“All’s not lost, Lady,” Mace said unexpectedly, putting a hand on her arm. “I swear to you, you’re nothing like her.”
Kelsea gritted her teeth. “You’re right. I won’t allow this to continue.”
“Lady, the Mort Treaty is specific. There is no appeals process, no outside arbiter. If a single shipment fails to arrive in Demesne on time, the Mort Queen has the right to invade this country and wreak terror. I lived through the last Mort invasion, Lady, and I assure you, Mhurn wasn’t exaggerating the carnage. Before you take action, consider the consequences.”
Somewhere a woman had begun wailing, a high, eldritch shrieking that reminded Kelsea of a story Barty used to tell her as a child: the banshee, a terrible creature that summoned one to her death. The screams echoed over the crowd, and Kelsea finally pinpointed the source: a woman who was trying desperately to reach the first cage. Her husband was trying just as hard to drag her away, but he was heavyset and she was too quick for him, wriggling out of his grasp and pushing her way toward the enclosure. The husband buried a hand in her hair and simply yanked, pulling her from her feet. The woman went down to the ground in a pile, but a moment later she was up again, straining toward the cage.
The four soldiers on guard around the cage were visibly on edge; they watched the mother uneasily, not certain whether to get involved. Her voice was giving way, her shrieks fading to a bruised cawing like a crow’s, and her strength also appeared to be giving out. While Kelsea watched, the husband finally won the battle and got a grip on her wool dress. He pulled her away to a safe distance from the cage, and the soldiers settled back into their formerly relaxed postures.
But the mother continued to croak brokenly, the sound audible even from Kelsea’s distance. Husband and wife stood watching the cage, surrounded by several children. Kelsea’s vision was blurred, and her hands were shaking on the reins. She sensed something terrible within her, not the girl hidden in the cottage: someone on fire, burning. The sapphire branded her chest. She wondered if it was possible for her own skin to break open, revealing another person entirely.
Mace touched her shoulder gently, and she spun around to him with wild eyes. He held out his sword. “Right or wrong, Lady, I see that you mean to take action. Hold this.”
Kelsea took the hilt in her hand, liking the heft of it, though the blade was too long for her build. “What about you?”
“I have many weapons, and we have friends here. The sword is for appearance only.”
“What friends?”
Slowly and casually, Mace raised an open palm into the air, clenched it into a fist, and dropped his arm again. Kelsea waited a moment, half expecting the sky to break open. She sensed some shifting in the crowd around her, but nothing distinct. Mace, however, seemed satisfied, and turned back to her. Kelsea looked at him for a moment, this man who’d guarded her life for days now, and said, “You were right, Lazarus. I see my own death, and exalt in it. But before I go, I’m going to cut a wide swath here, wide as God’s Ocean. If you don’t want to die with me, you should leave now.”
“Lady, your mother wasn’t a good queen, but she wasn’t evil. She was a weak queen. She would never have been able to walk straight into death. A fey streak carries enormous power, but be very certain that the havoc you wreak is for your people, not against your mother’s memory. This is the difference between a queen and an angry child.”
Kelsea tried to focus on his words, the way she would have considered any problem set before her, but what popped into her mind instead were illustrations from Carlin’s history books. People of deep brown skin, an old and infamous brutality that had darkened an age. Carlin had dwelled long on this period in history, and Kelsea had wondered more than once why it should be relevant. Behind her closed eyes, she saw stories and illustrations: people in chains. Men caught fleeing and roasted alive. Girls raped at so young an age that their wombs never recovered. Children stolen out of their mothers’ arms and sold at auction. State-sponsored slavery.
In my kingdom.
Carlin had known, but she hadn’t been allowed to tell. Yet she had done her job, almost too well, for now years of extraordinary cruelty flickered through Kelsea’s mind in less than a second. “I will end this.”
“You’re certain?” Mace asked.
“I’m certain.”
“Then I vow to guard you against death.”
Kelsea blinked. “You do?”
Mace nodded, resolve clear in his weathered face. “You have possibility in you, Lady. Carroll and I could both sense it. I have nothing to lose, and I would rather die attempting to eradicate a great evil, for I sense that’s Your Majesty’s purpose.”
Majesty. The word seemed to ripple through her. “I haven’t been crowned, Lazarus.”
“No matter, Lady. I see the queenship in you, and I never saw it in your mother, not one day of her life.”
Kelsea looked away, moved to fresh tears. She had won a guard. Only one, but he was the most important. She wiped her leaking eyes and tightened her grip on the sword. “If I shout, will they hear me?”
“Let me do the shouting, Lady, since you don’t have a proper herald yet. You’ll have their full attention in a moment. Keep your hand on that sword, and don’t move any closer to the Keep. I see no archers, but they may be there, all the same.”
Kelsea nodded firmly, though inwardly she groaned. She was a mess. The simple, clean gown that the Fetch had given her was now streaked with mud, the hem of her pants torn. Pen’s armor was twice as heavy as it had been that morning. Her long, unwashed hair fell from its pins to dangle in dark brown clumps around her face, and sweat poured down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She remembered her childhood dream of entering the city on a white pony with a crown on her head. Today she looked nothing like a queen.
The mother in front of the children’s cage had begun weeping again, oblivious to the small children who looked fearfully up at her. Kelsea cursed herself. Who cares about your hair, you fool? Look what’s been done here.
“What are those cages made of, Lazarus?”
“Mort iron.”
“But the wheels and undercarriage are wood.”
“Tearling oak, Lady. What are you getting at?”
Staring down at the table full of blue-clad officials in front of the Keep, Kelsea took a deep breath. This was her last moment to be anonymous. Everything was about to change. “The cages. After we empty them, we’re going to set them on fire.”
Javel was fighting sleep. Guarding the Keep Gate was not a challenging job. It had been at least eighteen months since anyone had tried to rush the gate, and that attempt had been halfhearted, a drunk who stumbled up at two in the morning with a grievance over his taxes. Nothing had happened, and nothing was going to happen. That was the life of a Gate Guard.
Besides being sleepy, Javel was miserable. He had never enjoyed his job, but he positively loathed it during the shipment. The crowd as a whole didn’t present a security problem; they stood around like cows waiting for the slaughter. But there was always some incident at the children’s cages, which were closest to the gate, and today was no exception. Javel had breathed a sigh of relief when they finally got the woman quieted down. There was always a parent like that, usually a mother, and only Keller, true dyed-in-the-wool sadist that he was, enjoyed hearing a woman scream. For the rest of the Gate Guard, the shipment was bad duty. Even if another guard was willing to trade, it took two regular shifts to balance it out.
The second problem was that the shipment brought two troops of the Tear army onto the Keep Lawn. The army thought Gate Guard was a soft option, a refuge for those who weren’t skilled enough or brave enough to be soldiers. It wasn’t always true; across the drawbridge, directly in front of Javel, stood Vil, who’d received two commendations from Queen Elyssa after the Mort invasion and been rewarded with command of the gate. But they weren’t all Vil, and the Tear army never let them forget it. Even now, when Javel cut his eyes to the left, he could see two of the soldiers snickering, and he was certain they were laughing at him.
The worst thing about the shipment was that it reminded him of Allie. Most of the time he didn’t think about Allie, and when he did start to think of her, he could find the nearest bottle of whiskey and put an end to that. But he couldn’t drink on duty; even if Vil wasn’t on watch, the other guards wouldn’t tolerate it. There wasn’t much loyalty in the Gate Guard, but there was plenty of solidarity, a solidarity based on the understanding that none of them was perfect. They all looked the other way for Ethan’s incessant gambling, Marco’s illiteracy, and even Keller’s habit of roughing up the whores down in the Gut. But none of those problems impaired their job performance. If Javel wanted to drink, he had to wait until he was off duty.
Fortunately, the sun was beginning to set and the cages were almost full. The priest from the Arvath had risen from his place at the table, and now he stood beside the first cage, his white robes rippling in the late-afternoon wind. Javel didn’t recognize this official, a great, thick fellow with jowls that hung down almost to his neck. Piety was good, so the saying went, but it was especially good with everything else. Javel loathed the sight of the priest, this man who never had to face the lottery. Perhaps he had even joined God’s Church for that reason; many men did. Javel remembered the day the Regent had granted the Church exemption; there had been an outcry. The lottery was an indiscriminate predator; it took everyone it could get its hands on. It was indiscriminate, but it was fair, and God’s Church only took men. Yes, there had been an outcry, but like all outcries, it soon quieted.
Javel fidgeted with his sleeves, wishing the time would pass faster. It couldn’t be long now. The priest would bless the shipment, Thorne would give the signal, and then the cages would begin to roll. It was technically the Gate Guard’s job to disperse the crowd, but Javel knew this routine as well: the crowd would disperse itself, following the shipment when it left the lawn. Most of the families would go at least as far as the New London Bridge, but eventually they would give up. Javel closed his eyes, feeling a sudden pain behind his ribs. When Allie’s name had been pulled from the lot, they had talked about fleeing, and at some point they’d almost done it. But Javel had been young and a Gate Guard, and in the end he had convinced Allie that it was their duty to stay. Javel believed in the lottery, in loyalty to the Raleigh house, in the sacrifices that needed to be made for a larger peace. If his name had been pulled from the lot instead, he would have gone without question. Everything had seemed so clear then, and it was only when he saw Allie in the cage that his certainty crumbled. He thought longingly of the burn in his throat, the way it would hit his stomach like an anchor, setting everything in its place. Whiskey always put Allie back in the past, where she belonged.
“People of the Tearling!”
The man’s voice, sonorous and powerful, rolled down the slope and across the lawn before reverberating against the walls of the Keep. The crowd hushed. Gate Guards weren’t supposed to have their eyes anywhere but the bridge, but all of them, Javel included, turned to peer toward the top of the lawn.
“The Mace is back,” Martin murmured.
He was right. The figure at the top of the slope was unmistakably Lazarus of the Mace: tall, broad, and terrifying. Whenever he passed by Javel on the gate, Javel did his best to be as invisible as possible. He was always afraid that those deep, calculating eyes might linger on him, and Javel didn’t want to be even a speck in the smallest corner of the Mace’s mind.
Beside the Mace was a smaller figure, cloaked and hooded in purple. Probably Pen Alcott. Queen’s Guards were usually tall and well built, but they’d taken Alcott despite his slim build; he was reputed to be very good with a sword. But then Alcott pushed back his hood, and Javel saw that it was a woman, a plain woman with long, tangled dark hair.
“I am Lazarus of the Queen’s Guard!” the Mace’s voice boomed again. “Welcome Queen Kelsea of the Tearling!”
Javel’s jaw dropped. He’d heard rumors that the Regent had intensified the search in recent months, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Songs about the girl’s return sometimes went around, but Javel dismissed these. After all, musicians had to write about something, and the Regent’s enemies liked to keep people’s hopes alive. But there wasn’t even any proof that the princess had ever escaped the city. Most of New London, including Javel, assumed that she was long dead.
“All of them,” Martin muttered. “Look!”
Craning his neck, Javel saw that a group of grey-cloaked figures had formed a ring around the woman, and as they pushed back their own hoods, Javel recognized Galen and Dyer, then Elston and Kibb, Mhurn and Coryn. It was the remainder of the old Queen’s Guard. Even Pen Alcott was there, just in front of the woman with his sword drawn, wearing a green cloak. According to rumor, the Regent had tried to kick them all out of the Keep several times by stopping their salaries or assigning them to other duties. But he never managed to get rid of them for more than a few months or so, and they always came back. Carroll and the Mace held plenty of clout with the Tear nobles, but the real problem was deeper: no one feared the Regent, at least not the way they feared the Mace.