The Bird and the Sword (36 page)

“Has the queen requested a regent, Lord Corvyn?” Lady Firi asked mildly, drawing the attention of all seven of the bickering lords.

“The queen’s wishes cannot be considered. She is unable to communicate and is therefore unfit to reign,” my father retorted.

“That has not been established, Corvyn,” Lord Janda boomed, and Lord Enoch, a cousin of my mother, concurred. Then the arguing began again, tempers rising, opinions swirling, and no one attempted to consult me at all.

I took out my book of accounts and turned to a blank page. Very carefully, I composed a statement for the council, for my father, and for those who had any question about my willingness or ability to rule. I dusted it with sand as the men rambled, let it dry as the men aired out all their grievances, and when I finally stood, the lords rose as well, but their conversation barely stuttered and their eyes never left each other.

I walked to Lady Firi’s side and extended the document I had painstakingly created.

Will you read this, please?
I asked her. Her brows rose in surprise, but she immediately stood, taking it from my hands, then waited for me to return to my position at the table.

“The queen has prepared a statement and has asked me to read it to the council,” Lady Firi projected her voice above the fray.

I waited until I had their suspicious attention and inclined my head, asking Lady Firi to begin.

“I am Lark of Corvyn, now of Degn. I was crowned Queen of Jeru in the presence of this assembly. I am a daughter of Jeru and of noble birth. I am sound of mind and body, and I carry the heir to Jeru’s throne. I cannot speak, but I am able to read and write and communicate my wishes and instructions. My loyalty is to Jeru and to the late king. It was his wish that I reign. If a regent is to be appointed to assist me in matters of war and state, I would ask that Kjell of Degn, the king’s brother, be appointed consort until the royal heir is of age.”

My statement was met with silence and sidelong glances. Lady Firi had not raised her eyes from the parchment, and her stillness caused a pang of apprehension to curl in my belly. I needed one ally, one person with whom I could confer.

“I wonder . . . does the Lady Queen know the laws concerning the Gifted?” Lord Bin Dar queried. The sinister slide of his voice broke the silence. I was still standing, but I met his gaze, acknowledging him.

He continued easily. “I have eyes in Jeru City. Sources. Concerned citizens. There are rumors that our queen has been consorting with a Healer. Our late king refused to fully prosecute the Gifted. He has been lax in his duties and sadly, he has lost his life battling the Volgar, the very beasts his leniency created. Jeru is at war. We must destroy the Gifted, or they will destroy us.”

I remembered Boojohni’s words of days before. “He who persecutes the hardest has the most to hide.”
I wondered what Lord Bin Dar was hiding and what Lord Gaul and Lord Bilwick truly gained by supporting him.

“My question is this, Queen Lark.” Bin Dar said my name with a lilting skip, as if it sounded silly to him. “What are your opinions on the Gifted? Your mother was a Teller. Will you allow them to live and breed and infect Jeru? Or will you have the courage to root them out?”

He knew I couldn’t answer aloud. They all did. I looked from one to the next, the corpulent and the thin, the sweating and the pale, the conspiring and the weary. Bilwick and the lords from the south looked on, but their minds were on their stomachs. We’d been sequestered all afternoon. Lord Gaul and Lady Firi observed, offering nothing. My father glared, praying I wouldn’t upend chairs, and Lord Bin Dar waited, spinning a quill in his skeletal hand.

As my gaze narrowed on the pale feather twitching between his finger and thumb, I saw it shift. For a millisecond, the white quill became a long-stemmed glass, as if his desire for wine had gotten the better of him. I blinked, and the glass was a feather once more, spinning, spinning, spinning.

My eyes shot upward, his narrowed, and I had my answer. I picked up my own quill and dipped it into my inkwell, forming the letters on a blank sheet of parchment in large, bold print, so he and the rest of the council could plainly read my response.

Shall I start with you, Milord?

A
t sundown on the seventh day of Penthos, I dressed in black from head to toe, and I climbed the hill to the cathedral, just like I’d done on my wedding day. The bells rang in intervals of seven, tolling mournfully over the city. I don’t know how the sound had changed so much since that day, becoming dreary instead of bright, ominous instead of optimistic, but it had. Maybe it wasn’t the bells. Maybe it was me—my ears, my heart, my hope. Maybe I was different—a Changer after all.

The people did not throw flowers this time. They stood silently and watched my procession, some weeping, some stoic, dressed in their own varying shades of grey, brown, and black.

It was not uncommon in times of conflict for a fallen monarch to be memorialized on the battlefield where he met his end, and sometimes, as with King Zoltev, there were no remains to honor. If Tiras were brought back, his body would be placed on a pyre overlooking the city for another seven days. At the end of that time, the pyre would be lit, reducing the king’s body to dust and to the earth from whence it came.

But Tiras’s body would not be brought back to Jeru. His remains would not be turned to ash. We’d been sent no further word about the details of his “death,” no glorious accounts of his valor or updates on the war effort against the relentless Volgar. Hashim had not returned. A monument for Tiras would be erected next to the monument for his father, and his father before him. The hill beyond the cathedral was littered with dozens of statues raised for warrior kings of Jeru.

The lords walked behind me to the cathedral, appropriately grim-faced and sober, and I did my best to pay them no heed, though their thoughts and concerns brushed at my set shoulders and my stiff back. Lord Bin Dar had called the proceedings to a halt after I’d challenged him, and they’d not been taken up again.

I had little doubt I would be set aside. The council had convened, but there had been a great deal of conversation and collusion, bargaining and coercion in private quarters all over the castle. I’d heard my name bandied about and my life bartered with countless times. Lords Enoch, Janda and Quondoon were in favor of letting me remain in my position as queen, but felt no fealty to me or residual sentimentality for Tiras. They simply wished for Jeru to be governed ably and for their own provinces not to suffer any ill-effects from its poor management.

Bilwick, Gaul and Bin Dar wanted me gone.

My father and Lady Firi stood on the outside, each for their own reasons, and watched with apprehension. My father argued for my life—and his—though that usually included placing himself in a position of power to protect it. Lady Firi kept her own company, and I could never snatch her words or her thoughts from the air the way I could with most of the other lords. I suspected her mixed feelings had a great deal to do with Kjell and his eventual return; she stiffened when his name was tied with mine in any way.

A stalemate had been reached, and all parties seemed to agree that until Penthos had passed and the king’s brother had returned, no final decisions would be made. So I climbed the tall hill, dressed in black, a widow instead of a bride, and begged Tiras to rise again.

T
hat very night, like an answer to my Penthos prayer, my eagle sat, perched on the garden wall beyond the Great Hall, silhouetted in moonlight that suddenly felt warm, golden, and impossibly bright, melting the ore around my heart, making it liquid and soft.

He spread his great wings and beat the air, and I followed him, just like I’d done before.

I didn’t wait for Boojohni or summon a guard. There wasn’t time, and I couldn’t risk an audience if he managed to change.

Tiras?

Come,
the bird urged, flying from branch to branch, wall to wall, making sure I kept up. I obeyed, practically running through the forest, mindless with joy, with brilliant hope, watching his wings flex and fold as he led me deeper. Before long the cottage beckoned, quietly peaceful beneath the bows of sheltering trees, and my heart was an eager drum, pounding in anticipation, needing to believe that Tiras would be able to change for me, that I would soon see him again.

The cottage was dark, and the shutters gaped wide, pressed against the stone walls instead of folded inward to keep the forest at bay. The eagle was nowhere in sight, and I stopped, suddenly afraid, suddenly wondering if, in my desire, I’d simply imagined the bird was an eagle. I called his name, sending the word into the night, and the call went unanswered. Even the creatures that usually hummed and scurried were silent.

Then a light flickered in the cottage, a lamp being lit inside the tiny space, reassuring me like a mother’s voice. I ran, clutching my skirts in my hands, a sob in my chest. I pushed through the door, Tiras on my lips, and drew up short.

She wore the dress edged in lace that I’d discovered beneath the bed, the garment I had assumed belonged to the Changer who’d been captured and killed and brought before my throne on hearing day.

Lady Firi?

She laughed, fastening the ties at her throat. “I told you my family had Gifted blood. Did you simply assume it was a mild strain?”

You are an eagle?

“I am whatever animal I wish to be. A little mouse in the corner listening to the king make all his plans. A tiny bird on the sill gathering information like crumbs. A cat lurking in the shadows. A carrier pigeon delivering messages from Firi.”

Alarm coiled in my belly.

Are you the Changer the hunter saw?

Her smile was smug, and she inclined her head, as if she were receiving applause.

But . . . you were . . . dead!

She waved her hand in the air. “I was pretending. No one expects a bird to play dead.” She smiled—a kind, regretful twist of her lips that made the hairs rise on my neck. “I waited until the room cleared, until you left, and I flew away. Kjell watched me go. Did he not tell you?”

I shook my head. He hadn’t. But one thing was clear. Lady Firi knew everyone’s secrets.

Y
ou wanted me to believe you were the king.

“Yes.”

Why?

“Because I knew you would follow me here. I failed that night. The timing was off. Then the king returned. I had to change my strategy.”

I stared at her, not wholly comprehending.
But . . . why?

“I want Jeru. In order to have Jeru, I must marry a king, but Tiras has taken care of that, hasn’t he? He has made Kjell his successor. I didn’t anticipate that, though I hoped. I thought I was going to have to take Jeru by cunning. Now I can just take it by marriage. The way
you
did.”

I never wanted to be queen.

“Every girl wants to be queen,” she snarled, her expression shifting so quickly I saw a glimmer of beast. “I can be a lion, a snake, a bird, even a dragon. Why not a queen?”

She shrugged, but there was anger beneath her nonchalance. “There have been so many things I couldn’t have predicted. You, for one. I didn’t even know you existed, and suddenly you were Queen of Jeru, snatching it away from me.”

You were the one who kidnapped the king on our wedding day.

“I’m a Changer. I knew when the king would be most vulnerable. I knew his pattern. It wasn’t difficult. My guards took care of the heavy lifting.”

And the lords? My father?

“I told them the king wouldn’t arrive. Promised them.”

But he did.

“Yes. Another thing I couldn’t predict.” She tilted her head, considering me. “Did you have something to do with that?”

I didn’t answer, forcing blankness to my face. Had she not heard me? Had only the birds been privy to my call?

“The king will not arrive this time, will he? He’s not coming back. And Kjell will return, heir to the throne. So you have to die.”

And the attacks in Firi? What if Kjell is killed?

“The Volgar are not in Firi. I lied. They are here.”