I could flee, the Queen thought, but it was an empty idea at best. She was equally hated in both Cadare and Callae. That left the north, where the dark thing waited, and west, the worst option of all. If the Tear got hold of her, they would stretch her to ribbons just to watch her scream. And even if she could flee, into dark holes and shadowy corners, what kind of life would that be, when she was used to watching kingdoms dance at her command?
Evie! Come here!
“No,” she whispered. Long before the Tear had sent its first shipment, she had already been a slave, and now she could never go back. She would rather be dead. She thought of her recurring nightmare, which had plagued her for months now: the last flight, the girl, the fire looming, and the man in grey behind them. You will flee, the dark thing had told her, and perhaps she would, but only at the very end, when she had nothing left. She lifted her chin, staring at the room of traitors before her.
“Next.”
Chapter 3
Demesne
These people are so damned proud of their hatred! Hatred is easy, and lazy to boot. It’s love that demands effort, love that exacts a price from each of us. Love costs; this is its value.
—The Glynn Queen’s Words, as compiled by Father Tyler
In all his years of sneaking in and out of every venue imaginable, the Fetch had found that the most valuable skill was the correct stride. Too fast was suspicious. Too slow was lost. But the right pace, the confident gait of one who belonged there, these things had an almost magical power to set guards and sentries at ease.
He padded stolidly up the stairs, the walk of a much heavier man who did not relish his destination. He wore the cloak of one of the Arvath guards, but beneath the hood his eyes darted everywhere, looking for movement. It was half past three in the morning, and most of the Arvath was asleep. But not all; the Fetch could hear the activity far above him, the sound of many voices drifting down the center of the staircase from the upper floors. A new mob. When the Holy Father had been anointed, the devout of the city had hailed the event in a three-day waking fast before the Arvath. These same people thought the Holy Father would restore the glory of the Church, a glory that had steadily eroded since the Glynn Queen took the throne. It was from this demographic that the Holy Father assembled his mobs.
I could tell you, the Fetch thought, the thought tinged with black inside his head, and now, instead of the Holy Father, he saw Row, swathed in white. I could tell you about God’s Church.
The mobs were bad; they had already slaughtered several “sinners” in various corners of the city. But there was worse to come. The new Holy Father had hired more than twenty-five bookkeepers for the Arvath, but even a casual observer could see that these men were not accountants but enforcers. Howell had followed several of them around the city, into the Gut and the warehouse district, even down into the Creche, where they dealt in whatever obscenity would give a good rate of return. Intuition told the Fetch that a vast criminal empire was being assembled here, under the streets, in the dark.
Of course, there were many gangsters in the Tearling; the Queen’s treasurer was one of them. But this was the Church, and the Fetch, who had once been a member of God’s Church in its infancy, felt the difference deep inside himself. Criminals and panderers . . . he didn’t know why this fact should continue to surprise him. But the shame he felt now was the same shame he had felt then.
Before he died, Thomas Raleigh had told the Fetch that the crown was in the keeping of the Holy Father. Thomas had offered an infinite number of minor bribes to get it back, but he had at least had the presence of mind to withhold what the old Holy Father had really wanted: a permanent income tax exemption for the Church. It was, after all, only a crown, though the Fetch, who had always been able to read Thomas easily, saw a different truth in the condemned man’s eyes: he had wanted the crown terribly. He had no idea of what it could do—for that matter, neither did the Fetch—but the silver circlet symbolized something that Thomas had needed to prove. In that final moment before execution, the Fetch had pitied him, but not enough to withhold the axe.