The Black Queen (Book 6) (12 page)

“Yer da is na well.”

“And he never will be again.”

His mother turned away. Alex kept his head on the table, as if he were ducking the whole fight.

“You know that, Ma. You know it. You just won’t accept it.”

“Yer da is a special man,” she said, without looking at Matt. “He has a kindness—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Matt had heard that speech a hundred times:
He has a kindness that most cannot see; he has saved us all; he even saved the Isle. He did it at great personal cost...
“It doesn’t matter what he did, Ma. What matters is who he is now. And he’s not the kind of man who can help us.”

She put a hand on Alex’s head. “Ye’ve been havin stray magick?”

Their father had once explained how he had magick and hadn’t realized it, how all of his powers had leaked out, causing damage when he actually thought he was in control. Only he hadn’t used the word “magick.” He never did. Only their mother was not afraid to call things as they truly were.

Alex shook his head without raising it from the table.

“Then why do ye need Coulter’s school?”

Matt had started this and he was sorry. But there was no turning back now. “Tell her, Alex.”

Alex shook his head again.

His mother looked at Matt. Matt hated that expression. It was strong and demanding and powerful. “If he will na say it, tis up to ye.”

Alex would never forgive him. “He thinks he’s going crazy,” Matt said, and his mother winced. Alex shoved away from the table, but his mother grabbed his shoulder and held him in place.

“‘N why is that now?” she asked Alex.

Alex was looking at Matt with murder in his eyes. “It’s nothing, Ma,” Alex said.

“It must be somethin, if yer willin ta lie bout it.”

Alex’s face was turning red. Matt hadn’t seen him that mad in a long, long time. “I see things sometimes.”

“Things?” his mother asked.

“Hallucinations,” Matt said.

To his surprise, his mother asked no more. Instead she let go of Alex’s shoulder and sank into a chair. “Lord hae mercy,” she said, and buried her face in her hands.

Alex’s mouth dropped open, and Matt felt himself gasp. His mother didn’t act like this. She was always strong and demanding. She should have told them not to leave. She should have told them if they were going to go anywhere it was the Vault. She should have forbidden them from having anything to do with Coulter.

“Am I going crazy then?” Alex asked.

But she didn’t seem to hear him. She brought her hands down and stared at the fire burning low in the hearth. “I told yer father,” she said. “Twas wrong the names he gave you. Matthias, my son, ye shoulda been Jakib after me brother, and Alexander, ye shoulda been Marcus or even Nicholas after the king. I coulda bore having a son named Nicholas. But yer da, he insisted. Matthias and Alexander, like the sons of the first Roca. Maybe he was losing his mind even then. He thought he could do right this time, but it don’t seem right is possible na more.”

And then she burst into tears. Both Alex and Matt went to her side, putting their hands on her shoulder. Alex looked lost, his blue eyes haunted, and Matt suspected he had the exact same expression on his face.

“Ma,” he said, crouching beside her. “What’re you talking about?”

She raised her head. Tear streaks marked both cheeks. Matt couldn’t remember ever seeing her cry before. “Twas two sons the Roca had,” she said. “Alexander, the one with subtle magick, sightins a the future n such, n a way with him that twould make any one do what he wanted. Twas him that was the ancestor of the royal family. The second son was Matthias. He was like yer da, all wild, with the ability ta do most a what he wanted when he wanted. I worried about ye, Matty. I thought ye’d be the one to go—”

She didn’t finish that sentence. She shook her head as if trying to shake the words out of it.

“I dinna think twould hit Alex too.”

“What?” Matt asked.

“It’s in the Words,” Alex said. “I thought you were supposed to read them.”

“I read them so many times they make no sense,” Matt said.

“‘A man cannot have the powers of God,’” Alex quoted. “‘It will ultimately destroy him.’ The Roca wrote that after he learned what had happened to his son, Matthias. Don’t you remember?”

Matt didn’t. He had studied what his father had told him to study and nothing else. He hated the Vault, hated the smell, the glass dolls, the drums made of skin, the old vials of blood. Most of all, he hated the way his father’s eyes lit up when they went inside, and the golden light flowed off the small altar holding the leather bound book of Words.

“Tis na story but history,” their mother said. “The son, Alexander, used the subtler powers only when he needed to. Creatin a warmth, a way of rulin that bound people tagether. The other son, Matthias, used every power givin him through the Roca’s blood. By the time the Roca returned, when he got his second life, the life when he wrote the Words, Matthias was insane.”

She whispered those last words.

“So?” Matt asked. He had heard the story before and never understood its significance. Perhaps he had never wanted to.

“There are some what believe that yer da is the Roca come again. Him and Nicholas, parts of the same whole, created to stop the scourge the Fey had become. And they did. Then yer da and I have sons. And he names them like the Roca named his. And ye have powers, Matty, from a little boy, like yer namesake.”

“Like Father,” Matt said. “Father was the same.”

“Aye,” his mother said, her gaze meeting his. “He was.”

Matt felt his stomach clench. He didn’t want to think about this, but he had never been able to stop himself from imagining it. He was named after his father as well. Matthias, destined to go insane. That was why he went to Coulter, to help him prevent his own destiny.

“But why,” he asked, and as he did his voice changed slightly, that uncontrollable squeaky rise and fall that had been happening for the past two years, “why would Alex’s hallucinations change that?”

His mother looked at him, then closed her eyes. “I tole yer da twas na good, keepin the Fey terms from ye. But he hoped ye’d be pure for the Islanders. He hoped ye’d be the hope of the New Rocaanism.”

“Ma,” Alex said, sounding slightly annoyed.

“I am na an expert. But I dinna think Alex’s havin hallucinations.” She brought her hands to her shoulders and squeezed her boys’ arms. Her fingers were like ice. “Go. Dinna tell yer da, and I wilna either. But dinna lie if he asks.”

Matt met Alex’s gaze. Alex shrugged.

“Do you want us to get Father on our way back?” Matt asked.

“No,” his mother said. “I’ll bring him his dinner. Tis na a task I should be givin to ye boys anaway.”

She let their hands go and stood, then brushed off her apron, smearing rather than removing the flour. When the boys hadn’t moved, she looked up at them, first Alex, then Matt.

“Go,” she said. And they did.

Matt was the first out the door. The back yard was dark, although Matt could still see sunlight on the mountainsides. The air smelled fresh and held the beginning of a deep cold. Spring was here, but it was new: the nights still felt like winter.

He wished he had a coat, but he knew better than to go back inside. He didn’t want his mother to change her mind.

Alex joined him a moment later. He was carrying both their coats—long warm woolen ones their mother had made two years ago. Then the coats had been too big. Now they were getting too small.

“She didn’t want us to be out late and get a chill,” he said. The flatness of his tone hid the cadences his mother would have used. Once Alex would have tried to mimic her, but apparently the night was too serious for that.

Matt was looking up. Stars shone faintly against the orange and pink sky. “She’s worried, isn’t she?”

“Frightened is more like it,” Alex said. “I didn’t expect her to give permission.”

“Is that why you told such an obvious lie?” As he watched, the sky darkened. The oranges were turning red.

“Let’s just go,” Alex said.

Matt looked at him. His brother’s face was shrouded in shadow. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Maybe I don’t want help.”

“Maybe you’re a bigger fool than I thought.” Matt walked across the lawn. The grass was spongy with dew. When he reached the road, he stayed on the side, so that he wouldn’t get too much dirt on his only pair of boots.

After a moment, he heard Alex’s footsteps behind him. Matt no longer wanted to talk to him. If his brother wanted to be stupid then it was his problem. Matt had done all he could.

He shoved his hands in his pocket and walked, head high. The neighborhood hadn’t changed much in all his years. The stone houses still looked forbidding in the darkness. Most of them had no windows, although a few added windows after Matt’s father created one for the boys.

The streets were silent after dark, but Matt could see lights in the main part of the town, where the plaza was. There was probably a bazaar going on. Constant seemed to have them all the time now that the city was open to trade. When his parents moved here, Constant had been ruled by a group of Wise Ones who tried to keep the town isolated from the rest of the Isle.

It was isolated no longer. There was even an enclave of Fey on the Cardidas side of Constant. They lived in wooden buildings their Domestics had assembled and they had the most beautiful gardens Matt had ever seen. His father had forbidden them to go to that side of town, but sometimes Matt snuck there, to see what was so frightening about these people his father hated.

So far, he hadn’t been able to tell.

The school, though, was in a building on this side of Constant. It had once been a stone house, like Matt’s, only someone had built onto it. So instead of one small dwelling with three rooms besides the kitchen and living area, it looked like several pushed together.

There were only five live-in students right now, but Coulter had once told him there would be more as time went on. A lot of parents moved their magickal children to Constant, and lived near the school, so that the kids had families as well as education. Matt envied them. Their parents helped them instead of getting in the way.

He led Alex down the dirt path that led to the school’s back entrance. Instead of a garden or a yard, the school had a dirt playground, filled with equipment that Matt didn’t understand, and didn’t ask to have explained. They called it the magick yard. Once he had seen a group of students hurling fireballs at each other, and he realized that some of the reason for the dirt was to prevent serious injury. But he had also seen a solitary boy out there one afternoon, drawing pictures in the dirt with a knife. The magick yard wasn’t used as much as Matt would have thought.

Lights were on all over the building—wasteful, his mother would have called it. Some of the lights were magick sticks—an exercise that Coulter assigned the live-ins—and the rest were torches, burning in their holders. Their light looked odd with the sun still on the mountains, but he knew as soon as the sun set completely, he would welcome the flicker of fires.

As he and Alex crossed the magick yard, Matt saw a little Fey man sitting on a chair in front of the door. He was cleaning his fingernails with the edge of a knife. A plate covered with crumbs and sausage wrappings lay on the ground next to him.

The little man looked up. He was older than most Fey Matt had seen, his face square, the angles lost in age and a few extra pounds. He smelled of soap and leather, with just a whiff of garlic from the sausage. When he saw Matt, he grinned.

“Can’t stay away, huh?” he asked, and then he cackled. “Your God always gets his revenge.”

Alex grabbed Matt’s arm and tugged, but Matt reached over and trapped Alex’s hand. “It’s all right,” he said.

Alex didn’t look like it was all right. Alex looked frightened.

“Coulter’s expecting us, Scavenger,” Matt said with a strength that he didn’t feel.

“Coulter doesn’t even know you’re coming,” Scavenger said. He turned his knife over so that the blade glinted in the torch light. As he did, he watched Alex. Matt could feel his brother tremble. “I bet no one knows you’re here.”

“My mother,” Alex said, and Scavenger laughed.

“That’s right,” he said. “And the Black King’s alive and well and running Blue Isle.”

“No,” Matt said. “We did tell her.”

“What happened?” Scavenger asked. “That evil puss-face of a father of yours die?”

“Hey!” Alex started for him, but Matt’s grip tightened, holding his brother in place.

“No,” Matt said. “And Coulter does know we’re coming. I told Leen.”

“You think she tells Coulter everything?” But Scavenger stood up, kicked the chair aside, and pulled open the door. “You two had dinner yet?”

He asked this last in a warm tone, as if he hadn’t said any of the other things. Coulter had once told Matt that Scavenger was unpredictable and perhaps even slightly crazy, but that he knew more about magick than any other Fey alive. Matt had always thought that strange, because one afternoon Scavenger had told him that he had been a Red Cap, the non-magickal Fey who, in the days when the Fey were trying to conquer the world, took care of the bodies of people who died in war.