“I suppose I can’t do that in my armchair.”
“You could,” Mace replied, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “It would be an unusual development for the Raleigh monarchy. But whatever chair you sit in, this room is much easier to defend and control. There’s only one public entrance to the Queen’s Wing, a long passageway with no openings. You saw it when we came in.”
“I don’t remember that at all.”
“Understandable. You were half-conscious both times we dragged you through. There are many hidden ways in and out of this wing, but they’re well guarded, and only I know them all. The passage outside gives us good control of the regular traffic.”
“All right.” Kelsea lowered herself gingerly into the armchair. “Have I begun to bleed again?” She leaned forward and let Mace peek under the bandage that swaddled her shoulder blade.
“No blood.”
“I feel like I should sleep again soon.”
“Not yet, Lady. Meet everyone at the same time, so no one feels snubbed.” Mace crooked his finger at Mhurn, who was stationed at the opening to the hallway. “Get me Venner and Fell.”
Mhurn disappeared, and Kelsea relaxed into the armchair. Andalie took a place against the wall, apparently meaning to stay. Kelsea thought Mace might object, but he ignored Andalie entirely, and Kelsea understood that she was supposed to do the same. After years when there had only been Carlin and Barty in her life, she now had so many people around her that some of them were supposed to be invisible. “When can we bring Barty and Carlin here?”
Mace shrugged. “A few weeks, perhaps. It’ll take time to find them.”
“They’re in a village called Petaluma, near the Cadarese border.”
“Well, that simplifies things.”
“I want them,” Kelsea told him. And she did; she hadn’t realized how badly until this moment. She felt a sudden, fierce longing for Barty, for his clean, leathery smell and the crinkle of his eyebrows when he smiled. Carlin . . . well, she didn’t precisely long for Carlin. In fact, she dreaded the moment when she would need to stand before Carlin and account for her deeds. But Carlin and Barty were a package. “I want them as soon as possible.”
“Dyer’s the best man for such jobs, Lady. We’ll arrange it when he comes back.”
“Back from where?”
“I’ve already sent him on an errand.”
“What errand?”
Mace sighed and shut his eyes. “Do me a favor, Majesty: let me do my job in peace.”
Kelsea bit back another question, annoyed at being silenced, and peeked at the four guards who stood against the walls of the chamber. One of them was Galen, whom Kelsea had never seen before without a helmet. His hair was a shock of grey, and strangely, the lines in his face were even more prominent in torchlight than they’d been out in the forest. Five and forty, at least; he must have been with her mother’s Guard for many years. Kelsea turned this fact over in her mind for a moment before tucking it away.
The other three were Elston, Kibb, and Coryn, men she’d also met on the journey. These three weren’t quite as old as Galen, but they were still many years beyond Kelsea herself. Kelsea wished more of her guards were younger; her youth only served to increase her isolation here. All four guards kept their eyes resolutely away from Kelsea, a practice she assumed was standard but also found demeaning. After a minute, she grew so tired of not being looked at that she called across the room, “Kibb, how’s your hand?”
He turned to face her, eyes down, refusing to meet her gaze. “Fine, Lady.”
“Leave him alone,” Mace muttered.
Footsteps rapped up the corridor and two men emerged, both dressed in the grey of the Guard. One was tall and thin, the other short and husky, but both moved with the easy, silent grace that Kelsea associated with trained fighters, especially Mace himself. The way they walked together told Kelsea that they were accustomed to moving as a pair. When they bowed low before her, it seemed a choreographed gesture. Kelsea might have thought they were fraternal twins, except that the tall man was at least ten years older than the short one.
Mhurn followed the two men out of the hallway and stationed himself again at the entrance to the corridor. It had been more than a week since they’d arrived back at the Keep, but Kelsea noticed with some concern that Mhurn looked no more rested than he had out in the countryside. His face was still a pale oval in the torchlight, and she could see the dark sockets around his eyes from here. Why didn’t he sleep?
“Venner and Fell, Lady,” Mace announced, bringing her attention back to the two men in front of her. “Your arms masters.”
Once they straightened, Kelsea reached out to shake their hands. They reacted with some surprise, but shook. Fell, the shorter one, had a nasty scar down his cheekbone; the wound had been poorly stitched, or not at all. Kelsea thought of her own wound, Mace’s clumsy stitches in her neck, and shook her head to clear the unwanted thought. Her shoulder was throbbing steadily now, reminding her that it was time to go back to sleep.
Mace expects me to stay awake, she thought stubbornly. And I will.
“Well, arms masters, what exactly do you do?”
The two men looked at each other, but it was Fell who answered first. “I oversee weapons and garrison for Your Majesty’s guard.”
“I oversee training,” Venner added.
“Could you get me a sword?”
“We have several swords for you to choose from, Majesty,” replied Fell.
“No, not a ceremonial sword, though I know I must have one of those as well. A sword fitted to my build, to wield.”
Both men gaped at her, then looked instinctively to Mace, which irritated Kelsea so much that she dug her nails into the soft fabric of the armchair. But Mace merely shrugged.
“To wield, Majesty?”
Kelsea thought of Carlin, the hard disappointment in her face whenever Kelsea lost her temper. She bit down, hard, on the inside of her cheek. “I’ll need a sword and armor made to my build. And I want to be trained as well.”
“To swordfight, Majesty?” asked Venner, clearly horrified.
“Yes, Venner, to swordfight. I’ve learned to defend myself with a knife, but I know little of swords.”
She looked to Mace to see how he was taking the idea and found him nodding, a thin smile creasing his face. His approval soothed Kelsea’s anger, and she softened her tone. “I won’t ask men to die for me while I sit and do nothing. Why shouldn’t I learn to fight as well?”
Both men opened their mouths to reply and then stopped. Kelsea gestured for them to continue, and Fell finally spoke. “Only appearance, Lady, but appearance in a queen is important. For you to wield a sword, it’s . . . not queenly.”
“I can’t be queenly when I’m dead. And I’ve had to defend myself too often lately to be content with only my knife.”
“You’ll need to be measured, Lady,” Fell replied grudgingly. “And it might take a while to find a blacksmith who’ll make armor for a woman.”
“Search fast, then. You’re dismissed.”
Both men nodded, bowed, and headed down the hallway, Venner muttering something to Fell as they went. Mace snorted as they disappeared around the corner.
“What was that?”
“He said you couldn’t be less like your mother.”
Kelsea smiled, but it was a tired smile. “I suppose we’ll find out. Who’s left?”
“Arliss, your Treasurer. The Regent has also put in a standing order to speak with you. A nuisance, but it would be good to get him out of the way.”
Kelsea sighed, thinking of her soft bed, of a hot mug of tea with cream. She jerked awake and realized she had begun to nod off in her chair; Andalie was no longer beside her, and Mace was still waiting. Straightening up, she rubbed her eyes. “Let’s have the Regent first, then the Treasurer.”
Mace snapped his fingers at Coryn, who nodded and slipped into the kitchen.
“Speaking of your uncle, I should tell you that he finds himself in greatly reduced circumstances in the last few days.”
“My heart bleeds.”
Andalie silently reappeared and handed Kelsea a steaming mug of milky liquid. Taking a cautious sniff, Kelsea smelled black tea, laced with cream. She looked up in surprise at Andalie, who had stationed herself against the wall again, her serene gaze aimed far away.
“What I mean is,” Mace continued, “I believe the Regent feels ill treated by my decisions. I confiscated most of his property.”
“In my name?”
“You were asleep.”
“Still, it’s my name. Maybe you could wait for me to wake up next time.”
Mace looked at her, and Kelsea realized that he considered this a dolls-and-dresses moment. She sighed. “What property did you confiscate?”
“Jewelry, some liquor and tasteless statuary. Some spectacularly bad paintings, gold plate—”
“Fine, Lazarus, I’ll leave you to do your job in peace, just as you wanted.” She peeked up at him. “You should thank me for that.”
Mace bowed. “My most humble thanks, your most illustrious—”
“Stuff it.”
He grinned, then resumed waiting in silence until a hollow boom echoed through the audience chamber from the double doors on the west wall. These doors stretched nearly twenty feet high and were not only locked but bolted with heavy slabs of oak at the height of a man’s knees and head. Kibb opened a small peephole in the right-hand door while Elston rapped twice on the left. Three answering knocks came from outside, echoing off the east wall and back again, and Elston answered in kind.
Kelsea found this system fascinating. Elston murmured something, apparently satisfied, and he and Kibb laid hold of the bolts and pulled them back. It was a struggle; even from the other end of the room, Kelsea could see the veins standing out in Elston’s enormous forearms.
“A good system,” she told Mace. “Yours, I’m guessing?”
“The details are mine, but the original idea was Carroll’s. We change the knocks every day.”
“It seems a bit labor-intensive for just one visitor. Why don’t they bring him in the same way Coryn left?”
Mace gave her one of his speaking glances.
“Oh.”
“A few people know some of these passageways, Lady, but I’d be shocked if the Regent’s ever dragged himself out of bed long enough to discover even a quarter of what I know.”
“I see. Someone should shut the door to the nursery. I don’t want Marguerite to hear this.”
Mace snapped his fingers at Mhurn, who went. Kelsea would have found the constant snapping demeaning, but the guards clearly didn’t mind; they even seemed to take pride in the fact that Mace didn’t issue them specific orders. Elston and Kibb laid their shoulders into the doors now, pushing them outward, and Kelsea saw a broad tunnel, lit by many torches, which stretched downward on a gentle slope for several hundred feet before disappearing around a corner. She remembered this tunnel, but she hadn’t been walking, had she? No, that’s right; Mace had finally been forced to physically drag her up the slope. Why would anyone create an artificial hill inside a building?
For defense, of course, Carlin replied. Think, Kelsea. For the day when they come to the Keep with pitchforks to take your head.
“Cheery,” Kelsea murmured. “Thank you.”
“What, Lady?”
“Nothing.”