“Please, sit.” The Queen offered the far chair, and after a moment’s hesitation, the girl stalked forward to take it. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the Queen wondered at this. What did the girl cry for? Not herself, surely; she had already proven that she had no interest in her own safety. Perhaps she was merely tired, but the Queen thought not. Grief sat on her plainly, like a raven perched on her shoulder.
The girl was studying the Queen now, staring at each of her features in turn, as though trying to dissect her face and put it back together. She recognizes me, the Queen thought for a fearful moment. But how could she? How could anyone? This wasn’t the woman from the portrait. This girl was only nineteen years old.
“How old are you, really?” the girl asked abruptly, in Mort. Good Mort, hers, with only the barest hint of an accent.
“Far older than you,” the Queen replied steadily, pleased to hear that her voice betrayed none of the upheaval in her thoughts. “Old enough to know when I have won.”
“You have won,” the girl replied slowly. But her eyes continued to dart across the Queen’s face, as though seeking clues.
“Well?”
“I’ve seen you before,” the girl mused.
“We all have visions.”
“No,” the girl replied. “I’ve seen you. But where?”
Something tightened in the Queen’s chest. Only nineteen, she reminded herself. “What can it possibly matter?”
“You want these.” The girl held the sapphires up on her palm. Even in the diffuse light that filtered through the fabric of the tent, the jewels sparkled, and the Queen thought she could see something, far in their depths … but then the girl shook them, and whatever she believed she had seen was gone.
“They are pretty jewels, certainly.”
“They come with a price.”
“Price?” The Queen laughed, although even she could hear the slight edge in her laughter. “You’re in no position to bargain.”
“Of course I am,” the girl replied. Her green gaze speared the Queen with bright intelligence. Sometimes one could look in the eyes and simply see it, in the focus of the pupil, the sharpness of the gaze. “You can kill me, Lady Crimson. You can invade my city and lay it waste. But neither of those things will get the sapphires from around my neck. I’m sure you know what happens if you try to take them by force.”
The Queen sat back, discomfited. The girl did have a bargaining chip, after all … and the Queen wondered who had talked. Thomas Raleigh? Thorne?
“I can simply order some other poor soul to kill you and take them off,” the Queen replied after a long moment. “What do I care?”
“And that will work, will it?” the girl asked. The arrogance in her voice staggered the Queen. Most information concerning the Tear sapphires was myth and legend; no one had tried to take them by force since the death of Jonathan Tear. But the dark thing had said it could be done. And now the Queen had a truly terrible thought, one that hit her right in her solar plexus: what if the dark thing had lied to her, so long ago? What if it had only needed her to procure the sapphires, do its dirty work and take the punishment?
“Good.” The girl nodded. “Think on these things. Because I tell you, anyone who tries to take them against my wishes will suffer agony. And if your hand merely guides them, my vengeance will find you as well.”
“I have been cursed before. You don’t frighten me.” But the Queen was unsettled, all the same. She had overcome the awful idea that the woman from the portrait had come to life before her, but still the girl’s face mocked her, raising the ghost of the past. She could not be sure that the girl was bluffing … and the stakes if she guessed wrong! “Those jewels have had no proper owner since William Tear.”
“Wrong.” The girl bared her teeth again, her eyes burning with a fierce emotion, something like jealousy. “They’re mine.”
The Queen was appalled to find herself believing this nonsense. So little was known about the magic of jewels … several special pieces had come out of the Cadarese mines over the years, but nothing with power even remotely comparable to that of the Tear sapphires. The Queen had never heard of a jewel bonding with a specific owner; so far as she knew, possession was everything in this game. But she also didn’t think the girl was lying; her gaze was too clear for that, and she didn’t strike the Queen as much of a liar to begin with.
I don’t know, the Queen admitted to herself, and that was the crux of the problem. Uncertainties abounded here. She wanted to ask the girl about the dark thing, try to glean some further information about her abilities. But she was afraid to raise either issue, afraid to give the girl any more leverage. She was no fool, this one. She had come here with a plan.
“I do know you.”
The Queen looked up, found the girl’s eyes bright with revelation.
“In the portrait.” The girl tipped her head to one side, fixing the Queen with a critical stare. “The disfavored child. The bastard. She was you.”
The Queen slapped the girl across the face. But she had only a moment to admire the welt she had made before she was seized, as though with invisible hands, and thrown across the room to land on the thick, sumptuous pallet she used as a bed. She had not been pushed so much as flung, and if she had landed with equal force against something of iron or steel, she would probably be dead. She sprang up, ready to fight, but the girl had remained at the table, motionless, the Queen’s handprint ugly and stark on her cheek.
I am in danger, the Queen realized suddenly. The thought was so novel that it took a moment to become frightening. Somehow the girl had reached right inside her, right through the defenses that the Queen kept around her person at all times. How had she done that? The Queen rallied herself; she should return to the table, but something had shifted now, and even with her defenses up, the Queen found that she did not want to cross the room.
“You don’t like being recognized,” the girl mused. “Was life with the Beautiful Queen really so bad?”
The Queen snarled, an animal sound that lashed through her teeth before she could hold it back. She had forgotten about the damned portrait. It must still be lying around the Keep somewhere, their last family moment before all hell had broken loose. But the Queen had shed that sad child as though she were emerging from a chrysalis. The girl should never have been able to connect the two. The Queen thought about calling for Ducarte, but she couldn’t seem to open her mouth.
“I have poor vision,” the girl remarked. “But my jewels are useful. Sometimes I see. I simply see, where other people might notice nothing.” She stood up from the table and approached the Queen slowly, her gaze appraising and, worse, pitying. “You’re a Raleigh, aren’t you? A bastard Raleigh, unloved and unwanted and always forgotten.”
The Queen felt her guts twist. “I am not a Raleigh. I am the Queen of Mortmesne.”
But the words sounded feeble, even to her own ears.
“Why do you hate us so much?” the girl asked. “What did they do to you?”
Evie! Come here! I need you!
The Queen shuddered. The woman’s face, her mother’s voice … one was bad, but both were too much to bear. She tried to gather herself, to find some of the control she’d had when the girl first entered the tent, but whatever she took hold of seemed to melt in her hands.
Evie!
More impatient now, her mother’s voice, a bit of steel showing through. The Queen clapped her hands to her ears, but that did no good, for the girl was already inside her head. The Queen could feel her there, reading the Queen’s memories as though they were a novel, running through them, flipping the pages, pausing on the worst moments. The Queen stumbled away, but the girl followed her across the tent, across her mind, leafing through the past and discarding it behind her. Elaine, her mother, the Keep, the portrait, the dark thing … they were all there, called up suddenly, as though they had been waiting all along.