“Thorne. He’s made a deal behind my back, and he’s on the way to Mortmesne with a shipment of Tear.”
“How do you know?”
One of the switches on Kelsea’s temper went, just like that. It didn’t feel as though there were many more to flip. “Dammit, Lazarus, I know!”
“Lady, you had a nightmare,” Pen insisted. “Maybe you should get back into bed and—”
Kelsea took off her nightgown, and had the small, spiteful satisfaction of seeing Pen’s cheeks redden before he whirled around to face the wall. She turned to her chest of drawers and found Andalie already standing there, holding out a pair of black trousers.
“Lady,” Mace said, in the slow, logical voice one would use with a child, “it’s the middle of the night. You can’t go anywhere now.”
Another switch flipped. “Don’t even think about trying to stop me, Lazarus.”
“It was a dream.”
Andalie spoke up in a quiet, firm tone. “The Queen has to go.”
“Have you both gone mad? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“She has to go. I see it. There’s no other way.”
Kelsea finished dressing herself and found that her sapphire had already sprung free again, its light glaring across the room. Mace and Pen hissed and raised hands to shield their eyes, but Kelsea didn’t even need to blink. Holding the sapphire up, she realized suddenly that she could see a face within its depths: a beautiful woman with dark hair and sharp, cold eyes. Her cheekbones were high and curving, the angles of her face cruel. She smiled at Kelsea and then vanished, leaving the jewel a bright, blank gleam of aquamarine in the torchlight.
For a moment, Kelsea wondered if she really was mad. But that seemed too easy a solution; if she’d gone mad, the real world wouldn’t seem nearly so important. That day in front of the Keep had been her entire foothold, and if a shipment managed to make it to Mortmesne in spite of her decree, she was finished. She would be a paper ruler, and anything else that she tried to accomplish would be doomed to fail.
“Andalie’s right, Lazarus. I have to go.”
Mace swung back to Andalie, his tone disgusted. “Well done.”
“You’re welcome.” Kelsea was surprised to hear the faint trace of a Mort accent, something she’d never heard before in Andalie’s voice. “You make no allowance for gifts beyond your own.”
“Your sort of gift has never been consistent. Not even the Red Queen’s seer could foretell everything.”
“Foretell this, Captain.”
“Shut up!” Kelsea shouted. “We’re all going to go. Pick a couple of guards to stay here with the women and children.”
“No one’s going anywhere,” Mace growled. He took her arm, roughly. “You had a bad dream, Majesty.”
“He’s right, Lady,” Pen told her. “Why don’t you just go back to sleep? By morning you’ll have forgotten all about it.”
Mace was nodding agreement, his face arranged in a solicitous expression that made Kelsea want to smack him. She bared her teeth. “Lazarus, this is a direct order from your Queen. We’re leaving.”
She went for the door again, and this time they both grabbed her, Mace by the arm and Pen around her waist. Kelsea’s temper gave, pulling wide open, a seamless implosion inside her head, and she shoved out at both of them with her anger, feeling it depart her body like a current. Both men flew backward, Pen landing in a huddle at the foot of the bed and Mace bouncing off the far wall to crash on the floor. She hadn’t shoved them very hard, and they recovered easily, each sitting up to stare at her, their faces bathed in blue light. Andalie had backed up to press against the vanity table.
“No one has to come with me,” Kelsea told them, relieved to find that her voice was steady. “But don’t try to stop me. I don’t want to hurt either of you, but I will.”
Mace and Pen looked at each other for a moment, their faces blank. What would they have done if she hadn’t had her sapphire? Locked her in her chamber, she supposed, and allowed her to cry herself out, just as Carlin had always done when Kelsea was a child. She searched for that reserve of anger inside herself and found it, banked but still full. Had she ever been ashamed of her anger? Now it was a gift, somehow reflected through the jewel. It had the potential to be dangerous, certainly . . . if she’d been even a little angrier, Pen and Mace could have been seriously hurt.
Pen recovered first. “If you mean to do it, Lady, we shouldn’t go as the Queen’s Guard. We should dress as army. You’ll want the outfit of a low-ranking officer.”
Mace nodded slowly. “You’ll also have to cut your hair, Majesty. All of it, right down to the nape.”
Kelsea breathed a hidden sigh of relief; she needed Mace’s support, at least. She didn’t even know where her horse was kept, where to find supplies. Andalie crossed the room and went out the door.
“Without your hair,” Mace continued, his tone tinged with malice, “you should have no trouble passing as a man.”
“Of course,” Kelsea replied. A test, she remembered, with a touch of nostalgia. It’s all a test. “Anything else?”
“No, Lady.” He left the room, closing the door behind him, and began firing orders left and right. Kelsea could hear his deep, angry voice even through the thick walls of the chamber.
Pen settled himself in the corner, ignoring her glare. She could see their perspective, and yet . . . they didn’t trust her to know the difference between a nightmare and what she had seen, which had been a vision far more real than any dream. She’d even felt the prickle of goose bumps on her arms in the morning air. Was it a real woman, out there on the Almont Plain? A real bird flying over the Mort army? Kelsea had no proof, but she trusted the visions implicitly; she felt as though she had no choice. She supposed she could see Pen’s side, but she didn’t want to.
You should have believed me, she thought, staring at him from beneath lowered brows. My word should have been enough for you.
Andalie returned with a small towel and a pair of sewing shears. Kelsea reached for the tiara on the vanity table, then drew her hand back. Fake crown or not, she felt real attachment to the thing. But she would have to leave it here.
“Sit, Lady.”
Kelsea sat, and Andalie began shearing the top of Kelsea’s head in great chunks. “I’ve been cutting my children’s hair for years. We couldn’t afford a dresser.”
“Why’d you marry him, Andalie?”
“We don’t always make these choices ourselves.”
“Did someone force you?”
Andalie shook her head, chuckling mirthlessly, then leaned down and murmured in Kelsea’s ear. “Who’s the man, Majesty? I’ve seen his face in your mind many times. The dark-haired man with the snake-charmer’s smile.”
Kelsea blushed. “No one.”
“Not no one.” Andalie grabbed a hank of hair over Kelsea’s left ear and sheared straight through it. “He means very much to you, this man, and I see shame covering all of those feelings.”
“So?”
“Did you choose to feel this way for this man?”
“No,” Kelsea admitted.
“One of the worst choices you could have made, no?”
Kelsea nodded, defeated.
“We don’t always choose, Majesty. We simply make the best choices we can once the deed is done.”
Rather than being comforting, this statement made Kelsea feel utterly hopeless. She sat in silence while Andalie finished, staring bleakly at the growing pile of dark hair on the floor. She meant nothing to the Fetch, she knew, but remote possibility had kept her going. The act of cutting her hair seemed to cross a final bridge into a land where there was no possibility at all.
A guard knocked at the door and, at Pen’s summons, brought in a black Tearling army uniform, dumping it on the bed. His eyes widened at the sight of Kelsea, but when she glared back, he ducked out, closing the door behind him. Pen returned to his armchair, apparently determined not to meet Kelsea’s eye. Andalie finished and motioned for Kelsea to lean over, then quickly combed out the last of her long hair and cut. Levering Kelsea back upright, Andalie surveyed her work. “It’ll do, Lady. A professional dresser can clean it up later.”
Kelsea’s head felt light, almost buoyant. Gathering her courage, she looked in the mirror. Andalie had given her a good haircut, almost the duplicate of Coryn’s, a tight cap of hair around her head. Another woman, one with a perfect elfin face, might even have looked good with such hair, but Kelsea felt like crying. A boy stared back at her from the mirror, a boy with full lips and fine green eyes, but a boy all the same.
“Shit,” she muttered. She’d heard the word from her guard many times, but only now did she understand the real use of profanity. That one word said exactly what she was feeling, said it better than a hundred other words could have done.
“Come, Lady. Clothes next.” Andalie’s blank gaze held a trace of pity.
“Will we succeed, Andalie?”
“I can’t know, Lady. But you have to go, all the same.”