“That may be true,” Genevieve says, all too happy to pick up this line of conversation. “Still, would it be too much to ask for the legion-cursed naturalist to wash ashore? Or the mainland suitor? I would even settle for a few pieces of the Wolf Spring boy.”
“I would settle for the cougar,” Antonin says, and the old Black Council laughs.
“That is enough,” Katharine interjects. But she cannot stop herself from smiling. “If it will put the people’s minds at ease, arrange for boats and small crews to sail out of the harbor to search. Pay them well, and offer an extra reward to any who return with evidence. Whole or in pieces.” She turns toward Luca and Bree. “Now. Shall we plan your welcome banquet?”
BASTIAN CITY
That night, Emilia takes Jules to a pub, promising that it will remind her of home and that she could even venture to bring Camden, as the proprietors are loyal to the Vatros clan. But the moment that Jules enters, through an entrance down an alley, her hackles rise. It is less a pub than an underground room of stone with a partial dirt floor, and in the many weeks that Jules has been in Bastian, Emilia has never mentioned it. Yet she is obviously a regular, touching the shoulder of nearly everyone she passes and nodding to the two men behind the bar.
“What is this place?”
“We call it ‘the Bronze Whistle,’” Emilia answers. “Try the chicken and the wine. Stay clear of the ale, unless Berkley pours it.”
Jules glances at the bartenders. She could not guess which one was Berkley, though both look nice enough, sweating a little and working hard. The tall one with the slight reddish beard catches her watching and gives her a wink.
“They have food here?”
“Of course! Takes a while to get it. We’re underneath a manor house. They let us run through their halls and use their kitchens, for a fee.”
“So this is a club, of sorts?”
“Of sorts.”
Emilia leads them through the room, lit a bright gaslight yellow. It is quieter now than when they came in, as people stop talking to gawk and mutter about her cougar. Camden yowls happily at the smell of chicken and jumps onto a tabletop. The girls seated there shout, “Oi,” and move their mugs out of the way of her sweeping tail.
“Sorry,” Jules mutters, and they cock their eyebrows. She coaxes Camden down and follows Emilia to a corner table, untucking the short hair behind her ears so it can swing past her face. She has not had so many eyes on her since the day in the arena at the Queens’ Duel.
“What will you have?” Emilia asks. “I mean, besides the chicken?”
“The good ale, I suppose.”
Emilia slaps her palms down on the table and turns to a server. “Three dishes of the chicken and two mugs of Berkley’s ale. And a bowl of water, for the cat.”
Camden, never one to skulk on the floor, hops onto the wall bench to wait for dinner. Still so many eyes on them, and just as many watching Jules as the cougar.
“When will they stop staring?”
Emilia pays the boy who brings their ale.
“Maybe when you dance with them. You’re a pretty girl, Jules Milone. You can’t think that it was only your handsome mainlander would notice that.”
“Joseph wasn’t a mainlander. He was one of us.” And he is still in her heart. Anyone who looks at her that way is a fool if they cannot see that Joseph’s ghost sits beside her.
Emilia tips her head back and forth. She has made it plain that she does not think much of Joseph, gone so long to the mainland with Billy, but she has never spoken against him. Why would she? He is dead, and it does not matter anymore.
Jules tries to get comfortable in her chair and rests her elbows on the table. The air in the crowded space is close, but not stifling, the freshness aided perhaps by the kitchens being so far away.
“Oh no,” Jules groans.
“What?”
She pushes her chin toward the door, where the oracle Mathilde sits with her eyes on them, her yellow hair braided through with a fat twist of white.
“Ah, Mathilde!” Emilia waves to her. “Good. Maybe I will get to hear the song of Aethiel after all.”
“Is she really a bard?” Jules asks.
“Of course. She is a seer and a bard. It is possible to be many things at once, Jules Milone. You of all people should know that.”
Jules frowns as the chicken arrives, but her scowl fades as she smells the steam. The chicken is stewed in a gravy and served with a thick slice of oat bread. She has to yank Camden’s plate away to keep her from biting into it while it is still too hot. She blows on both dishes and twists off a small forkful, tender and delicious. Camden, tired of waiting, grabs hers with her forepaw and sloshes most of it onto the table. Then she licks her fur and burned paw pads.
Emilia laughs and shakes her head.
“Having her around is such a danger.”
“Why?”
“I will begin to think I can treat all mountain cats this way. And I’ll get ten claws raked down my back.”
Jules snorts. It is not likely. Mountain cats are rare as far south as Bastian City. Camden was the only one even in the forests of Wolf Spring, as far as she knows.
“Jules, look out!”
The knife aimed at her is kitchen cutlery, large and sharp. She leans back as Emilia raises her hands, using her war gift to push the blade off course. Camden ducks, but not far enough, and the knife slices into her back.
When her cougar winces, Jules sees red. She flips her chair and turns. It is not hard to find the one who threw the knife. The man behind the bar. The one who winked. But now his eyes are so wide, they could near fall out and hang on stalks.
“You!” she shouts. Her war gift surges, unbidden, and sends him flying against the wall. Bottles and glasses fall to the floor and shatter. Camden, who was not badly hurt, leaps across the tables and onto the bar, snarling and swiping with her good paw, the cut on her back spattering blood into spilled beer.
“Stop!” Emilia calls. “Berkley, you idiot. You were supposed to wait until she’d finished eating. And you were not to harm the cat.”
“Was you who harmed the cat. You pushed the knife into her path.” Berkley gets to his feet and brushes at his trousers. He curses when his fingers come away bloody. “I just mended these.”
Jules turns to Emilia. “You knew? This was planned?”
“They needed to see your gift. Don’t get angry. You lack control.”
“I’ll give you control,” Jules growls, and every glass on the bar begins to shake.
No one reacts. Perhaps because they are in the city of the war gifted. But then the murmurs begin, and Jules goes cold, and Camden creeps off the bar to curl around her legs. Near the door on the far side of the room, the oracle Mathilde rises to her feet.
“It is as I said. Juillenne Milone was once a queen. And she may yet be a queen again.”
Jules moans. “Don’t go spreading that nonsense around!”
But in the Bronze Whistle at least, it is too late, and now she knows why they have stared at her since she came in.
“Emilia. Who are these people?”
Emilia grins.
“We are the queen’s revolt. And you, Jules, a gifted naturalist also gifted in war, will be the one to unite us and take the poisoner’s place.”
She grabs Emilia by the sleeve.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“The seers have known of your coming for a long time.”
“The seers are fools. They said I should be drowned at birth. Now they say I’m a queen. Or I will be. Or I was once already.”
But Jules’s words cast no doubt across the faces in the Whistle. They are too full of hope. In her, they see a chance they have not had in generations. And Jules has heard that there is nothing a warrior loves more than to run into a battle headlong with little chance of victory. That is where the glory is, they say. That is where heroes are made.
Jules has never heard anything quite so stupid.
“Prophecy has many interpretations,” says Mathilde as she crosses the room to stand before them. “Unfortunately, it is often difficult to know the meaning until after it has come to pass.”
“But it says I was once a queen. I was never.”