“Aye,” someone joined in behind her. Kelsea blushed, but was spared from replying by Mace, who shoved his way through the group of guards to station himself on her right.
“Tighten it up, men,” he growled. “If I could get through, so could anyone else.”
The journey to the Great Hall was an ordeal of low grey hallways cut by torchlight. Kelsea suspected that Mace was taking a roundabout route, but still she was daunted by the endless corridors and staircases and tunnels. She hoped there was a map of the Keep somewhere, or she would never dare to venture outside her own wing.
They passed many men and women dressed in white, with hoods drawn low over their foreheads. From Carlin’s descriptions, Kelsea knew that these must be Keep servants. The Keep had its housekeepers and plumbers, but it was also stuffed to bursting with unnecessary services: bartenders, hairdressers, masseuses, all of them on the Crown’s payroll. Keep servants were supposed to remain inconspicuous when they weren’t needed, and they drew out of Kelsea’s way to hug the wall as she passed. After passing perhaps the twentieth servant, Kelsea felt her temper beginning to unravel, and no amount of gnawing on the inside of her cheek could bring it back into line. This was where her treasury had been going for the past two decades: into luxury and cages.
At last they crossed a small antechamber toward massive double doors made of some sort of oak. It didn’t look like Tearling oak, though. The grain was too even, and the doors were covered in elaborate carvings of what appeared to be zodiacal signs. Tearling oak didn’t carve well; Kelsea had tried to whittle it with her knife as a child, only to find the wood chipping away in chunks and splinters. She tried to get a better look at the doors, but had no time; at her approach, they opened as if by magic, and the tide of guards pushed her through.
To her left, a herald shouted, “The Princess Apparent!” Kelsea grimaced, but quickly found other things to focus on. She was in a room of greater size than she had ever imagined, with ceilings at least a good two hundred feet high and the far wall so distant that she couldn’t clearly see the faces of those who stood there. The floor had been assembled from enormous tiles of dark red stone, each some thirty feet square, and the room was interspersed with massive white pillars that could only be Cadarese marble. Several skylights had been carved into the ceiling, allowing random shafts of bright sunlight to arrow down to the floor. It was eerie, the enormous torch-lit room broken by those random scatterings of white-hot light. As Kelsea and her guards passed through one beam, she felt momentary heat on her arm, then it was gone.
But for the shuffling and clinking as they moved forward down the aisle, the great room was silent. Kelsea’s guard had loosened up a bit, allowing her to peek at the crowd, ranks of men and women whom Kelsea thought must be nobles. Velvet garb predominated, rich velvet in scarlet and black and royal blue. Velvet was a Callaen specialty, and there was no way to get it without going through Mort trading controls. Were all of these people doing business with Mortmesne?
Everywhere Kelsea looked were faces, both male and female, enhanced with cosmetics: dark-smudged eyes, lined and rouged lips, even one lord who appeared to have powdered his skin. Many of them displayed elaborate hairstyles that must have taken hours to create. One woman had bound her hair into a large spiral, something like the arc of a leaping fish, which ascended from one side of her head and landed on the other. Around the entire construction rested a silver tiara interspersed with amethysts, a really beautiful piece of metalwork even to Kelsea’s untrained eye. Yet the woman’s face had a pinched look that suggested she was prepared to be displeased with anything and everything that might occur, including her own hairstyle.
Laughter threatened to bubble up in Kelsea’s throat, laughter that came from a dark well of anger. The noblewoman’s hairstyle wasn’t even the most ridiculous thing in the crowd. Hats seemed to be everywhere: huge and ostentatious hats with wide brims and pointed crowns in every color of the rainbow. Most were decorated with jewels or gold and elaborated with feathers. On a few hats, Kelsea even saw peacock feathers from Cadare, another luxury surely confined to the black market. Some of the hats were so wide that they took up more space than their occupants; Kelsea spotted a husband and wife with matching designs on their blue cloaks whose hats forced them to stand more than two feet apart. Noticing her stare, the couple gave a shallow curtsy, both smiling. Kelsea ignored them and turned away.
Mace’s eyes were fixed on the narrow gallery that ran the length of the left wall above their heads. Following his gaze, Kelsea saw that this gallery was also crammed with people, but they weren’t nobles; their clothing was plain and dark, with only a random glitter of gold here and there. Merchants, Kelsea guessed, important enough to gain entrance to the Keep but not wealthy enough to be allowed down on the floor. There were no poor in this throng, none of the gaunt people she’d seen in the fields of the Almont or out on the Keep Lawn.
Hundreds of eyes were upon her. Kelsea could feel their weight, but thousands of miles seemed to exist between her and the crowd. Had Queen Elyssa felt equally alone in this enormous room? But Kelsea turned away from that idea, furious that any part of her mind would try to relate to her mother.
At the end of the hall was a great raised dais, in the very center of which sat a throne, brilliant even in torchlight. It had been forged from pure silver, formed and shaped into a great flowing seat whose various parts simply melted one into the next, arms to back to base. The high, arched back of the throne was at least ten feet tall and carved in an aquatic relief depicting various scenes from the Crossing. It was an extraordinary piece of art, but as with so many relics of the Tear dynasty, no one knew who’d done the work, and now the throne was only a mute reminder of a time long gone.
By all rights, no one should have sat on this throne since the day her mother had died, but Kelsea wasn’t surprised to see a man seated there. Her uncle was a short man with dark hair and a curling beard, a fashion that Kelsea had observed many times on her journey through the city and one to which she’d taken an instant dislike. The Regent fidgeted with the beard as Kelsea approached, wrapping it in tight coils around his index finger. He wore a tight-fitting purple jumpsuit that hid nothing. His face was pale and bloated, with deep-set eyes, and Kelsea read signs of dissipation in the broken veins of his large nose and sagging cheeks. Alcoholism, if not something more exotic; Kelsea suddenly knew, the knowledge coming from nowhere, that if there was an expensive vice out there, her uncle had tried it. He watched her with an indifferent stare, one hand hooked into his beard, the fingers of the other tapping idly on the arm of the throne. He was cunning, Kelsea could see, but not brave. Here was a man who’d been trying to kill her for years, yet she didn’t fear him.
At the Regent’s feet sat a red-haired woman, perched motionless on the top step of the dais, staring at nothing, extraordinarily beautiful despite her vacant stare. Her face was a perfect oval, utterly symmetrical, with a fine upturned nose and wide, sensual mouth. She was dressed in soft blue gauze, a garment of so few layers that it was nearly transparent, revealing a figure that was both willowy and voluptuous. The gauze did nothing to hide her nipples, deep pink points that poked out against the fabric. Kelsea wondered what sort of man paid for his women to dress like whores, but then the redhead looked up and Kelsea’s breath hissed through her teeth. A yoke had been tied around the woman’s throat, and not loosely either; puffy, welted flesh showed where the rope had abraded her skin. The other end of the rope snaked upward, over the steps of the dais, to rest in the Regent’s hand.
At Mace’s word, Kelsea’s guard halted in front of the dais. Her uncle was surrounded by his own guard, but one glance could chart the difference between a true guard and a bunch of mercenaries. Her uncle’s men wore voluminous, impractical uniforms of midnight blue, and their posture was as insolent and lazy as his. When her uncle met her gaze, Kelsea saw with some surprise that he had the same deep green, almond-shaped eyes as her own. A true blood relation, and the only one she had left . . . the thought made Kelsea pause. It seemed like blood should matter. But then her eyes returned to the roped woman huddled on the floor, and an insistent beat began in Kelsea’s temples. This man wasn’t a relation, her mind insisted, not if she didn’t want him to be. She unclenched her fists and gentled her voice to disciplined reason. “Greetings, Uncle. I come to be crowned today.”
“Welcome to the Princess Apparent,” her uncle replied in a pinched, nasal voice. “We require the proof, of course.”
Kelsea reached up to take off the necklace. On the Keep Lawn the day before, she had noticed that it came off rather unhappily, with a prickly feeling that seemed to tug at her skin. Today was worse; she seemed to feel the silver chain pulling at her flesh, a sensation like ants crawling beneath the surface. She held the necklace high for her uncle’s inspection, and once he nodded, she turned and displayed it to the enormous company gathered in the hall.
“Where’s the companion jewel?” her uncle asked.
“That’s not your concern, Uncle. I have the jewel I was sent away with, and that’s the proof required.”
He waved a hand. “Of course, of course. The brand?”
Kelsea smiled, baring her teeth, as she pulled up the sleeve of her dress and turned her forearm to the light. The burn scar didn’t look as ugly in torchlight, but it was clear all the same: someone had laid a white-hot knife against her forearm. For a moment, Kelsea could almost picture the scene: the dark room, the fire, the outraged screams of a baby who had just felt real pain for the first time in her life.
Who did this to me? she wondered. Who would have been able to do it?
At the sight of the scar, the Regent seemed to relax, relief settling over his shoulders. Kelsea was amazed at how easily she could read him. Was it because they were related? More likely it was merely that her uncle was fairly simple, greed and gluttony rolled together. He didn’t like uncertainty, even when it worked to his advantage.
“My identity is true,” Kelsea announced. “I will be crowned now. Where’s the priest?”
“Here, Lady,” a thin voice quavered behind her. Kelsea turned to see a tall, gaunt man of perhaps sixty approaching from the nearest pillar. He wore a loose white robe with no decoration, the uniform clothing of an ordained priest who hadn’t advanced in the hierarchy. His face was that of an ascetic, drawn and pale, and his hair and eyebrows were likewise a faded, colorless blond, as though life had leached the very pigment from him. He shuffled forward with nervous, uncertain steps.
“Well done, Lazarus,” Kelsea murmured.
The priest halted some ten feet from Kelsea’s guard and bowed. “Lady, I’m Father Tyler. It will be my honor to administer your coronation. Where is the crown, please?”
“Ah,” the Regent replied, “that has been a difficulty. Before her death, my sister hid the crown for safekeeping. We haven’t been able to locate it.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Kelsea replied, fuming inside. She should have expected some cheap nonsense like this. The crown was a symbolic instrument, but it was an important one all the same, so important that Kelsea had never heard of anyone becoming a monarch without some overdone piece of jewelry placed on his head. Her uncle probably had made an extraordinary effort to find the crown, so that he could wear it himself. If he hadn’t found the thing, it was unlikely to be found.
The priest appeared to be near tears. He looked back and forth between Kelsea and the Regent, wringing his hands. “Well, it’s difficult, Your Highness. I . . . I don’t see how I can perform the ceremony without a crown.”
The crowd was beginning to shift restlessly. Kelsea heard the strange susurration of innumerable voices murmuring in an enormous room. On impulse, she craned her neck over the priest and scanned the throng. The woman she was seeking wasn’t difficult to find; her spiraled hair towered at least a foot over those around her. “Lazarus. The woman with the hideous hair. I want her tiara.”
Mace peered into the crowd, his face bewildered. “What’s a tiara?”
“The silver thing in her hair. Didn’t you ever read fairy tales?”
Mace snapped his fingers. “Coryn. Tell Lady Andrews the Crown will reimburse her.”
Coryn went swiftly down the steps, and Kelsea turned back to the priest. “Will that do, Father, until the true crown can be found?”
Father Tyler nodded, his Adam’s apple working nervously. It occurred to Kelsea that for all the priests knew, she could have been raised to the Church’s teachings, could even be truly devout. As the priest took another cautious step forward, Kelsea broadened her smile in slow degrees until it felt genuine. “We’re honored by your presence, Father.”
“The honor is mine, Lady,” the priest replied, but Kelsea sensed a broad vein of anxiety beneath his placid expression. Did he fear the wrath of his superiors? Carlin’s warnings about the power of the Arvath resurfaced in Kelsea’s mind, and she watched the pale man with distrust.
“How dare you!” a woman shouted, the words followed by the clear crack of a slap. Kelsea peered between Elston and Dyer and saw that there was quite a tussle going on; as the crowd shifted, she caught a quick glimpse of Coryn, his hands buried in a nest of thick, dark hair. Then he disappeared again.
Elston was shaking, and when Kelsea looked up, she found him red with bottled-up laughter. He wasn’t the only one; all around her, Kelsea heard quiet snickers. Mhurn, standing just behind her on the left, was openly giggling, and it had brought some color to his pallid face. Even Mace had clamped his jaw shut tight, though his lips continued to twitch. Kelsea had never seen Mace laugh, but after a moment, his mouth relaxed and he resumed scanning the gallery.
Coryn finally emerged from the crowd, tiara in hand. He looked like he’d been through a raspberry thicket; one side of his face bore a long, ugly scratch, the other was bright red, and his shirtsleeve was torn. Behind him, Kelsea could see the noblewoman progressing with sorry dignity toward the door, her elaborate hairstyle in tatters.
“Well, you’ve lost Lady Andrews,” Pen murmured.
“I didn’t need her,” Kelsea replied, her temples throbbing with sudden anger. “I don’t need anyone with hair like that.”
Coryn handed the tiara to the priest and took his place at the front of Kelsea’s guard.
“Let’s do this as fast as possible, Father,” Kelsea announced. “I’d hate to endanger your life any further.”
The words had the desired effect; Father Tyler paled and darted a wary glance over his shoulder. Kelsea felt a moment’s pity, wondering how often he was allowed to leave the Arvath. Carlin had told her that some priests, particularly those who joined young, lived their entire lives in the white tower, only leaving in a box.
The company of guards shifted now, allowing Kelsea to kneel at the foot of the dais, facing the throne. The stone floor was cold and jagged, digging into her kneecaps, and she wondered how long she would have to kneel. Her guard closed in around her, half of them facing the Regent and his guards, half directing their attention into the crowd. Father Tyler moved as close as Coryn would allow him, some five feet away.
Mhurn stood just behind her right shoulder, Mace beside him. When Kelsea twisted around to peer up at Mace, she saw that he had his sword raised in one hand, his mace in the other. The ball of the mace was still crusted with dried blood. Mace’s expression was one of dangerous serenity: a man so casual and comfortable with death that he begged it to come forward and make its presence known. But the rest of the guards were so on edge that half of them drew their swords when a woman in the crowd sneezed.
Kelsea’s sapphire began to burn against her skin, and she fought the urge to look down at her chest. The jewel had flared into an inferno on the Keep Lawn, but when Kelsea inspected her skin this morning, there hadn’t even been the faintest hint of a mark. She had many questions about the sapphire, but the strength it provided seemed more important than her questions, more important than wonder. If she looked down, she knew she would see the jewel gleaming against her chest, a bright, healthy blue of warning. Something was going to happen here.
Father Tyler began to mutter in tones so low that Kelsea didn’t think the audience could hear him. He appeared to be settling in for some kind of soliloquy on the grace of God and His relationship to the monarchy. Kelsea ceased to pay attention. She peeked over her shoulder, but no one was moving in the crowd. Near the back, almost hidden beside one of the pillars, she glimpsed Arlen Thorne’s unmistakably skeletal body in its tight blue uniform. He looked like a praying mantis leaning against the wall. A businessman, by Mace’s account, but that made him even more dangerous. When Thorne noticed Kelsea watching him, he turned away.
The priest produced an aged Bible from the folds of his robe and began to read something about the ascendancy of King David. Kelsea clamped her jaws shut over a yawn. She had read the Bible from cover to cover; it had some good stories, and King David was one of the most compelling. But stories were only stories. Still, Kelsea couldn’t help but admire the ancient Bible in the priest’s hands, its pages as delicate as the priest himself.
Father Tyler came within two feet of Kelsea, one hand clutching the crown. She felt her guard edge up on their toes, heard the dry rasp of a sword being drawn to her right. The priest looked over her shoulder and flinched—the expression on Mace’s face must be dreadful—then lost his place in his book and looked down for a moment, fumbling.
Several things happened all at once. A man shouted behind her, and Kelsea felt a knifing pain in her left shoulder. Mace shoved her flat to the floor and crouched above her, shielding her with his body. A woman screamed in the audience, an entire world away.