“WHERE IS HE?”
The Queen heard the peevish edge in her own voice. That was bad, but she couldn’t help it.
“He’ll be here, Majesty,” Lieutenant Vallee replied in a quiet voice. The lieutenant was new to her Security Council, a replacement after the death of Jean Dowell, and he always seemed to be on the edge of things, afraid to speak up. The Queen, who usually valued restraint, found the new lieutenant’s tiptoeing manner irritating, and signaled him to be silent. “I wasn’t speaking to you. Martin?”
Lieutenant Martin nodded in agreement. “He’ll be here shortly, Majesty. The message said that urgent business delayed him.”
The Queen frowned. Ten men were seated in a semicircle in front of her throne. All of them looked exhausted, and none more so than Martin. For the past month, he’d been in the north, putting down unrest in Cite Marche. Hundreds of people had planted themselves in front of the Auctioneer’s Office and refused to move until the Crown addressed the economic conditions in the city. It was irritating, but nothing to really contend with. They had no leader, these radicals, and rebellion without a leader was like a tidal wave; it went like hell until it met a cliff wall. The rebellion in Callae had failed in a similar fashion when its momentum simply petered out. But the fighting in Cite Marche had been hard, with several soldiers killed. There was no doubt that many of these men could use some rest. After this meeting, she would give some of them a few days off.
But the meeting couldn’t begin without Ducarte. Her Chief of Internal Security was no doubt more exhausted than any of them. His men had spent weeks trying to figure out who was organizing the protests in Cite Marche, with no answers yet. But Ducarte would get results eventually; he always did. Physically, he was beginning to show his age, but there wasn’t a more skilled interrogator in Mortmesne. The Queen tapped her nails on the arm of her throne, her fingers going automatically to her breastbone. They seemed to go there all the time, of their own accord. It had, in fact, become a tic, and the Queen of Mortmesne had no tics. Such things were for the weak and mindless.
The invasion of the Tearling had begun in disaster. Word had reached the Palais a week earlier: her army had been taken by surprise and scattered throughout the Mort Flats. It would take weeks to reassemble the soldiers and clear the camp. The entire thing was a catastrophe, but there was no one on whom the Queen could unleash her fury; General Genot had simply disappeared. More than a thousand Mort soldiers had died on the Flats, but Genot’s body hadn’t been among the corpses.
He’d better pray he’s dead. If I find him—
Movement to her right drew her attention. A slave was kneeling in front of the fireplace, lining the base with paper.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The slave looked up, her eyes wide, terrified yet resentful. Tear, there could be no doubt of it; although she was dark-haired and quite beautiful, she had the sullen, stupid expression of a Tear peasant. The Queen switched languages. “No fireplace is to be used within this building.”
The girl swallowed and replied in Tear, “I’m sorry, Majesty. I didn’t know.”
Was that possible? The Queen had given a blanket order about fires. She would have to speak to Beryll about it. “What’s your name, slave?”
“Emily.” She even pronounced it in the Tear fashion, without accent.
“Be the last to know again, Emily, and you’ll find yourself for sale on the streets.”
The slave nodded, gathered up the paper from the fireplace, and stuffed it back in the bucket, then stood waiting with a bewildered expression that only irritated the Queen further.
“Get out.”
The girl left. The Queen sensed her Security Council’s eyes on her, questioning. The throne room was cold this morning; no doubt many of them wondered why there was no fire. But the only fires the Queen allowed now were torches and the ovens in the Palais kitchens, some twenty floors below. Not even to Beryll could she admit the truth: she was frightened. In the past two months, disturbing rumors had begun to trickle in from the Fairwitch: miners taken, children disappearing, even an entire family that had simply vanished from a home at the base of the foothills. The dark thing was always hungry; the Queen knew that better than anyone, but something had changed. It had always been satisfied with explorers and fortune hunters, those foolish enough to venture into the Fairwitch proper. Now it was expanding its hunting grounds.
But how?
That was the real question. The Queen didn’t know the whole of the dark thing’s strange history, but there was no doubt that it was bound to the Fairwitch, enspelled there in some way. It could only travel by fire, and even that effort could exhaust its abilities. So how had it managed to take an entire family in Arc Nord without leaving a trace?
Has it gotten free?
The Queen quailed at the thought. The dark thing had forbidden her to invade the Tearling, and by now it would know that she had disobeyed. But what choice did she have? Left unpunished, the delinquent Tear shipment was an incitement to every revolutionary in the New World. The riots in Cite Marche were only the latest example. The last Cadarese shipment had contained goods of markedly diminished quality: poorly insulated glass, defective horses, second-rate gems whose surfaces revealed multiple flaws. In Callae, silk production had dropped to such a low level that it could only mean deliberate sabotage. These signs were easy to interpret: fear, that powerful engine that drove the Mort economy, was waning. The Queen had to invade the Tearling, if for no other reason than demonstration. An object lesson, as Thorne would say. But she had disobeyed the dark thing, and by now it had surely found her out. Damping the fireplaces was a temporary measure, one that could not work forever.
It doesn’t matter, her mind insisted. She would invade the Tearling and do what she should have done years ago: take the sapphires. The reports from the Argive Pass, though still spotty and unconfirmed, made her course very clear. The Tear sapphires still had power, all right, and once the Queen had them, she would tear through the New World like a hurricane. She would light all the fires she wanted, and even the dark thing would cower from her sight.
But still she was worried. Thorne had vanished. It was a special gift of his, disappearing without a trace, but her guard captain, Ghislaine, had evaluated Thorne correctly long ago: “Dangerous, Majesty, always, even if he stands before you wearing nothing.” She wished she knew where he was.
None of her military men were brave enough to ask about the fireplace. Vallee’s mouth still held a hint of sullen displeasure at being silenced earlier, his pout that of a small boy denied a sweet.
Children, the Queen thought grimly. My soldiers are all children.
A throat cleared behind her, such a perfect mixture of signal and respect that it could only be Beryll. “Majesty, Ducarte has arrived. He will be here shortly.”
The Queen nodded, but her eyes remained on the darkened fireplace. She thought she’d heard something over there, a soft hiss like the sparking of a flame. Her patience had shortened, and she found herself unwilling to wait for Ducarte even a moment longer. “Let’s begin. What of Cite Marche?”
“The rebels are contained, Majesty,” Martin replied. “For now, at least.”
“Let’s not call them rebels,” Vise interrupted. “Let’s call them adolescents with too much time and money on their hands.”
Martin shook his head. “I would advise caution in that assessment. We found many overfed young people, yes, and most of these ran at the first sign of real conflict. But we also found a considerable number of idle poor, apparently directed by a man named Levieux. Several of those we took into custody died hard without even revealing his name.”