The Queen of the Tearling (16 page)

“Simple people need their symbols, Lady.”

Kelsea stared at her. Carlin had said the same thing many times, and the echo was unwelcome now, when Kelsea thought she had escaped the schoolroom forever. “May I ask you an unpleasant question?”

“By all means.”

“The night before your daughter was to go to Mortmesne, what did you do?”

Andalie pursed her lips, and again Kelsea felt a fierceness that was entirely lacking on other topics. “I'm not a religious woman, Lady. I'm sorry if it pains you, but I believe in no god, and even less do I believe in any church. But two nights ago, I came as close to prayer as I've ever come. I had the worst of all visions: my child lying dead, and I powerless to prevent it.” Andalie took a deep breath before continuing. “She would have died before long, you know. The girls die much more rapidly than the boys. Used for menial labor until she was old enough to be sold for pleasure. That is, if she was fortunate enough not to be bought by a child rapist upon arrival.” Andalie bared her teeth in a grim, pained smile. “Mortmesne condones many things.”

Kelsea tried to reply, but failed, unable to speak or even move in the face of Andalie's sudden anger.

“Borwen, my husband, said that we would have to let her go. He was quite . . . forceful about it. I planned to run, but I underestimated him. He knows me, you see. He took Glee while I slept and gave her to his friends for safekeeping. I woke to find her gone, and no matter where I looked I could only see her body . . . red, all red.”

Kelsea jumped in her seat, then flexed her leg, as though it had cramped. Andalie didn't seem to notice. Her hands had hooked into claws now, and Kelsea saw that three of her fingernails were ripped down to the quick.

“After despairing for some hours, Lady, I had no choice but to beg for help from every god I could think of. I don't know that you could truly call it praying, since I believed in none of those gods at that moment and believe in none of them now. But I begged help from every source I know, even a few I shouldn't mention in the light of day.

“When I came to the Keep Lawn, my Glee was already in the cage and lost to me. My next thought was to send my other children away and go after the shipment, but only after I'd killed my husband. I was considering all the ways I might watch him die, Lady, when I heard your voice.”

Andalie stood without warning. “Your Majesty needs a bath, I believe, and clothing and food?”

Kelsea nodded mutely.

“I'll see to it.”

When the door closed, Kelsea drew a shaking breath, rubbing gooseflesh from her arms. It had been like being in the room with a vengeful ghost, and Kelsea still felt Andalie's eyes on her, long after the woman herself had gone.

 

D
id she tell you she was part Mort?”

“She did.”

“And it bothered you not at all?”

“It might have been cause for concern in someone else.”

“What does that mean?”

Mace fiddled with the short knife strapped to his forearm. “I have only a few gifts, Lady, but they're a strange, powerful few. Had there been danger to Your Majesty in the deepest part of any of these people, I'd have ferreted it out and they wouldn't be here.”

“She's not a danger to me, I agree, not now. But she could be, Lazarus. To anyone who threatened her children, she could be.”

“Ah, but Lady, you saved her youngest child. I think you'll find that anyone who threatens
you
faces grave danger from her.”

“She's cold, Lazarus. She'll serve me only so long as it serves her children.”

Mace considered for a moment, and then shrugged. “I'm sorry, Lady. I think you're simply wrong. And even if you're right, you're currently serving her children infinitely better than she could with that jackal of a husband, or even on her own. Why be gloomy?”

“If Andalie should become a danger to me, would you know it?”

Mace nodded, a gesture with so many years of certainty behind it that Kelsea let the matter drop. “Is my crowning arranged?”

“The Regent knows you're coming during his audience. I didn't specify a time; may as well not make things too easy for him.”

“Will he try to kill me?”

“Likely, Lady. The Regent doesn't have a subtle bone in his body, and he'll do anything to keep the crown off your head.”

Kelsea inspected her neck in the mirror. Mace had restitched the wound, but his work wasn't as neat as that of the Fetch. The gash would leave a noticeable scar.

Andalie had found a plain black velvet dress that hung straight to the floor. Kelsea guessed that sleeveless dresses were the fashion; many of the women she'd seen in the city had displayed their bare arms. But Kelsea was self-conscious about her arms, something Andalie seemed to understand without being told. The dress's loose sleeves concealed Kelsea's arms, while the neckline was just low enough to allow the sapphire to hang against her bare skin. Andalie had done an excellent job with Kelsea's thick, heavy hair as well, wrestling it into a braid and then pinning it high on her head. The woman was a monument to competence, but still, black couldn't conceal all flaws. Kelsea looked at herself in the mirror for a moment, trying to project more confidence than she felt. Some ancestor of hers, her mother's grandmother or great-grandmother, had been known as the Beautiful Queen, the first in a line of several Raleigh women renowned for fairness. The Fetch's face surfaced in her mind, and Kelsea smiled sadly at her reflection, then turned away and shrugged.

I'll be more than that.

“I need to see a copy of the Mort Treaty as soon as possible.”

“We have one here somewhere.”

Kelsea thought she heard disapproval in his tone. “Did I do the wrong thing yesterday?”

“Right versus wrong is a moot point, Lady. It's done, and now we'll all face the consequences. The shipment is due in seven days. You'll need to make some fast decisions.”

“I want to read the treaty first. There must be some loophole.”

Mace shook his head. “If so, Lady, others would have found it.”

“Didn't you think I would need to know, Lazarus? Why keep it from me?”

“Please, Lady. How could any of us tell you something like that, when your own foster parents had kept it secret from you all your life? You might not even have believed me. It seemed better to let you see for yourself.”

“I need to understand this system, this lottery. Who was that man in charge on the lawn yesterday?”

“Arlen Thorne,” Mace said, his face furrowing. “The Overseer of the Census.”

“A census only counts the population.”

“Not in this kingdom, Lady. The Census is a powerful arm of your government. It controls all aspects of the shipment, from lottery to transport.”

“How did this Arlen Thorne merit his position?”

“By being extremely clever, Lady. Once he nearly outsmarted me.”

“Surely not you.”

Mace opened his mouth to argue, but then he saw Kelsea's face in the mirror. “Hilarious, Majesty.”

“Don't you ever make mistakes?”

“People who make mistakes rarely live through them, Lady.”

She turned from the mirror. “How on earth did you become what you are, Lazarus?”

“Don't mistake our relationship, Lady. You're my employer. I don't confess to you.”

Kelsea looked down, feeling thoroughly rebuffed. She
had
forgotten who he was for a moment; it had been like talking to Barty. Mace held up the breastplate from Pen's armor, and she shook her head. “No.”

“Lady, you need it.”

“Not today, Lazarus. It sends a poor signal.”

“So will your dead body.”

“Doesn't Pen need his armor back?”

“He has more than one set.”

“I won't wear it.”

Mace stared at her stonily. “You're not a child. Stop behaving like one.”

“Or what?”

“Or I bring several more guards in here and they hold you down while I strap this armor on you forcibly. Is that really what you want?”

Kelsea knew he was right. She didn't know why she kept arguing. She
was
acting like a child; she remembered similar fights with Carlin over cleaning her room in the cottage. “I don't do well being ordered around, Lazarus. I never have.”

“You don't say.” Mace shook the armor again, his expression implacable. “Hold out your arms.”

Kelsea did, grimacing. “I need my own armor, and soon. A silly queen I'll look when I've been slowly flattened into a man.”

Mace grinned. “You wouldn't be the first queen of this kingdom to be mistaken for a king.”

“God granted me a small enough helping of femininity. I'd like to keep what I have.”

“Later, Lady, I'll introduce you to Venner and Fell, your arms masters. Women's armor is an odd order, but I'm sure they can fill it. They're good at their jobs. Until then, any time we leave the Queen's Wing, you wear Pen's armor.”

“Wonderful.” Kelsea sucked in a breath as he tightened a strap around her arm. “It doesn't even cover my back.”

“I cover your back.”

“How many people are in the Queen's Wing?”

“Twenty-four all told, Lady: thirteen Queen's Guards, three women, and their seven children. And of course, your own helpful self.”

“Piss off,” Kelsea muttered. She'd heard the phrase during the Fetch's poker game, and it seemed to fit her mood perfectly, though she wasn't sure she'd used it right. “How big can we grow in here?”

“Considerably bigger, and we will,” Mace replied. “Three of the guards have families in a safe house. As soon as we're settled, I'll send them one at a time to bring back their kin.”

Kelsea turned away and found herself staring at her mother's bookshelves again. They bothered her more every moment. Bookshelves weren't meant to be empty. “Is there a library in the city?”

“A what?”

“A library. A public library.”

Mace looked up at her, incredulous. “Books?”

“Books.”

“Lady,” Mace said, in the slow, patient tones one would use with a young child, “there hasn't been a working printing press in this kingdom since the Landing era.”

“I know,” Kelsea snapped. “That's not what I asked. I asked if there was a library.”

“Books are hard to come by, Lady. A curiosity at best. Who would have enough books for a library?”

“Nobles. Surely some of them still have some hoarded books.”

Mace shrugged. “Never heard of such a thing. But even if they did, they wouldn't open them to the public.”

“Why not?”

“Lady, try to take away even the most resilient weed in a nobleman's garden, and watch him scream trespass. I'm sure most of them don't read any books they might have, but all the same, they would never give them away.”

“Can we buy books on the black market?”

“We could, Lady, if anyone valued them enough. But books aren't contraband. The black market deals in vice for value. The Tear market has high-value weapons from Mortmesne, some sex traffic, rare animals, drugs . . .”

Kelsea wasn't interested in the workings of the black market; in every society, they were always the same. She let Mace keep going while she stared despondently at the empty bookshelves, thinking of Carlin's library: three long walls full of leather-bound volumes, nonfiction on the left and fiction on the right. There was a certain patch of sunlight that came through the front window and remained until early afternoon, and Kelsea had liked to curl up in this patch every Sunday morning to read. One Christmas, when she was eight or nine, she had come downstairs and found Barty's present: a large built-in chair constructed squarely in the patch of sunlight, a chair with deep pillows and “Kelsea's Patch” carved into the left arm. The happy memory of collapsing into that chair was so strong that Kelsea could actually smell cinnamon bread baking in the kitchen and hear the grackles around the cottage working their way into their usual morning frenzy.

Barty
, she thought, and felt tears well in her eyes. It seemed very important that Mace not see; she widened her eyes to keep the tears from falling and stared resolutely at the empty bookshelves, thinking hard. How
had
Carlin acquired all of her books? Paper books had been at a premium long before the Crossing; the transition to electronic books had decimated the publishing industry, and in the last two decades before the Crossing, many printed books had been destroyed altogether. According to Carlin, William Tear had only allowed his utopians to bring ten books apiece. Two thousand people with ten books each made twenty thousand books, and at least two thousand now stood on Carlin's shelves. Kelsea had spent her entire life with Carlin's library at her fingertips, taking it for granted, never understanding that it was invaluable in a world without books. Vandals might find the cottage, or even children searching for firewood. That was what had happened to most of the books that originally came over in the British-American Crossing: the desperate had burned them for fuel or warmth. Kelsea had always thought of Carlin's library as a set piece, unified and immovable, but it wasn't. Books could be moved.

“I want all of the books from Barty and Carlin's cottage brought here.”

Mace rolled his eyes. “No.”

“It might take a week, perhaps two if it rains.”

He finished buckling the heavy piece of steel to her forearm. “The Caden likely burned that cottage down days ago. You have a limited number of loyal people, Lady; do you really want to throw them away on a fool's errand like this?”

“Books may have been a fool's errand in my mother's kingdom, Lazarus, but they won't be in mine. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you're young and likely to overreach, Lady. You can't do all things at once. Power dispersed has a way of scattering altogether in the wind.”