The Invasion of the Tearling

“Here, Majesty!” Father Tyler announced from the far end of the hallway.

Kelsea turned and found that the wall they had just come through was lined with portraits. They ran the length of the gallery in both directions. Father Tyler had gone to the farthest portrait and rested a hand on the base of the frame, where there was an engraved wooden plaque. The portrait showed the same man Kelsea had seen in her vision: a tall, severe man with short-cropped blond hair, his face set in businesslike lines. Kelsea’s heart leapt. She had known that her visions were real, of course, but it was still an enormous relief to have empirical proof.

“William Tear,” Father Tyler announced, placing his torch in the empty bracket on the wall. The sunlight was so bright in here that there was no need of fire. “The plaque says this was painted five years after the Crossing.”

Kelsea moved closer, staring up at the first Tear King. He stood in front of a fireplace, but not the sort of grand fireplace that littered the Keep, more like that of the cottage where she had grown up. Even the artist had not been able to disguise Tear’s annoyance at having to simply stand still; his expression betrayed extreme impatience. The portrait must have been someone else’s idea. Dimly, in the background, Kelsea glimpsed a shelf full of books, but a thick layer of grime had accumulated on the surface of the portrait and she couldn’t make out any titles.

“I want a Keep servant to clean these,” she told Mace. “Surely they have plenty of time on their hands.”

Mace nodded, and Kelsea moved on to the next portrait: a young blond man barely out of his teens. He was good-looking, but even through layers of dust, Kelsea could see the worry that shrouded his eyes. She ran her fingers over the frame, looking for a plaque, and found it coated with dust as well. She polished it with her thumb, wiping her dirty hand on her skirt, and bent down to read the engraving. “Jonathan Tear.”

“Jonathan the Good,” Father Tyler murmured beside her.

On Jonathan Tear’s chest, Kelsea spotted a sapphire, one of hers, dangling on its chain. She looked quickly back to the portrait of William Tear. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry, at least not that Kelsea could see. There was a sizable space between the two portraits, William and Jonathan, wide enough that Kelsea wondered if another portrait had once hung there.

“Who was Jonathan Tear’s mother?”

Father Tyler shook his head. “That I don’t know, Majesty. William Tear had no queen; legend says he didn’t believe in marriage. But there’s no record of any doubt that Jonathan the Good was his son. The resemblance is marked.”

“What was Jonathan so worried about, do you think?”

“Perhaps he feared death, Lady,” Coryn replied behind her. “He was twenty years old when he was murdered. That portrait couldn’t have been done more than a couple years before.”

“Who murdered him?”

“No one knows, but they got through Tear’s Guard. The worst moment in our history, that—”

Coryn broke off suddenly, and she knew that he was thinking of Mhurn. Barty had said the same thing about the Tear assassination: the Guard had failed. Regretting Coryn’s discomfort, Kelsea swallowed the rest of her questions about Jonathan Tear and passed onward to the next portrait: a woman, very innocent-looking, with a beautiful head of reddish-brown hair that ran over her shoulders like a river, dropping in long streamers down her back. She smiled beatifically from the canvas. Kelsea checked the engraved plaque: “Caitlyn Tear.” Jonathan Tear’s wife. After the assassination, Caitlyn Tear had been hunted down and slaughtered. Although the woman in the portrait was long dead, beyond any harm, Kelsea’s heart wrenched. This woman looked as though she couldn’t even conceive of evil, much less endure it.

The next portrait made Kelsea suck in her breath. She would have known this man anywhere: he had stood in front of her fireplace two weeks earlier, the handsomest man in the world. He sat on the Tear throne—the elaborately carved back was unmistakable—smiling an easy politician’s smile. But his amber eyes were cold, and by an odd artist’s trick, they seemed to follow Kelsea no matter where she moved. Gingerly, she felt along the edges of the frame, but there was nothing, only an odd scarring of the wood that suggested that the plaque, if one existed, had been torn away long ago. She wondered at the handsome man’s presence in this gallery of Tear royalty, but said nothing.

“Handsome devil,” Mace remarked. “No idea who he is, though. Father?”