Agnes prepared for battle. She was given, by the elven court, an armory shed at one end of the lists and two pages to dress her. They were pubescent boys, milky-skinned, beautiful, and naked. So far as she could tell, they were identical twins.
The pages were removing her clothing when Frederic rolled in. He grabbed one by the scruff of the neck and forcibly ousted him. The second followed after.
Agnes snatched up her blouse and struggled back into it. But Frederic did not so much as glance at her. He put down a cloth-wrapped package as long as a sword and started rummaging through the armor laid out for her. “She’s going to strike you three times,” he said. “First, on your upper right arm. So you’ll need a pauldron.”
The pauldron covered her entire upper arm and was padded underneath. He strapped it on her, right over her blouse.
“The second blow will strike you directly above your left knee. You’ll need a cuish.”
“I feel unbalanced,” Agnes said, to hide her embarrassment, as he reached between her thighs to tighten the cinches. “And just a little foolish, too.”
Frederic ignored her. “Neither of those blows will be lethaclass="underline" They are intended to disable and unbalance you. The third and, potentially, the killing blow will come not from the elf-queen’s sword like the first two, but her spear. She’ll toss the sword aside and then flip the spear up into the air and catch it back-handed behind her, so that her arm is up and ready for the strike.” He held up his arm to demonstrate. “Then it will come down, and hard, right in the middle of your stomach.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been studying. This sort of thing is all written down.”
Frederic took from his kit a triple length of stiff brown leather. He wrapped it around and around Agnes’s abdomen so tightly she could barely breathe. Over it he placed a chain mail stomacher. Then, atop all, he strapped on an item of shaped metal he called a tace. “There,” he said at last. “She might knock the wind out of you, but she won’t kill you.”
“What weapon should I use?”
“None of these,” Frederic said, dismissing with a glance a gleaming selection of swords, spears, and morning stars. “They’re enchanted not to hurt her — you might as well try to take down a tank with a custard pie.” He unwrapped the package he had brought with him. “Use this instead.”
Agnes laughed involuntarily.
It was a baseball bat.
“Take it,” Frederic said. “Try it out.”
She swung the bat stiffly back and forth.
“Put your back into it. Swing from the shoulders.” He grabbed the bat and showed her what he meant.
Agnes took back the bat and swung again, with more strength. “I could never keep my eye on the ball. It’s so small and it comes at you so fast.”
“It won’t be a ball. It will be Queen Melisaundre’s head, and it will be the size of a small melon, plenty big enough to see. Just think of how you have served her, over the years, and she you.”
Agnes swung the bat with force.
“I think you’re getting the feel of it.”
“I wish I was a boy,” Agnes said. “I hope I don’t look as stupid as I feel.”
To her profound surprise, Frederic grabbed her and kissed her full on the lips. Then he pushed her away and stared straight into her eyes. “You look like you’re going to free us from elven tyranny forever,” he said fervently. “You look like the very first human queen of all the world. I don’t wish you were a boy at all.”
Then the heralds blew their clarions and the doors of the shed flung themselves wide.
“Go,” Frederic said. “Set us free.”
Agnes did not so much stride out into the lists as stumble. Yet the throngs of elves (with here and there a human bobbing in the air; only she, it seemed, knew no magic) roared at the sight of her, as if she were an Amazon champion.
Directly across the arena, Queen Melisaundre stepped down from her throne, looking every inch the warrior-queen. Her slim, powerful figure was clad in dazzling gold plate. A scarlet cape flew out behind her, lifted by a wind that did not exist for Agnes. Her helmet was adorned with wings, as if she were a Valkyrie, and so cut that her hair flowed out becomingly behind her.
In her hand was a sword of moon-silver, harder than steel and lighter than a feather. At her back was a long spear.
Agnes hoisted her baseball bat, feeling like a clumsy human yokel. She closed her eyes in silent prayer: Make this quick, she thought. Whether I win or whether I lose, make it quick.
Somebody threw a cloth-of-gold scarf into the air. It fluttered lazily downward, drawing all eyes after it.
When it touched the ground, Queen Melisaundre screamed like an eagle and ran straight toward Agnes. Her long legs carried her quickly and effortlessly across the green lawn. She was beautiful to watch.
Agnes suddenly realized that she should be running too and began to lumber forward.
They met.
It all went as Frederic had said it would. Queen Melisaundre delivered a stinging blow to Agnes’s armored and padded shoulder, and a second to her leg that would have crippled her had it not been for the cuish. Then she tossed the sword aside as if it were a plaything she had tired of. One hand deftly undid the strap holding the spear to her back. The other reached behind her and flipped the spear up into the air.
Queen Melisaundre caught the spear and froze for an instant, a goddess incarnate. Then, with her hair lashing and the battle-light blazing about her face, she drove the spear downward with every ounce of her strength.
The spearhead pierced Agnes’s tace with a shriek of ripping metal. But the chain mail underneath held, and the wrapped layers of leather softened the blow.
Somewhat.
It felt like getting kicked in the stomach by a horse. All the breath flew out of Agnes and she was driven back a good three feet. But though for an instant all the world went black and there was nothing in it but pain, she did not fall down.
Then she could see again, and she was running forward, all in a rage, the baseball bat cocked and ready to swing. Take this, bitch, she thought. You with your perfect face and perfect legs and perfect everything else. With your courtiers and sycophants and lovers by the score. With your cruelty and power and the admiration of all the world and Richard too.
A fierce blood-lust filled her. Take this for being everything I am not.
It was that last thought that pulled Agnes out of her madness, for she recognized in it — as who would not? — the envy, jealousy, and spite that the elf-queen had so long been nurturing in her. And so recognizing it, she rejected it. She refused to let it be a part of her.
It was not a rational decision, for on purely logical grounds she understood that she had to kill the queen. It was simple revulsion that caused her to pull back before her blow reached its target. The bat swung past the elf-queen, missing her by a whisker.
Queen Melisaundre’s head shattered anyway.
Frederic led Agnes away from Melisaundre’s lifeless corpse toward the throne, whispering urgently in her ear. “You are the queen now. It’s important that you act the part. Speak slowly and clearly. Say that your rule will be benign but absolute. A new empire shall arise from the ashes of the old — a human empire. All magical talismans, potions, et cetera, are to be presented to the royal court that they may be made subject to your power. In this way all magicks will support the State and we need never fear rebellion. Finally, if it please you, your majesty, let us be married immediately. Announce that I am to be your consort and in no sense king. I will act in a purely advisory manner, subordinate to the throne. Do you understand?”
Agnes nodded once, regally, and withdrew her arm from his. With the slightest flutter of the fingers of one hand she gestured him back into the crowd.