The Invasion of the Tearling

—The Glynn Queen’s Words, AS COMPILED BY FATHER TYLER

THE CADARESE AMBASSADOR, Ajmal Kattan, was a charmer: tall, sharp-witted, and handsome, with almond-colored skin and a blinding white smile. Kelsea liked him immediately, despite Mace’s warning that this was exactly the sort of ambassador the King of Cadare always sent to women: smooth and plausible and seductive. Kattan’s Tear was imperfect, but even his accent was engaging, riddled with pauses before long words and a sharp drop on the penultimate vowel. He had brought Kelsea a beautiful chess set carved from marble, kings and rooks and bishops with intricately detailed faces, and she accepted the gift happily. After their return from the Argive, she had sent several Keep servants to clean out Carlin and Barty’s cottage, and among assorted other things, they had brought back Carlin’s old chess set. Both Arliss and Mace were good players; Arliss could beat Kelsea two times of three. But Carlin’s set was old, whittled—by Barty, no doubt—of plain wood and beginning to show its wear. It had great sentimental value to Kelsea, but the new set would be more durable for play.

Mace had warned Kelsea that the Cadarese placed great value on appearances, and as such, she had not wanted to conduct this meeting in the large central room of the Queen’s Wing that usually served for such functions. At her urging, Mace had finally relented and moved the throne back down to the massive audience chamber several floors below. When not filled with people, the chamber felt ridiculously cavernous, so they had also thrown this audience open to the public. Tear nobles had more or less stopped attending Kelsea’s audiences once they realized that no gifts would be dispensed from the throne, and Mace and Kelsea had decided on a simple, fair system: the first five hundred people who came to the Keep Gate could attend the audience, so long as they submitted to a search for weapons. Kelsea had found that clothing was a fairly reliable index of wealth; some of the people who stood in front of her were clearly of the entrepreneurial class, probably dealing in lumber if not something less legal. But the majority of the audience was poor, and Kelsea had the regrettable thought that most of them had come here for entertainment. Her first few public audiences had featured quite a bit of talk and some occasional catcalling from the crowd, but Mace had taken care of that, announcing that anyone who captured his attention could look forward to a private conference. Now Kelsea barely heard a peep.

“My master begs that you will honor him with a visit,” the ambassador said.

“Perhaps one day,” Kelsea replied, seeing Mace frown. “At the moment, I have too much to do.”

“Indeed you have the full plate. You have provoked the Ageless Queen. My master admires your bravery.”

“Has your master never provoked her?”

“No. His father did, and received a painful reminder. Now we pay twice as much in glass and horses.”

“Perhaps that’s the difference. We were paying in humans.” A moment later Kelsea remembered that the Cadarese also sent slaves to Mortmesne, but the ambassador did not seem to take offense.

“Yes, we’ve heard this as well. You forbid human traffic within your borders. My master is greatly entertained.”