The Queen of the Tearling (39 page)

“No one has to come with me,” Kelsea told them, relieved to find that her voice was steady. “But don't try to stop me. I don't want to hurt either of you, but I will.”

Mace and Pen looked at each other for a moment, their faces blank. What would they have done if she hadn't had her sapphire? Locked her in her chamber, she supposed, and allowed her to cry herself out, just as Carlin had always done when Kelsea was a child. She searched for that reserve of anger inside herself and found it, banked but still full. Had she ever been ashamed of her anger? Now it was a gift, somehow reflected through the jewel. It had the potential to be dangerous, certainly . . . if she'd been even a little angrier, Pen and Mace could have been seriously hurt.

Pen recovered first. “If you mean to do it, Lady, we shouldn't go as the Queen's Guard. We should dress as army. You'll want the outfit of a low-ranking officer.”

Mace nodded slowly. “You'll also have to cut your hair, Majesty. All of it, right down to the nape.”

Kelsea breathed a hidden sigh of relief; she needed Mace's support, at least. She didn't even know where her horse was kept, where to find supplies. Andalie crossed the room and went out the door.

“Without your hair,” Mace continued, his tone tinged with malice, “you should have no trouble passing as a man.”

“Of course,” Kelsea replied.
A test
, she remembered, with a touch of nostalgia.
It's all a test.
“Anything else?”

“No, Lady.” He left the room, closing the door behind him, and began firing orders left and right. Kelsea could hear his deep, angry voice even through the thick walls of the chamber.

Pen settled himself in the corner, ignoring her glare. She could see their perspective, and yet . . . they didn't trust her to know the difference between a nightmare and what she had seen, which had been a vision far more real than any dream. She'd even felt the prickle of goose bumps on her arms in the morning air. Was it a real woman, out there on the Almont Plain? A real bird flying over the Mort army? Kelsea had no proof, but she trusted the visions implicitly; she felt as though she had no choice. She supposed she could see Pen's side, but she didn't want to.

You should have believed me
, she thought, staring at him from beneath lowered brows.
My word should have been enough for you.

Andalie returned with a small towel and a pair of sewing shears. Kelsea reached for the tiara on the vanity table, then drew her hand back. Fake crown or not, she felt real attachment to the thing. But she would have to leave it here.

“Sit, Lady.”

Kelsea sat, and Andalie began shearing the top of Kelsea's head in great chunks. “I've been cutting my children's hair for years. We couldn't afford a dresser.”

“Why'd you marry him, Andalie?”

“We don't always make these choices ourselves.”

“Did someone force you?”

Andalie shook her head, chuckling mirthlessly, then leaned down and murmured in Kelsea's ear. “Who's the man, Majesty? I've seen his face in your mind many times. The dark-haired man with the snake-charmer's smile.”

Kelsea blushed. “No one.”

“Not no one.” Andalie grabbed a hank of hair over Kelsea's left ear and sheared straight through it. “He means very much to you, this man, and I see shame covering all of those feelings.”

“So?”

“Did you
choose
to feel this way for this man?”

“No,” Kelsea admitted.

“One of the worst choices you could have made, no?”

Kelsea nodded, defeated.

“We don't always choose, Majesty. We simply make the best choices we can once the deed is done.”

Rather than being comforting, this statement made Kelsea feel utterly hopeless. She sat in silence while Andalie finished, staring bleakly at the growing pile of dark hair on the floor. She meant nothing to the Fetch, she knew, but remote possibility had kept her going. The act of cutting her hair seemed to cross a final bridge into a land where there was no possibility at all.

A guard knocked at the door and, at Pen's summons, brought in a black Tearling army uniform, dumping it on the bed. His eyes widened at the sight of Kelsea, but when she glared back, he ducked out, closing the door behind him. Pen returned to his armchair, apparently determined not to meet Kelsea's eye. Andalie finished and motioned for Kelsea to lean over, then quickly combed out the last of her long hair and cut. Levering Kelsea back upright, Andalie surveyed her work. “It'll do, Lady. A professional dresser can clean it up later.”

Kelsea's head felt light, almost buoyant. Gathering her courage, she looked in the mirror. Andalie had given her a good haircut, almost the duplicate of Coryn's, a tight cap of hair around her head. Another woman, one with a perfect elfin face, might even have looked good with such hair, but Kelsea felt like crying. A boy stared back at her from the mirror, a boy with full lips and fine green eyes, but a boy all the same.

“Shit,” she muttered. She'd heard the word from her guard many times, but only now did she understand the real use of profanity. That one word said exactly what she was feeling, said it better than a hundred other words could have done.

“Come, Lady. Clothes next.” Andalie's blank gaze held a trace of pity.

“Will we succeed, Andalie?”

“I can't know, Lady. But you have to go, all the same.”

Book III

Chapter 12

The Shipment

Q
UESTION:
What is an exiled girl with a false crown?

A
NSWER:
A True Queen.

—
The Tear Book of Riddles

T
hey left the Queen's Wing at dawn by one of Mace's tunnels, through a passage in darkness and then down a square staircase that seemed to descend forever. Kelsea moved along half in a dream, for the jewel wouldn't let her think clearly. She saw many faces in her mind now: Arlen Thorne; the Fetch; the cold-eyed woman with the high cheekbones. By the time they crossed the drawbridge, Kelsea was certain that this woman was the Red Queen of Mortmesne. She couldn't say how she knew.

She had expected to be overjoyed at being outside again, but the jewel wouldn't let her enjoy the outdoors either. Once they cleared New London, apparently free of pursuit, the sapphire began to pull Kelsea along. There was no other way to describe it; the thing exerted physical force, as though a string were tied beneath her rib cage. She was being hauled in a nearly straight line east, and if she tried to go in a different direction, the jewel flared into unbearable heat and Kelsea's stomach was racked with nausea, so much so that she could barely stay on her mount.

She couldn't keep this state of affairs secret from Pen for long, and Pen insisted on telling Mace. The troop had stopped to water the horses on the shores of the Crithe, on a low knoll that sloped down to the edge of the river. Except for Galen and Cae, whom Mace had left behind to guard the Queen's Wing, Kelsea's entire Guard was here, standing or crouching on the riverbank. She didn't know what Mace had told them, but it couldn't have been good; she'd caught several skeptical glances throughout the journey, and Dyer in particular looked as though he'd swallowed a lemon. As Pen, Mace, and Kelsea moved off to have a private conference on the other side of the knoll, she heard Dyer mutter, “Fucking waste of time.”

When Kelsea produced the jewel, it was once again glowing so brightly that the two men needed to cover their eyes.

“Where's it taking you?” Pen asked.

“East.”

“Why don't you just take it off?” Mace demanded.

Kelsea, feeling strangely reluctant, reached up and unclasped the necklace. But when she pulled the chain from her neck, she felt diminished. It was a dreadful feeling, like being drained.

“Jesus, she's turning white.”

Pen shook his head. “She can't take it off, sir.” He took the necklace from Kelsea and clasped it around her neck. Relief flooded her body, the sensation almost narcotic.

What is happening to me?

“Christ's sake, Pen,” Mace muttered disgustedly. “What the hell do we do with these magic things?”

“We could follow the Queen, sir. No one needs to know where she's getting her directions from.”

“I've got nothing better,” Mace muttered, shooting Kelsea an irritated glance. “But it'll cause trouble. The rest are already pissed off about being out here at all.”

Kelsea shook her head. “You know, Lazarus, at this moment I don't really care whether you believe me or not. But later on I will remember that you did not.”

“Do, Lady. Do that.”

They walked back toward the top of the knoll, and Kelsea tucked the sapphire beneath the shirt of her uniform, shielding her eyes from the sun. The blue thread of the Crithe wound its way east; they could barely see the Caddell, miles to the south. The two rivers ran nearly parallel courses, but their beds were dissimilar; the Crithe twisted and turned where the Caddell merely meandered. There was no sign of Thorne along either river, and yet Kelsea wasn't discouraged. The sapphire pulled at her, drawing her toward what she sought.

Mace took the bridle of his stallion from Wellmer, announcing casually, “From now on, the Queen will lead. We follow her.”

There was some grumbling from the group, and Dyer pursed his lips and let out a loud, expressive sigh. But it appeared that would be the extent of argument. They mounted up, and Kibb and Coryn resumed the good-natured argument about the quality of their horses that had sustained them for much of the journey. Save for Mace and Dyer, the troop seemed to have resigned themselves to a silly errand, just as if Kelsea had taken it into her head to go pleasure boating on the Crithe.

Fine. So long as it gets me where I'm going.

“We could split, Lady,” Mace suggested quietly. “Send you off with four or five men and—”

“No,” Kelsea replied, clutching her sapphire. “Don't even try it, Lazarus. Turning aside would drive me mad now.”

“Perhaps you're mad already, Majesty. Did that ever occur to you?”

It had occurred to Kelsea, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She gripped the reins and turned her horse east, allowing him to find his own way forward along the riverbank. Immediately the pressure in her chest eased, and she closed her eyes in relief.

 

T
he next day, they ran onto the ruts of enormous wheels caked into the mud of the Mort Road. The sight stopped Mace cold, and Kelsea took a spiteful pleasure in his surprise, though she could tell he still wasn't convinced. Sometimes the tracks left the road and crossed the country, but they were always easy to spot, and Kelsea knew where Thorne was going now: cutting a nearly straight line east toward the Argive Pass, the same route always taken by the shipment. There were other places to get a caravan across the border, but the Argive gave direct access to the Pike Hill, a straight slope to Demesne. Speed would be important to Thorne, so it must be important to Kelsea as well. On the first night, when her guard made plans to camp, Kelsea told them firmly that they were welcome to stop, but she would keep riding. The resulting night's travel earned her no friends, but Kelsea didn't care. She was being driven now, driven by a great vein of blue fire in her head that seemed to widen with each passing hour.

On the second night, Mace finally commanded them to stop and rest. Kelsea, realizing that she had pushed herself to exhaustion, made no argument. They camped in an enormous field of wildflowers just beyond the end of the Crithe. Kelsea had never seen such a field; it stretched out like an ocean, dappled with every color of the rainbow. The flowers, unfamiliar to Kelsea, smelled like strawberries, and the grass was so soft that the troop didn't even bother to set up tents; they simply piled onto bedrolls in the field. Kelsea, who had expected to toss and turn for hours with the torment in her head, fell asleep at once. When she woke, she felt restored, and she picked several of the flowers, tucking them into her cloak for luck. Everyone seemed to wake in a good mood, and most of her guards began to treat Kelsea in their old fashion, joking lightly with her as they rode. Even Mhurn, who had been avoiding her since the incident at her audience, dropped back to ride on her left as the morning went on.

“Well met, Mhurn.”

“Lady.”

“Come to try to talk me out of it as well?”

“No, Lady.” Mhurn shook his head. “I know you're telling the truth.”

She looked up at him, startled. “You do?”

“Mhurn!” Mace barked from the front of the troop. “Up here now!”

Mhurn shook his reins and his horse darted around several others to reach the front. Kelsea stared after him, and then shook her head. On her other side, Pen was frowning, his hand on his sword, and Kelsea felt a pulse of low, banked anger. She wished she could forgive Pen for that scene in her chamber, but she simply couldn't. He of all people should have believed her; he knew she was no hysteric. Pen seemed to feel her anger, for he turned to give her a defiant look.

“Yes, Lady?”

“If I'd been forced to leave the Keep alone, if Lazarus hadn't allowed any of the Guard to come with me, would you still have come, Pen?”

“I'm sworn, Majesty.”

“But sworn to whom? If it came down to a choice between the Captain of Guard and myself, which way would you go?”

“Don't force me to answer that, Lady.”

“I won't, Pen, not today. But you either trust me or you don't. And if you don't, I no longer want you as my close guard.”

Pen stared at her, his eyes wounded. “Lady, I thought only of your safety.”

Kelsea turned away, suddenly furious with him, with all of them . . . except Mhurn. It had been more than a month, and many of them had come to know her, but nothing had really changed. She was still the girl they'd brought like a piece of baggage from Barty and Carlin's cottage, the girl who couldn't ride, who could barely be trusted to put up her own tent. It was Mace they listened to, whose word counted, and in the final judgment even Mace had treated her like a wayward child. When Pen tried to speak to her again, she didn't answer.

The terrible pull of the east only increased as the day progressed, becoming less a physical tug than a mental compulsion. Something was dragging Kelsea's mind along without the slightest concern whether the rest of her followed. Her chest throbbed, the sapphire throbbed, and they seemed to feed each other, the jewel and the anger, each of them growing beyond their own borders until just after noon, when Wellmer called a sudden halt.

The entire company drew rein just over the rise of a small hill that was covered with wheat and dotted with purple flowers. To the east, Mount Ellyre and Mount Willingham rose to blot out the horizon, the deep blue V between them marking the ravine of the Argive Pass. Wellmer pointed toward the base of the mountains, where the Mort Road disappeared in a series of switchbacks.

“There, Lady.”

They all stood in their stirrups, Kelsea craning her neck to get a better view. Some ten miles distant, buried in the foothills, was a long black shadow snaking its way upward.

“A fissure in the rock,” Dyer muttered.

“No, sir.” Wellmer's face was white, but he firmed his jaw and turned to Kelsea. “Cages, Majesty, all in a line. I can see the bars.”

“How many cages?”

“Eight.”

“Bullshit!” Elston roared from the back of the troop. “How the hell could Thorne build new cages in secret?”

“It doesn't matter how. It's done.” Kelsea felt Mace's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. On her right, Pen was staring at the foothills, his jaw twitching. “We have to reach them before they get out of the Argive. Once they come down from the mountains, Mort soldiers will be waiting to escort them to Demesne.”

“How can you know that, Majesty?” Dyer asked. His tone was remarkably humble; it sounded almost like an honest question.

“I just know.”

Now they all turned to Mace, seeking validation. An hour ago, this would have enraged Kelsea all over again, but now she could only stare at the caravan, making its slow way up the foothills. At least one of those cages was filled with children. How many villages like the one she'd seen? How many people?

Mace spoke slowly, refusing to meet Kelsea's gaze. “I apologize, Majesty. Thorne has outsmarted me again, and I promise you, it's the last time.”

Kelsea didn't acknowledge his words, only shook her reins, anxious to go on. She stared at the dark line silhouetted against the foothills, shivering, trying not to wonder how she might come out of this on the other side.

East.

The voice was in her mind, but it seemed to be all around her, its words vibrating against her skin. “Let's ride on. We need to catch them by nightfall.”

“Do we have a plan, Lady?” Dyer asked.

“Certainly.” She had no plan at all. “Come, daylight's wasting.”

 

W
hen Javel wiped his brow, his hand came away soaking wet. The day was brutally, unseasonably hot, and driving the mules forward was exhausting work. Thorne had planned the bulk of their route through the Almont to avoid the most heavily populated towns and villages; sensible enough, but as a consequence they'd sometimes been forced to take rough roads that had seen no repair for a long time. By the time they reached the end of the Crithe, Javel could already feel his sickness over this whole enterprise beginning to overtake him, but he turned forward and thought of Allie.

The people in the cages wouldn't be quiet. They could hardly be expected to, but their pleading was something that Javel had never considered back in New London. Even Thorne might not have considered it, although being Thorne, he probably didn't care either way. Javel could see him up ahead through the bars of the cage, guiding his horse forward as serenely as a king out for a picnic. Javel pulled the flask from his pocket and took a sip of whiskey, which burned his parched throat. Thorne would give him hell if he saw him drinking, but Javel hardly cared at this point. He'd packed three full flasks into his saddlebags, knowing that he would need them before the journey was over.

Thorne had decided that four men were necessary to guard each cage. There were several nobles in addition to Lord Tare, as well as a fair smattering of the Tearling army. The Baedencourt brothers had also produced two more Caden, Dwyne and Avile; both were well-known fighters, which made the rest of the group feel better. But even for a conspiracy, they were all curiously detached from each other, brought together by a common purpose like a group of wanderers stranded in the Cadarese desert. There was no love, and precious little respect. Brother Matthew and the little pickpocket, Alain, had taken a palpable dislike to each other. Lord Tare kept himself removed, riding ahead as a scout. Javel resented the presence of the Baedencourt brothers, who didn't even appear to have sobered up for the journey, and he'd spent the past few days with one eye on his cage and the other on Keller, who had begun to worry him more and more.

They had raided twelve villages along the shores of the Crithe. There had been almost no young men and so there'd been very little actual fighting. But Javel had noticed that Keller's disappearances into houses and huts took a long time, and that some of the women Keller brought out, particularly the young ones, had seen rough handling, their clothing ripped and stained with blood. Javel had considered raising the subject with Thorne, appealing to him on his level: wouldn't damage to the merchandise mean reduced value? But there had been no opportunity to speak privately with Thorne, and finally Javel had swallowed his disgust, bit by bit, just as he'd been forced to swallow everything else in this business. The progression was terribly easy: one bulwark after another fell inside his mind, like sand castles under the tide, until he worried that one day he might wake up and find himself actually become Arlen Thorne, so debased that everything seemed acceptable.