Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (67 page)

She picked up the button as well.

Clara rushed in through the door then.

Memory flicked the button across to her. “Good timing, this one’s for you.”

Clara caught it in almost a daze and clasped it in her hands. She frowned deeply. “There’s news,” she stuttered. “News from Hayes. He’s still demanding to marry Eloryn.”

Memory and Roen frowned at each other and got to their feet. The doorway between Memory and Eloryn’s chambers clicked closed and Eloryn stood there, neatly dressed in a simple lace gown, her face almost as white as the fabric.

“What do you mean he has the legal right? He’s a scum-sucking criminal!” Memory paced up and down the long table in the Round Room.

Bedevere’s expression remained stoic. “It is also legally within your rights to have Hayes executed for those crimes of treason, which would solve the matter.”

Memory cringed visibly. “No more death. I don’t want that to be the way I deal with problems. When something tough comes up, it’s not right, just snuffing out a life so the issue disappears. We’ll find another way.”

Eloryn nodded, backing up her sister. It felt important that she support Memory’s decisions as queen, since it was her actions that made Memory queen. And her actions that brought her now to this ordeal. Eloryn sat still in the center seat, with Roen on one side and Bedevere, Lanval and Roen’s parents seated around them. She put her hands on the table and it felt so flimsy. She really had to get to work on repairing the table that belonged in this room, the true round table that had been there since Arthur’s time. Memory would be able to pace much more effectively around the circle it formed than up and down this straight edge.

Curious, the things one ponders of at times like these.
Eloryn wondered if she was in shock, or simply in denial. As soon as Clara shared the news, Eloryn realized what a fool she’d been. Her contract of marriage with Hayes had foiled his plans to become king, and had revealed the crimes he’d committed. She thought she’d won then. She didn’t consider that the contract still stood, or that he would take advantage of that. She should have known better. Hayes was the type to take any advantage he could.

He looked far too pleased with himself as he was marched into the meeting by the bailiff and two other guards. Eloryn recognized the shackles as the same that Thayl had used, that block magic on the wearer.

Roen’s hand rested on the table beside her and she moved hers closer, so that their little fingers touched, seeking that smallest comfort. He locked gazes with hers and she took strength from him.

Hayes stood before the group and smiled at Eloryn in a way that crinkled his hooked nose. The spite within the expression made Eloryn’s stomach churn.

He bowed a shallow and mocking bow. “My dear soon-to-be wife.”

Eloryn stared back at him, keeping her voice and gaze level. “You are doing this only to punish me. Why must you be so cruel?”

“Oh, not only to punish you. It’s your little trick that has turned to bite you. You may not let me be king, but I can still hope that your wild sister never bears an heir, and that one of our many, many children will come to rule.”

Memory choked. “I just threw up in my mouth a little.”

She stood right beside Hayes, although he completely ignored her. All his attention and venom was focused on Eloryn. Something wild and desperate filled him now, something darker than the simple greed he had within him before. Eloryn wished she never had to take an action again that would create such an enemy to her. The feeling that this man could have so much hatred for her left her drained to her core.

“Despite the brain bleaching I now need, the fact is, Hayes, that you’ll be in jail,” Memory said. “How can you make her be your wife while you’re in jail?”

Hayes replied, but continued to look at Eloryn. “It doesn’t matter where I am, or what I am. King or prisoner, Eloryn will be my wife. She is legally and magically bound by contract, and I intend to follow through.”

Memory put her palms to her forehead as if she was trying to contain herself. “Gah! I hate you so much right now if someone doesn’t get you out of this room I’m going to pull your eyeballs out and vomit in the empty sockets.”

Half the room stared open mouthed at Memory as the guards led Hayes away, but Hayes just glared at Eloryn the whole way out.

Memory pulled a chair out across from Eloryn and flopped into it. “I’m sorry, I guess that wasn’t very queenly of me.”

“Are you all right?” Eloryn asked.

“Am I all right? How are you not a living emotional explosion right now?”

Eloryn took a deep breath. She didn’t know the answer. She just knew she had to believe they would find a solution, and believe that nobody could force her away from Roen. “I guess I’m simply putting all my energy into not vomiting in someone’s eye sockets, which is a horrendous concept, by the way.”

Roen laughed, but it was short and sharp with anger. “Although if anyone were to deserve it right now, Hayes would have my vote.”

“Good luck to Hayes, thinking he’s going to get a wife and family while he’s in prison forever,” Memory said.

Eloryn stared at the table again. “But he will. I must marry him, even if the wedding takes place in his cell. And a wife has certain duties under law.”

Memory paused for a second, clearly trying to add up the meaning. “Women have to have babies as a legal duty? Hell no, not in my kingdom they don’t. Bedevere, do I have a legal advisor? If I do or don’t, bring me one. We’re going to find a way out of this. Including starting right now, we’re going to change the laws about what ‘duties’ women have in this land.”

“Oh. My. God. That’s it. I’m done. I quit being queen,” Memory said. She dropped her forehead onto the stack of paperwork on the desk in front of her and pretended to drool incoherently.

“You never did like homework,” Will said with a sly grin. “Made me do it for you half the time.”

Memory let out a groan that went for as long as she could force breath out. Rubbing her eyes with one hand, she flicked through the stack of unfinished documents and compared it to what she’d completed so far. Her first day of paperwork as queen was not proving very productive.

The monarch’s office was a dark room, filled with timber furniture in rich chocolate tones and a desk bigger than what Memory thought a dining table should be. Going in there that morning had seemed fun, exploring all the quill pens, ink pots, shifting rulers and other gadgets around the desk. The room made her feel important, like a proper queen. Then the paperwork began.

At least the chair was comfortable, and she rocked back in it and stuck her tongue out at Will where he sat cross-legged on a sideboard. He was reading a copy of Shakespeare’s complete works, which they were both amused to find on the shelves. It seemed the fae imported all sorts of things back when they still travelled between the worlds.

“Can I help?” Will offered.

Memory sighed and picked up her next piece of parchment. It was velvety and thicker than the modern paper she remembered. “Nah, I’m okay. I need to get through this. It’s part of my job now. And to be honest all I’m really doing so far is sorting things into stuff I know what I want to do about but not how to do it, stuff I can sign and be done with, and things I’m completely clueless about.”

There was a knock on the door and Memory pumped a fist into the air and whispered, “Distraction! Yes!”

“Do come in,” she said formally.

Peirs opened the door and remained standing in the threshold. He was out of his guard uniform and wore a simple fawn colored suit that matched his graying sandy-blonde hair. He held his cap in his hands against his chest and weariness accentuated the fine wrinkles across his face.

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I’ve been doing as you instructed, undoing the wrongs Hayes committed. While undergoing this task, I’ve been visiting a number of prisons Hayes established for the masses he deemed to be wrongdoers, troublemakers, or undesirables. At one such prison I have found someone I thought you might like to see.”

Peirs extended his arm, and from behind the door Clara stepped out, bringing with her a young girl with wiry red hair. The child’s eyes were full circles, wide with awe and fear, and although she was clean, in fresh clothes and with an additional blanket around her shoulders, Memory could see the girl was even skinner than she had been when under Maeve’s care at the orphanage. Skinnier and shaking like a leaf.

Memory got to her feet, a deep frown aching her forehead. In a few steps she was around her desk and kneeling in front of the girl to look her eye to eye.

“Hey, Isa,” she said softly. “Where’s your sister?”

Isa shook her head.

“Do you know where Maeve and the others are?”

Isa’s lips pulled in and she shook her head again.

Memory stood back up and gave Peirs a questioning look.

He leaned toward her and whispered so the girl couldn’t here. “After we got her out of the prison, while we got her fed and cleaned up, she said she saw Maeve and the others get taken by gaunts. She was the only one left. Apparently she was trying to find you when she got caught by Hayes’s militia.”

How dare they? She’s just a child.
Memory felt the fires in her chest roaring. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Clara, can you find Isa a room in the guest wing below my chambers, and a handmaiden to look after her?”

“Already sorted,” Clara replied, her eyes watery and lips tight.

Memory bent back down to the girl. “We’re going to find your sister and the others, and bring everyone back here, I promise. Won’t it be fun, living in the palace together?”

Isa made no movement to respond.

“I was a bit scared of getting lost when I first started working here,” Clara said, smiling at Isa. “But don’t worry, I’ll draw you a map, and soon you’ll be running all over like you own the place.” Clara scooped the girl up, and carried her away on her hip.

Memory waved to them, then headed out of her office as well, beckoning Peirs and Will to follow her. Will jumped silently from the cupboard he’d been perched on and walked at her side.

“Have you had any luck tracking those fae critters who work for Providence?” Memory asked as she took long strides down the polished marble hall.

Peirs shook his head. “We’ve checked through all known unseelie fae territories in Caermaellan, and even seelie ones, but found nothing. We’ve spotted gaunts trying to take people a few times, but haven’t been able to follow them. As soon as they’ve noticed us they leave their victim and flee, or worse, turn and fight to the death, the crazed beasts. They seem to have no fear for being Branded, and are blatantly showing more hatred toward humans.”

“I’d like to blatantly show my hatred right back again,” Memory muttered. “Have things always been this bad?”

Peirs’s grin was wry, stretching the skin on his cheeks. “Not like this, but there has always been tension between the unseelie fae and humans. They are monsters, and they see us as inferior animals. That’s why the Pact was made to include Branding, to protect each side from the other. In the old times, we used to be free to hunt the monsters for sport. I figure that’s the only reason the unseelie fae went along with the Pact because they were so under threat. But many in the unseelie court have outright stated they didn’t want the Pact as it was, that humans should have been made subservient to the fae.”

Subservient to the unseelie fae?
Memory could just imagine the kind of horrors that would involve. Still, having seen a fae creature suffer the fate of a Branding, she was pretty sure it fell under the category of horror as well.

Peirs slowed his stride, and Memory turned to see why. He still held his cap clutched against his chest. “Your Majesty, it is my fault the children have been taken. I should have stayed to protect them.”

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda, nonsense. This isn’t your fault. This is the fault of the damned vampires.”

Peirs raised an eyebrow. “There really is no such thing as vampires.”