The Invasion of the Tearling

“Take me to her, General, and I will stop.”


All of the blood had drained from Ducarte’s face now. He looked up and over the hillside behind him, his gaze frustrated, at the battering rams that stood ready. Kelsea saw the tenor of Ducarte’s thoughts now, his ambitions, and she had to stomp down her anger, to leash it as one would a dog.

“Take me to her now, General, or I swear to you, you will not be able to enjoy your siege. You will no longer be equipped to do so.”

Ducarte swore, then turned and began tromping back up the hill. Kelsea followed, surrounded by six of Ducarte’s men, a group that had the feeling of a guard. This gave Kelsea pause: did Ducarte really need a guard in his own encampment? He was not a man who inspired loyalty, but it seemed extraordinary that he could be that hated. Even this picked guard, Kelsea noticed, made sure to steer well clear of her, traveling perhaps twenty feet out to the side.

They topped the hill, and Kelsea halted briefly, stunned by what she saw. Looking down at the Mort camp from the walls of New London was a very different proposition from seeing it up close. Black tents seemed to stretch for miles into the distance, and Kelsea’s first thought was to wonder how they kept from overheating when the sun was up. Then she noticed the sheer, almost reflective nature of the fabric, and her earlier anger recurred. Always, Mortmesne had something new.

As they entered the camp, the six men tightened up around her, and Kelsea saw the reason soon enough. The path they were traversing passed between many tents, and the men lining either side looked at her like hungry dogs. Kelsea tried to prepare for violence, but didn’t know what good it would do. The invisible wall she had sensed the other day was still there, protecting the camp; did the woman never sleep? As they moved farther toward the center, whispering became hissing, and the hissing gradually resolved itself into discrete comments that Kelsea wished she could unhear.

“Tear bitch!”

“When our lady is done with you, I’ll use you until you break!”

Ducarte made no sign that he had heard them. Kelsea straightened her shoulders and stared straight ahead, trying to remind herself that she had been threatened before, that people had been trying to kill her all of her life. But this, the hostility and bile raining down from all sides, some in Mort and some in broken Tear, this was very different, and Kelsea was afraid.

“She’ll make you beg for death!”

So much hate … where does it come from? Kelsea wanted to weep, not for herself but for the waste, the thought of how many extraordinary things could have been accomplished in the new world. She could not close her ears to them, so she searched for Lily and found her, just beneath the surface, staring up at the night sky, the white sails in the moonlight. But the sails were billowing now, as though stirred by a strong wind.

I missed it, Kelsea realized sadly. She had missed the launch. But Lily had made it. Lily was on board one of the ships. Grief threatened to overwhelm Kelsea, but she battled it, thinking of William Tear, of the main prize.

They turned another corner, and now Kelsea glimpsed a hint of scarlet through the mass of black. The Red Queen … soon Kelsea would stand in front her, face-to-face. In all the long, blurred night past, this was the one thing she had avoided thinking about. A piece of discarded metal caught her left foot, and Kelsea nearly fell in the mud, landing heavily on her ankle. The jeering of the men seemed to double in volume. Her body was exhausted from more than a day without sleep, and it was beginning to show. But her mind … her mind felt bright and sharp, sure of its course, if she could only hold herself together a bit longer. The crimson tent loomed ahead, and Kelsea was frightened, but there was relief as well, a sense that her approaching fate was now so final that it could not be averted.

She was nearly done.

THE QUEEN WAS nervous. She didn’t know why; all things were proceeding better than she could have devised. The girl was coming—actually delivering herself!—when the Queen had thought that they would have to fight tooth and nail to get into the Keep. She was wearing both jewels; Ducarte’s runner had been very definite on that point. This development simplified matters enormously, but the Queen didn’t trust it, for it seemed too easy. She had not seen the Tear sapphires in more than a century, and even as a child, she had never been able to study them as she would have liked. Elaine never took the Heir’s Necklace off, and the Queen’s mother had never let her close enough. The sapphires would be the last piece of the puzzle, the Queen was sure of it, but all the same her heartbeat was up and her left leg twitched madly, tapping and tapping beneath her skirts.