“I won’t wear it.”
Mace stared at her stonily. “You’re not a child. Stop behaving like one.”
“Or what?”
“Or I bring several more guards in here and they hold you down while I strap this armor on you forcibly. Is that really what you want?”
Kelsea knew he was right. She didn’t know why she kept arguing. She was acting like a child; she remembered similar fights with Carlin over cleaning her room in the cottage. “I don’t do well being ordered around, Lazarus. I never have.”
“You don’t say.” Mace shook the armor again, his expression implacable. “Hold out your arms.”
Kelsea did, grimacing. “I need my own armor, and soon. A silly queen I’ll look when I’ve been slowly flattened into a man.”
Mace grinned. “You wouldn’t be the first queen of this kingdom to be mistaken for a king.”
“God granted me a small enough helping of femininity. I’d like to keep what I have.”
“Later, Lady, I’ll introduce you to Venner and Fell, your arms masters. Women’s armor is an odd order, but I’m sure they can fill it. They’re good at their jobs. Until then, any time we leave the Queen’s Wing, you wear Pen’s armor.”
“Wonderful.” Kelsea sucked in a breath as he tightened a strap around her arm. “It doesn’t even cover my back.”
“I cover your back.”
“How many people are in the Queen’s Wing?”
“Twenty-four all told, Lady: thirteen Queen’s Guards, three women, and their seven children. And of course, your own helpful self.”
“Piss off,” Kelsea muttered. She’d heard the phrase during the Fetch’s poker game, and it seemed to fit her mood perfectly, though she wasn’t sure she’d used it right. “How big can we grow in here?”
“Considerably bigger, and we will,” Mace replied. “Three of the guards have families in a safe house. As soon as we’re settled, I’ll send them one at a time to bring back their kin.”
Kelsea turned away and found herself staring at her mother’s bookshelves again. They bothered her more every moment. Bookshelves weren’t meant to be empty. “Is there a library in the city?”
“A what?”
“A library. A public library.”
Mace looked up at her, incredulous. “Books?”
“Books.”
“Lady,” Mace said, in the slow, patient tones one would use with a young child, “there hasn’t been a working printing press in this kingdom since the Landing era.”
“I know,” Kelsea snapped. “That’s not what I asked. I asked if there was a library.”
“Books are hard to come by, Lady. A curiosity at best. Who would have enough books for a library?”
“Nobles. Surely some of them still have some hoarded books.”
Mace shrugged. “Never heard of such a thing. But even if they did, they wouldn’t open them to the public.”
“Why not?”
“Lady, try to take away even the most resilient weed in a nobleman’s garden, and watch him scream trespass. I’m sure most of them don’t read any books they might have, but all the same, they would never give them away.”
“Can we buy books on the black market?”
“We could, Lady, if anyone valued them enough. But books aren’t contraband. The black market deals in vice for value. The Tear market has high-value weapons from Mortmesne, some sex traffic, rare animals, drugs . . .”
Kelsea wasn’t interested in the workings of the black market; in every society, they were always the same. She let Mace keep going while she stared despondently at the empty bookshelves, thinking of Carlin’s library: three long walls full of leather-bound volumes, nonfiction on the left and fiction on the right. There was a certain patch of sunlight that came through the front window and remained until early afternoon, and Kelsea had liked to curl up in this patch every Sunday morning to read. One Christmas, when she was eight or nine, she had come downstairs and found Barty’s present: a large built-in chair constructed squarely in the patch of sunlight, a chair with deep pillows and “Kelsea’s Patch” carved into the left arm. The happy memory of collapsing into that chair was so strong that Kelsea could actually smell cinnamon bread baking in the kitchen and hear the grackles around the cottage working their way into their usual morning frenzy.
Barty, she thought, and felt tears well in her eyes. It seemed very important that Mace not see; she widened her eyes to keep the tears from falling and stared resolutely at the empty bookshelves, thinking hard. How had Carlin acquired all of her books? Paper books had been at a premium long before the Crossing; the transition to electronic books had decimated the publishing industry, and in the last two decades before the Crossing, many printed books had been destroyed altogether. According to Carlin, William Tear had only allowed his utopians to bring ten books apiece. Two thousand people with ten books each made twenty thousand books, and at least two thousand now stood on Carlin’s shelves. Kelsea had spent her entire life with Carlin’s library at her fingertips, taking it for granted, never understanding that it was invaluable in a world without books. Vandals might find the cottage, or even children searching for firewood. That was what had happened to most of the books that originally came over in the British-American Crossing: the desperate had burned them for fuel or warmth. Kelsea had always thought of Carlin’s library as a set piece, unified and immovable, but it wasn’t. Books could be moved.
“I want all of the books from Barty and Carlin’s cottage brought here.”
Mace rolled his eyes. “No.”
“It might take a week, perhaps two if it rains.”
He finished buckling the heavy piece of steel to her forearm. “The Caden likely burned that cottage down days ago. You have a limited number of loyal people, Lady; do you really want to throw them away on a fool’s errand like this?”
“Books may have been a fool’s errand in my mother’s kingdom, Lazarus, but they won’t be in mine. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you’re young and likely to overreach, Lady. You can’t do all things at once. Power dispersed has a way of scattering altogether in the wind.”
Unable to debate that point, Kelsea turned back to the mirror. Thinking of the cottage had reminded her of something Barty had said, one week and a lifetime ago. “Where does my food come from?”
“The food’s secure, Lady. Carroll didn’t trust the Keep kitchens, and he had a kitchen specially constructed out there.” Mace gestured toward the door. “One of the women we brought in is a tiny thing named Milla. She made breakfast for everyone this morning.”
“It was good,” Kelsea remarked. It had been good . . . griddle cakes and mixed fruit in some sort of cream, and Kelsea had eaten for at least two.
“Milla’s already staked out the kitchen as her province, and she means business; I hardly dare go in there without her permission.”
“Where do we get the actual food from?”
“Don’t worry. It’s secure.”
“Do the women seem scared?”
Mace shook his head. “Mildly concerned about their children, perhaps. One of the babies has some sort of retching sickness; I already sent for a doctor.”
“A doctor?” Kelsea asked, surprised.
“I know of two Mort doctors operating in the city. One we’ve used before; he’s greedy but not dishonest.”
“Why only two?”
“The city won’t support more. It’s rare that a Mort doctor emigrates, and the rates they charge are so exorbitant that few can afford them.”
“What about in Bolton? Or Lewiston?”
“Bolton has one doctor that I know of. I don’t think Lewiston has any at all.”
“Is there a way to tempt more doctors from Mortmesne?”
“Doubtful, Lady. The Red Queen discourages defection, but some still make the attempt. But professionals have a comfortable life in Mortmesne. Only the very greedy come to the Tear.”
“Only two doctors,” Kelsea repeated, shaking her head. “There’s a lot to do, isn’t there? I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start by getting the crown on your head.” Mace tightened a final strap on her arm and stepped back. “We’re done. Let’s go.”
Kelsea took a deep breath and followed him out the door. They emerged into a large room, perhaps two hundred feet from end to end, with a high ceiling like her mother’s chamber. The floor and walls were blocks of the same grey stone as the exterior of the Keep. There were no windows; the only light came from torches mounted in brackets on the walls. The left wall of the chamber was interrupted by a door-filled hallway that stretched for perhaps fifty yards and ended in another door.
“Quarters, Lady,” Mace murmured beside her.
On her right, the wall opened into what was clearly a kitchen; Kelsea could hear the clang of pans being washed. Carroll’s idea, Mace had said, and it was a good one; according to Barty, the Keep kitchens, some ten floors below, had over thirty staff and multiple entrances and exits. There was no way to secure them.
“Do you think Carroll is dead?”
“Yes,” Mace replied, his face crossed by a momentary shadow. “He always said that he’d die bringing you back, and I never believed him.”
“His wife and children. I made a promise in that clearing.”
“Worry later, Lady.” Mace turned and began to bark orders at the guards stationed on the walls. More guards emerged from the quarters at the end of the hall. Men surrounded Kelsea until she could see nothing but armor and shoulders. Most of her guards seemed to have bathed recently, but there was still an overwhelming man-smell, horses and musk and sweat, which made Kelsea feel as though she was in the wrong place. Barty and Carlin’s cottage had always smelled like lavender, Carlin’s favorite scent, and although Kelsea had hated the cloying smell, at least she had always known where she was.
Mhurn crowded behind her, boxing her in. Kelsea thought about greeting him and decided not to; Mhurn looked as though he hadn’t slept in days, his face far too white and his eyes rimmed in red. To her right was Dyer, his expression hard and truculent behind his red beard. Pen was on her left, and Kelsea smiled, relieved to see him unharmed. “Hello, Pen.”
“Lady.”
“Thanks for the loan of your horse; I’ll return your armor as soon as may be.”
“Keep it, Lady. It was a good thing you did yesterday.”
“It probably won’t make any difference. I’ve doomed myself.”
“You’ve doomed us all with you, Lady,” Dyer remarked.
“Stuff that, Dyer!” Pen snapped.
“You stuff it, runt. The very moment that shipment doesn’t arrive, the Mort army begins to mobilize. You’re fucked as well.”
“We’re all fucked,” Elston rumbled behind her. His voice came thickly through his broken teeth, but he didn’t seem so hard to understand now. “Don’t listen to Dyer, Lady. We’ve watched this kingdom sink into the mud for years. You might’ve come too late to save it, but it’s a good thing, all the same, to try to stop the slide.”