The Invasion of the Tearling

“I’m a bookie, Queenie. I take bets on anything where I can calculate the odds.”


Kelsea rubbed her eyes. “Didn’t anyone try to put a stop to it?”

“Who would, Lady? I saw your uncle down there several times. Your mother too.”

“How did they decide who won?”

Arliss met her gaze steadily, and Kelsea shook her head, feeling ill. “I see. Lazarus never told me.”

“Of course he didn’t. If some comes out, it all comes out.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that the Mace was almost an animal by the time he was done. No one could wrangle him, except maybe Carroll; it was Carroll who got him out of the Creche for good. But the Mace was still a danger to others, long after his days in the ring were over. He’s ashamed of his deeds. He doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

Arliss raised his eyebrows. “I don’t answer to the Mace, Queenie. You’re a fool if you think I do. I don’t even answer to you. I’ve reached the good time of life now, the time where I’ve made my money, and if someone is fool enough to threaten me, I don’t need to care. I do and say as I please.”

“And it pleases you to be here? Now? Why haven’t you fled to Mortmesne? Or Cadare?”

Arliss grinned. “Because I don’t want to.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.” Kelsea got up from the armchair, wiping off several puffs of dust that had settled on her skirt. “Will you draft my bill?”

“Yes.” Arliss sat back, crossing his arms over his chest, and eyed her speculatively. “So you’re going to die tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Then what in the happy Christ are you doing sitting here talking to me? You should be out getting drunk, getting laid.”

“With whom?”

Arliss smiled, a sudden and gentle smile that sat oddly on his twisted face. “You think we don’t know?”

“Shut up, Arliss.”

“As you like.” He pulled a blank sheet of paper from the stack at his left hand, and his next words were muttered down at the desk.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Don’t throw in the towel yet, Queenie. You’re a clever piece of business … smarter even than your grandmother, and that’s saying something. This is a gutsy thing you mean to do.”

“Mad, perhaps. I’ll be back to sign the bills before dawn.”

Leaving Arliss’s office, she wandered up the hallway, feeling lost, not knowing what to do now. Tomorrow morning she would walk out of here, and chances were that she wouldn’t be coming back. She wondered whether Arliss was right, whether she ought to simply spend the entire night in bed with Pen.

Kelsea.

She halted in the middle of the hallway. The voice was Lily’s, not words but a pleading grab for help. It felt as if a drowning woman were grasping at the edges of Kelsea’s mind.

Kelsea.

Lily was in trouble. Terrible trouble. Kelsea stared at the asymmetrical pattern of stones on the floor, her mind racing, moving from point to point. Lily had called, and Kelsea had heard her. In the span of history, Lily Mayhew’s life meant nothing; she was not even a footnote. Whatever was happening to her, she was long dead and buried now, but Kelsea couldn’t turn away. Yet she didn’t know how to reach Lily. They were separated by three centuries, an endless gulf. Kelsea had always thought of time as a solid wall behind her, blocking out everything that had already passed … but the world she now inhabited was greater than that.

Was it possible to create one of her fugues?

Kelsea stilled, arrested by this idea. The distance might be vast in time, but Kelsea no longer lived in pure time, did she? She had moved in and out of it for months. Could she step off the edge of one age and into another, as neatly as pre-Crossing passengers would have boarded a train? She called up the outlines of Lily’s world: the dark storm-filled horizon, much like the Tearling, threaded through with inequality and violence. A burst of fire seared through Kelsea’s chest, sending her staggering against the wall.

“Lady?”

Pen, behind her, his voice muffled as though Kelsea were swimming in deep water.

“Pen. It’s going to be a long night, I think. I need you to watch out for me when I fall.”

“Fall?”

Kelsea’s vision had blurred now. Pen was a kind shape in the torchlight. “I don’t know where I land.”

“Lady?” Pen grabbed her arm. “Is it your fugue?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll get you to your chamber.”

Kelsea allowed him to lift her along, barely even noticing. Her mind was full of Lily: Lily’s life, Lily’s fright. What had been waiting for her when she got home from Boston?

“What’s wrong?”

Elston’s booming, bearlike voice, but now Kelsea heard it from a great distance. Pen was carrying her, she realized, and she had no idea when it had happened.

“Fugue,” Pen muttered. “It came on fast. Help me get her to bed.”

“No,” Kelsea whispered. “Can’t afford to sleep the night. Just stay with me and don’t let me fall.”