“Well, that’s the choice before you, Gate Guard. Serve the Queen, or serve your own nonsense. The Captain has put your fate in my hands, and I can leave you here to drown, if that suits you better. It certainly suits me.” Dyer looked over Javel’s shoulder, his eyes narrowing. “Either way, we’ve spent enough time loitering on this street.”
Javel followed his gaze and found that some sort of commotion was building down at the next intersection. Another riot. The streets of Demesne were full of them. The rebels rioted, Demesne’s security forces broke them up, and then another riot began the next day. Galen said that the city was heading for open revolt.
Dyer walked up the street, away from the trouble, and Javel followed. His mind was a tumult: two parts hangover, two parts Allie, and a tiny, uncertain corner that had begun to turn Dyer’s words over, to examine them like a raw jewel unearthed from a mine.
You might still be useful.
He had been useful once. Before the drink had gotten hold of him, and long before Arlen Thorne had shown up with his poisonous bag of bribes, there had been a Gate Guard named Javel, ordinary but competent, content to simply do his job well and go home to his wife at the end of the day.
Serve the Queen, or serve your own nonsense.
He had not thought of the Queen in weeks, not since they had seen her go by in the wagon. But he realized now—and felt a fool for not realizing it before—that the two Gate Guards had thought of nothing else. The Queen could have stretched Javel’s neck for treason, just as she had done to Bannaker and the Arvath priest, or even mutilated him, as she had done to Thorne. But she had not. Death would have been a kindness to Javel, but there was no way for the Queen to know that, and now here he was, miserable perhaps, but alive and free, while the Queen rotted in a Mort dungeon. Javel considered this a moment longer, dodging a cart that had come trundling down the footpath, then hurried to catch up to Dyer.
“I’ll leave tomorrow.”
Dyer halted, and Javel, who had prepared himself for a sarcastic remark, looked up and found the Queen’s Guard honestly considering him, perhaps for the first time. After a long moment, Dyer pulled the sealed letter from his pocket again and offered it to Javel.
“Keep it close and show it to no one until you reach New London. It should get you past the Gate Guard and into the Queen’s Wing. Present it to Devin, him that was left in charge of the wing.”
Javel took the letter, sliding it into the inner pocket of his shirt. They began walking again, narrowly missing a splash of mud from a passing wagon. Dyer’s gaze was distant, almost sorrowful, and Javel knew that he was thinking of the Queen. Javel would be thinking of Allie, this night and many nights after, and the thoughts would undoubtedly be painful, but she was no prisoner.
“Will you be able to get her out?” Javel asked quietly.
Dyer slammed a fist into his palm. “I don’t know, Gate Guard. But dear God, if we fail . . .”
Javel peeked at Dyer’s face, wary of the rage he sensed in the man, fuel just waiting for a match. But what he saw there was more alarming still.
Dyer was crying.
Chapter 7
The Fall
It is difficult to fight the cult of sycophancy that has sprung up around the Glynn Queen. Too many historians fail to question her decisions. This historian, however, finds that the Glynn Queen made several disastrous mistakes. The Tearling is invested in the myth of the infallible ruler, but the fact remains that the Glynn Queen abandoned her kingdom at a crucial point, leaving it in the charge of the Mace, who then abandoned it as well. These decisions had catastrophic results, and true historians should admit that fact.
—An Alternate History of the Tearling, Ethan Gallagher
“I am under assault,” the Red Queen remarked. “Each day, it grows closer.”
They were standing on a balcony, the highest in the Palais, so far above the rest of the turrets that Kelsea could turn in a wide circle and see everything, unobstructed, in all directions. Demesne stretched out like a carpet beneath them, a vast tapestry of red brick and grey stone, and beyond it lay the Champs Demesne, a massive open field encircling the city. Mortmesne was a far greener country than the Tearling; much of the land was covered with pine forest, but even the farming fields had abundant greenery, rather than the dirt base that Kelsea was used to seeing in the Almont. It was an extraordinary land, this, and Kelsea could only regret the bitter history that divided Mort and Tear, made them enemies. The waste was terrible.
To the west, Kelsea could just glimpse the twin peaks of Mount Ellyre and Mount Willingham, their summits nearly hidden under the haze of the late autumn day. Both mountains were already covered with snow, but Kelsea’s eyes were locked on the divide between them: the Argive Pass. The longing to be back in her own land, standing on Tear soil, was so sharp that it wrenched something inside her.
“My army can’t stop this rebellion,” the Red Queen continued, bringing Kelsea back to herself. “Look down there.”
Following her gaze, Kelsea saw an enormous plume of smoke in the north section of the city below.