The Gypsy Queen (45 page)

  “What are you not telling me?” Bastion demanded.

  “I cannot bear to say,” Nathaniel said.

  “Out with it,” Bastion said.

  “Draiman is a Ursari gypsy,” Nathaniel said.

  “Draiman...” Bastion searched his memory. “Draiman...”

  “The man we removed from your wagon at the Coronation parade,” Nico said.

  “Draiman. Possible slave trader?” Bastion said. His men did not answer.

  “Tell me the rest of it!” Bastion demanded, standing up.

  “Draiman is a spy for Otta,” Nico said.

  “And?” Bastion said tersely. There had to be more.

  “Well, as you know, Draiman has some kind of history with
Yana
,” Nathaniel said.

  “Yes.”

  “Last night I was scouting in the meadows, my normal assignment. I was in black, scouting Draiman on orders. I saw him, and
Yana
, kissing near the caravans.”

  Bastion fell back into his throne, staring at his friends in shock.

  “I am deeply sorry, my King,” Nathaniel said. “I did not want to tell you.
”
  “Otta gave us orders to kill that bastard if he sets foot in the city, after the parade incident,” Nico said. “Give me the order to kill him tonight, my King. Please give me that order.” Nico wanted him dead already, and a hundred times more, seeing the grief on Bastion’s face.

  Bastion’s head was swimming in an ocean of sorrow. Tears streaked down his face, but he did not seem to notice.

  “She... she was kissing him?” Bastion said, glancing over at the crowns he had stared at for hours. The men said nothing.

  “Kill him?” Bastion mused. He summoned the stone that had been growing in his soul all day. Numb, cold stone.

  “No. I will not give that order,” Bastion said.

  “Your majesty, we can end him right now. Tonight!”

  “No, damn it!” Bastion said, looking him in the eye. “
Yana
is free to go where she will. Free to kiss whom she will. Free to love...” Bastion cut off, unable to speak, his stony front failing him. He fell from his throne to the floor, his friends rushing to his aid. Bastion gasped for air, feeling like his chest was tightening, closing in on him.

  His friends sat with him on the throne room floor, as his breathing began to steady. Both of them wanted to take action for their King.

  “Let me destroy that vile gypsy, my King,” Nico said. “Please.” Bastion let out a sigh. 

  “If I decide that the black riders will visit him,” Bastion said, “It will be my own blade in his gut. It will be my face that he looks upon, as he breathes his last.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Otta, what the hell is going on?” Draiman demanded.

  “The King has ordered the gates closed,” Otta said. Otta had come out to the Ursari camp once more. He knew Draiman would seek him urgently, but had not been able to get out of the city sooner.

  “I know that!” Draiman said. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “I have already considered it. I have a plan,” Otta said. “I will order the gates to be opened early, well before sunrise, for a delivery we are expecting. The gatekeepers will think nothing of it.”

  “You don’t think they will suspect anything?” Draiman said.

  “Everyone in
Jedikai
knows that the gates are closed because the King is heartbroken. No one is expecting an assault.” Otta said. “The entire city will be dead asleep.”

  “Dead asleep!” Draiman laughed. “I like that!”

  “When will the army be in position?” Otta asked. “How much longer until I am King?”

  Draiman handed Otta a drink, at his campfire, and raised his own, high in the air.

  “Tomorrow!” Draiman said. They clinked their glass bottles together.

  “
Na Zdorovie
!” they toasted together, taking a drink. Draiman was eager to see it done, too.

  “To King Otta!” he said with a grin.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 
Yana
had a miserable day. She woke up with a crushing hangover, most of the morning already spent. She drank water and sat by the fire as her friends offered her lunch. She ate, feeling better as she watched her people go about their day. There was still music, in other camps, and her friends were kindly towards her, bringing her berries and figs, but otherwise leaving her alone.

  She sat with Lyubov, who seemed to be getting worse, as Luba treated her. Lyubov slept in her wagon, saying very little.

  “I think this will work,” Luba said, applying a compress to her head. “I made this medicine myself. If it works, I can help the other gypsies who are sick.”

  “How do you know what to do?”
Yana
asked.

  “I teach myself,” Luba said.

  “Yes, but how? I see no books. Lyubov is your teacher.”
Yana
said. Luba smiled.

  “Smell,” she said.

  “Smell?”
Yana
said with disbelief
.

  “I smell the different oils, and herbs. I smell the mixtures they make. Then I smell the person who is sick.”

  “You think that is going to work?”
Yana
said.

  “I hope so,” Luba replied. “We will lose good gypsy folk if it doesn’t.”
Yana
’s chin trembled at the idea of losing Lyubov. She was the closest thing she had to a mother.

  “I pray you succeed,”
Yana
said, doubting very much that she would.

  “What will you do?” Luba asked, sensing
Yana
’s angst.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “What will you do about Bastion?” Luba asked.

  “There’s nothing
to
do. He is in the palace, and I am in the prairie, and that is that. Just like it was before. It was cruel for him to come pursue me. He should have left me alone,”
Yana
said.

  “If he had, Kizzy and Nadya would have been killed in a fire, and Jaelle would have remained in a dungeon, and the nearly forty other captives you freed would be living beaten-down lives as slaves.”

  “He should have been noble enough to leave me alone,”
Yana
said.

  “Did he seduce you? Or did you seduce
him
?” Luba asked. 

  “Shut up,”
Yana
hissed. “I’m sorry, Luba,” she said right after, “it’s not your fault. It’s my fault. It’s very much my fault.”

  “It’s not,” Luba said.

  “Yes. I broke the heart of the only man I have loved, or ever will love.”

  “And broken your own as well,” Luba said.

  “Aye. My own as well. I let myself love him, kiss him, embrace him, lay with him... though I knew I shouldn’t. I was afraid of the pain, but I did it anyway, and now this pain is upon us both. Perhaps I deserve it. He didn’t. He deserves a much better woman than me.”

  “He does deserve a good woman,” Luba said. “Maybe you should just be that woman.”

  “Luba, I am a gypsy. A thief. A killer. How could I possibly be queen?”

  “Um... by saying yes?” Luba said.

  “You don’t get it. They hated me. I think if I stayed, Bastion would end up hating me too. It is better this way. This way, I can be the villain that I am.”

  “You are a terrible villain,” Luba said with a smile. “Saving lives, and all that.”
Yana
let her have her smile. She didn’t want to burden Luba with her past, from her time riding with Draiman, to recent days of killing men with the black riders.

  “I am a terrible villain,”
Yana
agreed.

  “Maybe you just need healing, like we saw in the crystal ball.”

  “There is no healing for me,”
Yana
said. “There is no way to heal anything in my life. I just hope what you saw was for Lyubov.”

  “You have a good heart,
Yana
,” Luba said.

  “I have no heart at all.”

 
Yana
left Luba, and her caravan, and took her bow and arrows into the forest. It always made her feel better to shoot, and the arrows she had gotten from the
kingdom
were of excellent build.

 
Yana
wanted out of
Jedikai
. She did not want to wait for Lyubov to die, or anything else. She would not leave on her own, it was too dangerous. She thought of ways s
he might escape, as she drew an
arrow, and fired it at a tree. It missed, whizzing right past.

  Strange,
Yana
thought. She fired another. It skiffed off the side of the tree, sailing where the other one went. She checked her bow, and the string, as she thought. Her heart ached so much for Bastion. She felt guilty for what she had done to him. She was furious with him, but in the end, she could only be angry with herself. It hurt even worse, with the humiliation she had brought on them both. She should have ran much sooner. 

 
Yana
fired another arrow, and this one struck low. Much too low. She fired another. It went to the left this time, missing. She fired again, angry. This one flew three feet wide and hit another tree behind her target instead.

  “Bosh,” she said to herself. She checked her bow again. It seemed in perfect order. She knocked another arrow and pulled it tight, and realized what her problem was.

  Her hands were shaking.

  She tried to steady herself, and focus hard, as she let fly. Her arrow hit the tree, but not where she wanted. Unacceptable. She could not get the pain in her chest to stop. It was so bad, it scared her. How could it hurt so bad? Bastion’s voice rang in her ears, his smile played across her eyesight, his touch rippled across her skin. Each of her senses heightened her pain. She threw her bow down in disgust, and stormed away from it.

  She walked the woods a while, and came back for her bow. Setting her things against a tree, she laid down in a soft spot, and tried to sleep a while. A familiar scent greeted her, as she lay on her side. Periwinkle.

  She was laying in a patch of soft, cursed periwinkle. She laid there a while anyway, wondering if her grief would exhaust her enough to let her sleep. She needed to escape this pain. She needed to escape this place. She needed relief, and knew she would find none. She longed for the curve of Bastion’s body behind her, as she cried bitterly.

 
Yana
woke at an unknown hour. It was dark out, well into the night. She felt terrible, in every possible way. She gathered her things, and headed out of the forest, back into the meadows. She was north of the caravans, well out in the darkness. There was only one campfire nearby. She could see men shouting around the fire, but couldn’t hear them. She decided to look closer. She remembered the last time she was curious and decided to look closer. She ended up tracking black riders, and getting herself into the worst mess of her life.

  These were gypsy wagons, though, and her celebrity as a hero among the gypsies should make her welcome. She figured she couldn’t do any worse. She walked closer, and smiled at the irony. This was Draiman’s caravan. She recognized the wagons.

 
Yana
walked directly for the fire. This sorry band of miscreant gypsies was more fitting anyway. She was tired of hearing her friends harass her or encourage her with false words of kindness. She didn’t deserve kindness, and she knew she wouldn’t find too much among the Ursari.

  “Oi, you sorry dogs!”
Yana
said, walking into the light.

  “Oi!” they all welcomed her with drunken faces and lifted bottles. She knew most of them.

  “
Oi,
Yana
! We were just toasting to future success,” Draiman said, handing her a bottle as he approached.

  “A toast?”
Yana
said. “What about a toast for me?”

  “To
Yana
!” Draiman announced, “A gypsy more wicked than us all!”

Yana
took a big chug of the drink, along with the rest, who hardly needed an excuse to drink more.

  “You are a damned idiot, Draiman,”
Yana
said, sitting down with the bottle in her hand.

  “No more so than you,” he said. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Whatever the hell I please,”
Yana
said, taking another drink.