The Invasion of the Tearling

“I do depend on you, Ryll. It has been a long lifetime, you and me.”


“I would not have traded it for the wide world, Lady.” Beryll smiled, his stiff resolve breaking for a moment, and in the smile the Queen glimpsed the child she had lifted from the blood-puddled pit. She had reached down and extended a hand, and the boy had grasped it … the memory hurt. Time seemed to stretch over such an unbridgeable distance lately. The Queen cast around for something to lighten the mood. “At any rate, Medire isn’t half the pharmacist he thinks he is. I’ve heard some ugly rumors about side effects. Rashes and spots.”

“It makes the pages uneasy, Majesty, knowing that you don’t sleep. Their anxiety then passes further down the chain.”

“When we take the Tearling, I’ll sleep fine.”

“As you say, Majesty,” he replied, in a tone that stopped just short of disbelief.

Beryll left her when they reached the top of the stairs, heading off toward the throne room, and the Queen continued slowly on her way, perusing the two messages that Beryll had handed her. Ducarte’s note was like the man himself, brief and to the point: the invasion was proceeding as it should, the bulk of the Mort army moving steadily across the Almont Plain. But Martin’s words had been written hastily, the tone bordering on panic: three of his interrogators had been snatched off the street and found hung from the city walls four days later. Two Crown armories had burned to the ground. Vallee had taken an arrow in the knee from a sniper. Martin’s anxiety would not help matters. As soon as Ducarte reached New London and got his fill of whatever he wanted there, she would put him back on this … this …

Rebellion.

Her mind shied away from the word, but after a moment’s thought, she was forced to acknowledge its essential truth. She had a rebellion on her hands, and none of her people were equal to quelling it.

In the wide, high-ceilinged corridor that led to her chambers, the Queen found five pages in a cluster, talking in low voices.

“Surely there’s something else you could be doing with your time,” she remarked acidly, and was pleased to see them jump at her voice. “Go and make yourselves useful.”

They left, with quietly murmured apologies that the Queen did not acknowledge. Her pages behaved respectfully, but all of them occasionally betrayed the impudence of youth, impatience at having to wait on a woman they considered old. The Queen paused before entering her chamber, examining herself in one of the floor-length mirrors that stood beside the door. She was not young, no, not like these girls with their wrinkle-free eyes and upright breasts. But neither was she old. She was a grown woman, a woman who knew what she was about.

I am changeless, the Queen thought proudly. Still vulnerable to weapons and wounds, certainly, but age, that relentless double-edged blade of decay and disease, would never touch her again. The Queen sobered, frowning. She would never grow old, but all the same, time had been growing on her lately: a sense of time as power, as a force that exerted incredible pressure. Her life had been long, but much of it had flown past unexamined. Only recently had the Queen begun to feel the passing years on her shoulders, nothing so simple as mere time … now it was history.

She went on into her chambers, closing the door behind her. Beryll would bring her some hot chocolate, and that would put her to sleep for an hour or so, at least. The room was nice and warm, perfect for napping. She would—

The Queen nearly tripped as her feet connected with a dull, lifeless heap on the ground. She looked down and found Mina, one of her pages, sprawled on the floor, her neck wrung so neatly that her head faced backward.

The Queen spun around and stared at the fireplace. A roaring blaze was going, a pillar of flame so strong that she could feel its heat all the way across the room.

“No—,” she began, and then a hand clamped around her throat.

“You are faithless, Mort Queen,” the voice hissed in her ear.

She tried to scream, but the dark thing’s hand had already begun to squeeze, forcing her windpipe closed. She summoned everything she had and forced it away, shoving it across the room, where it landed on a table in the far corner, breaking the wood with a dull crunch.

The Queen darted behind the sofa, trying to force breath down her abraded throat, her eyes never moving from the dark mass that was just beginning to uncoil itself in the corner. Suddenly it whipped to its feet in a strange, unnatural motion, like that of a slingshot, and the Queen shrieked. A painted clown leered at her from the shadows, pale face and lips twisted in a grin. Its eyes were a bright, burning crimson.