The Invasion of the Tearling

Who did those things? The queen of spades? Or me?

Mace placed a cup in her hand, and Kelsea suddenly understood that the drinking was a ritual. She raised the cup to the crowd, wondering if there were any specific words she was supposed to say. No; she was the Queen. She could make up her own words, her own ritual, and they would trump everything that had come before.

“The health of my people!” she shouted. “The health of the Tearling!”

The crowd roared the final words back to her and then drank. Kelsea took a sip and realized that although Mace had come prepared, he was no fool; the liquid in her cup was only water. But it tasted sweet somehow, and Kelsea drained it. When she turned to give the cup back, she found Mace still holding the noose in his other hand. Although his face was blank, Kelsea sensed disapproval beneath.

“Well, Lazarus?”

“You’ve changed, Lady. I never thought to see you bow to the will of the mob.”

Kelsea flushed. The realization that Mace could still do that, make her feel ashamed with a single cutting remark, was unwelcome. “I bow to no one.”

“That I can well believe.”

Mace turned away, and Kelsea grabbed his arm, desperate to make him understand. “I haven’t changed, Lazarus. I’ve grown older, that’s all. I’m still me.”

“No, Lady.” Mace sighed, and the sigh seemed to pass through Kelsea, a breath of doom on cold wings. “Tell yourself whatever pleasing stories you want, but you’re not the girl we took from the cottage. You’ve become someone else.”





CHAPTER 10


FATHER TYLER


Always, we think we know what courage means. If I were called upon, we say, I would answer the call. I would not hesitate. Until the moment is upon us, and then we realize that the demands of true courage are very different from what we had envisioned, long ago on that bright morning when we felt brave.

—Father Tyler’s Collected Sermons, FROM THE ARVATH ARCHIVE

THE ARVATH STAIRCASE was made of solid stone, bleached white stone that had been mined from the rocks around Crossing’s End. But with each step, Tyler became more careful, tormented by an irrational certainty that the stone staircase would squeak beneath his feet. He climbed slowly, dragging his broken leg.

Occasionally he passed one of his brothers going down the staircase, and they gave him only the most cursory glance before moving on. Tyler’s position as Keep Priest gave him latitude, made it plausible that he might be invited up to the Holy Father’s private quarters so late at night. But Tyler had to count the landings in order to know where he was. He had never climbed so high in the Arvath. He did not know whether he would be coming back down.

When he reached the ninth floor, he darted away from the staircase, concealing himself in a recess that stood across the hall. The opulence of his surroundings made Tyler dizzy, for the decor on this level was a far cry from the plain stone walls and handwoven rugs that graced the brothers’ quarters downstairs. Gold and silver shone in the torchlight: candlestands, tables, statuary. The floors were Cadarese marble. The walls were draped with red and purple velvet.

The hallway continued for perhaps fifty feet before it turned left toward the Holy Father’s private quarters. There was no one in sight, but Tyler knew that around the corner he would surely find guards and acolytes, at least several of them, near the Holy Father’s door. It was just after two o’clock in the morning. If Tyler was lucky, the Holy Father would be sleeping, but it seemed too much to hope for that his guards and servants should do the same. Even on tiptoe, Tyler’s shoes made a scuffling sound that seemed deafening in the cavernous hallway.

I will grab my books and be gone, he repeated to himself. Only ten books; Tyler had already chosen them, so that he would not be tempted to exceed his capacity. He liked the historical significance of the number 10, the symmetry with the Crossing. Books were one of the few personal items William Tear had allowed his people, ten books apiece. If they tried to sneak other items aboard, he left them behind. It was only arcana, one of thousands of tiny pieces of information about the Crossing that Tyler had picked up during his lifetime. But he had never forgotten a single one.

If I survive this, Tyler decided, I will write the first history of the Crossing. I’ll bind it myself, and present it to the Queen for printing.

That was a good thing to tell himself, a grand dream. But the Queen’s ambition to create a printing press had come to naught so far. No one in the Tearling had any idea how to begin building such a thing. There was no mechanism for broad distribution of the written word.

There will be.