She steps back and whirls Mirabella around. Theirs is the only movement in the room, and the music plays clumsily, as even the violinists are staring.
“Do you know what I think?” Katharine asks. “I think you are a shame. I think you are a waste.”
Her fingers trace Mirabella’s veins, envying her unblemished skin.
“You are the strongest,” she says. “You could be the one. But up close, you are such a disappointment. Your eyes are wary as a kicked dog’s, when you and I both know you have never been kicked in your life. Not like me, who has been kicked down with poisons and popped blisters and made to vomit until I weep.
“That is why I am going to win,” she goes on as they twirl. “I may be the weakest, but I am a queen, through and through. All the way down to my dead blood and bones.”
“Katharine, stop this now.” Mirabella’s voice is pitiful. And she shudders when Katharine leans close.
“Do you know what they do with the dead queens, sister?” Katharine asks. “Do you know what they do with their bodies?”
She stops the farce of a dance to stand still in the center of the floor and jerks Mirabella toward her until they are chest to chest and eye to eye.
“They throw them into the Breccia for the island to eat. And may I tell you a secret?”
Katharine’s lips press to Mirabella’s ear, almost like a kiss.
“They are tired of it.”
THE BRECCIA DOMAIN
Pietyr walks his mare slowly through Innisfuil Valley. She is tired. So is he. He traded his silver armband for her at the last coach stop before the mountain pass and has not slept since getting out of the coach. Nearly two solid days of fast travel, by coach and on three horses, but he made it. Or at least he thinks so. He has only come to Innisfuil for Beltane, and without the glut of black and white tents, the place looks completely unfamiliar.
Pietyr rides along the edge of the southern trees. He is hesitant to plunge in. Despite sunlight so bright it is near blinding, the valley does not feel safe or peaceful. It feels watchful, and overeager for visitors.
When they enter the trees, the mare shies and he dismounts. If she were to spook when they reach the Breccia, she could send them both plummeting over the edge. He leads her slowly and pats her muzzle. She does not like these trees empty of birds, these woods empty of sound, any better than he does.
Soon enough the ground changes, and his mare’s hooves ring off small half-submerged stones. Pietyr lifts his head and sees the Breccia, though he would swear it had not been visible a moment before.
The Breccia Domain. A deep, dark cut into the heart of the island. It is blacker than a crow’s wing, blacker than night. It is where they once threw the bodies of the vanquished queens, and where he threw his Kat when he thought the priestesses were going to behead her.
Pietyr tosses the mare’s reins across a low branch. The long, knotted rope in his saddlebag was purchased from a trusted merchant in Prynn. Coil after coil of thick, sturdy knots that weighed the mare down on one side as they rode. Coil after coil, and still he is not sure whether he purchased enough.
He studies the trees, but none seems strong enough to tie off on. Not even the ones as thick as his waist, when the Breccia Domain is leering over his shoulder. He would prefer a trunk as thick as his horse. He considers rigging an additional safety line to her saddle, but if she were to run she would drag him back up over the side. And besides, the extra line would cost too much rope.
“Get on with it,” he growls, loudly, to break the silence and bolster his courage. “I did not ride all this way for nothing.” He holds his mare’s cheeks between his hands. “If I am lucky,” he says to her, “I will see what Kat saw.”
The horse blinks. It does not take a naturalist to see she knows he is lying. If Pietyr is lucky, he will not see, or feel, anything at all.
He chooses a tree and ties his rope, then lets out slack all the way to the mouth of the fissure. Sweat dots his forehead. His hands shake. He is terrified of a hole in the ground. How Nicolas Martel would laugh at him if he were there.
Pietyr throws the loose end of the rope over the side of the rocks, and it unfurls for many long seconds. He does not hear it strike the bottom. It only comes to an end, tugging against his fists.
Perhaps the rumors are true, and there is no bottom.
With the rope in place, he walks back to his horse, and takes a small lamp out of his saddlebag. He ties it to his belt, and stuffs extra matches into every pocket. Then he breathes in deep, goes to the edge, and lowers himself over the side.
The knotted rope makes for easy enough going. His feet do not slip, and his hands are strong and sure. Even so, he keeps his eyes on the patch of blue-and-white sky overhead. When the patch is dishearteningly small and his legs have begun to tire, he finally looks around, resting against the side of the crevasse. The sides are sheer, steep rock. He does not know how Katharine was able to stop her fall.
He continues on, deeper and deeper into the dark. Until his feet search for the next knot, and it is not there.
Pietyr’s hands clench tight as he tries to catch his previous foothold. It is hard not to panic thinking of how far it is to climb back up and how far he may yet have to fall. And it is so dark now that he cannot see the rope in front of his face.
A sudden wind moves across his shoulders. He jerks, and his hip strikes painfully against the stone. But it is only wind, sneaking down from the surface. Never mind that the wind somehow smells like death and rot. Or that when he laughs at his foolishness, there is no echo.
There is nothing here, he thinks as the back of his neck prickles. There is no one down here, no one watching. This was a waste.
He reaches for the lantern at his belt. He will light it just to be sure, to get a look at the darkness and nothing below his feet. But when his fingers find a match, he does not want to strike it. What if he is near the bottom? Will he see everything that they have discarded? Long-dead queens lying in piles of bones and ragged black dresses, staring up at him with empty, accusing eye sockets and bare, yawning jaws.
Or will he see Katharine, his Katharine, rotting where he threw her, and the claw marks on the stones of whatever scratched its way out to take her place?
No, he thinks. That is foolishness. A flight of frightened fancy.
He strikes the match.
It struggles to light, and he touches it quickly to the lamp. Yellow-orange flame casts against his clothes, against his rope and the stone it hangs beside. Carefully, he unties the lantern and holds it out, looking down, past his feet.
There is nothing. No bones of dead queens. No cavern bottom of rocky growths. It is only a void, and that is a wonder in itself considering how far he has descended. The length of rope he would need to reach the bottom would have been too much for his horse to carry. All he can do now is drop the lamp, and try to see something in the moment that it lands.