“Give him to General Ducarte,” she told Emily. “Benin! I want names!”
“Yes, Majesty,” Ducarte replied, dragging himself to his feet. The new page handed the prisoner over while the Queen kept a careful eye on Juliette, who was working hard to conceal her anxiety. Whether that indicated guilt, the Queen couldn’t say. Treachery seemed to surround her now. It was like the old Tear tale: the lonely dictator, safe in his castle, so well guarded that he could not leave. Ducarte had warned her that withdrawing the army would cause a real problem, and now she realized that he had understood his men better than she had. She should have listened. As Ducarte began marching his prisoner toward the door, the Queen found herself forced to face an unpleasant truth: this miserable man was the closest thing she had to a friend. Alone, neither of them would last very long.
“Benin!”
He turned back. “Majesty?”
The Queen took a deep breath, feeling as though she had to coax each word from her throat. Asking for help . . . it was the most difficult thing, the most terrible thing. But she had run out of options.
“It is only you and I now, Benin. You see?”
Ducarte nodded, his face twitching, and the Queen made a startling discovery: he found her just as unpleasant as she found him. That would be something to think on, but later, when this crisis was over, when she’d finally had one good night’s sleep.
“Go.”
Ducarte left, pushing the army lieutenant in front of him. There was probably nothing to be extracted from the man anyway; a dissatisfied army made for fruitful recruiting, but the clever conspirator never told the assassin anything, and her unseen adversary, this Levieux, was nothing if not clever. The Queen seated herself on her throne again, staring at the menagerie of potential traitors before her: guards, pages, soldiers, courtiers, at least thirty people, all of them scheming to bring her down. Juliette had begun to arrange for removal of the corpse on the floor, but her eyes darted constantly to the Queen, fearful.
The Queen sought out the Tear girl, who had retreated to stand against the wall with the other pages. She should dig into the girl’s background, find out where a Tear woman had learned to handle a knife like that. But that was for later; there were too many things to worry about now. Entire villages had disappeared, fleeing from the Glace-Vert. The Queen no longer commanded an army, only a bunch of cutthroats. The Orphan, the dark thing, whatever name he traveled under, he was coming, and she had nothing with which to stop him. The girl might be of use, but she was a dangerous uncertainty, and the Queen hated uncertainty above all things. She felt a sudden urge to scream, to throw something, anything to stop all of these people from staring at her, waiting for her to make another mistake.
“Emily, is it?” she asked the slave.
“Yes, Majesty.”
The Queen stared at her for a moment longer, sizing her up. She could not trust anyone, she realized now, but perhaps a Tear slave was a better choice than most. By and large, the Tear who came in the shipment retained no loyalty to their kingdom; they were more likely to feel active hate. It was a risk, and a large one, to give a Tear slave access to the Tear Queen, but the girl had at least acted, damn it . . . and that was more than the Queen could say for most of the room, even her own guards. Again she thought with longing of Beryll, of a time when loyalty had not been a choice between evils.
“You are no longer a page,” the Queen told her. “Yours is a special assignment. Go down to my dungeons. I want a full report on the status of the Tear Queen. Where is she, what are her conditions. Find out if she has made any requests of her jailors.”
The girl nodded, shooting a triumphant glance at Juliette, whose face darkened further. No love lost there; a good sign.
“And get yourself a Mort tutor. Learn fast. I want to hear no Tear words out of your mouth.”
Another good sign: Emily neither talked back nor asked questions, only nodded and left.
The Queen returned to her throne, but once there, it seemed she could do nothing but stare at the fresh bloodstain on the floor. Rebellion and revolt. No ruler had ever held such things down for long, not by force. Levieux and the dark thing . . . for a moment she wondered if they might be working together. But no, the dark thing would never condescend to work with anyone. Even the Queen, who had thought they were partners, had only been a pawn to him. The dark thing would wait until she was weak, until the rebellion raging across Mortmesne had taken its worst toll, and then it would come for her.