“You idealists are all the same,” the Red Queen spat. “You assume that because you wish no harm, your decisions are always harmless. This thing was restrained, Glynn . . . bounded by magic so dark that even I could never discover its source. Now that spell is broken, the Orphan is free, and I know that you have done it. This plague is yours.”
Kelsea sensed her own temper stirring, roiling beneath the surface calm she projected, and she welcomed it as though it were an old friend at her door.
“You have a nerve, Lady Crimson. You wish to discuss responsibility? Let’s talk about yours. Thousands of people stolen from my kingdom, men and women and children, brought here to be worked and screwed until they dropped dead of abuse. And how many did you hand over to Finn yourself? You’ve been taking a disproportionate number of children since the shipment started, and I’ll wager my crown that’s where they’ve been going. If my hands are bloody, you’re swimming in it.”
“Will that allow you to sleep at night?”
Kelsea gritted her teeth. Arguing with this woman was maddening, for hypocrisy seemed to shame her not at all. “Perhaps not, but I don’t need fear to rule my own kingdom. I have no secret police, no Ducarte.”
“But you wish you did.”
“You think I’m jealous?” Kelsea asked incredulously. “Of you?”
“I have kept my people safe and fed and housed for more than a century. You can only dream of such an accomplishment. Instead, you’ve wrecked us all, without a second thought.”
“You don’t know me. I agonize over every decision I make.”
“No decision so damaging as this one. The dark thing—”
“His name is Row Finn. You really don’t know very much about him, do you?”
“Neither do you.”
“Oh, but I do,” Kelsea replied, seeing a sudden glimmer of a path. “I know more about him than you could imagine. He grew up in William Tear’s town. His mother was named Sarah. He was a gifted metalworker.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
“He would never tell you these things.”
“He didn’t.”
The Red Queen stared at her for a long moment. “What is your source?”
“You’re not the only one beset by visions.” Kelsea hesitated—it was second nature, by now, to deny the truth of her fugues—then continued. “I see the Landing, the time when New London was no more than a village on a hill, ruled by William Tear.”
“What use is a vision of the past?”
“That’s a fine question, but I see it all the same: fifteen years after the Landing, Tear’s town just beginning to rot from the inside.” As she said the words, Kelsea realized that history had failed them; always, in Carlin’s classroom, the fall of Tear’s utopia had been ascribed to the death of Jonathan Tear. But it had begun much earlier than that, all of humanity’s old vices creeping back in. Kelsea sensed them, even in Katie, who had been raised by one of Tear’s oldest and most trusted lieutenants. Even Katie had doubts.
Maybe we aren’t capable of being satisfied, Kelsea thought, and the idea seemed to open a chasm inside her. Maybe utopia is beyond us.
But no, she didn’t believe that.
“And the Orphan—Finn, as you say—he was there?” the Red Queen asked.
“Yes, little more than a child.”
“But vulnerable,” the Red Queen murmured, her eyes beginning to gleam. “Everything is vulnerable in infancy.”
“Perhaps. But I must live long enough to discover that vulnerability. My visions are not unified. They progress in time, sometimes by leaps and bounds. Like a story in chapters.”
“How strange,” the Red Queen mused, but then her gaze sharpened. “You still have these visions, even though I hold the Tear sapphires?”
“Yes.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“This Row Finn. Can he be killed?”
“I think so,” Kelsea answered truthfully, for she sensed that this was so. Young as she was, Katie’s sight was very clear. The boy, Finn, was undeniably arrogant, but there was fear there too, carefully hidden, driving him. But fear from what source?
“But you don’t know how to kill him.”
“My visions come unbidden. I don’t control them. You have to give me time.”
“Time, with this creature breathing down my neck?” The Red Queen turned away, but not before Kelsea had seen something extraordinary: the Red Queen’s knuckles locked together, so white that they seemed as though they might split and begin to bleed.
“What is it you’re afraid of?” Kelsea asked softly. She didn’t expect an answer, but the Red Queen surprised her, the words muffled as she spoke over her shoulder.
“You think I don’t care about my people, but I do, just as you care about yours. I have built this kingdom from nothing, from a disordered mess into a machine. I won’t have it torn down. I care about my people.”
Not as much as you care about yourself, Kelsea thought, but she kept the words locked behind her lips.
“I need time,” she repeated firmly. “Time to find out what he’s afraid of. And I want a different jailor.”
The Red Queen stared at her for a moment, her brow furrowed, then barked, “Emily!”
The page entered, bowing.
“Yes, Majesty?”
“Who is her jailor?”
“Strass, Majesty.”
“Strass? Why do I—”