The Invasion of the Tearling

Glee climbed into Andalie’s arms. Andalie sat down on one of the sofas and began to rock the girl, who appeared to already be falling asleep.

“Pen. Leave us alone, and make sure we’re not disturbed.”

Pen left, shutting the door behind him.

“I apologize, Majesty,” Andalie murmured quietly. “My Glee is not like my others. I can have both eyes on her, and a moment later she’s gone.”

Kelsea paused for a moment. “Does she have your sight, Andalie?”

“Yes. She is too young to control it. I have been trying to train her, but it is difficult to find time alone, so that my other children will not be jealous. Glee still doesn’t know how to differentiate between what should be said and what should be kept to herself.”

“I’m sure she’ll learn.”

“She will, but the sooner the better. A child like Glee makes a valuable prize.”

“She’s safe from me, Andalie.”

“I am not thinking of you, Majesty.” Andalie continued to rock her daughter, her gaze thoughtful. “Even before my Glee was to go in the shipment, her father had already begun planning a way to use her. His spoken thoughts went no further than dragging her to the dogfights for his own benefit, but I saw the possibility of sale in his mind. He may have told others about Glee.”

“I see.” As always, Kelsea had to fight a morbid curiosity about Andalie’s marriage. “Was it equally hard for you, as a child?”

“Even worse, Lady, for I had no one to guide me through it. My mother sent me away for fostering when I was newly born.”

Like me, Kelsea thought, surprised. Andalie and her children were so tightly knit that Kelsea had never imagined Andalie raised in anything but a close family.

“For a long time, my foster parents thought I was merely mad. They treat these things with great suspicion in Mortmesne.”

“Despite the Red Queen?”

“Perhaps because of her, Lady. The Mort are a science-minded people. They hate what the Red Queen can do, yes, but she is too powerful for them to hate the woman herself. Ordinary Mort quickly learn to hide such gifts.”

“Lazarus tells me—though it’s only a rumor in the Palais—that the Red Queen’s laboratories have been working on the sight. They wish to find out if it’s genetic.”

Andalie smiled, her expression brittle. “Trust me, Lady, it is. My mother was one of the most powerful seers of our age. My gifts are only a shadow of hers. And I am terribly afraid, Majesty, that Glee is more my mother than me. It will make the world very dangerous for her.”

“In what way?”

Andalie considered her thoughtfully for a moment. “We have trust, Lady, you and I?”

“I trust you with my life, Andalie.”

“Then I will tell you a story. I cannot speak to the truth of the entire story, you understand, for some of it is Mort legend, but instructive nonetheless. There is a woman, a plain wife, who lives on the edge of the Foret Evanoui. Her life is uneventful. She has grown bored with her husband, a miner. She does not like keeping house. She has nothing to occupy her mind, until one day a fortune-teller comes to the village. He is handsome, this fortune-teller, and he does parlor tricks: reads palms, offers charms, even carries an ancient crystal ball. But his tricks are very good, and he is no stranger to bored wives in small towns. The woman is enchanted, and enchantment makes her foolish. Nine months later, the fortune-teller is long gone, but a child is born, a child as different from the woman’s other children as can be. This child can predict the weather, knows when visitors approach the village. Useful information for a community, certainly, but the child’s gifts reach even further. She can see not only the future but the past and present, the truth of things. She knows when people are lying. She is a boon to her tiny mining village, and the village prospers, far out of proportion to others in the surrounding countryside.

“And yet the villagers are extremely foolish. They talk freely about the child. They praise her to the skies. They brag about her in Cite Marche, not thinking of the fact that their country has a new queen now, a queen who believes that she has a right to anything she can grab. And one day, inevitably, soldiers come to the village and take the girl away. She is a commodity, you see, just as valuable as a good assassin or spymaster. More valuable, even, for her gifts only sharpen as she reaches adolescence. She lives a gilded life in Demesne, but still she is a prisoner, destined to sit at the right hand of the Queen until she dies.”