The Queen of the Tearling (8 page)

For a time she could hear only Mace behind her, but gradually her ears picked up the unmistakable sound of hooves, at least several sets in pursuit. They were gaining, and the river was approaching at an alarming pace. Peeking over her shoulder, Kelsea saw her worst fears confirmed: Caden, four of them, perhaps fifty yards back, their bright red cloaks flying in the wind. Hearing of the Caden in her childhood, Kelsea had asked Barty why professional assassins would wear such a bright and distinguishable color. Barty's answer was not comforting: the Caden were such confident killers that they could afford to wear bright red and come in daylight. Those cloaks sent a clear message; something inside Kelsea froze at the sight of them.

Behind her, Mace snarled a curse before shouting, “On the right!”

Looking around, Kelsea now saw a second group of men, perhaps four or five strong, cloaked in black, bearing down from the northwest, angling to intercept them before they reached the river. Even if Rake was strong enough to outrun both parties in pursuit, Kelsea would be cut off when the river forced her to turn. The river was wide, perhaps twenty yards across, and even from this distance, Kelsea could see that the deep green water flowed rapidly along, occasional spits and sprays betraying underwater rocks. It was too fast and wild to swim, and no boats were visible. Kelsea saw no option, but still her thoughts wandered back helplessly across that vast green land that stretched to all horizons, the fields covered with people. Her responsibility.

If she could gallop west along the riverbank, she thought, both packs of pursuers would be forced to follow her along the water's edge; there would be no more angles for them to cut her off. They would probably catch her anyway, but it would extend the time during which a miracle was possible. She tightened her grip and rode headlong for the river. Blood from the wound on her neck spattered across her chin and cheek with each stride.

When the water was perhaps fifty feet away, Kelsea yanked on the reins, trying to take the other riders by surprise with a right turn. But Rake misinterpreted the movement and stopped short, and Kelsea went flying, taking in a confused muddle of inverted river and sky before she landed flat on her stomach. Her wind had been knocked out so completely that she could only chuff out small puffs of air. She pushed herself up, but her legs wouldn't respond. She tried to force breath in and only managed a hitching gasp. The sound of approaching horses seemed to fill the world.

To her left, a man shouted, “The girl! The girl, damn you! Deal with the Mace later, take the girl!”

Something crashed to the ground in front of her. Kelsea looked up and saw Mace, his sword raised in one hand and his mace in the other, facing down four men in red cloaks. The Caden were all quite different in appearance, dark and light, tall and short. One even had a mustache. But each face had the same hard, blank look: disciplined ferocity. The light-skinned assassin got through Mace's guard and raked the point of a sword across his collarbone. Blood spattered across the Caden's face and sank into the scarlet of his cloak, but Mace ignored the wound, reached out with one hand, and jabbed his attacker in the throat. The man in red collapsed with a gargling, choking sound, his windpipe crushed.

Mace backed up to stand directly in front of Kelsea now, waiting, a weapon raised in each fist. Another Caden rushed him and Mace dropped to his knees, his sword slicing through the air. The Caden fell to the ground, shrieking in agony. His right leg had been severed just below the knee; blood fountained from the stump in bursts, soaking the riverbank a deep red. After a moment, Kelsea realized that she was watching the rhythm of the man's dying pulse, his heart pumping out his lifeblood onto the sand.

Dimly, she realized that she should do something. But her legs still weren't responding, and her ribs ached horribly. The two remaining Caden came at Mace from each side, but Mace ducked them neatly and buried his mace in the side of one man's head, crushing it in a spray of blood and bone. Mace didn't recover quickly enough; the last assassin reached him and sliced him up the hip, his sword tearing cleanly through the leather band at Mace's waist. Mace dove beneath him, rolled once, and came to his feet with the grace of an animal, swinging the mace with crushing force against the assassin's spine. Kelsea heard a snap, a sound like Barty breaking a branch of greenwood, and the Caden thumped to the ground.

Behind Mace, Kelsea saw that the black-cloaked men had arrived and dropped from their horses with swords already drawn. Mace whirled and charged forward to meet them while Kelsea watched with a sense of disappointed wonder . . . it seemed such a waste for him to die here. She'd never heard of anyone beating one Caden swordsman before, let alone four. She took her hand from her neck and found it slick with blood. Was it possible to bleed to death from a shallow wound? Barty had never covered death or dying.

Someone reached beneath Kelsea's arms and flipped her onto her back. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. The gash in her neck tore wider and began to pulse with warm blood. Her legs splayed out, the feeling in them reawakened to horrible life as though shards of glass were being driven into her calves. A face loomed just above hers, a face the color of pale death with fathomless black holes for eyes and a bloodstained mouth, and Kelsea screamed before she could help it, before she realized that it was only a mask.

“Sir. The Mace.”

Kelsea looked up and saw a second masked man standing in front of her, though his mask was a mercifully plain black.

“Knock him out,” ordered the man in the white mask. “We'll take him with us.”

“Sir?”

“Look around you, How. Four Caden, all by himself! He'll be trouble, for certain, but it would be criminal to waste such a fighter. He comes with us.”

Kelsea hauled herself up, though her neck shrieked in protest, and reached a sitting position in time to see Mace, bleeding from numerous wounds now, surrounded by several black-masked men. One of them darted forward, quick as a weasel, and brought his sword hilt down on the back of Mace's head.

“Don't!” Kelsea cried as Mace crumpled to the ground.

“He'll be fine, girl,” said the white-masked man above her. “Get yourself together.”

Kelsea dragged herself to her feet. “What do you want with me?”

“You're in no position to demand answers, girl.” He held out a flask of water, but she ignored it. Black eyes gleamed behind the mask's eyeholes as he studied her, peering closely at her neck. “Nasty. How did that happen?”

“A Mort hawk,” Kelsea replied grudgingly.

“God bless your uncle. His taste in allies is no better than his taste in clothing.”

“Sir! More Caden! From the north!”

Kelsea turned northward. A cloud of dust was visible across the acres of farmland, deceptively small at this distance, but Kelsea thought that the party in pursuit must be at least ten men strong, a reddish mass against the horizon.

“Any more hawks?” asked the leader.

“No. How shot one down.”

“Thank Christ for that. Tie up the horses; we'll take them with us.”

Kelsea turned to look at the river. It was deep and wild, the far bank covered in trees and shrubs that overhung the water for at least five hundred yards downstream. If she could swim the width of the river, she could probably manage to pull herself out.

“What a coveted prize you are,” the leader remarked beside her. “You don't look like much.”

Kelsea whirled toward the river. She didn't make three steps before he grabbed her elbow and threw her toward a second man, nearly the size of a bear, who caught her neatly beneath the arms.

“Don't try to run from us, girl,” the leader told her, his voice cold. “We might kill you, yes, but the Caden
will
kill you, and give the Regent your head as a prize.”

Kelsea weighed her options and decided she had none. Five masked men surrounded her. Mace lay on the ground twenty feet away; Kelsea could see him breathing, but his body was limp. When one of the men finished binding Mace's hands, two more picked him up and began to bundle him onto his horse. Kelsea had no sword, and didn't know how to use one anyway. She turned back to the leader and nodded her consent.

“Morgan, take her on your horse.” The leader turned and mounted his own horse, raising his voice as he did so. “Quickly now! Watch for outriders!”

“Up, Lady,” Morgan said, his voice surprisingly gentle in contrast to his massive frame and black mask. “Here.”

Kelsea placed her foot in the makeshift stirrup of his hands and hauled herself onto his horse. Her neck was bleeding freely again; the right shoulder of her shirt was soaked, and scarlet rivulets had begun to drip down her forearm. She could smell her own blood, a coppery odor like the old pennies Barty kept in his keepsake box at home. Once a week, he would polish them meticulously and then show them to Kelsea: dull round copper coins with a stately bearded man on the face, remnants of a time long gone. It seemed strange that a good memory could be triggered by the smell of blood.

Morgan climbed up behind her; Kelsea felt the horse settle appreciably under his weight. His arms provided a sturdy frame on either side. Kelsea ripped the fabric of her sleeve until she had a patch to press against her neck. The wound definitely needed stitches, and soon, but she was determined not to leave a blood trail on the ground.

They galloped along the river's edge. Kelsea wondered where they could go, for the river certainly ran too fast and wild for the horses to swim, and there was no sign of a bridge. Glancing north, Kelsea saw that the group of red cloaks had changed direction and were now on a direct course to intercept. But the masked men around her gave no hint of where they were going, whether they had a plan of escape. The leader rode in front, and behind him another man rode Mace's stallion with Mace thrown across the saddle, his inert form bouncing with each of the horse's strides. Kelsea could see only a little blood, but his grey cloak covered the bulk of his body. All of the masked men seemed singularly focused on the road ahead; they didn't even turn to track the progress of her pursuers, nor did they look at Kelsea, and she felt another pang at her own helplessness. On her own, she would have been dead in a heartbeat.

“Now!” the leader shouted.

The earth turned beneath Morgan's horse and they galloped headlong into the river. Kelsea shut her eyes and held her breath, preparing for the icy water, but it didn't come. All around them the current roared wildly, freezing droplets scattering in the air and soaking Kelsea's pants to the knees. But when she opened her eyes, she found that they were incomprehensibly crossing the river, the horses' hooves splashing with each step, yet striking solid ground.

Impossible
, she thought, her eyes wide with astonishment. But the proof was before her: they were cutting a broad diagonal across the river, each step bringing them closer to the far bank. They passed between two boulders jutting upward from the water, so close that Kelsea could see patches of deep emerald moss slicked across the surface. She thought of the glowing jewel around her neck, and almost laughed. The day had been full of wonders.

When they reached dry ground, the group of horses immediately cut into the woods. For the second time that day, Kelsea found her face whipped and snapped by trees, but she tucked her chin into her chest and made no sound.

Deep in the shade of a massive oak, the leader raised his hand and they brought their horses to a stop. Behind them, the river was barely visible through the trees. The leader brought his horse around in a circle and then sat motionless, staring back toward the far bank.

“That should puzzle them for a while,” one of the men muttered.

Kelsea turned, ignoring a wave of dizziness, and peered through the branches of the oak. She could see nothing, only the gleam of sunlight off the water. But one of the black-masked men chuckled. “They're stumped, all right. They'll be there for hours.”

Now she could hear their pursuers: raised voices and an answering shout of “I don't know!”

“The lady needs stitching,” Morgan announced behind Kelsea, startling her. “She's losing too much blood.”

“Indeed,” the leader replied, fixing Kelsea with his black eyes. She stared back, trying to ignore his mask. The face was a harlequin, but much more sinister, awful in some way that she couldn't put her finger on. It reminded her of nightmares she'd had as a child. Nevertheless, she forced herself to sit up straight and stare back at him while blood pooled in the crook of her arm. “Who
are
you?”

“I am the long death of the Tearling. Forgive us.” He nodded, looking over her head, and before Kelsea could turn around, the world went dark.

Chapter 3

The Fetch

The mark of the true hero is that the most heroic of his deeds is done in secret. We never hear of it. And yet somehow, my friends, we know.

—
Father Tyler's Collected Sermons
,
FROM THE
A
RVATH
A
RCHIVE

W
ake up, girl.”

Kelsea opened her eyes to a sky of such brilliant blue that she thought she must still be dreaming. But a quick glance around showed her that it was a tent. She was lying on the ground, wrapped in the skin of some animal. Not deer, which she would have recognized, but it was warm, so warm that she was reluctant to rise.

She looked up at the speaker, a man dressed entirely in dark blue. His voice was a pleasant baritone, distinctive enough that she recognized him even without his awful mask. He was clean-shaven and handsome, with sharp cheekbones and good humor in the set of his mouth. He was also considerably younger than she had guessed on the riverbank, certainly no more than twenty-five, his hair still thick and dark and his unlined face dominated by a pair of large black eyes that gave Kelsea pause; those eyes were much older than twenty-five.

“Where's your handsome face today?”

“I'm home now,” he replied easily. “No point in dressing up.”

Kelsea busied herself with sitting upright, though the movement brought a strong warning twinge from the right side of her neck. Exploring the area gently with her fingers, she found a stitched gash, covered with some sort of sticky poultice.

“It will heal well. I tended you myself.”

“Thank you,” Kelsea replied, then realized that she wasn't wearing her own clothing, but a gown of some sort of white cloth, linen perhaps. She reached up to touch her hair and found it smooth and soft; someone had given her a bath. She looked up at him, her cheeks reddening.

“Yes, me as well.” His smile widened. “But you needn't worry, girl. You're far too plain for my taste.”

The words hurt, and badly, but Kelsea hid the sting with only a slight tightening of her face. “Where's my cloak?”

“Over there.” He flicked his thumb toward a pile of clothing in the corner. “But there's nothing in it. It would take a better man than me to resist hunting for this.”

He held out one hand to display a dangling sapphire necklace. Kelsea reached up and found her own necklace still around her neck.

“They're optimistic, girl, to let you have both. Some said the King's jewel had been lost altogether.”

Kelsea restrained herself from reaching for the second necklace, since he so obviously wished her to. But her eyes followed the sapphire as it swung back and forth.

“You've never worn this necklace,” he remarked.

“How do you know?”

“If you had worn it, the jewel would never have allowed me to take it from you.”

“What?”

He gave her an incredulous look. “Don't you know anything of these jewels?”

“I know they're mine.”

“And what have you done to earn them? Born to a second-rate queen with a burn on your arm.”

Second-rate.
What did that mean? Kelsea filed the comment away, speaking carefully. “I would not have wished for any of this.”

“Perhaps not.”

Something in his tone chilled Kelsea, warned her that she was in danger here. And yet why should that be, when he had saved her life on the riverbank? She watched the jewel, blue sparkles reflecting across her skin, while she concentrated on the problem. Bargaining required something to bargain with. She needed information. “May I ask your name, sir?”

“Unimportant. You may call me the Fetch.” He leaned back, awaiting her reaction.

“The name means nothing to me.”

“Really?”

“I was raised in isolation, you see.”

“Well, you would know my name otherwise. The Regent has a high price on my head, growing all the time.”

“For what?”

“I stole his horse. Among other things.”

“You're a thief?”

“The world is full of thieves. If anything, I am the father of thieves.”

Kelsea smiled against her will. “Is that why you all wear masks?”

“Of course. People are envious of the gifts they don't have.”

“Perhaps they just don't like criminals.”

“One needn't be a criminal to get in trouble, girl. There's a handsome reward for your head as well.”

“My head,” Kelsea repeated faintly.

“Yes, your head. Your uncle offers twice as much if it's recognizable upon delivery. A present for the Mort bitch, no doubt; I suppose she wishes to hang it somewhere. But your uncle demands the jewels and your arm, as proof.”

Carlin's words about the fates of rulers reappeared in Kelsea's mind. She tried to picture her head atop a pike and couldn't. Carlin and Barty rarely spoke about the Raleigh Regent, Kelsea's uncle, but there was no mistaking their tone. They held him in low esteem, and that low esteem had trickled down to Kelsea. The fact that her uncle wanted to kill her had never bothered her; he had never seemed important, not the way her mother was important. He was only an obstacle to be surmounted. She returned her attention to the Fetch and took a deep breath; he had drawn his knife now. It sat balanced on one knee.

“So, girl,” the Fetch continued in a deceptively pleasant voice, “what to do with you?”

Kelsea's stomach tightened further, her mind racing. This man wouldn't want her to beg.

I must prove that I'm worth something. Quickly.

“If you're such a wanted man, I'll be in a position to offer you clemency.”

“You will indeed, should you survive to sit on the throne for more than a few hours, and I doubt you will.”

“But I may,” Kelsea replied firmly. The wound on her neck gave a hard twinge, but she ignored it, recalling Carroll's words in the clearing. “I'm made of stronger stuff than I appear.”

The Fetch stared at her, long and intently. He wanted something from her, Kelsea realized, though she couldn't imagine what it might be. With each passing second, she became more uncomfortable, but she couldn't look away. Finally, she blurted out the question in the back of her mind. “Why did you call my mother a second-rate queen?”

“You think she was first-rate, I suppose.”

“I don't know anything about her. No one would tell me.”

His eyes widened. “Impossible. Carlin Glynn is an extraordinarily capable woman. We could have picked no one better.”

Kelsea's mouth dropped open. No one but her mother's guard knew where she'd been raised, or the Regent's men would have been at the door of their cottage years before. She waited for the Fetch to continue, but he said nothing. Finally she asked, “How is it that you knew where I was, but the Mort and the Caden didn't?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “The Mort are thugs, and the Caden didn't start looking for you until your uncle grew desperate enough to pay their rates, which are exorbitant. If the Caden had been looking for you from the beginning, you'd have been dead years ago. Your mother didn't hide you that well; she lacked imagination.”

Kelsea managed to hold her face still, but it wasn't easy. He talked about her mother so contemptuously, but Carlin had never said anything bad about Queen Elyssa.

But she wouldn't have, would she?
Kelsea's mind whispered unpleasantly.
She promised.

“Why do you dislike my mother so much? Did she wrong you somehow?”

The Fetch tipped his head to one side, his gaze calculating. “You're very young, girl. Incredibly young to be a queen.”

“Will you tell me your grievance with my mother?”

“I see no reason to.”

“Fine.” Kelsea crossed her arms. “Then I'll continue to think of her as first-rate.”

The Fetch smiled appreciatively. “Young you may be, but you have more brains than your mother ever had on a good day.”

Kelsea's wound was aching badly now. A fine mist of sweat had sprung up on her brow, and he seemed to notice it only a moment after she did herself. “Tip your head.”

Kelsea did so without thinking. The Fetch reached into his clothing and pulled out a pouch, then began to apply something wet to her neck. Kelsea braced herself for the sting that didn't come. His fingers were soft on her skin. Within a few seconds, Kelsea realized that she should have been more protective of her person, and shut her eyes, resigned. A phrase from one of Carlin's books occurred to her:
any plausible scoundrel . . .
Her own foolishness made her toes clench.

The anesthetic worked quickly; within a few seconds, the pain had dulled to a low pulse. The Fetch released Kelsea's neck and pocketed the pouch. “Later, some mead should take care of the rest of the pain.”

“Don't patronize me!” Kelsea snapped; she was angry at herself for finding this man attractive, and it seemed very important that he not know. “If you mean to kill me, be done with it!”

“In my own time.” The Fetch's black eyes gleamed with something that Kelsea thought might be respect. “You surprise me, girl.”

“Did you expect me to beg?”

“Had you done so, I would have killed you on the spot.”

“Why?”

“Your mother was a beggar.”

“I'm not my mother.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Why don't you tell me what it is you want?”

“We want you to be a queen.”

Kelsea heard the implication easily. “As my mother was not?”

“Have you any idea who your father was?”

“No, and I don't care.”

“I do. I've a bet with one of my men.”

“A bet?”

His eyes twinkled. “Your paternity is one of the great wagering items in this kingdom. I know an old woman living in a village far to the south who backed her horse almost twenty years ago, and she's been waiting for the truth to come out ever since. The field is, shall we say, quite wide.”

“How charming.”

“You're royalty, girl. Nothing in your life will be personal anymore.”

Kelsea pursed her lips, annoyed at the turn of the conversation. Her father, like her uncle, had never seemed particularly important. Her mother was the important one, the woman who ruled the kingdom. Whoever Kelsea's father was, he had apparently abandoned her at birth . . . but that abandonment had never hurt the way her mother's had. Kelsea remembered days spent waiting in front of the picture window in the front room of the cottage; eventually, the sun would always set, and still her mother hadn't come.

“We've waited a long time to see what you were made of, girl,” the Fetch remarked. “I cajole and threaten by turns, and now I'm no further. You're not what we expected.”

“Who is we?”

The Fetch gestured behind him. Kelsea realized that she could hear men's voices outside the tent, and, slightly more distant, someone chopping wood.

“What holds your group together?”

“That's a perceptive question, so of course you'll get no answer.” He sprang to his feet, the movement so sudden that Kelsea flinched and drew her knees together. Had she a knife and he nothing at all, this man would still have her dead in less than a minute. He reminded her of Mace: a man of latent violence, its employment all the more deadly for the fact that he held it in such low esteem. She'd forgotten to ask about Mace, she realized, but now wasn't the time. She felt dim relief when the Fetch tucked his knife back into the band at his waist.

“Dress yourself, girl, and come outside.”

When he had disappeared through the tent flap, Kelsea turned her attention to the pile of dark-hued clothing on the ground. Men's clothes, and far too big for her, but perhaps that was for the best. Kelsea didn't flatter herself that she had a shapely figure.

Who cares about your figure?

No one
, she answered Carlin grumpily, pulling the crumpled linen gown over her head. She wasn't fool enough to miss the danger here: a man who was handsome, intelligent, and more than slightly bad. Not all of Carlin's books had been nonfiction.

But I'm doing no harm
, she insisted.
If I know the danger, it lessens the harm.

Even inside her head, this statement didn't ring entirely true. The Fetch had left moments ago, but she was already anxious to follow him outside and see him again.

Don't be a fool
, her mind snapped.
You're too ugly for him, he said so.

She had finished dressing now. Combing her fingers through her hair, she stood and peered out of the tent.

They must have brought her a long way south. The country surrounding the camp was no longer forest or even farmland; they were on top of a high, flat hill covered with weedy grass parched yellow by the sun. Similar hills surrounded them on all sides, a sea of rolling yellow. The land hadn't yet begun to drop into desert, but they couldn't be far from the Cadarese border.

At first glance, Kelsea would have taken the camp for that of a circus troupe: several tents dyed gaudy shades of red, yellow, and blue, situated around a stone fire pit. Something was cooking, for smoke drifted lazily into the air and Kelsea could smell roasting meat. On the other side of the pit, a short blond man dressed in the same sort of shapeless clothing as Kelsea herself was chopping wood.

Closer to Kelsea's tent, three men were huddled together, talking in low voices. One of them was the Fetch; another, judging by his height and shoulders, could only be the enormous Morgan. He had blond hair and a round face that remained friendly as Kelsea approached. The third man was black, which gave Kelsea pause for a moment. She'd never seen a black person before, and she was fascinated by the man's skin, which gleamed in the sunlight.

None of them bowed to her, not that Kelsea had expected them to. The Fetch beckoned her, and Kelsea moved forward, taking plenty of time about it so that he knew she didn't jump to his command. As she drew nearer, he gestured to his two companions. “My associates, Morgan and Lear. They won't harm you.”