The Invasion of the Tearling

Arla the Just sat on the Tear throne, no child in sight, both sapphires around her neck and the Tear crown on her head. Fascinated, Kelsea stared at the crown, a single, elegant circle of silver, set with perhaps four or five sapphires. She tapped her finger against the canvas. “Any luck on finding that thing, Lazarus?”


“None yet, Lady.”

Kelsea nodded, disappointed but not surprised, and turned back to the portrait. Queen Arla had not been particularly pretty, but she possessed a magnetic quality that shone clearly through the canvas. She was much older than the other Raleigh women, and Kelsea remembered then that Queen Elaine had lived long, that her daughter had not been crowned until she was nearing her own middle age. Arla had been an autocrat, and the portrait showed her as such, reflected a clear determination to have her own way. Her smile was so contented that it was nearly smug, radiating pride to the point of arrogance. But pride had gotten Arla in trouble in the long run.

Barbarians at the walls, Kelsea’s mind whispered, and she provoked them, just like you.

She shook the thought off, moved quickly to the next portrait, and found herself staring up at her mother.

Queen Elyssa did not look at all the way Kelsea had imagined. There had been long days in the cottage, lonely days when Carlin had been angry with her, when Kelsea would console herself by picturing the phantom woman who had borne her: a delicate, willowy woman, like something out of a Grimm tale. But the Elyssa in the portrait didn’t look frail at all; she was tall, taller than Kelsea, and she radiated health and substance, a striking blonde woman with sparkling green eyes. She stood beside a plain, unadorned table, but she was grinning, the carefree grin of a woman with nothing in the world to worry about. Kelsea, who had almost been pleased with this version of her mother, found herself latching on to that grin. Even if the portrait had been painted immediately after Elyssa took the throne, the Mort would already be tearing their way through the Tear countryside. The Mort Treaty, the lottery, these things couldn’t be far away, and the utter carelessness of her mother’s expression sharpened Kelsea’s resolve, her determination that no one would suffer for her mistakes.

“Lady,” Mace murmured.

“What?”

“It does no good to dwell on the past. The future, now … that’s everything.”

Kelsea was annoyed that Mace had read her so easily. But she saw no judgment in his face, only his own brand of hard truth, and after a moment she relaxed, shrugging. “And yet sometimes the answer to the future lies in the past, Lazarus.”

Mace turned and barked, “Spread out, all of you!”

Kelsea’s guards moved away, to all ends of the room. Kelsea stared at Mace, bewildered, but he only moved closer and murmured, “Is that where you go at night, Lady, on your wanderings? The past?”

Kelsea swallowed, though something seemed to catch in her throat. “What makes you think I go anywhere?”

“Pen missed it, that night last week. He was on the library door. But I was right next to you, Lady. You said, ‘There’s a better world out there. So close we can almost touch it.’ I know those words; there was a song about them in the village where I grew up. A song of the Crossing.”

“I was sleepwalking.”

Mace chuckled. “You’re no more a sleepwalker than Andalie’s little one, Lady. I found her in Arliss’s office the other night. When Arliss is gone, that office is always locked. But Glee got in there, all the same.”

“What’s your point, Lazarus?”

“That night, for a minute, just before you came out of your fugue, you seemed to … fade.”

“Fade?” The word chilled Kelsea, but she produced a halfhearted snicker.

“Laugh if you like, Lady, but I did see it.” Mace leaned in even closer now, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Do you ever consider, Lady, that it might be better to simply take them off and throw them away?”

Kelsea reached up automatically, taking her jewels in a clenched fist. She didn’t know whether they even functioned any longer, or whether something else was working on her now. But everything in her rebelled at the idea of taking them off.

Mace shook his head and then gave her a pained grin. “Well, it was worth a try.”

“Look here, Lady!” Coryn announced, pointing to the next portrait.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Kelsea breathed. Her uncle’s face beamed down at her from the wall: younger than the man she had met, but unmistakably Thomas Raleigh. He carried less weight, and his nose didn’t quite have the alcoholic shade of red that it would attain later, but the air of entitlement, the sense of being God’s gift to the earth, these things emanated from the canvas in nearly visible waves.

“Take that nonsense down!” Kelsea snapped. “He’s not a Tear monarch, he never was. Get rid of it.”

“I’ll take care of it, Lady,” Mace replied. “I had no idea he’d put up a portrait. I haven’t been down here in years.”

“Doesn’t anyone use this gallery?”