Kelsea stared at the woman’s husband, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He watched the proceedings balefully, a tall dark-haired man with an unkempt beard and broad arms that revealed him to be a laborer of some kind. His black eyes were narrowed in a pouty way that was easy to read: he didn’t like to be cut out of decisions. Kelsea returned her gaze to his wife, whose eyes darted between her husband and the group of children around her. She was very thin, with arms like twigs; blackened marks on her forearm revealed where her husband had hauled her away from the cage. Then Kelsea spotted more bruises: one high up on her cheek and a large dark smudge on her collarbone when her daughter pulled at the neck of her dress.
“Christ, Lazarus, your eyes are sharp. I have a mind to take her with us either way.”
“I think she’ll come on her own, Lady. Watch and wait.”
Pen and one of the new guards had already maneuvered themselves between the burly black-eyed man and his wife. They were very quick, very competent, and despite the danger all around her, Kelsea felt almost hopeful . . . perhaps she would survive. Then the hope collapsed, and she was merely exhausted again. She waited a few more moments before announcing, “We’ll enter the Keep now. Those who wish to accompany me are welcome.”
Kelsea watched the madwoman out of the corner of her eye as the company began to ride down the slope. The woman pulled her children close to her, gathering them until they surrounded her like a broad skirt. Then she nodded, murmuring some kind of encouragement, and the entire group began to move down the lawn. The husband leaped forward with an incoherent yell, but halted at the point of Pen’s sword. Kelsea jerked her horse to a stop.
“Keep riding, Lady. They’ll control him.”
“Can I take children from their father, Lazarus?”
“You can do whatever you like, Lady. You’re the Queen.”
“What will we do with all these children?”
“Children are good, Lady. They make women predictable. Now keep your head down.”
Kelsea turned to face the Keep. Although she found it difficult to let her guards handle everything behind her—she heard raised voices arguing and the muted sounds of a scuffle—she knew that Mace was right: interference would show a lack of faith in her Guard. She rode on, keeping her gaze resolutely forward, even when a woman’s voice rose in a shriek.
As they approached the cages, Kelsea saw that a crowd fanned in an outer ring beyond her guards. The people had pressed so close that some of them were lined up against the horses’ flanks. All of them seemed to be speaking to her, but she could understand none of their words.
“Archers!” Mace barked. “Eyes on the battlements!”
Two of her guard produced bows and nocked arrows. One of them was very young and fair; Kelsea thought he might be even younger than she. His face was white with anxiety, his jaw clenched in concentration as he stared up at the Keep. Kelsea wanted to say something reassuring, but then Mace repeated, “On the battlements, dammit!” and she clamped her mouth shut.
When they drew level with the cages, Mace grabbed hold of Rake’s bridle and brought the horse to a sudden stop. He signaled to Kibb, who presented a flaming torch. Mace offered it to Kelsea. “The first page in your history, Lady. Make it good.”
She hesitated, then took the torch and rode toward the nearest cage. The crowd and her guards shifted like a single great organism to allow her access. Mace had sent Elston and Kibb ahead to the cages with a bucket of oil; hopefully they’d done it properly, or she was about to look extremely stupid. She took a good grip on the torch, but before she could throw it, her eye happened on one of the two cages built for children. The fire inside her chest reignited, spreading heat across her skin.
Everything I’ve done so far can be undone. But if I do this, there’s no going back. If the shipment did not come, the Red Queen would invade. Kelsea thought of Mhurn, her handsome blond guard, of his tale about the last Mort invasion. Thousands had suffered and died. But here in front of her was a cage built especially for the young, the helpless, built to carry them hundreds of miles from home so that they could be worked, raped, starved. Kelsea closed her eyes and saw her mother, the woman she had pictured throughout her childhood, the white queen on the horse. But the vision had already darkened. The people who cheered the Queen were scarecrows, gaunt with long starvation. The wreath of flowers on her head had withered. Her horse’s mouth was rotting away with disease. And the woman herself . . . a crawling, servile thing, her skin white as a corpse and yet bathed in shadow. A collaborator. Kelsea blinked the image away, but it had already propelled her onward to the next step. Barty’s story of Death recurred in her head; it had never really left her since that night beside the campfire. Barty was right; it was better to die clean. She reared back and flung the torch at the children’s cage.
The movement pulled the wound in her neck wide open, but she stifled a cry as the crowd roared and the undercarriage ignited. Kelsea had never seen fire so hungry; flames spread over the floor of the cage and then began, improbably, to climb the iron bars. A burst of heat blew across the lawn, scattering the few people who had ventured too close to the cage. It was like being in front of a lit oven.
The crowd surged toward the fire, shrieking curses. Even the children were screaming, infected with their parents’ hysteria, their eyes lit red. Watching the flames, Kelsea felt the wild thing inside her chest fold its wings and disappear, and was both relieved and disappointed. The sensation had been like having a stranger inside, a stranger who somehow knew everything about her.
“Cae!” Mace called over his shoulder.
“Sir?”
“Make sure the rest burn.”
At Mace’s signal, they rode on, leaving the cages behind. When they reached the drawbridge, the stink of the moat hit Kelsea’s nostrils: a rank smell, like rotting vegetables. The water was a deep, dark green, and a layer of nearly opaque slime had gelled on the surface. The fetid smell grew stronger the farther they progressed across the bridge.
“Is the water not drained?”
“No questions now, Lady, forgive me.” Mace’s eyes were darting everywhere, over the Keep’s surface and into the darkness ahead, across the moat to the far side, lingering on the guards who lined either side of the bridge. These guards made no move to stop the procession, and several of them even bowed as Kelsea went by. But when the crowd tried to follow her into the Keep, the men grudgingly moved into action, blocking off the bridge and herding people back to the far bank.
Ahead, the Keep Gate was a dark hole with vague flickers of torchlight inside. Kelsea shut her eyes and opened them again, an action that seemed to take all of her strength. Her uncle was waiting inside, but she didn’t know how she could stand in front of him now. Her bloodline, once a secret source of pride, now seemed little more than a cesspool. Her uncle was filth, and her mother . . . it was like sliding down the face of a precipice from which all handholds had vanished.
“I can’t face my uncle tonight, Lazarus. I’m too tired. Can we delay?”
“If Her Majesty will only be quiet.”
Kelsea laughed, surprising herself, as they passed through the grim archway of the Keep Gate.
Two hundred feet away, the Fetch watched the girl and her entourage cross the bridge, a small smile playing on his lips. It had been a clever thing, taking the women from the crowd, and all but one of them had followed her into the Keep. Who was the father? The girl displayed a prickly intelligence that could never have come from Elyssa. Poor Elyssa, who had needed most of her brains to decide which dress to wear in the morning. The girl was worth ten of her.
Beside the moat, the children’s cage flamed, a towering pyre in the dusk. One of the Queen’s Guard had been left behind to fire the rest of the cages, but the people (and several soldiers) were far ahead of him. One by one, each cage went up in a gust of flame. People shouted for the Queen, and the air remained thick with the sound of weeping.
The Fetch shook his head in admiration. “Bravo, Tear Queen.”
The Census table looked like an anthill that some cruel child had stirred with a stick. Officials hurried back and forth, their movements frenzied by panic; they’d quickly grasped the consequences of this day. Arlen Thorne had disappeared. He would be out for the girl’s blood, and he was a much cannier adversary than her idiot uncle. The Fetch frowned, deliberating for a moment before speaking over his shoulder. “Alain.”
“Sir?”
“Something is already brewing in Thorne’s mind. Go find out what it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lear spurred his horse forward until he was abreast of the Fetch. Lear was in a bad mood, and no wonder. When they went about undisguised, it was Lear’s black skin that caught the world’s attention. He loved to have people stare at him, riveted, while he spun his tales, but he hated to be an object of curiosity.
“Thorne may not accept him,” Lear muttered. “And even if he does, Alain’s anonymity will be compromised forever. Is the girl really worth it?”
“Don’t underestimate her, Lear. I certainly don’t.”
“Can we dispatch the Regent?” Morgan asked.
“The Regent is mine, and unless I’ve misjudged the girl, I’ll have him shortly. Luck to you, Alain.”
Alain turned his horse without a word and rode back into the city. As he disappeared into the crowd, the Fetch closed his eyes and bowed his head.
So much now depends on one young girl, he thought grimly. God plays at hazard with us.