“You didn’t keep peace.” Kelsea’s temper was here now; she sensed it stalking just around the edges of her mind, waiting for any chance to present itself. “You bought peace, by trafficking the people you were supposed to protect.”
“They were poor!” Elyssa insisted indignantly. “The kingdom couldn’t feed them anyway! At least in Mortmesne they would be fed and taken care of, that’s what Thorne said—”
“And why would you ever question the words of Arlen Thorne?” The urge to smack her mother across the face was so strong that Kelsea was forced to shove her hands beneath her thighs, sitting on them until it passed.
This is my mother, she thought. The idea was unbearable. How she wished that she were Carlin’s daughter, anyone else’s. This woman had given her half of what she was . . . but only half. The thought struck Kelsea like a life rope, and she leaned forward, suddenly forgetting her anger.
“Who is my father?”
Elyssa’s eyes dropped, her expression once more anxious. “Surely it can no longer matter.”
“I know you worked your way through your entire Guard. I couldn’t care less. But I want a name.”
“Perhaps I don’t know.”
“You do. So does Lazarus.”
“He wouldn’t say?” Elyssa smiled. “My faithful guard.”
Kelsea grimaced. “Lazarus doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“He did, once, to me.” Elyssa’s eyes were distant now. “I threw him away.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Why do we speak of the past?” Elyssa asked again. “It’s long gone. I hear the Red Queen is finally dead. Is it so?”
Kelsea closed her eyes, opened them again. “You won’t distract me. My father. I want a name.”
“It doesn’t matter! He’s dead!”
“Then there’s no reason not to tell me.”
Elyssa’s eyes darted away again, and an awful suspicion suddenly crossed Kelsea’s mind. In all of her ruminations on who had fathered her, there was one option she had never considered, because she couldn’t. Mace would have told her.
No, he wouldn’t, her mind reminded her, almost smugly. He’s a Queen’s Guard, through and through.
“One of my guards,” Elyssa finally replied. “I took up with him for only a few weeks. He didn’t matter!”
“The name.”
“He was so sad when he came to us!” Elyssa was babbling now, her words running together. “He was a good swordsman, even though he came from farm country. Carroll wanted him for the Guard and I only thought to make him feel better, didn’t mean to—”
“Who?”
“Mhurn. I don’t know if you ever met him—”
“I met him.” Kelsea heard her own voice, flat and almost suspiciously calm, but her mother wasn’t one to notice such things. “Did he know?” she demanded. “Did he know he was my father?”
“I don’t think so. He never asked.”
Kelsea felt a wave of relief, but only a small one. There seemed to be two halves of her mind now, running parallel tracks. One functioned well enough, but the other was transfixed by memory: blood spurting over her hand and Mhurn’s smiling face, eyes hazy with morphia.
I killed my father.
“Carroll brought Mhurn into the Guard. He had lost a wife and daughter to the Mort and oh, he was a wreck!” Elyssa looked up now, and Kelsea saw a rare hint of rueful honesty in her eyes. “I’ve never been able to resist a wreck.”
Kelsea nodded, keeping the pleasant smile on her face with an effort. “It’s not my weakness—”
I killed my father.
“—but I have read of it. Please, go on.”
“When Mace found out, he was just furious, but you know he didn’t have any right to be, we were long done by then. Sometimes I do wonder, though, if he took you away merely to punish me—”
“Lazarus took me away?”
“He and Carroll. They did it behind my back!” The trace of a pout crossed Elyssa’s lips. “I would never have given you away.”
Kelsea sat back in her chair, Mhurn pushed mercifully into the background. Finally, an answer to the question that had tormented her since that day on the Keep Lawn: why would a woman as selfish as this one give her child away for safekeeping? Kelsea had conjectured all manner of reasons, and yet had missed the simplest answer of all: her mother hadn’t given her away. Others had made the decision for her.
But why?
“I missed you a great deal at first.” Elyssa’s voice was musing, as though she were describing something that had happened to someone else. “You were a sweet baby, and oh—how you used to smile at me! But it turned out to be a good choice. Else we would have had to find a double for you too!”
She giggled, and at the sound, something in Kelsea finally broke open. She sprang from the chair, knocking it over, grabbed the smiling woman, and began to shake her. But that wasn’t enough. She wanted to slap her mother, demand that she account for her failings, that she make amends somehow.
“Lady,” Mace murmured, and Kelsea paused. He had stolen back into the room, and now he stood several feet away, his hands raised to halt her.
“What, Lazarus?” Her hands were only inches from her mother’s throat and she wanted, oh she wanted . . . Her mother was not true evil, perhaps, any more than Thorne, or the jailor, or even the young Row Finn. But all the same, she wanted so badly . . .
“Don’t do it, Lady.”