"Why does this attunement have to happen at all? Can’t you just attack the Black Queen when she shows up in the Hall of Summoning, and kill her?"
"If only. She’ll be shielded, and had at least a rudimentary command of Force magic. With her strength she’d swat us like bugs before we scratched her defences. With the kind of power she’ll have at her disposal, even destroying the entire Hall before her arrival wouldn’t cause her much bother. Not that we aren’t going to prepare for a direct battle, should we fail to stop the Summoning, but–"
"What do the rest of the Sentene think of Rennyn?"
"Oh, we’re all too busy lusting after her magical knowledge to have any opinion. Meniar made a good point the other day, though."
"What?"
"That the Council debates had some basis. That if Tiandel hadn’t abdicated, Rennyn Montjuste-Surclere would be Tyrland’s Queen." Lieutenant Danress looked at the darkening sky. "Shall we head back?"
Shrugging, Kendall followed the Sentene mage up the hill, her calves aching by the time they reached the inn, glad when Lieutenant Danress left her to make her own way upstairs. Rennyn’s door was closed. Kendall frowned at it and tapped – too lightly to wake a sleeper – and bit her lip when the handle turned and opened.
The room was full of floating things. Rennyn lay in the bed, arms folded over the coverlet, and the Black Queen’s focus sitting in her lap. Everything that wasn’t nailed down was swooping around the ceiling, but it all settled back as Kendall came in.
"What’s that in aid of?"
The woman reached out and picked her own focus off the coverlet, slipping it back over her head. "You never really stop with Thought magic exercises. Just like people who swing swords about, practice is important."
Kendall looked at her steadily. "Keeps you occupied, too. Like giving people lectures on magic."
This only prompted a faint, wry smile. "You wanted something?"
"My Gran used to tell me that the ends don’t justify the means. What’s the difference between you and the Black Queen if you’re both willing to kill people to get your way?"
"Probably none, to any people I happen to kill," Rennyn said. She didn’t seem surprised by the question, or particularly upset. "If there’s any difference, it’s that I’ll feel bad about it after, and from what I’ve read of Solace’s journals, I’m not certain she would."
"Is that a difference?"
"Well, I tell myself that it is. Are you trying to argue me out of continuing, Kendall?"
"N-no."
"Do you really think I’m as bad as Solace?"
"…no."
"Then why are you so upset?"
"She didn’t start out bad, did she? The Black Queen?"
Rennyn’s eyes widened, then she sat up, revealing a plain-cut linen nightdress. "Come here."
"Why?"
"Because."
Infuriating as ever, but Kendall didn’t quite like to just walk out, so she moved slowly forward. And got hugged for her pains, a soft, quick squeeze. The Black Queen’s focus swung against the back of her legs, cold and heavy.
"You surprise me again, Kendall," Rennyn said, letting go. "I will do my best not to become the thing I am fighting. You have my word on it."
Scarlet-faced, Kendall backed away. "Ask permission first," she said. "If you’re going to change other people’s lives. At least give them the choice."
This Rennyn didn’t answer, only sat looking at her, so Kendall left, just managing not to slam the door behind her. A faint stir at the end of the landing showed her Captain Faille on guard, looking particularly ominous and not best impressed with her. Kendall escaped into the next room, where Sukata was pretending to be asleep already.
Queen of Tyrland all right, taking people over, acting like they were her business. Making decisions about other people’s lives. A scary woman.
She’d smelled like vanilla.
Chapter Twenty
Lecey Forest gave Rennyn a great deal of pleasure. It was very different from the forests of the north, which were grand and pine-scented and overwhelming. Lecey was full of smaller trees, none of which Rennyn had the knowledge to identify. Primarily twisty, black-barked ones, their canopies low overhead and the foliage dense. On a less well-favoured day it would probably be damp and gloomy, for there was moss and lichen decorating the undersides of all the branches, but the skies had been fortunately clear since they’d left Sark, and so the forest was a dapple-green playground for butterflies and sunbeams.
There were no convenient coach-roads running past the incursion point, but Rennyn had enjoyed being on horseback for an unhurried journey along trails winding between bushes and trees. There were plenty of berry brambles, too, offering a juicy selection of sweet and tart, and only a few scratches. Every so often the trees eased back, and they blinked at dazzling-bright clearings spattered with flowers.
The Sentene vanguard had widened and established camp in one of these, with fewer tents than usual and no provision for the handful of horses, which were taken back out again by the Ferumguard, since there was little room for them in the single circle of protection established. The trunks of freshly-felled trees had been pulled about a big central cooking area, and while they settled into camp one of the Ferumguard filled two frying pans with sausages, mushrooms and bacon, then broke eggs into the mix so they cooked together into savoury disks.
"Will you be able to locate the incursion today?" Captain Illuma asked, as Rennyn worked her way through lunch.
"Tomorrow morning at the earliest," Rennyn said, in a way glad to postpone the task another day. "Though I might take some readings later, to see what kind of reaction is detectable this far out."
After lunch, she checked how Kendall and Sukata were going with their exercises, and was surprised to see how far Sukata had progressed. Not that she could move something, but that she’d managed to rein in her own strength, and was nudging a small leaf about with a semblance of choosing the direction.
"The leaf’s a good idea," she said, approvingly. "Less chance of embedding it in someone."
Torn between trying to escape for a private walk and feeling unusually settled, Rennyn watched the pair self-consciously struggling with the task, thinking over Kendall’s accusation of the previous day. The offence not just of killing people, but of making decisions without their permission. Did all that come out of some past choice made on the girl’s behalf, or just the sheer mule-stubbornness of her personality?
She heard Captain Faille take a step behind her, but didn’t look back. She’d grown so used to his presence she’d started to notice his absences instead, and that made her hate the idea of Kellian bodyguards more than ever. Had it been inevitable that she end up surrounded by them, using them as Solace had? She was sure that Faille, like Kendall, would bitterly resent decisions made on his behalf. She wished that didn’t matter to her.
Thinking about the man, Rennyn nearly jumped out of her skin when he reached down and touched one sun-tipped finger to the thick bracelet around her right wrist, pushing it further along her arm. He straightened as she looked up at him.
"Meniar," he said, "Find some way to shield Lady Montjuste-Surclere’s wrists."
Lieutenant Meniar, who had been pretending to review his slates while he day-dreamed, gave them both a startled glance, then came across to study what Faille’s sharp eyes had caught. Resigned, Rennyn removed the bracelet, cradling the focus carefully in her lap, and allowed Meniar to inspect the circle of bruises and rubbed skin. He shook his head, then fetched salve and bandages.