Naelin winced. She should have tried to clean. A hard scrub would have gotten out many of the stains . . . She surveyed the room, cataloguing all the things she could have fixed or cleaned. “I’ve been practicing here.”
“I can see that.” The queen studied Naelin. Even when she’s not on the throne, she seems like a queen, Naelin thought. She wondered if it was an act or her natural personality, or a consequence of wearing the crown. Tapping the armrests, the queen continued to regard Naelin so intently that Naelin began to feel like an insect who had been noticed by a kitten. “You can speak freely, you know. I’m not going to have my guards chop your head off if you offend me. Besides, Captain Alet speaks highly of you.”
Naelin hadn’t seen Alet in days. It was nice to know that the guardswoman approved of her. She’d thought so, but she appreciated the confirmation. “You did the right thing, telling people the truth. Now they can be prepared.”
“I can’t predict it, so how can people prepare?” The queen stood abruptly and walked toward the balcony. She halted in the archway and looked out.
Naelin stood as well, smoothing her skirt and patting her hair. She’d changed from the brocade gown that the caretakers had provided for the funerals. She was wearing instead heavy-duty laundress clothes that would stand up to water, fire, and dirt. “Well, now that I know, I can be prepared. The next time—”
“I’ll train you.”
“Your Majesty?”
The queen spun to face her, and her sun-colored skirts flared around her. “I have precious little time, with the schedule my seneschal has set for me. There are many who want an audience after my announcement today. People need to be reassured. Champions need to be soothed. Not everyone feels that my announcement was the right decision . . . But that’s not your problem. Your problem is that you have too much power. You’ve never learned to work small.”
“I’m honored—”
“Oh, for spirits’ sake, stop treating me like a queen. Come here.” Queen Daleina beckoned. When Naelin joined her on the balcony, she pointed toward a tree spirit who was gnawing on an acorn several yards away. It was perched on a spire, with its hind legs planted in the bark. The tree spirit was no larger than Naelin’s fist and so gnarled that it looked like an oversized walnut. Its face was a mash of wrinkles, and its spindly wood legs were pockmarked with deep, rotted-looking knots. “Tell me: what does it want?” the queen asked.
Death, she thought. It wanted their blood soaking into the moss, their last breath exhaled into the wind, their bodies sunk into the earth. “To kill all humans. To be free of our commands. To tear down all we’ve built. To rip the throats from our children and destroy our future.”
“More simply. What does it want right now?”
Naelin studied the spirit. Bits of acorn flew from its teeth. “Lunch?”
“Exactly. So if you want to use the least amount of power possible to make that spirit grow a tree, choose a tree that it will want to grow. And then don’t command. You don’t want to bully the spirit—that requires more power. You want to nudge it. Encourage it. Trick it into doing what you want by making it think it’s doing what it wants.”
“Like getting children to help with the dishes by turning it into a game.” Naelin thought of Erian and Llor. She’d turned housework into a contest—who could straighten their sheets fastest, who could wash their plates the best, who could remember to hang up their towels for the most days in a row. Here, caretakers did it all. “Mine will be so spoiled when we—” She stopped before she said “go home.” She pictured home: her cozy kitchen with herbs drying upside down from the rafters, the beds piled high with down quilts she’d made, the wood floor worn from years of footsteps, and then she ruthlessly pushed the image away. Home is gone. Or at least so far out of reach that it might as well be. “All right, I’ll try.”
“Good.”
Taking a deep breath, Naelin steadied herself. She cleared her mind and then sent a single thought spiraling toward the spirit: More?
It perked up, rising onto its hind legs and pricking its ears forward.
She pictured a nut tree. Painted an image of a belen nut, its pink shell, its chewy inside. She pushed the image toward the spirit. Grow more, eat more.
“Gently,” Queen Daleina said. “Only suggest.”
Naelin drew back her thoughts. The spirit looked around—down, up, right, left—its movements quick and jerky.
“Focus on what it wants. Encourage that.”
You’re so hungry. So very hungry. You want more food. She pictured the tree again, with its twisted limbs and wrinkled bark. She filled its branches with clusters of nuts. The spirit chittered like a squirrel, and Naelin tasted the bitter-buttery nut taste on her own tongue.
“Good,” the queen said softly. “Now guide it to one of the barren patches. There’s one just to the east, half a mile. Just suggest it. Don’t order.”
“How?”
“Picture it.”
“But I’ve never seen it.”
“The spirits have. Reach east, and look through their eyes.”
“We can do that?”
The queen placed her hands on Naelin’s shoulders and positioned her to face east. “Quiet your own thoughts, and look. Think of their eyes as your eyes.”
Naelin reached out, expanding her awareness as Ven had taught her. She brushed past the spirits around the palace. So many spirits. Burrowing, flying, sleeping, crawling . . .
“They aren’t Other,” the queen said. “They’re you. Parts of you. See with them, through them.”
She felt . . . Shaking her head, Naelin yanked away. She’d felt their hunger, their hate, and even worse, their indifference. She’d felt their oddness, their slippery, slimy . . .
“You can’t hate them,” Queen Daleina said, and Naelin thought she sounded sad. “That was the hardest thing, when they crowned me. They’d killed . . . Regardless, you can’t hate your foot even if it hurts you. You can’t hate your eyes even if they sting. In order to command them with precision, rather than bludgeon them with raw power, you need to accept them as a part of you.”
Lovely sentiment, but not practical. “I hate them, and I’ll always hate them.”
“You can’t,” Queen Daleina said. “You and I . . . We don’t have the luxury of hate anymore.”
“I don’t forgive easily.” She thought of Renet. Thinking of him felt like a fist in her stomach. They were supposed to spend their future together, grow old and crotchety together, bounce grandchildren on their knees, feed each other soup when they grew too weak to chew . . . He’d taken that away from her. She could easily hate him. But not forgive. “It may be that I have personality flaws.”
The queen rolled her eyes—a very unqueenly expression. “Do you believe I am flawless?”