It was a terrible ride. She took the stallion in the wide circle Mace had described, her whole body itching for the moment when she could go straight and pick up speed. When she judged the circle wide enough, she checked the moss on the rocks and began to ride south, Pen’s grey cloak flying behind her. For a few minutes the armor weighed heavily, seeming to rattle her whole body each time Rake landed on his front hooves. But after a bit she found that she could no longer feel the weight of the metal at all. There was nothing but speed, a pure, clean speed that she had never achieved with Barty’s aging stallion. The forest flew by her, trees sometimes far off and sometimes so close that the tips of branches whipped against her mailed body. A freezing wind screamed in her ears, and she tasted the bitterness of adrenaline in the back of her throat.
There was no sign of Mace, but she knew he was there, and his last comment recurred to her every few minutes while she rode, making her face flush with warmth even beneath the numbness imparted by the wind. She had thought that she’d been very strong and very brave during this journey; she had let herself believe that she had impressed them. Carlin had always told Kelsea that her face was an open book; what if they had all seen her pride? Would she ever be able to face them again?
Stop that nonsense right now!
Carlin’s voice thundered inside her head, stronger than any humiliation, stronger than doubt. Kelsea clamped her thighs more tightly against Rake’s sides and urged him to go faster, and when her cheeks threatened to turn warm again, she reached up and slapped herself across the face.
After perhaps an hour of hard riding, the woods cleared for good and Kelsea was suddenly down into pure farmland, the Almont Plain. Carefully tilled rows of green stretched out as far as she could see, and she mourned inside at the very flatness of the land, its sameness. There were a few trees, but they were only thin leafless trunks that twisted upward toward the sky, none of them sturdy enough to provide any cover. Kelsea rode on, finding lanes between the rows of crops, cutting across fields only when there was no other way through. The farming acres were dotted with low homesteads made of wood and hay-thatched roofs, most of them little more than huts. In the distance Kelsea could also see several taller, stronger wooden dwellings, probably the houses of overseers, if not nobles.
She saw many farmers; some of them straightened to get a look at her, or waved as she flew by. But most, more concerned with their crops, simply ignored her. The Tear economy ran on farming; farmers worked the fields in exchange for the right to occupy the noble’s land, but the noble took all of the profits, except for taxes paid to the Crown. Kelsea could hear Carlin’s voice in the library now, her tone of deep disapproval echoing against the wall of books: “Serfdom, Kelsea, that’s all it is. Worse, it’s serfdom condoned by the state. These people are forced to work themselves to the bone for a noble’s comfortable lifestyle, and if they’re lucky, they’re rewarded with survival. William Tear came to the New World with a dream of pure socialism, and this is where we ended up.”
Carlin had hammered this point home many times, but it was very different for Kelsea to see the system in front of her. The people working the fields looked hungry; most of them wore shapeless clothes that seemed to hang from their bones. The overseers, easily identifiable on horses high above the rows of crops, did not look hungry. They wore broad, flat hats, and each carried a thick wooden stick whose purpose was painfully clear; when Kelsea rode close to one of them, she saw that the end of his stick was stained a deep maroon.
To the east, Kelsea spotted what must be the house of a noble: a high tower made of red brick. Real brick! Tearling brick was a notoriously poor building material compared to Mortmesne’s, which was made with better mortar and commanded at least a pound per kilo. Carlin had an oven made of real bricks, built for her by Barty, and Kelsea had wondered more than once whether Barty had bought the bricks off the black market from Mortmesne. Mort craftsmen weren’t supposed to sell their wares to the Tear, but Mort luxuries commanded a great price across the border, and Barty had told Kelsea that anything was available for the right price. But even if Barty wasn’t above doing a bit of black market business, he and Carlin would never have been able to afford a brick house. The noble who lived there must be extraordinarily wealthy. Kelsea’s gaze roved over the people who dotted the fields, their scarecrow cheeks and necks, and dim anger surfaced in her mind. She had dreaded being a queen most of her life, and she was ill equipped for the task, she knew, though Barty and Carlin had done their best. She hadn’t grown up in a castle, hadn’t been raised in that privileged life. The land she would rule frightened her in its vastness, but at the sight of the men and women working in the fields, something inside her seemed to turn over and breathe deeply for the first time. All of these people were her responsibility.
The sun broke the horizon on Kelsea’s left. She turned to watch it rise and saw a black shape streak across the blinding sky, there and then gone without a sound.
A Mort hawk!
She dug her heels into Rake’s sides and relaxed her grip on the reins as far as she dared. The stallion picked up pace, but it was futile; no manned horse could outrun a hawk in hunt. She glanced around wildly in all directions and saw nothing, not even a stand of trees to give them cover, only endless farmland and ahead, in the distance, the blue gleam of a river. She dug beneath her cloak for her knife.
“Down! Get down!” Mace shouted behind her. Kelsea ducked and heard the harsh whistle of talons hitting the air where her head had been.
“Lazarus!”
“Go, Lady!”
She crouched against Rake’s neck and took all pressure off his reins. They were tearing down the length of the country now, so fast that Kelsea could no longer distinguish the farmers in the fields, only a continuous blur of brown and green. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before the horse threw her and she broke her neck. But even that idea brought its own strange freedom . . . who could have predicted she would survive this long? She found herself laughing, wild, out-of-control laughter that was instantly cut to shreds by the wind.
The hawk swooped in from her right and Kelsea ducked again, but not soon enough. Talons punctured her neck and ripped through the skin. Blood, thick and warm, oozed down to her collarbone. The hawk soared off to her left. Kelsea turned to track it and felt the gash in her neck pull wide open, sending a shot of pain all the way down her right side.
Hooves were pounding up behind her on the right, but Kelsea didn’t dare turn around; the hawk was circling in front of her now, preparing to come for her eyes. It was far larger than any hawk she’d ever seen, a deep, dark black rather than the usual brown, almost akin to a vulture. Suddenly it dived for her again, talons outstretched. Kelsea ducked a third time, throwing up her arm to protect her face.
A sound of muffled impact thudded above her head. Kelsea felt no pain, waited a moment, and then peeked above her. Nothing.
She glanced to her right, her eyes tearing with the pain of movement, and found Mace alongside her. The hawk’s body dangled from the spiked head of his mace, a pulpy mass of blood, feathers, and gleaming innards. He shook the handle truculently until the bird fell off.
“Mort hawk?” she called over the wind, trying to keep her voice steady.
“For certain, Lady. They’re like no other hawks in the world, black as midnight and big as dogs. God knows how she’s breeding them.” Mace slowed his stallion and looked Kelsea over, his gaze assessing. “You’re wounded.”
“Only my neck.”
“The hawks are killers, but they’re also scouts. A party of assassins will be behind us now. Can you still ride?”
“Yes, but the blood will leave a trail.”
“About ten miles southwest is the stronghold of a noblewoman who was loyal to your mother. Can you make it that far?”
Kelsea glared at him. “What sort of weak, housebound woman do you think I am, Lazarus? I’m bleeding, that’s all. And I’ve never had such a fine time as on this journey.”
Mace’s dark eyes brightened with understanding. “You’re young and reckless, Lady. It’s a desirable quality in a warrior, but not in a queen.”
Kelsea frowned.
“Let’s go, Lady. Southwest.”
By now the sun had risen fully over the horizon, and Kelsea thought she could see their destination: another brick tower outlined against the blue shimmer of the river. From this distance, the tower had the dimensions of a toy, but she knew that upon approach it would rear many stories high. Kelsea wondered if the noblewoman who lived there took toll from the river; Carlin had told her that many nobles who were situated next to a river or road took the opportunity to squeeze extra money from those who passed by.
Mace’s head swung back and forth, as though on a swivel, while they rode. He had tucked his mace back into his belt without even bothering to clean it, and the hawk’s innards gleamed in the morning sunlight. The sight made Kelsea feel slightly sick, and she turned to study the country around her, ignoring the pain in her neck. They were undoubtedly in the center of the Almont, the great farming plains of the Tearling, with nothing but flat land in every direction. The river up ahead was either the Caddell or the Crithe, but Kelsea couldn’t determine which without knowing how far west they’d ridden. Far to the southwest, she saw a smudge of brown hills and a darker stain of black against it, possibly the city of New London. But then sweat dripped into her eye, and by the time she could see again, the brown hills had vanished like a mirage and green land stretched as far as she could see. The Tearling felt enormous, much more so than it had ever looked on any of Carlin’s maps.
They had covered perhaps half the distance to the tower when Mace reached out and slapped Rake’s rump, hard. The stallion whinnied in protest but lengthened his stride, tearing off toward the river so suddenly that Kelsea nearly fell from her saddle. She tried to jog with the stallion’s movement, but the wound in her neck seemed to tear open each time Rake’s hooves hit the earth, and Kelsea fought to ignore a dizziness that rose and fell like the tide.
For a time she could hear only Mace behind her, but gradually her ears picked up the unmistakable sound of hooves, at least several sets in pursuit. They were gaining, and the river was approaching at an alarming pace. Peeking over her shoulder, Kelsea saw her worst fears confirmed: Caden, four of them, perhaps fifty yards back, their bright red cloaks flying in the wind. Hearing of the Caden in her childhood, Kelsea had asked Barty why professional assassins would wear such a bright and distinguishable color. Barty’s answer was not comforting: the Caden were such confident killers that they could afford to wear bright red and come in daylight. Those cloaks sent a clear message; something inside Kelsea froze at the sight of them.