“In the house of a woman who was loyal to your mother. Lady Chilton.”
“We’re not in Gin Reach.”
“No, Lady. About a day’s ride north, in the southern Almont. You’ve been in fugue since we found you, three days ago.”
“Three days!”
“It was a long one, Lady, and worrisome for the Guard. We should let Pen in here soon, lest he begin to chew on the furniture.” Mace smiled, but the smile did not meet his eyes.
“You haven’t forgiven me, Lazarus.”
He remained silent.
“What did you expect me to do?”
“Tell us, dammit! I would have gone with you.”
“Of course you would have, Lazarus. But I thought I was going to die. Why would I ask anyone to follow me there?”
“Because it’s my job!” he roared, and his voice seemed to shake the timbers of the tiny space. “It’s what I signed on for! The choice was mine, not yours!”
“I needed you to stay behind, Lazarus. I needed you to run the kingdom. Who else would I have trusted to get it done?”
At this, Mace’s anger seemed to fade. He looked down at the floor, his cheeks coloring.
“You chose wrong, Lady. I failed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Keep is under siege.”
“By whom?”
“The Arvath, with a legion of Mort. Our people are holed up inside, but they won’t hold out forever. New London is under the rule of the mob, but the mob, too, is directed by the Arvath.”
Kelsea’s hands tightened on the covers. Her knuckles were white, but she hoped that Mace wouldn’t notice. The thought of the Holy Father in her Keep—sitting on my throne!—was like a dark hole inside her. The entire city, the entire kingdom, at the mercy of Anders’s poisonous god . . . the thought made her insides seethe, but in this moment, Mace’s doubt seemed even more pressing.
“It was as much my fault as yours, Lazarus,” she said softly. “Some days I wonder whether I shouldn’t have let the cages roll.”
“You were trying to do the right thing, Lady. It’s not your fault that it went so wrong.”
That made her think of Simon, of their long conversation in the dungeons. Whether the topic was physics or history, it made no difference; trying to do the right thing so often ended in wrong. Kelsea shrank from the idea, for she felt it as the first step on the road to paralysis, an inability to make any decision at all for fear of unforeseen consequence.
“But me,” Mace continued, “I left. We all left to get you out. We left the kingdom wide open, so the Holy Father could steal it.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Lazarus. Either the grey cloak stays on always, or it comes off for greater exigency. It was my fault, perhaps, for asking you to be both Queen’s Guard and Regent. I’d imagine the two would often be at cross-purposes.”
“Do not coddle me, Lady.”
“Done is done, Lazarus. We both fell down, but you once told me there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on the past. The future, now, that’s everything.”
She extended her hand again.
“So what say we forgive each other, so we can keep moving forward?”
For a long moment, Mace merely stared at her hand, and Kelsea waited, feeling, again, as though she stood before a precipice. The Red Queen’s face surfaced briefly in her mind, then disappeared. It had been a long journey from that edge to this, but something told Kelsea that the journey wasn’t done, and how could she go anywhere without Mace? Guard, voice of doubt, voice of conscience . . . she needed all of these things. Her throat constricted as Mace reached out and took her hand.
“Wide as God’s ocean,” she whispered. “You remember?”
“I remember, Lady.” He looked away, blinking, and Kelsea took the opportunity to stretch her arms and shoulders, which were still sore from Brenna’s bonds. The news about the Holy Father roiled in her chest. She would have liked to go back and fix her own mistakes, but the roots of this problem went far deeper, all the way back to the fledgling settlement, the beginnings of the Tearling, where everything had begun to go wrong.
Tear was able to shuttle through time, she thought defiantly. And there had been times, deep in her fugues, when Kelsea felt as though she were almost doing the same, not just seeing but traveling, as though she were actually there, in Lily’s world, in Katie’s. But she did not control it. Something was still missing.
“Lazarus, there was a man in the cell beside me, an engineer.”
“Simon, Lady. We have him.”
Kelsea smiled, relieved to hear some good news. God only knew what good a printing press would do the Tearling now, but still she was glad that Simon had gotten out.
“Where is he?”
“Downstairs. We can barely get Hall to concentrate on anything lately.”
“Twins,” Kelsea replied, nodding. “I see now.”
“Why did you want him, anyway?”
She explained about the printing press, expecting Mace to make a scathing remark about books or reading. But he listened quietly, and when she was done, he remarked, “That’s valuable, Lady.”
“It is?”
“Yes.”
“And where is the real Lazarus?”
His mouth twitched. “I have been . . . reading.”