The queen raised her own voice enough to be heard by her people standing along the wall. “A gold coin to the archer who puts one in his eye.”
For an instant there was the sound like buzz of a hundred wasps.
Then a sound like a sudden hard rain on a slate roof.
Then silence.
Leaning a little past the battlement to get a better line of sight, the queen smiled. “Nice grouping, archers. Well done. Wallace!”
“Majesty!” Her personal aide leaped forward.
“Go down and check the fletching on those arrows-it looks like we have at least three winners.” Her archers were her pride and joy, even though she knew she shouldn’t have favorites among her extensive armies. “Take a wizard with you to make sure he hasn’t been magically booby-trapped, then strip the body. Bring the armor and the ring to me, have the body cremated.”
“And his horse, Majesty?”
The beautiful black stallion standing just to the right of the gate stared up at her with intelligent eyes.
“Archers!”
“Mother! I wanted that horse!”
Arrabel sighed, turning to her son as the stallion whirled to escape and crashed dead to the ground, looking remarkably like a horse-shaped pincushion. “Horses don’t have intelligent eyes, Danyel. Nor are they able to determine who, in a group of people standing on top of a wall twenty feet over their heads, is in charge.”
Danyel frowned, dark brows almost meeting over his nose. “So the Hero knew I’d win and take his horse and the horse was to kill me later. The horse was enchanted and the Hero was a sacrifice.”
“I suspect the horse was no more than a backup plan. Heroes never think they’re going to lose.”
“I could have taken him.” At nearly twenty he was too old to pout but his tone was distinctly sulky.
She patted his arm as she passed. “Of course you could have. Captain Jurin.”
Almost overcome by adoration, clearly astounded that the queen knew his name, the captain stepped forward and saluted. “Majesty!”
“Send out a couple of patrols to make sure this Hero didn’t leave one of those annoying sidekicks skulking about in the bushes.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
On the way back to the palace, she smiled and waved and noted how pleased everyone her son’s age and younger was to see her. The free schooling she provided for her subjects until the age of twelve was paying off-it was so much easier to teach children how to think than it was to change their minds as adults. A strong apprenticeship program helped too. Idle hands found time for mischief and nothing straightened out a young troublemaker faster than twelve hours of hauling stone. City walls didn’t build themselves, after all.
It pleased her too to see so many babies around. Young men who tried to get out of the responsibilities of fatherhood were sent to the mines and their very fair wages were paid entirely to the mother of their child. Fatherhood seemed a good deal in comparison. And the sort of man that might succeed at rebellion soon thought better of it when he became responsible for the care and feeding of six or seven screaming children-said children guaranteed schooling and employment should the status quo be maintained.
“Mother.”
One child had certainly done his best to sap her energy.
“Mother!”
“What is it, Danyel?”
“There’s a girl standing on your statue.”
“That’s nice, dear.” Arrabel blew a kiss to a strapping young man and smiled to see him blush. “Which statue?”
“The one with your hand on the head of the beggar brat. Mother, you’d better pay attention to this!”
Sighing, she turned and glanced toward the statue in question. “Don’t point, Danyel. It’s common.”
He dropped his arm with a sullen clank of vanbrace against breastplate. “Well, do you see her?”
It was hard to miss her. “Andrew, stop the coach.” As the six archers in her escort moved into new defensive positions, the queen shifted over to stare out Danyel’s window.
The girl had a head of flaming red hair and stood with one booted foot on the beggar child’s stone head and the other tucked into the queen’s bent elbow. Gesturing dramatically, she pitched her voice to carry over the ambient noise of the streets and shrieked that the queen cared nothing for her subjects.
“That would go farther if she wasn’t standing in front of the hospital you had built,” Danyel muttered.
The people loved the hospital. Arrabel loved it more. With all healers working for the crown at salaries too good to walk away from, the crown controlled who got healed and how.
“The queen has turned you into mindless drones in her glittering hive!”
People who might not have noticed the girl noticed the queen and the crowds began to quiet, half their attention on the flamboyant redhead and half on the royal coach.
“The queen has taken away your freedoms!” The last word fell into a nearly perfect silence and the girl’s eyes widened as she stared over the heads of the crowd and realized who was in her audience.
“Like their freedom to starve?” Arrabel asked. “Do go on with what you were saying,” she added, adjusting her paisley shawl more securely around her shoulders. “But I’m afraid I can’t stay to listen, I have a country to run.”
The crowd roared its approval as she gestured for her driver to go on. Had they not been well aware of her opinion on wasting food, she felt sure the girl would have been wearing a variety of produce in short order.
“It’s weird how those types keep showing up,” Danyel snorted, settling back into the velvet upholstery. “Each of them more ridiculous than the last. No one even listens to them anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” She already knew it.
“Still…” He scratched under the edge of his vanbrace until he caught sight of her expression then he stopped. “This one seemed to really believe what she was saying.”
“Did she? I didn’t notice.” Mirroring her son’s position, minus the scratching, Arrabel made a mental note to have Wallace arrange a “tour of the provinces” for the young actress when she showed up at the palace to be paid. If even Danyel had noticed a certain conviction in her performance, the girl had become a liability. The last thing Arrabel wanted was for the people to start thinking.
Wallace was waiting for her in her private receiving room, the Hero’s armor and ring on the table.
“The wizards have checked it thoroughly, Your Majesty. It’s nothing more than the well-made armor it appears.”
“And the ring?”
“Also free of magical taint.” He picked it up and handed it to her with a slight bow. “It bears the eagle crest of Mecada.”
It was heavy and so pure a gold she could almost mark it with her thumbnail. “A gift to the Hero from King Giorge?”
“It seems likely, Majesty.”
“He’s really beginning to annoy me. This is what, the third attempt at myself or my son this month? Send this to the mint,” she continued tossing the ring back to her adviser before he could respond. “It’ll just cover what I paid those three archers to kill him.”
It was only chance that a fortnight later the queen was inspecting new recruits in the outer courtyard near enough to the palace gate to hear a voice raised in protest.
“Oh come on, mate, what I get for this here load’s gonna feed my family this coming cold. You’re not after burning up the food in my family’s mouths are you?”
In the courtyard, Arrabel smiled at the twenty young men and women who had just been congratulated on having passed the stringent physical and mental tests required to wear the Queen’s Tabard, reminded them to write their mothers weekly, and then dismissed them into the care of her Captain of Recruits. He was a genius with young people. Once he got their training well under way, they’d protect her with their lives. By the time he finished, even death wouldn’t stop them.