vials to pay the price. There will be no shortage of Highborn women willing to conceive an infant, even if it is under the dark of a withered moon. Light will come from dark, and pure blood will rise again from the polluted springs of mortal veins.
M
y hands trembled as I lifted and swallowed in one gulp a small glass of the fortifying spirits Baba Yaga kept in the back of her icebox. I let the strong flavor of anise sear my throat, praying it would settle the frantic racing of my heart. Then I poured a second glass. This time I drank more slowly, sipping the fiery brew until my belly was warm and my pulse had slowed. I had not thought to see him out here in the mortal realm. And yet there he was, his cadaverous face reflected in the window of a shop as he strolled down the street. I watched, half hidden in a doorway, as people instinctively avoided him, leaning away as he passed by, as if he were a harsh wind. Or perhaps it was the carrion reek that emanated from his withered skin. Glamour can hide most terrifying things, but not the stench of decay.
I hurried home, frightened and perplexed. For what reason could Red Cap have come here? To this city? To any human city before the turn of the season? I could not help but sense the world unraveling at the borders. The Greenwood was far away, and yet, I could hear the echo of its dissatisfaction even here. My fey bones beneath the mounded flesh felt a tremor in the joints as power shifted from one hand to another.
Red Cap
abroad in the streets!
It was the worst of many signs I had been noticing for almost a week now.
The only comfort I had was the grass green envelope in my hand that carried a new letter from my sister. I prayed for her words to bind me to the earth. As I read the letter, my eyes grew wider, my hands more steady. “
We have been dropped into this cesspit for a reason,
” she wrote, and with that sentence, she had given me hope that all the pieces of this unruly game of power were not yet in play. Mayhap a few still waited, hidden and quiet, while the pawns cleared a space for them on a board growing crowded with treacherous foes. I needed her to know just how treacherous they really were.
My dearest Serana,
As always we are of one mind; even the distance cannot change the concordance of our thoughts. But we tread a muddy path. These wounded birds may have been drawn to us, seeking champions in a game of power. But why us? And where do we seek for truth?
As to the girl—since handing me the bag with mandrake roots and seeing my displeasure, she has been reluctant to approach again. When I work in the garden she is a slender shadow leaning against the railing of her balcony. Sometimes I catch the sharp reek of her tobacco and sometimes the animal musk of fear. How can she possibly confront those fears with that mark on her neck? She is searching for an answer without knowing the question. As we surely do, sister, as we surely do.
It rained today, and under the shelter of an umbrella I ventured out to the street where the students gather in shops drinking bitter brews. Tucked between the shops are “parlors” where some of the children are changed into walking spells. Their ignorance astounds me. How little
they realize the spells of undoing and confusion they allow to be inscribed upon their arms, their shoulders, their legs, bellies, necks. I saw a boy with wings etched on his back—did he know that he has damned himself seven years to be tortured as a bird lost in a wood? Yes, I saw a few with blessed spirals, may their lives be always turning toward the mysteries, but most were dull and stupid, a heart that will always be broken, a butterfly for a short and meaningless life, a snake that devours the will, and barbed wire, proclaiming a life of pinpricked sorrows.
But now I must reach for the courage to tell you what near-crossed my path. Hold steady your hand upon the letter and pray that it will not flame up at the mere writing of his name. From across the street, this very afternoon, I saw a monster entering the door of one of these parlors. The hand that turned the knob was black and clawed, thorns breaking the skin at the knuckles. Yes, you know that hand, for have we not always feared it? While at court, kept ourselves well clear of its vicious cuff? He sniffed and I pressed my bulk into another doorway, terrified of his gnarled face. There was a glamour of course, a mask that hid the rotted wood of his flesh. But he wore the glamour badly and I saw him clearly even though others did not.
Who summons Red Cap to the game before Solstice? Has the Queen struck a bargain with this servant of the Dark Lord? Or has he all on his own crept out of his hole to caper in the light of the human city? How has he the strength to do it? And why?
I thought I had some measure of courage and yet now I tremble to the very marrow of my bones.
What say you, Serana? Are we two strong enough to push back this darkness? Or is it beyond our strength? I suspect we should run off
screaming, but now there are children clinging to us so I know your answer already. We will remain.
Have you any sense, dear sister, of what is afoot?
More precious to me you are than
ever before,
Meteora
R
ed Cap? She saw Red Cap? Surely not. Not there in her far-city before the Solstice. Not in a place where iron binds the bones. He would not chance it. Not for long at any rate.
Yet how could she mistake him? Why should she lie?
I read the lines on the page again. I smelt the blood, so like iron, slamming through my nostrils. It burnt my nose hairs. I houghed like a goat trying to get the smell out.
Red Cap!
I will not say his name aloud lest it become a summons. I hate that Meteora has seen him but it explains so much. The last Red Cap I saw was in a Lowland peel tower, where he waited for unwary travelers, his cap so stained with their blood it was a deep, pulsating, malignant crimson. His teeth were green and he was bent over with the weight of all his sins. No sin eater could have ever cleansed that hide. I left immediately and reported him to the Queen. As I had to, for she must know everything.
The Queen.
Does it all come back to her? But what game does she play with the UnSeelie folk? Can they somehow have her in their thrall?
No more. My poor head reels with questions that
have no answers, and soon I will be as useless as my bile-filled boy.
He stayed with me three days, hardly speaking, answering none of my questions, as if I spoke to him in an alien tongue. Then, when the moon became big with herself, as big as a woman in the last stages of birth, I could see he was hungering to leave. And suddenly I did not want him to go. Yes, he was a trouble, a pain under my breastbone, as if I had given him life. Though with the difference in our ages now, I might as well have been his granddam.