“You can’t!” Aunt Lily cried, her voice cracking.
“Lil.” Aunt Maddy grabbed her shoulder, squeezing it until Lily winced. “Stop.”
“But where will you go?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aunt Maddy replied. “This is more important than either of us. It always was, and you knew it as well as I did. He told me you were always one of us, even way back then, in Boston.”
She turned and limped down the hallway.
“She’s right, Mum,” Jonathan said quietly, turning the sapphire over in his hands. “Dad dead, and this town falls apart.”
“We have to stop her!” Lily insisted. But neither Katie nor Jonathan moved, and when Lily made to get up, Katie grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. A few seconds later, the front door clicked shut, and Lily began to sob. Katie wanted to cry as well, for William Tear, for Aunt Maddy, and even more, for what they had all lost, the entire Town. But in the face of Jonathan’s stoicism, she had no choice but to swallow her own tears, turning her thoughts to the immediate future.
No one was ready to hear that William Tear was dead. Tear had left Mum in charge, but that was an interim solution; Mum was not the woman to hold the Town together for the long term. It would have to be Jonathan, but the Town wasn’t ready to accept that either. Aunt Maddy was right. Tear’s death would have to be concealed at all costs. Katie was a guard now, and secrets were her business, but a rogue part of her mind could not help wishing that this charge had fallen to someone else. She loved the Town, and she was no good at telling lies.
You’ll learn, Tear whispered inside her head, and Katie shivered, realizing the truth of that voice: she was working for a dead man now.
Chapter 9
Flight
Even at this late date, we have been unable to discover any conclusive proof of the origins of the Red Queen. This historian believes that she was born in one of the small villages of northern Mortmesne, but this is guesswork only, for how can we research a woman about whom so little is known, not even her true name?
—The Tearling as a Military Nation, Callow the Martyr
When the Queen woke, she lay still for a moment. She was sure she’d heard something, a rustling on the far wall. Once, during a particularly cold winter, the Palais had become infested with rats. They’d taken care of it with poison bait, but perhaps the rodents had come back.
They have indeed.
The Queen’s mouth stretched in a cold smile. More of her people deserted every day. Her throne room had not been cleaned for a week, since most of the Palais cleaning staff had run off. Half of her own personal Guard could not be found. Ghislaine, her Guard captain, was the only reason the Queen dared to sleep; at this moment, Ghislaine stood watch outside her chamber door. Beyond her windows, she could hear the distant sounds of battle in the city. Demesne was in anarchy.
That odd, rustling sound came again.
The Queen uttered a low curse and reached for her candle. She slept very little at night anyway; it was so much easier to fall asleep in the daytime, in the light. The room beyond her covers was ice-cold, full of drafts from the many broken windows in the Palais. Three weeks ago, the King of Cadare had missed his first shipment in more than twenty years. Even the thought of it made the Queen’s blood boil. The old bastard had sensed her weakness, and the Queen, who had not had to worry about Cadare for years, suddenly had a problem on her southern border. Glass, once cheaper than food on the streets of Demesne, was about to become a priceless commodity, and the Queen, who had once had the best-insulated bedroom in the kingdom, now shivered beneath her blankets. The treasury couldn’t spare the money to repair windows. The Palais was wide open to the early winter air, as well as whatever vermin might crawl inside.