“There is a middle ground.”
“That would be the Mort way, I suppose. All things inconvenient discarded.”
“What have you done to these sapphires? I demand to know.”
“What is the information worth to you?”
“Don’t test me, Glynn. You live only on my sufferance.”
She does want something, Kelsea realized, not just information but something else. The idea elated her, and she leaned back against the sofa, crossing her legs.
“You do not speak.”
“Why should I? I haven’t heard an offer.”
The Red Queen’s face twisted. She reminded Kelsea of a dog stuck in front of forbidden food.
“I could curl up and sleep in the hollows under your eyes, Lady Crimson. What ails you?”
“You are right,” the Red Queen admitted slowly. “I do not sleep well. I am beset by visions.”
“Of what?”
“The future, what else?”
The past, Kelsea nearly replied, but kept her mouth shut.
“A plague has descended on my land.”
Kelsea blinked. “Disease?”
“Not in the way you mean. This plague comes out of the Fairwitch.”
A cold hand seemed to steal inside Kelsea’s chest.
“In your Tear, he is called the Orphan. An ancient monster, filled with spite.” The Red Queen eyed her narrowly. “But I think you have seen him differently, Glynn. A young man, perhaps? A young man, handsome as the devil himself.”
Kelsea kept very still, for she did not trust the woman in front of her even an inch, but without volition, her mind moved backward, far back into the past, where a boy named Row Finn already felt slighted by William Tear’s town.
He’s always been here, Kelsea thought. Always here, waiting to wreck my kingdom, perhaps the whole new world. And I let him out.
“A horror moves across the north, sweeping my people south. Entire villages have disappeared.”
“What sort of horror?”
“Children,” the Red Queen replied, her face twisted with distaste and something else; guilt? “They’re moving from village to village, slaughtering the old, scavenging the young.”
Kelsea closed her eyes. In the moment she had forgiven Finn, she had felt the badness of the bargain, had known that she was once again being tricked by exigency into making a terrible decision. Behind her closed lids, she glimpsed the cages in front of the Keep, the special cages made for small children. The memory brought not comfort but a sense of great futility. Had she done anything of value since taking the throne? Anything that would mean something in the long run?
Ozymandias, king of kings, her mind whispered, the words not snide but plaintive, the tone of a wind that scraped the landscape, sweeping all before it, leaving nothing behind. Carlin had made her memorize Shelley’s poem, and now she saw why, for certain.
“Why children?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Always, the man has wanted children. For years, I had to keep back a portion of the shipment for times when I needed his help.”
“What sort of help?”
“He knows things. Simply knows them. If I had a rebellion brewing somewhere, he knew, and I could act before conspiracy found its legs. If I needed to find someone, a fugitive, a traitor, he would know where. Except for you, Glynn. He has protected you all your life. He was happy to give information on other matters—for a price, always a price—but he would never give me anything about you, your location. Why do you think that is?”
Kelsea turned away, feeling sick again.
The badness of the bargain!
“Fire allows him to travel where I could not, but he no longer needs the fire. He comes, and the children come with him, moving from village to village, using my people as meat.”
The words seemed to stab a soft place behind Kelsea’s ribs, but she merely shrugged and asked, “What do I care? He told me his hatred lay here.”
“In Mortmesne?”
“With you, Lady Crimson. What do I care if he comes for you?”
“Don’t be a fool, girl. The damage these children inflict is not random. One village at a time, they tear apart. Houses wrecked, fields churned to mud, graves disinterred . . . they search for something.”
Disinterred graves . . . another echo of the Town. Kelsea was disquieted, if only because past and present were supposed to remain separate. Even Lily’s time, powerful though the vision had been, had always been distinct. What business did Tear’s people have in the current world?
She shook her head to clear it. “Search for what?”
“Who can say? But if they don’t find it in my kingdom, they will come for yours.”
“Finn can’t be so powerful as all that.”
“He can be, and you know it. This creature has survived for centuries on spite alone.”
“Well, what am I to do about him?”