The more I spoke, the more irrational I felt, as they watched me with raised eyebrows and poorly disguised disbelief. But no matter how they spun things, they couldn’t charge the city’s poor to pay for a funeral where hundreds of gemstones were thrown away. I wouldn’t let that be how my rule began.
“Your Majesty,” Norling said, leaning forward slightly. “May I make a suggestion? There is distrust in the city for you, as you have seen. And if you do this, there will be distrust in the nobles, as well. It might be best to organize a distraction. An open trial, for those who tried to poison you, and other criminals we have apprehended recently. Show people that justice still rules in this city.”
If people thought the laws were unjust, having a trial wouldn’t help. But it would give me, and everyone else, a chance to see exactly what was going on. “Yes,” I said. “All right.”
“Perhaps Her Majesty should make sure she knows what her laws are,” Sten said softly, “before she rules on them.”
I stared at him. “I understand the laws,” I said quietly. “I just expect people to tell me when they start manipulating them.”
“Then perhaps you understand that we are not used to a tyrant for a ruler. King Jorgen listened to his advisers. And to his friends.”
“It’s hard to listen to your advisers when they don’t tell you anything.”
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t look away. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
He suspects me, I thought again. It was the only way to explain that look of careful assessment, the distrust and dislike lurking behind his eyes.
“Pay back the money,” I said. “That’s my final decision.”
My father escorted me after the meeting, his hand tight around my arm. “You are being too rash, Freya,” he said, in a low voice, once we were out of sight of the others.
I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms. “It isn’t rash to treat people fairly.”
“This decision will have consequences. Your council are supposed to be here protecting you from that, but if you plan to ignore us—”
“I’m not ignoring you,” I said. “You are the ones who’ve been ignoring me. I just—” I closed my eyes, all the fight rushing out of me. “It’s one thing to pretend to be someone else, when it’s speeches, and dresses, and balls. It’s another when it affects people. When people are suffering from decisions that I hate. I can’t—I can’t do that.”
“This will affect you, Freya.” He stopped and placed his hands on my shoulders, leaning closer, beseeching. “Sometimes, rulers have to do things that they don’t like, because it’s the best of bad options. Because fewer people will suffer than if you take the other course.”
“But you didn’t even present me with options,” I said, pulling out of his grip. “You just decided for me, and people hate me for it. I would never have agreed to this if I knew. Never.”
“Freya—”
“How can I trust you now? You were already willing to lie to me. How can I know you’re not manipulating me, as well?” I shook my head. “I can’t trust you. I have to make my decisions for myself.” I stepped back. “Have that book sent to my laboratory. And I’ll see you at the trials tomorrow.”
“Freya!”
I walked away.
The book, when it arrived, wasn’t much of a book at all. I’d been expecting an ancient tome, with hundreds of pages of philosophy and religion. Instead, Gustav’s Treatise consisted of roughly six leaves of paper, tied at the spine with string. Naomi and I read it together at the laboratory’s central table, and I scribbled notes as we went.
The essay inside wasn’t what I’d been expecting, either. Gustav had been an exiled radical, a man who despised the nobility and everything we stood for, but his book was hardly a call to mass murder. He claimed that the nobles originally appeared as false heirs to the lost Forgotten, people eager to fill the vacuum they’d left and claim their influence for themselves, but their descendants were now simply misguided, not wicked. The power to convince the Forgotten to return lay in all our hands, through good work and humility. We must purge the corruption from ourselves, and be examples to others, for only true atonement in each person’s heart would be enough to win favor again.
His ultimate goal, he wrote near the end, was to break down the line between the nobility and the people, as we were all equal under the Forgotten’s divine influence. But he recognized that would be a long and difficult path, and a more pious and thoughtful nobility would be the first step—a movement that must come from the nobility themselves.
And this, apparently, was enough to see him exiled and his work banned forever.
I couldn’t imagine how this was connected to the attacks. But Holt had said the work had been twisted over time, forced to mean whatever people wanted it to mean. People could have taken the words about pretenders and forgotten the rest. Even so . . .
I leaned back, dropping my pen on the paper. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t think.”
Naomi stretched beside me. “It’s a hundred years old, and illegal to own. It makes sense that it doesn’t tell you much about what these people want.”
“They call themselves the Gustavites! They should be following what he said, shouldn’t they?”
“Or maybe they are,” Naomi said softly. “They aren’t exactly around to answer questions, are they? Maybe your advisers are wrong about them.”
“But what about the woman who tried to poison me?”
“She might not represent the rest of them. She might have nothing to do with them.”
And I had thought it was unlikely, when I first heard the accusation. My head pounded. There were so many things to worry about, so many threats. I could barely keep track of all the strands, let alone see how they tangled together. “A break,” I said, pressing the heels of hands against my eyes. “Let’s have a break.”
Naomi stood and stretched again. “You must be tired,” she said. “You haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
“Who needs sleep?”
“Where did you go last night? I came out to look for you, but . . .” She shrugged. “You weren’t there.”
I looked up again. If she’d wanted to talk to me, on the night of the funerals, and I wasn’t there . . . “I’m sorry. I thought you were asleep.”
“I woke up. It’s all right, I was just wondering. Were you working?”
I nodded. “Not that I made much progress.” I drummed my fingers on the table, wondering how much to tell her. But my conversations weren’t secrets. There was nothing unmentionable about them. “Fitzroy was there.”
“Fitzroy?” She shot me a sideways glance. “Is that why you didn’t make much progress?”
“Naomi!” I stared at her, and she grinned.
“Well, you’ve never mentioned Fitzroy before. Last I heard, you didn’t know him at all. And now he’s helping you in your lab? How suspicious.”
“Suspicious? You think he’s manipulating me?”