Dimly, she sensed her guards bringing the fire under control. But they were ignoring the hearth.
“All of the fire, damn you! The fireplace as well!”
Over the dark thing’s shoulder a shadow loomed, a shadow that turned into Beryll, coming toward them with a wooden chair grasped in his hands like a club. He swung it at the dark thing’s head, and the Queen felt the impact ricochet all through her, the dark thing’s outline shuddering inside her mind. It hissed, turned its head, and found Beryll.
“No!” the Queen shrieked. But it was too late. Her concentration had broken. The dark thing pulled free of her, grabbed Beryll by the throat, and snapped the old man’s neck with one quick twist of its hands. Beryll went down without a sound, and at that moment the fire went out, plunging the room into darkness. The bright shape in the Queen’s mind flickered, faded, and finally disappeared. She sank to the floor, panting, clutching her dislocated shoulder.
“Majesty!” her guard captain shouted. “Where are you?”
“I’m fine, Ghislaine. Light a candle. Only a candle, mind.”
Confusion and stumbling followed her words. The Queen crawled sideways, leaning on her good shoulder and groping with the bad, until she reached Beryll’s limp, still-warm body beside the wall. As the thin glow of candlelight began to illuminate the room, she found his wide eyes staring up at her. Beryll had lived a long life, yes, and he was an old man, but the Queen could only see the child she had pulled from the pit: a tall, skinny child with intelligent eyes and a ready smile. Something contracted inside her, and she wanted to cry. But that was unthinkable. She had not shed a tear in over one hundred years.
The Queen looked up and found her guards circled around her, waiting, clearly frightened; they thought they would be blamed for this disaster. Blame needed to be taken, for certain, and after a moment’s thought, the Queen realized where the culpability lay.
“My pages. Get them in here.”
When the five women were all lined up before her, the Queen looked them over, wondering where the treachery lived. Juliette, who came from one of Demesne’s best families and clearly intended to be Queen here one day? Bre, who had once taken a whip for ruining one of the Queen’s dresses? Or perhaps Genevieve, who liked to make rebellious comments in order to win the approval of the others. The Queen had never felt her own age so heavily as when she saw the five of them in front of her, a solid wall of unrelenting youth.
“Which of you lit the fire?”
She saw many emotions flit across their faces: surprise, thoughtfulness, indignation. All of them eventually settled into exaggerated expressions of innocence. The Queen frowned.
“Mina is dead, but it wasn’t Mina. She’s never been able to light a decent fire to save her life. You know me, ladies. I am not fair. If no one admits guilt, you will all face punishment. Who defied my express command by lighting a fire?”
No one answered. The Queen felt as though they stood united against her. She looked down at Beryll’s body and suddenly realized the truth of things: there was no loyalty anymore. Beryll, Liriane … her own people were all dead now, and she was surrounded by grasping young strangers. The bubble of anger inside her head abruptly deflated, lapsing into sorrow and exhaustion, a strange sense of futility. She could punish them all, yes, but what would that prove?
“Dismissed, all of you. Get out.”
The guards went, but the five pages merely stood there, their eyes wide and confused. Blonde, redhead, brunette, even a dark, exotic Cadarese named Marina. What on earth had possessed the Queen to choose these women? She should have had men all along. Men came at you directly, with raised fists. They didn’t sneak up on your back with a knife.
“We’re dismissed, Majesty?” Juliette ventured, in a tone of disbelief.
“Go. Find me a replacement for Mina.”
“What of the corpses?”
“Get out!” the Queen screamed. She felt her own control slipping, inch by inch, but there was no way to rein it in. “Get out of here!”
Her pages fled.
The Queen shuffled over to her desk, her movements strangely hunched as she tried to protect her shoulder. It was badly dislocated; probing beneath her skin, the Queen sensed the outlines of the problem, a contortion of the musculature. Setting it straight would hurt like a bastard, but the Queen had bigger problems. The dark thing’s face hovered in front of her, eyes bright and gleeful. It thought it had the girl now, and the girl was all it wanted. Worse, it had called the Queen by name.
How could it know? she raged inwardly. No one could know; she had covered her tracks too well. Evelyn Raleigh was dead. But still, the dark thing had called her by name.
Evie! The voice echoed in a corner of her mind, her mother’s voice, always a trifle impatient, always exasperated at what was lacking in her daughter. Evie, where did you get to?
The Queen sat down at her desk. Moving carefully to spare her dislocated shoulder, she opened a drawer and took out a small portrait in a sanded wood frame. The portrait was the only tangible thing left to remind the Queen of her early life, and sometimes she toyed with the idea of throwing it away. But it had been too important to a young and desperate girl, and it had taken on the quality of a talisman; for a brief time, the Queen believed, the portrait had even kept her alive. Whenever she tried to discard it, something always held her back.
The woman in the portrait was not the Queen’s mother, but when the Queen was young, she would have given the world to make it so. The subject was a brunette, heavily pregnant, her skin browned from long hours spent in the sun. This portrait was old; the woman wore clothing too shapeless to be from anything but the Landing era, and a primitive bow was strung across her back. Her face was beautiful, but it was not the easy, careless beauty of any Raleigh queen. This woman had suffered; there were scars on her collarbone and neck, and her face was lined with long-healed pain. But there was no bitterness there. She was laughing, and her eyes radiated kindness. Flowers were woven in her hair. When the Queen was young, she would spend hours staring at this picture, her guts knotted in jealousy … not of the woman, but of the child in her belly. She wished she knew the woman’s name, but even in the Keep gallery, the picture had never been labeled.
Evie! Why do you make me wait?
“Shut up,” the Queen whispered. “You’re dead.”
Thinking of the past was a mistake. She tossed the picture back in the drawer and slammed it shut. If the dark thing had no use for her anymore, then she held no leverage. She could not prohibit fires forever; sooner or later, what had happened today would happen again. And if the girl actually did manage to set the dark thing free somehow, there would be no defense. The last remnants of memory disappeared from her mind, and she turned all of her thoughts to the present. The girl, the girl was the problem, and no matter what the dark thing said, the Queen did not consider the girl an easy mark. She could not offer Elyssa’s bargain, for the girl had refused to send Mortmesne a single slave. For a strange, wistful moment, the Queen wished that she could sit down with the girl, speak to her as an equal. But the jewels made such a friendly discussion impossible. The Queen hesitated for a moment longer, considering, and then pressed the gold button on the wall.
A few moments later Juliette entered the room, her steps hesitant, her eyes pinned to the floor. A smart girl, Julie, not wanting to push her luck. “Majesty?”
“Prepare my luggage for travel,” the Queen told her, turning toward the fireplace. She reached behind her back and grasped her left wrist in her right hand. “At least several weeks’ worth. You will accompany me. We leave tomorrow.”