“Yes, Majesty. Alive, I understand.”
But the Queen no longer trusted him. Would Ducarte ever turn against her? No loyalty seemed certain anymore. She thought wistfully of Beryll, her old chamberlain, who would have walked into fire on her command. But Beryll was dead, and in his place the Queen now had Juliette, who seemed always to be whispering. Even now, Julie was forgetting herself, lounging against the wall and making eyes at one of the palace guards. The Queen’s other pages were scattered around the room, barely even paying attention.
“What else?”
“The army, Majesty,” Ducarte ventured, shooting an uneasy glance at the two men behind him. “It’s a problem. Many of the soldiers refused to return home after they were discharged. Large groups of soldiers hold meetings which they believe to be secret. We have reports of widespread public drunkenness and brawling all over Demesne, and in the aftermath of broken furniture and abused women, the people blame you.”
The Queen smiled, allowing some of her own spite to enter her voice. “Well, why don’t you do something about it, Benin?”
“I no longer hold sway with my men, Majesty,” Ducarte admitted stiffly. “They do not want platitudes or patriotism. They want their plunder, all the way down to the infantry. Failing that, they want to be paid in coin.”
The Queen nodded, but what Ducarte asked was impossible. She had always acted as her own treasurer, and she knew down to the mark how much money was in her vaults. She had reserves, but the flow of money had slowed considerably since the Tear shipment had stopped. There certainly wasn’t enough to pay the thousands of disaffected soldiers anything close to what they had expected to reap from the Tear invasion. Briefly, the Queen considered paying them all a small fraction anyway; such a gesture would empty the Treasury, but sometimes gestures were necessary. The Queen had gambled thus several times before, and the gamble had always paid off.
But something about the idea stuck in her craw. After all, she had not been paid either. The two Tear sapphires lay beneath her clothes, but they were only pretty baubles. All of the power, the invincibility, she had hoped to gain from the Tear invasion had been reduced to the empty trophies that now hung between her breasts. Upon her return to the Palais, she had tried everything, every enchantment she knew, but the jewels would not speak to her. It was maddening. She had Tear blood—at least the dark thing had told her so—and she should have been able to wield them. Where had their power gone?
Ducarte was still waiting for a solution, but the Queen had none to give. Her soldiers were children. She had compensated her high command, generously so. What they chose to do with that money was their own problem.
“This is my army,” she finally replied. “They work for me. If they forget, I can remind them.”
“Fear will only hold them for so long, Majesty.”
“Just watch, Benin.”
Ducarte wanted to argue further, she could tell, but after a moment he merely resumed his former defeated posture, hanging his head over his knees. For perhaps the hundredth time, the Queen wondered what in holy hell the girl had done to him. She hadn’t even known that this man was capable of fear, and now he seemed to be nothing but a quivering mass of it.
“Anything else?”
“One disturbing report. When your soldiers meet in secret, my people are always watching. Two days ago, a group of ten lieutenants met down in an abandoned house in the southern district.”
“And?”
“They met with two priests.”
“Tear priests?”
“Yes, Majesty. We did not recognize the second, but the man in charge was Father Ryan, he who took over as the pope’s right hand when Brother Matthew was executed.”
The Queen’s lips pulled back in a snarl. The Tear pope’s principles were so flimsy as to be nearly transparent, and the bargain he had struck with the Queen now sat in limbo. The pope had failed to kill the girl, and the Queen had withdrawn her army. She would not touch the Tearling further; even though the jewels appeared lifeless, she had sworn an oath upon them, one she did not dare test. But she should have known that the two-faced bastard in the Arvath would now be seeking his own accommodation. She longed to have his neck in her hands.
“The substance of this meeting?” she demanded.
“I don’t know yet, Majesty. I have two of the lieutenants in custody, but they have not broken.”
“Break them now.”
“Of course, Majesty.” But Ducarte sounded discouraged, and the Queen heard his unspoken thought easily: it was so hard to keep people from plotting in the dark.
Evie!
“Christ God, shut up!” she whispered.