“It’s the Creche,” said Bradshaw, who was riding on Ewen’s other side. He was a last-minute addition to the Guard, but in the end, even the Mace had been forced to admit that a magician might make himself useful in a jailbreak. Aisa still did not know why the Mace had decided to bring Ewen. The three of them, Aisa, Ewen, and Bradshaw, existed in a strange twilight, armed but not real guards, and Aisa wondered if they would serve the same function on this journey: essentially ballast. But that was the life of a Queen’s Guard. The Queen’s safety came first, even if all three of them were nothing more than human shields.
“What’s the Creche?” Ewen asked.
“The tunnels beneath the Gut. The Caden have gone to work in earnest, clearing the place out.”
Ewen still looked confused, but of course he would; how would he even know what the Creche was? Now they were close enough that the battle noise echoing from the Gut was horrendous. Aisa wondered how the people who lived there could stand it, how they got any sleep.
“Why are they working at night?” Ewen asked.
Bradshaw’s mouth curled in disgust. “Because at this hour, there’s a better chance of catching the clientele.”
Aisa grimaced as well. She found herself able to picture the Creche with extraordinary clarity: the tunnels, the fleeing men, the torches. Red cloaks. All of it was somehow tied up in her head with Da, because of all the children down there, all of them in danger.
“Aisa?”
She blinked and found that she had brought her horse to a stop. Ewen and Bradshaw were some ten feet ahead, beckoning her to catch up.
“Aisa?” Ewen asked again.
She opened her mouth, meaning to explain this thing to him. After all, Ewen was not a real Queen’s Guard either. He knew what it was like to be only halfway part of this world. But no, she could not burden Ewen; his imagination would not extend so far, would not be able to encompass the human ugliness that played out only a few streets away. But Aisa’s could, and did. To her left, a man screamed, and there was a sound of running footsteps. Aisa’s temperature was rising, and she suddenly remembered something Glee had said, days ago: They turn the corner and you grasp your chance.
“Aisa? Are you all right?”
She smiled. The Guard had turned the corner. Her chance was before her, clear and bright and shining, and she only regretted that she could not apologize to the Mace personally, explain to him that this was something she simply had to do. Her hand wandered to the knife at her waist, and she gripped the hilt, feeling something titanic rise inside her. She was not a Queen’s Guard, not really, for she suddenly saw that there were more important things in the world than one woman’s life. She had wanted to stride the world, stabbing out evil, had been dreaming of it for months. But she knew that the root of these dreams went back further, all the way back to her childhood, back to Da. She had been waiting for this chance her entire life.
“Tell the Captain I’m sorry. Tell him I had no choice.”
Ewen’s face pinched in confusion, but Bradshaw asked, “What are you going to do?”
“What the Queen would have done.” Aisa turned away and found the memory right behind her eyes: the cages; the soldiers; Glee’s face, bewildered and frightened behind the bars; Maman screaming. It had felt like the end of the world, and then the Queen had come. She had released Glee from the cage, but there were cages everywhere.
“Child, you can’t go in there!” Bradshaw protested.
“I’m not a child,” Aisa replied, and knew as she said the words that they were true, that she had finally crossed over that mysterious border in her mind.
“Tell the Captain that I’m about the Queen’s business.”
Ewen’s mouth widened in dismay, but before he could say anything more, Aisa had grasped her chance and disappeared, deep into the shadows of the Gut.
“You! Girl!”
Kelsea looked up, startled. The voice was a man’s, speaking good Tear, but she couldn’t see the source. She sat cross-legged on the floor, perfectly still, but her brain had been working steadily for the past hour or more, trying to assemble information into a unified theory. She was just starting to get somewhere—something about the sapphires and William Tear—but at the sound of the man’s voice, her thoughts fell into disarray.
“You next door!”
It was her invisible cellmate. She went to the bars.
“What?”
“You’re the marked queen?”
Kelsea raised her eyebrows. “I suppose so.”
“My jailor said your army was destroyed. A massacre. Is it so?”
“Yes,” she replied, lowering her voice to a whisper. She could hear footsteps now, descending the shallow stairs at the end of the corridor. “We were heavily outnumbered.”
“Did none survive?”
Kelsea did not reply as the footsteps approached and torchlight came around the corner. She had assumed that it was Lona, her new jailor, come for her, but the steps paused at the next cell, and a man’s voice said in Mort, “Up, you. You’re wanted.”
Kelsea leaned through the bars, trying to peek down the corridor as the guard unlocked her neighbor’s cell. She could not see much, only the far wall and, after a moment, the back of a man’s bald head. He went down the corridor, followed by the shadowy form of his jailor, and the light disappeared behind him.