The Invasion of the Tearling

“Where is he?” she asked Mace.

“I don’t know, Lady,” Mace replied, his face troubled. “This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

“Find him, Lazarus. Find him right now.”

Mace went to confer with Coryn, and Kelsea was left with the magician. Mace had left her unguarded, she realized suddenly, and this was perhaps the truest indication that he knew the real score: Kelsea was in no physical danger from anyone anymore. Her Guard was only a polite fiction. An idea glimmered at the edges of her mind for a moment, something to do with the Mort, but when she reached out to grasp it, the idea was gone, subsumed in worry over Father Tyler. The magician had been able to outrun his pursuers; what could Father Tyler do? He was an old man with a broken leg.

“Does the Holy Father have some prior grievance with you?” she asked the magician.

“No, Majesty, I swear to you. I never saw him before that night at the Keep. Word in the Gut is that the Holy Father has excommunicated all performers of my trade. But I’m the only one for whom he offers a bounty.”

So this was not about Bradshaw. The Holy Father might hate magicians, but the bounty was a slap aimed directly at Kelsea.

“How much danger are you really in?”

“Less than another might be without my gift of vanishing. But I can’t outrun them forever, Majesty. I’m too well known in the city. I swear to you, I will be of use to you.”

Kelsea laughed and gestured over the wall. “Look out there, Bradshaw. I have no need of an in-house performer now.”

“I understand, Majesty.” The magician stared at the ground for a long moment, then squared his shoulders and spoke quietly. “I’m no performer.”

“What does that mean?”

Bradshaw leaned closer. If Mace had been nearby, he would never have allowed it, but he was still deep in conference with Coryn, and so Bradshaw was able to hunch over Kelsea, hiding her from the rest of her Guard.

“Look.”

Bradshaw raised his right palm and held it perfectly still. After a moment, the air above his palm began to shimmer, as cobblestones did in high heat. The shimmer solidified into a knife, a silver knife with an old and intricate handle.

“Try it, Majesty.”

Kelsea grasped the knife, found it solid in her hand.

“They say you have magic, Majesty, in your jewels. But there is other magic in the Tear. My family is full of such gifts.”

Kelsea snuck another quick look at Mace. He would not like it, she knew; he distrusted magicians, all of their ilk. And yet the man had meant no harm that night; Kelsea had hired him to perform. There were larger considerations here, too: the Holy Father might have paid off the nobles of New London, but the truly devout would never tolerate something as prosaic as a bounty from the Arvath.

“I will take you in,” she told the magician. “But the Queen’s Wing won’t be a safe haven for very long. When the Mort come, you may wish you had simply disappeared for good.”

“Thank you, Majesty. I will take no more of your time.”

Bradshaw whirled, with his unnatural acrobat’s grace, and was off toward Mace before Kelsea could tell him that she was not busy, far from it, that she had nothing better to do than stare out at the horizon and watch a ghastly destruction play out over and over in her mind. That cloud on the horizon belonged to her. She was the one who had brought it here. She shivered, sensing again the tickling fingers of Lily’s mind, nearly a physical thing, worming its way inside her own. Lily’s life was hurtling toward some calamity, and she needed something from Kelsea, something Kelsea could not see yet. And now Kelsea saw that there was no difference which vision she lived in. Past or future, in either direction lay only terror. She turned back to the horizon and restarted the count of her own mistakes, preparing to suffer through them again, one at a time. Preparing to scourge.

BASTARDS AREN’T WORRIED about us anymore, that’s for sure,” Bermond muttered. “No real sentries out there, just the hawks.”

Hall grunted in agreement, but didn’t look up from his helmet. A sword had grazed his chin two days before, slicing the helmet’s clasp clear off. Hall had rigged a substitute by sewing on an extra piece of leather, but now the fit was imperfect. The helmet kept threatening to slide off his head.

Still, it could have been worse. He would have a scar, but his winter beard would easily cover it. The stupid clasp had probably saved his teeth, if not his life. The clasp seemed like something Hall should have kept, a good-luck charm to carry in his pockets, but it was lost now, perhaps three miles up the Caddell.