The Forgotten Sisters (19 page)

On hands and knees they crawled in.

The tunnel was completely dark and so low the top scraped Miri's back. The water sloshed around her wrists and knees. Suddenly, it rose to her hips and shoulders, and she tilted her head up, breathing in panicked gasps, her chin wet. If the water gushed higher, there would not be time to crawl back to the entrance. They would be trapped. They would drown. They would—

Miri's heart beat with painful thuds. She took deep breaths, pretending the smell was just the swamp, fierce and alive under a hot sun.

And she thought of home. And wrote letters to her sister in her head.

Dear Marda
,

You would not believe the horrible things I had to do today! Thankfully it was over quickly, and Peder and I are just fine and on our way home …

As the water receded to a shallow flow, Miri felt something alive scurry past her in the dark. A rat? Her whole body quivered.

Marda, I saw a rat today and was not afraid at all. You would be so proud of me! In fact, we sat down and shared a cup of tea. I told him he looked smashing in a new hat from Elsby, and he
promised to pick up one for me the next time he was there visiting his auntie
.

The steady noise of Peder's splashing crawl ahead of her stopped. The air felt different, cooler, had more movement. She kept crawling, and the space above her head opened higher. Peder was able to stand. He lifted a metal grate and climbed out, reaching down to help Miri. She clambered out into a large room. The moment she was free of that awful tunnel, her legs shook violently as if they could no longer ignore the panic. She crumpled onto a tile floor.

Around her she saw Sus, Astrid, and Felissa lie down too. Peder sat against a wall, his knees up, resting his head on his arms. No one spoke.

Deep breaths. No tunnel. No water. Light. Alive.

Sus was the first to stand and look around.

“I found drinking water,” she whispered.

They all walked or crawled to the barrel, using a nearby cup to drink deeply. Miri felt a little more real.

“Kind of felt safer in Lesser Alva,” said Astrid.

In her year living in the palace, Miri had never been in this room before. It was a small kitchen, perhaps serving a minor wing of the palace. A quick search revealed no food. Since the palace was under siege, all the palace residents must have taken supplies to a central location.

They washed up as best they could and began to creep through the palace.

It felt as large as a city. Surely there were enough food stores to keep the palace residents alive until the Danlandian army could return to Asland. If King Bjorn and Queen Sabet could just hold out till their army returned—

No
. Miri rejected the thought. If the army returned first, there would be war in the streets of Asland. The destruction could be as devastating as a civil war. Unless they arranged a peaceful ending first.

As they traveled through the palace, eerily empty, the sun rose outside. Pale blue light reached through the windows, throwing long shadows across the stone floor.

They crossed into the linder section of the palace, and that familiar tingle trickled over Miri's skin, surrounded by the stone of her home. Instead of it being comforting, she felt sick with longing. She began to write a new letter in her mind:

Dear Marda
,

I wish I'd never left home …

If the world looks too big, I'll hold you that much tighter

If the breeze feels too chill, I'll make the fire hotter

If the storm booms too loud, I'll sing to you still louder

I'll always keep you safe, my tiny, precious daughter

Miri called out in quarry-speech as she walked. If Katar were in the palace, her friend from Mount Eskel might hear and let Miri know where Britta and the others were.

“I'll check the refuge room,” Peder said, speaking of the chamber where they had hidden from revolutionaries with the royal family the previous year. “If you find them first, quarry-speak and I'll come.”

“All right,” Miri said, feeling very brave, because all she wanted to do was cling to him and cry. The palace seemed as deserted by the living as that haunted house in the tale. Perhaps the royal family was long gone and the Storan army was laying siege to an abandoned building. In which case, they'd just broken into the most dangerous building in Asland.

Miri checked Britta's room. The hearth was cold. She headed toward Queen Sabet's apartment. Astrid, impatient, hurried ahead to the next open door.

Miri felt a strange tang of sorrow, as if she were barely catching a heartrending ballad sung in a far-off room. The sorrow was not her own, the way someone quarry-speaking to her felt different in her mind than her own thoughts. Could all her time in the linder house have helped her develop linder-wisdom? If so, whose sorrow was she sensing? She looked back to ask if Sus and Felissa felt it too.

Felissa had stopped and was doubled over, clutching at her middle.

“Are you sick?” Miri asked. “What's the matter?”

Felissa did not answer, her breathing tight.

Sus looked down the hall. “Someone is sad …”

Felissa covered her face with her hands and wept. The emotion must have been very intense, so much so that even Miri could detect it.

“Sus, stay with Felissa,” said Miri.

Miri jogged ahead to see what Astrid had found in the next room.

Queen Sabet was standing in front of a chair, as if the sight of Astrid had brought her to her feet. She clutched her hands. Her mouth was open, her eyes wide, almost
terrified. Again Miri detected a faint wave of sorrow rolling away from the queen.

“Your Majesty?” Miri said, but the queen did not tear her eyes away from Astrid. “It's me, Miri. You remember? Miri of Mount Eskel? We've just come from Lesser Alva. I've brought the king's cousins. Where is everyone?”

The queen still took no notice of Miri.

“Your … name?” the queen asked.

Astrid spoke her name like a question, her eyes narrowing.

“Astrid,” said the queen, nodding. “You look … you look healthy. Are you healthy?”

Healthy? Had Queen Sabet's mind cracked under the pressure of the besieged palace? Miri took the queen's arm, speaking her name till she finally broke eye contact with Astrid.

“Queen Sabet, we sneaked into the palace. If we can manage it, then so can the Storans. Where's the king? And Britta and Steffan? We need to get his cousins to safety and make a plan—”

“Cousins?” the queen said. Her gaze returned to Astrid. She blinked. A tear shook from her eyelashes and dropped to her cheek, but she did not seem to notice. “Astrid. You look healthy. And beautiful. So beautiful.”

Miri choked. Like Miri's, Astrid's hair was wild and her dress torn and filthy from their swim and escape.

“I know who you are,” Astrid said.

“Yes, this is Queen Sabet,” said Miri. “We should—”

“The painting,” Astrid said, her eyes still on the queen. “Before the heat ruined it. That was your face. Why did we have a painting of your face?”

“I thought—” The queen shrugged, a motion as pathetic as the limp of a shot deer. “I hoped that … I don't know. I'm sorry.”

She turned as if she would walk away.

“No,” Astrid said. A command. And the queen stopped, her back still turned. Astrid's voice hardened. “I
know
who you are.”

The queen nodded. “I don't feel hatred yet from you. But I know it's coming. And I can't bear—”

“You threw us away—”

“No, please,” the queen turned back.

“You never—”

“I had to pretend to myself that you didn't exist,” the queen said with a painfully sad shrug again. “My heart tore in half when I let them take you away. And the half I kept never stopped hurting. But I pretended that was normal. I told myself everyone lives with a throbbing scrap of a heart. Don't they? Do you? But I hope you don't. I hope—”

“You could have visited.”

The queen nodded, almost eager. “I did at first. When you were little. You seemed happy. Carefree out there with Elin and the wide world to run in. But I was a stranger to you, and it hurt me so much … I stopped coming.”

“That was selfish of you.”

“Was it?” Queen Sabet asked with absolute sincerity. “But why would you want me? A woman who bears a perfect, perfect little baby and wants her and kisses her head, but lets a chief delegate pull her from her arms and just take her away? What daughter would willingly claim such a … such a
thing
as a mother?”

Miri sat down without meaning to. Her head felt light and the room was wobbling. She suspected she had not taken a decent breath in a couple of minutes. Everything seemed tilted and wrong, as if the ceiling had suddenly become the floor.

“Did she love you?” the queen was asking Astrid, her eyes yearning. “Did Elin love you as a mother would?”

Astrid flinched.

“She was a good servant to me,” the queen went on. “And she loved babies so. I believed she would love you. Did she?”

Astrid squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she was all cool indifference. “You had years
to ask that question, but this is the first time you bothered.”

“I asked it.” The queen's voice was barely a whisper. “I asked it every day. Just not out loud.”

Miri could not seem to stop shaking her head, as if it would force her thoughts to work. She concentrated on breathing.

“I don't expect you to forgive me,” the queen was saying. “I deserve contempt and hatred. I hate myself. From the moment I let them take you, my arms have felt empty. I have been holding emptiness for so many years.” Her arms hung at her sides, and she tried to lift them as if she could barely remember the purpose for such limbs.

Astrid looked at the queen for several moments before she said, “Yes. Ma loved us. And we loved her.”

“I'm so glad,” said the queen. She covered her face with her empty hands and cried.

Astrid watched her cry. Surely she must be feeling the same sorrow that had knocked Felissa to her knees and that even Miri could sense in curdling waves, but Astrid just stood like a stone column.

“I was afraid … to love Steffan,” said Queen Sabet through sobs. “To hold him. If they could take away my baby girl, just take her, then they could take my son too.
I don't know. How could I bear anything? I don't know, I don't know …”

“Stop thinking about yourself,” Astrid said. “Stop it!”

The queen choked, trying to control her crying. She held out her hands. “What do you want me to do? What can I do? I can't undo anything … I hoped that Miri—she's like a candle that never burns down—and I imagined … I could imagine her out there with you, bringing you life. And she has a gift, you see, she makes things better, and—I didn't know how—but I hoped she could, she would make things better, and I …”

Her eyes lit up as if with a wonderful thought. She rushed over to a window. “Look! When I was pregnant with you, I had these window seats made. I thought, well, perhaps my child must grow up in a sprawling, unfriendly palace, but at least she'll have window seats to curl up in and watch the rain outside. A place to read a book or just be alone if you liked. See? I added cushions. I picked the yellow myself—it's such a happy color. You could come sit here any time you like. It would … it would make me happy to see you here. I know that's not … there's nothing that I could … I wish sometimes Bjorn had warned me when I was making these cushions. He didn't tell me at the time that … that I couldn't keep you. If you were a girl. Not until after you were born. He didn't want worry
to harm my pregnancy … but of course you weren't the only … he couldn't save me from worry for long … I couldn't save you … and I've never sat in these window seats, never once—”

The queen gasped, her eyes wide. She began shivering, as if fighting sobs that were pushing back, threatening to overtake her. Miri turned to see what she was looking at.

Felissa and Sus had come in from the corridor and stood now in the threshold, holding each other's hands.

“All three of you?” The queen's voice was a squeak. “You look … healthy. I … I … I'm so …”

Felissa let go of Sus and walked steadily forward. She lifted her arms and put them around the queen.

The touch seemed to be more than the queen could bear. She sank to her knees, collapsing into violent sobs. Felissa sat on the window seat, the queen's head on her lap, and leaned over her, rubbing her back, shushing her as if soothing a child.

Astrid and Sus watched.

“But … what about Ma?” Sus said to Astrid.

“Elin,” Astrid replied in a harsh whisper. “She was Elin.”

“She was Ma,” Sus insisted.

Miri quarry-spoke, sending a memory of the queen's
receiving room through the linder to radiate out to the palace and find Peder. As if in response, a call in quarry-speech entered her.

Miri …

Not Peder. A sense of Katar in that familiar vibration behind her eyes, and a memory: Miri and Katar in the king's advising chamber.

The confusion and sadness twisted together inside Miri, snapping at her heart, and as she took a deep breath, something that had been stopped up suddenly released. Rage flooded her limbs.

She ran down the hall, opening the door with her shoulder, letting it slam against the wall. King Bjorn sat at the head of a round table with the chief delegate and several other delegates and advisers. Katar stood with a handful of commoner delegates to the side of the room.

“Miri!” Katar said. “You're—”

“It was Queen Katarina, wasn't it?” Miri shouted to the room. “King Klas's twin, who claimed the throne and started the civil war. Queen Katarina put the fear in you—ugly, blind fear that brought you to this.” She glared at King Bjorn. “How could you? How
can
you?”