Keeping her eyes on the girl, the Queen backed toward her desk. She had a knife in the top drawer, though she was unsure whether a knife would be of any value here. This creature belonged to the dark thing; she could sense the similarity in the strange, shifting texture of the girl’s form. Not wholly solid, this child, almost as though she were not real, and the Queen, who had the ability to turn a man inside out in a hundred different ways, could not find anywhere on the child’s body to begin. If she could not reach it with her mind, then she was unlikely to reach it with a weapon, but a knife was better than nothing, and she fumbled in the drawer, pushing aside paper and pens and stamps, searching for the sharp edge of the blade. She tried to call up what she remembered from conversations with the dark thing, so long ago when they had been allies . . . or at least, when it had still considered her useful. There wasn’t much. The dark thing had taught her a great deal, but about its own history, the strange transformation that had made it what it was, it remained silent.
The girl reached the bottom of the wall and clambered to her feet. The Queen shuddered, for she recognized the rags the girl wore: remnants of one of the cheap blue uniforms that had once been used to clothe auctioned slaves. But Mortmesne hadn’t used such uniforms for more than forty years, long before Broussard’s tenure as Auctioneer. This child would have been in one of the earliest loads sent north to the Fairwitch, back when a much younger Queen of Mortmesne still thought she could placate the dark thing, buy him off with homeless children culled from the city streets. The girl’s eyes were dark and empty, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse, as though she hadn’t used it in a long time.
“I don’t want to go,” she rasped. “Don’t make me get on the wagon.”
The Queen scooted away, around the back end of the sofa. She tested the girl again, gently, pushing with her mind, and found that she had been right: the girl’s flesh was like the dark thing’s, low and humming like a hive, not entirely there. The Queen looked down at her candle, wondering if the girl would burn . . . but no. Nothing that belonged to the dark thing would ever be vulnerable to flame.
“I want my Maman,” said the girl, her voice plaintive. “Where are we going?”
“You’re no ghost,” the Queen countered. “You’re a pawn. He told you to say this to me.”
The girl vaulted over the edge of the sofa, reminding the Queen again of a hunting spider. The child’s size was deceptive; it had tricked the Queen into expecting a child’s speed and reflexes. The Queen backed across the room, nearly stumbling on the hem of her nightgown, and the girl darted forward, her blank face becoming eager and hungry. The Queen suddenly remembered a long night out in the Fairwitch, the snow steeping into drifts and the wind howling across the frozen wastes of the mountainside. The dark thing had wrapped her with fire, keeping her warm, and the Queen had been astonished to find that even though she was inside the blaze, she felt no pain. She had reached up to touch the flames, and the dark thing had grabbed her hand.
Don’t be fooled by the reprieve, he told her. In the end, we all burn.
“Burn,” the Queen whispered, almost wondering. Her entire acquaintance with the Orphan had been a history of fire held in abeyance, but now the flames were upon her.
She turned and fled for the door, heard the slap of the girl’s running feet right behind her. She got the door open and slipped through, but then her trailing hand was seized as though in a vise, and she screamed as she felt the girl’s teeth sink into the flesh of her wrist. She caught a wild glimpse of the sofa beside her doorway, and there was Ghislaine, dead, his skin bleach-white. The cushions beneath him were soaked with blood.
We all burn.
“Not yet,” the Queen snarled. She jerked her arm forward, ramming the girl’s head against the far side of the door, and felt the teeth dislodge from her wrist. Then she was fleeing down the corridor toward her audience chamber, the rabbit-patter of the girl’s feet right behind her. The hallway in front of her was empty and endless.
What can I do? the Queen wondered. She recognized the voice of incipient panic, but could not seem to control it.
Where is everyone?
Through an open doorway on her left, she saw several of her generals piled against the far wall, their limbs haphazard, as though they had been thrown there. Blood had puddled and trailed on the chamber floor.
I heard nothing, the Queen thought, almost marveling, before the girl caught the trailing end of her robe and the Queen was suddenly jerked backward, landing painfully and thumping her head on the floor. The girl jumped on top of her, giggling, the laugh of a child playing a particularly good game. The Queen grabbed the child’s throat, holding her off, but the girl was stronger than a man, and she wriggled free of the Queen’s grasp. The Queen summoned what strength she had and shoved the girl away, across the corridor to slam into the wall, but a moment later the girl was back up again, her grimy face full of white teeth. She didn’t even appear dazed.
Can’t win, the Queen realized. Already, she felt herself weakening. Her wrist was pouring blood; she pressed it against the waist of her robe, trying to staunch the flow, and felt something hard and unyielding in her pocket: the Tear sapphires.