“Do you want to help us further?”
“Help you how?”
“We can always use information. Anything you can pass along via Jonathan would be helpful.”
“How did Jonathan join up with you?”
“That’s his story to tell.”
“How did you get over the New Canaan wall?”
“There are ways through every barrier, Mrs. Mayhew.”
Lily blinked, stunned by the calm assurance of this statement. “Who are you?”
She knew what she would get: no names. The Englishman stepped through the door, and Lily ignored him, staring resolutely at the sleeping woman on the sofa. He had allowed Dorian to stay, but Lily felt as though she had already lost something. Soon they would both be gone, Dorian and this man, and what would Lily have then? A lifetime with Greg, an eternity of nights like tonight. This brief glimpse of another life would make that future a thousand times worse. When the man spoke, his reply was so unexpected that Lily froze in her chair, and by the time she looked up, he had already vanished into the night.
“My name is William Tear.”
BOOK II
C
HAPTER
6
E
WEN
Even small gestures of kindness have the potential to reap enormous rewards. Only the shortsighted man believes otherwise.
—The Glynn Queen’s Words, AS COMPILED BY FATHER TYLER
THE CADARESE AMBASSADOR, Ajmal Kattan, was a charmer: tall, sharp-witted, and handsome, with almond-colored skin and a blinding white smile. Kelsea liked him immediately, despite Mace’s warning that this was exactly the sort of ambassador the King of Cadare always sent to women: smooth and plausible and seductive. Kattan’s Tear was imperfect, but even his accent was engaging, riddled with pauses before long words and a sharp drop on the penultimate vowel. He had brought Kelsea a beautiful chess set carved from marble, kings and rooks and bishops with intricately detailed faces, and she accepted the gift happily. After their return from the Argive, she had sent several Keep servants to clean out Carlin and Barty’s cottage, and among assorted other things, they had brought back Carlin’s old chess set. Both Arliss and Mace were good players; Arliss could beat Kelsea two times of three. But Carlin’s set was old, whittled—by Barty, no doubt—of plain wood and beginning to show its wear. It had great sentimental value to Kelsea, but the new set would be more durable for play.
Mace had warned Kelsea that the Cadarese placed great value on appearances, and as such, she had not wanted to conduct this meeting in the large central room of the Queen’s Wing that usually served for such functions. At her urging, Mace had finally relented and moved the throne back down to the massive audience chamber several floors below. When not filled with people, the chamber felt ridiculously cavernous, so they had also thrown this audience open to the public. Tear nobles had more or less stopped attending Kelsea’s audiences once they realized that no gifts would be dispensed from the throne, and Mace and Kelsea had decided on a simple, fair system: the first five hundred people who came to the Keep Gate could attend the audience, so long as they submitted to a search for weapons. Kelsea had found that clothing was a fairly reliable index of wealth; some of the people who stood in front of her were clearly of the entrepreneurial class, probably dealing in lumber if not something less legal. But the majority of the audience was poor, and Kelsea had the regrettable thought that most of them had come here for entertainment. Her first few public audiences had featured quite a bit of talk and some occasional catcalling from the crowd, but Mace had taken care of that, announcing that anyone who captured his attention could look forward to a private conference. Now Kelsea barely heard a peep.
“My master begs that you will honor him with a visit,” the ambassador said.
“Perhaps one day,” Kelsea replied, seeing Mace frown. “At the moment, I have too much to do.”
“Indeed you have the full plate. You have provoked the Ageless Queen. My master admires your bravery.”
“Has your master never provoked her?”
“No. His father did, and received a painful reminder. Now we pay twice as much in glass and horses.”
“Perhaps that’s the difference. We were paying in humans.” A moment later Kelsea remembered that the Cadarese also sent slaves to Mortmesne, but the ambassador did not seem to take offense.
“Yes, we’ve heard this as well. You forbid human traffic within your borders. My master is greatly entertained.”
There was an insult wrapped in the last statement, but Kelsea made no attempt to unpack it. She needed help from the Cadarese king, and she could not offend the ambassador by questioning him in front of his aides, but neither did she have time to engage in the lengthy and circuitous prelude to serious discussion that was fashionable in Cadare. This morning, a message had arrived from Hall, with bad news: General Ducarte had taken command of the Mort army. Everyone in the Queen’s Wing seemed to know a horror story about Ducarte, and although the border villages had already been evacuated and Bermond was now beginning to clear out the eastern Almont, even a successful evacuation would accomplish nothing if Ducarte got to New London. The city’s defenses were weak. The eastern side had a high wall, but that wall was too close to the Caddell River, built on watery ground. The western side of the city had nothing. Her mother had trusted the natural defense of the Clayton Mountains to protect the west against a prolonged siege, but Kelsea was not so sanguine. She wanted a western wall around the city, but Mace estimated that they had less than two months until the Mort reached the city. Even if she conscripted every stonemason in New London, they would never build it in time.
But Cadare had many masons, the best stoneworkers in the New World. Even if the King was unwilling to supplement the Tear army with his own forces, perhaps Kelsea could get him to lend her some of his craftsmen. At the very least, she needed him to stop sending horses to Mortmesne; there was a saying, only lightly exaggerated, that a sick Cadarese mare could outrun a healthy Tear yearling. Better horses weren’t much use to the Mort up in the Border Hills, but once they got down into the Almont, superior cavalry would be a crushing advantage. She needed these negotiations to bear fruit.
“Shall we get down to business, Ambassador?”
Kattan’s eyebrows rose. “You move quickly, Majesty.”
“I’m a busy woman.”
Kattan settled in his chair, looking a bit disgruntled. “My master wishes to discuss an alliance.”
Kelsea’s heart leapt. A murmur ran through the audience chamber, but Mace did not react; he was too busy staring at the ambassador with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
“My master likewise wishes to reduce his tribute to the Mort,” Kattan continued. “But neither Cadare nor the Tearling is strong enough to do so alone.”
“I agree. What would the terms of this alliance be?”
“Slowly, slowly, Majesty!” Kattan insisted, waving his hands, and that was Kelsea’s real clue that she would not like what was coming: the ambassador felt the need to wend his way into it. “My master recognizes your bravery in defying the Mort, and would reward you accordingly.”
“Reward me how?”
“By making you first among his wives.”
Kelsea froze, dumbfounded, hearing several of her Guard mutter around her. She swallowed hard and managed to reply, though it felt as though her throat were full of moths. “How many wives does your King have?”