“How do you know this?”
Luca and Rho glance at each other.
“Reports first reached us in Rolanth,” says Rho. “The rebels were supposedly seen there, to the west, and there have been rumors of Jules Milone as far as the villages south of Innisfuil.”
“Jules Milone drowned with my sisters,” says Katharine, and every eye falls. They know as well as she what it will imply if the naturalist is found to be alive and well.
Beside her, Genevieve clears her throat.
“We think they are heading to Sunpool, and that is why the oracles have denied our request for a seer. They have allied with the rebellion.”
The room closes in around Katharine until it is hard to breathe.
“The legion-cursed naturalist is alive.”
“Or someone who is pretending to be her.”
“And the city of the oracles has taken her side?” Katharine scans the faces of her council. “Who else?”
“Bastian City, perhaps,” says Genevieve. “The Milone girl is calling herself the Legion Queen.”
The Legion Queen. The queen of multiple gifts, who will unite the island under one banner. If they only knew. It strikes Katharine as almost funny. The people yearn for a queen with a two-gift curse, when they already have a queen with all of them.
“So now I must fight a war for my crown and the mist as well?” She grinds her teeth. “And I suppose that the rebels are using that to their advantage. Spreading word that the attacking mist is my fault?”
“They say it rises against you,” says Luca. “They are using it as a sign.”
Katharine sinks into her chair.
“Well,” she says. “You are my Black Council. My advisers. This is the part where you are supposed to advise.”
“I say embrace it.” Rho Murtra places her knuckles upon the table. “Wage a war. Use it to quiet the unrest. Nothing calms the people more than having something to fight against.”
“You would say that,” Antonin spits. “War gifted. Always spoiling for a battle.”
“And why not, if it’s a winning battle? The queensguard army is in fine shape, despite languishing under soft poisoner leadership. It can rout a band of rebels made up of farmers and fishers.”
“Even if those rebels are backed by every warrior in Bastian City?”
Katharine slaps her hand down, and their arguing ceases.
“There is still too much I do not know. About the mist. About the Blue Queen. And now about these rebels and Juillenne Milone, if that is indeed who she is.” She turns to Genevieve. “I need an oracle.”
“I told you, my queen, none will come. They have refused us.”
“They cannot refuse the crown!” Katharine barks. “Send the queensguard and arrest one! And bring her back here for questioning.” She presses one hand to her cold belly, where she can feel the dead queens beginning to quicken. “Then we will know what to do.”
THE BLACK COTTAGE
“Well?” Jules asks as she and Camden help Caragh brew another of the endless pots of nettle leaf tea. “How bad is it?”
At the counter, chopping herbs and trying to keep cougar breath from blowing them everywhere, Caragh frowns. “It’s not good, Jules. Every day she bleeds. And every day it’s harder to stem the pains.”
“How long will it be before it’s safe for the baby to come?”
“Maybe it is not only the baby we should be worrying about.”
Jules swings the hot water kettle away from the fire and wraps the handle in cloth. “Don’t tell me you believe that low magic nonsense.”
“Whatever you think about the rightness or wrongness of it, low magic exists,” Caragh says. “And my sister has become the closest thing that the island has to a master of it.”
“Maybe. But this time she’s wrong. Have you heard her talking about the baby? She keeps calling it ‘he.’ A boy. When we all know that Milone women only bear girls. Two girls.”
“The old Milone rule,” Caragh says softly. “The old Milone curse. We have more than our fair share of those, don’t we?”
Jules brings the pot, and Caragh ties the herbs in cheesecloth and drops the bundle in. The nettle tea will be bitter enough to pucker Madrigal’s cheeks, but Willa says that they cannot add even one drop of honey.
“We thought you were dead,” Caragh says quietly. “Or at least gone. And then Worcester came with strange news: the mist was rising without cause and leaving dead bodies in its wake. Rumors of a legion-cursed naturalist who would go to war.” Caragh narrows her eyes. “I didn’t believe it was you, of course. I thought it must be an impostor. But your mother knew it had to be true.”
“How did she know?” Jules asks.
“Perhaps she knows her daughter.”
“She doesn’t know me. You know me. You raised me.”
“And then she raised you,” says Caragh. “After I came here.” She reaches out and tucks Jules’s short hair behind her ear. “You even look like a queen these days.”
Jules brushes her away with a smile. “I never thought we would get this far. Even when Mathilde’s crazy stories started to work and people started to believe . . . and then, maybe I started to believe.”
“Madrigal would say that is what destiny feels like.”
“How do you know what Madrigal would say?”
“She’s my sister, Jules. Thinking she’s dying has made her almost sweet. She’s trying to make amends. So am I, in case she’s right.” Caragh looks at her meaningfully, but Jules just sticks her lip out and blows hair away from her forehead. The baby will be fine, and Madrigal will be up to her old tricks in no time.
She gathers a cup and saucer and assembles Madrigal’s afternoon tea service, piling on a few of the almond biscuits she likes, the only thing that Willa will consent to her eating alongside the tea.
Halfway down the sunlit hall, Jules hears Emilia’s laughter bubble out from Madrigal’s room. It is a pretty sound, and her unwell mother sounds in good spirits, laughing back. But for some reason, the fur on Camden’s tail begins to puff with apprehension.
When Jules enters, all is innocent. Emilia has just returned from foraging in the woods, her hands black with dirt, her burlap sack heavy with roots and herbs.
“What did you find?” Jules asks.
“Big patch of fanroot.” Emilia reaches into the bag and pulls some out, a pale tuberous root still attached to its bright green leaves shaped like tiny fans. Hence its name. “I will go out again after dinner. Willa says it will keep well enough in the cellar. Before long, the frost and snow will get to the leaves, and it will be that much harder to find.”
“More fanroot. How delicious,” says Madrigal sarcastically.
“What brings you in to see my mother?” asks Jules, and Emilia shrugs.
“We got on well together, after you left us for the queens at Bardon Harbor. Your mother understands the virtue of the war gift and the possibilities of your so-called legion curse.”
Jules sets the tray of tea down beside Madrigal’s bed. She pours some of the bitter liquid into the cup and points to it. Then she takes Emilia by the arm and pulls her out of the room and down the hall.
“What?” Emilia asks. “What is the matter?”
“I know why you were in my mother’s room.”
“Yes. I told you. Because it is nice to converse with someone who understands our cause—”
“And because of the binding.”
“What?”
“The low magic binding. The blood. You know my mother bound my legion curse with her blood, and you know that if she dies, the war-gifted side will be let loose. Which is exactly what you’ve always wanted.”
For a moment, Emilia stares at Jules wordlessly. Then her eyes darken, and she steps up close.
“I would never want that. She is your mother! Have you forgotten that I had a mother who died?”
“No,” Jules says quickly, ashamed to admit that, for the moment, she had. “This war is everything to you; that’s all I know.”
She braces, sure that Emilia will use her war gift to shove her, to explode in her face. But instead, her shoulders slump.
“It is not everything.”